In this book, edited by Gail W. Lapidus, distinguished U.S. and Russian scholars analyze the great challenges confronting post-Communist Russia and examine the Yeltsin government's attempts to deal with them. Focusing on problems of state- and nation-building, economic reform, demilitarization, and the definition of Russia's national interests in its relations with the outside world, the authors trace the complex interplay between the communist legacy and efforts to chart new directions in both domestic and foreign policy in the years ahead.

Based on interviews with participants and research in newly opened archives, the book reveals how the American atomic monopoly affected Stalin's foreign policy, the role of espionage in the evolution of the Soviet bomb, and the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders.

The Soviet Union's economy was overindustrialized and highly militarized, with a disproportionate share of the military industry located in the Russian Republic. It is therefore not surprising that industrial production, including military production, has dropped sharply in the economic environment of the last few years. Many enterprises are shrinking, but few are failing completely or going into bankruptcy, and there is little disaggregation of large enterprises into smaller legal entities. Thus, with the exception of privatization, the general profile of Russian industry has not changed greatly.

The creation of new entrants (new business entities), to the extent that it is occurring, is one of the more promising aspects of the economic transition. However, the managers of many of the large enterprises resist divesting themselves of segments of their business. They fear that subsequent capitalization will result in a major reduction of value of the parent because the parent's contribution to the capitalized spin-off will not command much equity. Directors recognize the need for decentralization of management and financial responsibility, but many of them prefer to create divisions rather than subsidiaries. They also try to bring outside investment into the entire large enterprise rather than into a subsidiary. It is difficult for small groups of employees to simply leave and form a new (start-up) corporation because of the lack of commercial and social services infrastructure, especially capital markets, and the lack of rights to use state facilities.

The end of the Cold War creates both new challenges and new opportunities for improving nuclear weapons safety. Several post Cold War developments are likely to have negative effects on the safety of existing nuclear weapons arsenals. These potentially dangerous trends include an apparent decline of morale in the laboratories and military organizations responsible for weapons safety, the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons to new states, the likely discontinuation of nuclear testing for safety related purposes, and the introduction of new nuclear weapons operations, including large-scale warhead dismantlement and the relocation and long-term storage of large numbers of nuclear weapons.

In an effort to explore such challenges and opportunities, a NATO Advanced Research Workshop was held in Oxford, England from August 25^th through 27^th, 1994. The workshop produced seven specific proposals for consideration to increase nuclear weapons safety and security. The proposals represent a summary of the points discussed at the workshop and are not intended to imply complete consensus of all participants.

Under Article VI of the NPT, all parties agree "to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control." The purpose of this paper is to consider the meaning of this language.

The papers in this volume are revised versions of presentations made by the authors at a conference on economic reform in Russia, which was held at Stanford University on November 22 and 23, 1993. Professor Kenneth Arrow from Stanford chaired the confer­ence, which was sponsored by the university's Center for International Security and Arms Control ( CISAC), under the auspices of its project on Russian defense conversion, and by the Moscow-based Institute for the Economy in Transition. Speakers included all the authors in this volume, as well as other representatives of the Institute for the Economy in Transition, the World Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development ( EBRD).

With the ending of the Cold War, regional conflicts have come increasingly to the fore.  U.S. foreign policy goals in such areas continue to involve a mix of U.S. self-interest (as perceived by governing elites, Congress, and sometimes the electorate directly) and a desire to see conflicts in the world resolved more peacefully.  Both of these factors have led and will probably continue to lead to U.S. military interventions in some of these conflicts.

This paper addresses the issue of what role--if any--U.S. nuclear weapons should play in these interventions.  We focus on the following questions: given a military regional confrontation between the United States and a regional power, under what circumstances if any should nuclear weapons be used?  What arguments militate for and against their use? Can one come to an overall policy recommendation in this regard?

We are well aware that the best way to deal with military confrontations is to prevent them. To some degree, military confrontations represent a failure of policy.  Nevertheless, these confrontations do occur, and on occasion, the use of nuclear weapons has been and may again be contemplated.  The paper reviews some such possible occasions.

For more than half a century, we viewed one another through our gunsights.  Our ships passed each other on the tranquil watersof the world's largest ocean without so much as a sailor's traditional greeting.  Wary and suspicious, it was best to keep fingers on the trigger when warships passed in the night.

Now the Cold War is over.  Greater cooperation is evident not only in Europe, but also among the disparate nations of the Pacific Rim.  Despite widely divergent interests and agendas in this, the home of 60 percent of the world's people, trends are already becoming evident that point toward closer collaboration in a number of political, economic, and cultural endeavors.  The intersection of security interests, particularly at sea, suggests that the timing may be right to examine new forms of military cooperation as well.  While different threat perceptions have long militated against multilateralism in Asia, modest yet concrete steps toward naval cooperation inconceivable before the Cold War's thaw are now possible.

Although may problems face international efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to additional countries in the years ahead, none is more important than gaining a lengthy extension of the non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Action on extension will be taken by majority vote of the over 160 parties at a conference called to consider this question in 1995. This paper will consider why a lengthy extension of the NPT is important; what options for, and obstacles to, extension exist and what the NPT's strongest supporters can offer the NPT members who are skeptical about a long extension in order to win their votes.