Ambassador Dobbins will review the American and United Nation's experience with nation building over the past sixty years and explore lessons for Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. He will draw upon the just completed RAND History of Nation Building, the first volume of which deals with U.S. led missions from Germany to Iraq. The newly released second volume covers U.N.-led operations beginning with the Belgian Congo in the early 1960's. Dobbins will compare the U.S. and U.N. approaches to nation building, and evaluate their respective success rates.

Ambassador Dobbins directs RAND's International Security and Defense Policy Center. He has held State Department and White House posts including Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, Special Assistant to the President for the Western Hemisphere, Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State for the Balkans, and Ambassador to the European Community. He has handled a variety of crisis management assignments as the Clinton Administration's special envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and the Bush Administration's first special envoy for Afghanistan. He is principal author of the two-volume RAND History of Nation Building.

In the wake of Sept 11, 2001, Dobbins was designated as the Bush Administration's representative to the Afghan opposition. Dobbins helped organize and then represented the U.S. at the Bonn Conference where a new Afghan government was formed. On Dec. 16, 2001, he raised the flag over the newly reopened U.S. Embassy.

Earlier in his State Department career Dobbins served twice as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, as Deputy Chief of Mission in Germany, and as Acting Assistant Secretary for Europe.

Dobbins graduated from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and served 3 years in the Navy. He is married to Toril Kleivdal, and has two sons.

Despite an interesting prehistory, the field of information security we know today dates from the introduction of radio at the beginning of the 20th century. Cryptography dominated information security in its first hundred years and is now the best understood part of the field. In the last thirty years, cryptography was joined by the broad subject of secure computing, which remains much less well developed but shows signs of substantial improvement in the near future. The growth of networking promises a world in which typical computations are collaborations among many computers in a fashion suggestive of commercial subcontracting. In this environment, negotiation and configuration control will become the dominant information security problems.

Whitfield Diffie, Chief Security Officer of Sun Microsystems, is Vice President and Sun Fellow and has been at Sun since 1991. As Chief Security Officer, Diffie is the chief exponent of Sun's security vision and responsible for developing Sun's strategy to achieve that vision. Best known for his 1975 discovery of the concept of public key cryptography, Diffie spent the 1990s working primarily on the public policy aspects of cryptography and has testified several times in the Senate and House of Representatives. His position - in opposition to limitations on the business and personal use of cryptography - is the subject of the book, Crypto, by Steven Levy of Newsweek. Diffie and Susan Landau are joint authors of the book Privacy on the Line, which examines the politics of wiretapping and encryption and won the Donald McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communications Policy Research and the IEEE-USA award for Distinguished Literary Contributions Furthering Public Understanding of the Profession.

Diffie is a fellow of the Marconi Foundation and the International Association for Cryptologic Research and is the recipient of awards from a number of organizations, including IEEE, The Electronic Frontiers Foundation, NIST, NSA, the Franklin Institute and ACM. Prior to assuming his present position in 1991, Diffie was Manager of Secure Systems Research for Northern Telecom, where he designed the key management architecture for NT's PDSO security system for X.25 packet networks. Diffie received a BS in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1965, and was awarded a Doctorate in Technical Sciences (Honoris Causa) by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1992.

After the end of the Cold War, the world's attention focused on the vast quantity of potentially unsecured nuclear material- weaponized and unweaponized- that resided in the former Soviet Union. The closed borders of the Soviet Union were thrown open and facilities containing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were no longer under the watchful eye of a ubiquitous KGB. Russian scientists possessing knowledge about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons were able to visit or immigrate to any country of their choice, including rogue nations with active WMD programs.

In response, a number of nonproliferation programs were established by Western nations to help stem the emigration of Russian weapons scientists to countries of concern. The key question is whether these nonproliferation programs are achieving their objectives. To answer this question, we conducted a survey of 600 Russian scientists (physicists, chemists and biologists). The data indicate that U.S. and Western nonproliferation programs are indeed effective. The programs significantly reduce the likelihood that Russian scientists would consider working in rogue countries. The data further suggest that continuation of the Western assistance programs is necessary in order to prevent scientists from going rogue.

Biography

Dr. Deborah Yarsike Ball is a political-military analyst specializing in Russian affairs in the Nonproliferation, Arms Control and International Security Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and has been a fellow at Harvard University's Center for Science and International Affairs, as well as Stanford's Center for International Security and Arms Control. Her work focuses on Russian civil-military relations, military doctrine and security issues, the prevention of theft of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material from the former Soviet Union, as well as the safety and security of Russia's nuclear arsenal. Dr. Ball has conducted analysis of various regime's internal and external political and social behavior and their holistic use of the elements of power and influence.

Ball's publications include: "How Safe Is Russia's Nuclear Arsenal?" in Jane's Intelligence Review (December 1999) and "The Social Crisis of the Russian Military," in "Russia's Torn Safety Nets" (Ed. by Mark G. Field and Judyth L. Twigg, St. Martins, 2000), and "The State of Russian Science" in Post-Soviet Affairs, (July-Sept. 2002, with Theodore Gerber). Among her committee assignments, Dr. Ball is currently serving on a US National Academy of Sciences Committee tasked to assess the indigenization of US programs to prevent leakage of plutonium and highly enriched uranium from Russia.

After the 51-48 defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the Senate, General John Shalikashvili (Former Chair, Joint Chiefs of Staff) commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to examine the following technical issues,* which will be summarized:

•  US capacity to maintain safety/reliability and design/evaluation of its nuclear stockpile without testing.
• International/US capability to monitor a nuclear test ban, including evasion scenarios.
• Ability of nations to increase nuclear capability with/without cheating and the potential effect of cheating on US security.

* Technical Issues Related to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, National Academy Press, 2003. D. Hafemeister, Physics of Societal Issues, Springer and AIP Press, 2005; Physics and Society 33, 4-7, July 2004; and VERTIC Verification Yearbook 2004.

David Hafemeister is an emeritus professor of physics at California Polytechnic State University.  He spent a dozen years in Washington as Professional Staff Member on the Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Governmental Affairs (1990-93 on arms control treaties at the end of the Cold War), Science Advisor to Senator John Glenn (1975-77), Special Assistant to Under Secretary of State Benson and Deputy-Under Secretary Nye (1977-78), Visiting Scientist in the State Department Office of Nuclear Proliferation Policy (1979) and Office of Strategic Nuclear Policy (1987), Foster Fellow in the ACDA Strategic Negotiations Division (1997-98), and Study Director at the National Academy of Sciences (2000-02).  He has led technical staffs on nuclear-testing with the State Department (1987), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1900-02) and the National Academy of Sciences (2000-02).

Since Vietnam, the US Army has focused an unprecedented degree of effort on capturing lessons learned in training and on the battlefield and communicating them to other affected units. The Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL), established after Operation URGENT FURY, is the prime example of the Army's efforts to institutionalize the process of learning during the Cold War. CALL continues to function and provide lessons learned in the current Global War on Terror, while other grassroots organizations have sprung up within the Army to target the learning needs of specific segments of the force. One such organization is CompanyCommand.com, an online professional forum of Army leaders dedicated to outstanding leadership at the small-unit level. This talk will discuss the evolution of organizational learning in the Army since Vietnam, and examine how organizations like CALL and CompanyCommand complement one other in the pursuit of excellence.

Captain Raymond A. Kimball is a native of Reading, Pennsylvania, and was commissioned through the United States Military Academy in 1995. After completing initial officer and flight training, he was assigned to the 1st Battalion (Attack), 10th Aviation Regiment, at Fort Drum, New York in November 1996. While assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, he served as an aeroscout platoon leader and logistics and support officer. In those positions, he participated in the full range of Army operations, from home station training to counter-drug operations along the Mexican border to peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In May of 2001, after completing further officer training, he reported to the 3rd Infantry Division, where he was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 7th U.S. Cavalry. He took command of F Troop, 3-7 Cavalry in July of 2001. The troop consisted of 88 soldiers and $6 million in equipment and was responsible for all aspects of support and maintenance for the squadron's sixteen scout helicopters. In January of 2003, the troop deployed as part of 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, to Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. During combat operations the troop supported 870 flight hours over a period of twenty-one days while moving 700 kilometers through enemy territory without the loss of a single soldier. He gave up command of F Troop in June of 2003 and returned to the United States to begin graduate studies in history at Stanford. In addition to his coursework, he serves as a research assistant to the Preventive Defense Project in CISAC. For the past two years, he has also served as a Topic Lead and advisor to CompanyCommand.com. His next assignment will be as an Associate Professor of History at the United States Military Academy. His awards include the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, and the Humanitarian Service Medal. He is married to the former Mindy Hynds of Vacaville, California; they have one son, Daniel.

The presentation examines the practical problems of reducing the danger of accidental launch and suggests that the current approach to the problem should be reconsidered. First, the U.S. launch-on-warning posture may represent a bigger problem than that of Russia. Second, the efforts to repair or augment the Russian early-warning system should not be pursued as part of the de-alerting agenda, since they probably increase risk of an accidental launch. Finally, the notion of transparency in de-alerting should be reconsidered, for verification prevents de-alerting from being effective. (A short summary of the presentation can be found at russian forces).

Pavel Podvig joined CISAC as a research associate in 2004. Before that he was a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He spent several years as a visiting researcher with the Security Studies Program at MIT and with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and he taught physics in MIPT's General Physics Department for more than ten years. At the Center for Arms Control Studies, he worked on various technical and political issues of missile defense; U.S.-Russian arms control negotiations, and structure and history of the Russian strategic forces. During that time he was a principal investigator of a Russian Nuclear Forces research project, which produced a book, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. Podvig graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1988, with a degree in physics. In 2004 he received a PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen is a doctoral candidate at Yale University and a CISAC social science fellow. She is currently working on her dissertation, entitled "Between the Storms: An International History of the Second Indochina War, 1968-1973," for which she did multiarchival research in Vietnam, the United States, and Europe. She has two upcoming chapters in volumes on the First and Third Indochina Wars, to be published by the presses at Harvard University and the London School of Economics, respectively. She is a member of the American Historical Association, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Association for Asian Studies, and she serves on the executive committee of the Vietnam Studies Group. She received an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Pennsylvania.

Paul Stockton is Associate Provost at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and is Director of its Center for Homeland Defense and Security. Stockton is the Editor of Homeland Security (forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2005). His research has appeared in Political Science Quarterly, International Security and Strategic Survey. He is Co-Editor of Reconstituting America's Defense: America's New National Security Strategy (1992). Mr. Stockton has also published an Adelphi Paper and has contributed chapters to a number of books, including James Lindsay and Randall Ripley, Eds., U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War (1997).

Mr. Stockton received a B.A. summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1976 and a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 1986. Dr. Stockton served from 1986-1989 as Legislative Assistant to US Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Dr. Stockton was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship for 1989-1990 by the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University. In August 1990, Dr. Stockton joined the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School. From 1995 until 2000, he served as Director of the NPS Center for Civil-Military Relations. From 2000-2001, Dr. Stockton founded and served as the Acting Dean of the NPS School of International Graduate Studies. He was appointed Associate Provost in 2001.