What a difference eight years makes. Following the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered a new disarmament initiative that called for reducing U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,500 warheads apiece. Although that statement was basically ignored--at the time, Washington was embroiled in the recount saga--Putin's proposal remained the official Russian position on disarmament in subsequent years.

Fast-forward to this recent president election. Instead of calling for reductions in nuclear weapons in the aftermath of Barack Obama's victory, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened to move short-range ballistic missiles to the Kaliningrad region if Obama proceeds with installing missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Thus, he quickly presented Obama with his first major foreign policy test--how to handle the issue of missile defense in Europe, the biggest irritant in U.S.-Russian relations. He also seemed determined to demonstrate that Russia is going to be a difficult and capricious partner for the new U.S. administration.

So far, the Obama team has shown great care in dealing with the thorny issue of missile defense in Europe. During the campaign, they deliberately avoided making any critical statements on the European system to avoid alienating Polish voters in battleground states such as Pennsylvania. And now that the election is over, we're hearing that they're telling the eager Polish government that their general position on missile defense--it should be deployed only "when the technology is proved to be workable"--applies to the European part of the system as well. This isn't good news for missile defense in Europe, since its technology is "workable" only in a narrow sense, if at all.

Of course, this story is far from over. If the Obama administration decides not to deploy interceptors and radar in Europe, it opens itself to a charge of yielding to Russian pressure--especially from Republicans, for whom missile defense is a signature issue. The plan to deploy missile defense in Europe also has supporters in Poland and the Czech Republic; both governments seem to believe that the presence of U.S. personnel on their soil would provide them a security guarantee far stronger than NATO membership. Finally, Russia isn't exactly interested in seeing the issue disappear: The system presents no threat whatsoever, but the controversy allows the Kremlin to score lots of rhetorical points.

Finding a solution that calms the waters and satisfies everyone won't be easy. But it's not impossible either. One thing the new administration must avoid is getting into a discussion with Russia about whether Washington has the right to deploy its military facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic, or whether Russia should have the right to veto such a decision. While a legitimate discussion, we know that it's not going to get us anywhere.

Therefore, we need to take the dispute in a different direction. Instead of arguing about the terms and conditions of missile defense deployment, Washington should accept Moscow's standing offer to use its early warning radars in Armavir and Gabala to build elements of a joint monitoring system. The offer still seems to be on the table, although Russia has been far less enthusiastic about it since the United States made clear that this joint system wouldn't replace the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The problem with those sites might seem serious, but it can be solved. A year ago, Washington considered delaying the actual deployment of the interceptors until the ballistic missile threat from Iran (or maybe some other country) becomes evident. Moscow seemed interested, but the United States withdrew the offer. It certainly could be revived now. And I believe such a compromise would satisfy missile defense supporters and skeptics alike and also buy the necessary time to make the issue less sensitive politically. History shows us that once controversy dissipates, legitimate questions can be asked about effectiveness and cost--and on these counts, the current U.S. plan for missile defense in Europe fails in any sober, independent assessment.

What would remain then is a joint U.S.-Russian project in which both countries would work together to monitor missile tests and satellite launches. It's hard to think of a better legacy of the current missile defense dispute.

Although Iraq dominates the headlines, the situation in Afghanistan may be more decisive to longterm international security, said Sarah Chayes, who has lived in the country since 2001 after covering the last stand of the Taliban for National Public Radio (NPR).

Chayes, an American who directs Arghand, a cooperative in Kandahar that produces soap from local plants and fruits as an alternative to opium production, spent Wednesday, Nov. 5, at Stanford. During several talks with CISAC faculty, staff, students and donors she discussed regional security, the future of democracy in Afghanistan and the stresses of everyday life in the ancient city of Kandahar, where she lives and where civilians must carry firearms to protect themselves. 

Chayes strongly criticized efforts to negotiate with the Taliban, which has fought a protracted guerilla war against the Afghan government since 2004. The extremist movement ruled the country from 1996 to 2001, when the Northern Alliance and NATO forces removed its leaders from power. "There is no intrinsic support from the population for the Taliban," Chayes said. "The Taliban want all, they understand they won't get all so they are trying to get what they can. Negotiating with the Taliban [offers] zero benefit."

Instead, according to Chayes, Afghanistan needs to experience the "real substance of democracy," not simply elections. It also needs a surge of non-military volunteers trained to mentor leaders working in civil society. "Thirty years of combat undoes a lot of structure" in society, she said. "People get things done as fast as possible because they might be shot in the next 50 seconds."

Chayes is the author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan after the Taliban. In 2006, she was awarded The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' inaugural Ruth Adams Award for her work explaining the impact of U.S. policy on Afghanistan after 9/11. The prize recognizes journalists who translate complex issues of peace and security into everyday language and images. Chayes left NPR in 2002 to help rebuild Afghanistan. Initially, she served as field director for Afghans for Civil Society, a non-profit founded by the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. She founded Arghand in May 2005.

Lawrence M. Wein, CISAC faculty member, has been awarded the 2008 Frederick W. Lanchester Prize by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). The prize is given for the best written contribution to operations research and the management sciences published in English in the last three years.

Wein, a professor at the Graduate School of Business, was awarded the prize for a series of papers, including, "The Last Line of Defense: Designing Radiation Detection-Interdiction Systems to Protect Cities from a Nuclear Attack."

Wein's work opened up an important new area, homeland security, for the application of Operations Research. The work analyzes risks associated with four main national threats: border security, nuclear weapons at ports and large cities, anthrax- and smallpox-based attacks and food supply attacks, and it offers important policy recommendations for dealing with these risks. According to the award citation, Wein's research developed creative, original and detailed models for evaluating alternative methods of protection in these four areas. "The analysis used a range of methods including optimization, game theory, stochastic models, statistics and differential equations. Wein's research sets a high standard for future work on not only problems of security but public problems in general, and in communicating results of operations research to the general public," the citation stated."

The civilian nuclear cooperation deal between the United States and India, which President George W. Bush signed into law last week, has been controversial from the moment it was first outlined in New Delhi about three years ago. It would allow Washington to trade nuclear technology with New Delhi despite the fact that India is a de facto nuclear weapons state outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Critics of the deal insist, fairly convincingly, that doing so would cause irreparable harm to the nonproliferation regime, leaving the non-nuclear weapon states that abide by the NPT to question what tangible benefits exist for dutifully assuming their treaty obligations and submitting to NPT restrictions. Conversely, supporters of the deal legitimately point out that the benefits of a good relationship between India and the United States outweigh any potential harm. As with most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle--it's unlikely that the nonproliferation regime would remain unscathed, but it's quite possible that the damage could be contained.

A major sticking point for critics is that the deal actually makes it easier for India to continue producing fissile material for its nuclear weapons program by allowing New Delhi access to the world market in nuclear fuel for its power reactors, thereby freeing its scarce uranium resources for the production of weapons-usable plutonium in dedicated reactors that are exempt from any international safeguards. Moreover, India's breeder reactor program--another potential source of weapon-grade plutonium--is also free from safeguards. It's hardly encouraging that India would have the capability to increase its stock of weapon materials, but in reality, this doesn't much matter--probably the main reason why India got away with keeping that capability. There seems to be a worldwide consensus that once New Delhi crossed the nuclear threshold, the amount of weapons in its arsenal is unimportant. In fact, in some important aspects this is exactly the case--beyond its symbolic value India's nuclear arsenal hardly provides any security for the country. Indeed, if the U.S.-India nuclear deal helps strengthen this understanding, it provides some silver lining to the nuclear arrangement's drawbacks.

The deal could also provide a much needed incentive for a critical review of some of the current nonproliferation regime's assumptions. One such assumption is implicit in Article VI of the NPT--nuclear weapon states and their close allies have control over nuclear technologies. This is still largely true for advanced commercially viable technologies, but the monopoly on weapon-relevant technology is firmly in the past. An idea that emerged during discussion of the U.S.-India nuclear deal was to ban the transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technologies to India, supposedly to limit its ability to ramp up production of weapon materials. Limiting production of weapon-grade materials is a reasonable goal, but if the only approach is to deny a country access to advanced centrifuges or reprocessing plants, that battle is already lost.

Similarly, much ink has been spilled over the effort to have India commit to a moratorium on nuclear testing as part of the deal. The intent behind the idea was certainly laudable. But if the threat of cutting off the supply of fuel for nuclear reactors is our best hope to prevent India from nuclear testing, the effort to prevent new nuclear tests is in big trouble.

Without a doubt, the U.S.-India nuclear deal presents a serious challenge to the NPT. But it also presents an opportunity to strengthening the regime and its most important, relevant elements. In particular, for all of its problems and challenges, the NPT has successfully established a norm that assumes that countries shouldn't have nuclear weapons. The official signing of the U.S.-India nuclear deal is a good time to remind New Delhi that if it wants to be a responsible partner in the nuclear trade, it must assume the obligations that come with this norm--even if India never signed the NPT. Of course, this would require the nuclear weapon states to get serious about their NPT obligations and responsibilities as well. And that's not such a bad thing either.