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.

Ariel (Eli) Levite is the Principal Deputy Director General of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC). Dr. Levite has extensive experience dealing with issues of nuclear proliferation as both a scholar and practitioner. Before that, Dr. Levite was a visiting fellow at CISAC, where he also served as co-leader of the CISAC Discriminate Force Project. His previous jobs include Deputy National Security Advisor (Defense Policy) and Head of the Bureau of International Security at the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

Dr. Levite has written and published extensively on issues of international security, strategy, and Middle East politics. His two most recent publications include "Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited" in International Security, Winter 2002-03, and, co-authored with Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, "The Case for Discriminate Force" in Survival, Winter 2002-03. He holds a bachelor's degree from Tel-Aviv University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Kimberly Marten is a tenured associate professor of political science at Barnard College, Columbia University, and also teaches at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

She earned her Ph.D. at Stanford in 1991, and held both pre-doc and post-doc fellowships at CISAC. She has written three books: Enforcing the Peace: Learning from the Imperial Past (Columbia Univ. Press, 2004), Weapons, Culture, and Self-Interest: Soviet Defense Managers in the New Russia (Columbia University Press, 1997), and Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation (Princeton University Press, 1993), which received the Marshall Shulman Prize. Her numerous book chapters and journal articles include a Washington Quarterly piece in Winter 2002-3, "Defending against Anarchy: From War to Peacekeeping in Afghanistan," as well as op-eds in the New York Times and International Herald Tribune.

In May 2004 she was embedded for a week with the Canadian Forces then leading the ISAF peace mission in Kabul. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Program on New Approaches to Russian Security (PONARS). Her current research asks whether warlords and gangs can be changed from potential spoilers to stakeholders in state-building processes.

Steven Miller is Director of the International Security Program, Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal International Security, and co-editor of the International Security Program's book series, BCSIA Studies in International Security (which is published by the MIT Press). Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and taught Defense and Arms Control Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is co-author of the recent monograph, War with Iraq: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives (2002) and a frequent contributor to Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Miller is editor or co-editor of some two dozen books, including, most recently, Offense, Defense, and War (October 2004), The Russian Military: Power and Policy (September 2004), Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict- Revised Edition (2001), and The Rise of China (2000).

Miller is the co-chair of the U.S. Pugwash Committee and a member of the Committee on International Security Studies (CISS) of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Council of International Pugwash, the Advisory Committee of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and the Scientific Committee of the Landau Network Centro Volta (Italy). He is a former member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Within Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Miller serves on the steering committees of the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe and of the Harvard Ukrainian Project.

Suggested readings for the seminar:

(1) Teresa Johnson, "Writing for International Security: A Contributor's Guide." International Security, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall 1991), pp. 171-180.

(2) For a critical view of the journal: Hugh Gusterson, "Missing the End of the Cold War in International Security," in Jutta Weldes, et al., Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 319-345.

(3) For a survey of the evolution of the journal: Steven Miller, "International Security at 25: From One World to Another," International Security, Vol 26, No. 1 (Summer 2001), pp. 5-39.

Paul Kapur is a visiting professor at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. He is on leave from Claremont McKenna College, where he is an assistant professor of government. At CISAC, Kapur is writing a book manuscript on nuclear proliferation's effects on conventional military stability in South Asia. Kapur received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.

At least four different models have been proposed to describe the human dose-response relationship for inhalation anthrax. This research examined the 1979 outbreak of inhalation anthrax in the city of Sverdlovsk, Russia, in which approximately 70 people died, to gain a better understanding of the low-dose infectivity of inhalation anthrax in humans, since this was a low-dose exposure event. The results suggest that primate data originally published by Harold Glassman in 1966 probably represent the best human dose-response model currently available for inhalation anthrax.