The turmoil caused by weak and failing states gravely threatens U.S. security, yet Washington is doing little to respond. The United States needs a new, comprehensive development strategy combining crisis prevention, rapid response, centralized decision-making, and international cooperation.

Arguing for the primary role of homeland security, Council on Foreign Relations fellow Stephen Flynn describes a nation living on borrowed time. He presents a hypothetical scenario of a devastating "next attack" and stresses the difficulty officials have in learning new tricks and politicians have in paying for them. Flynn stresses as well the susceptibility of the food supply to sabotage and the lack of oversight in a vulnerable chemical industry, emphasizing in particular the continuing failure to establish systematic inspection of cargo containers. He is most convincing in arguing the risks of a "silver bullet approach," the assumption that a single innovation will solve a particular security problem. Instead, Flynn proposes a Federal Homeland Security System integrating private and public expertise, funded by levying fees on such activities as the movement of containers and by requiring owners and operators of critical infrastructure to carry antiterrorist insurance. The details of Flynn's proposals are significant in representing a genuinely long-term response to a threat he is convinced will remain serious for an indefinite longterm. Any risks they might pose to civil liberties, he argues, are marginal compared with the likely domestic consequences of being caught unprepared a second time-or a third.

Publisher's Weekly

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan created the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change in September 2003 with SIIS and CISAC senior fellow Stephen J. Stedman as its research director to identify the major global threats and generate new ideas about policies and institutions to enable the U.N. to be effective in the 21st century.

The panel issued a four-part report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, in December 2004.

PART ONE: The panel identifies six types of threats of greatest global concern: war between states; violence within states; poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation; nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological weapons; terrorism; and transnational crime. A collective security system must take all member states' threats seriously and deal with them equitably.

PART TWO: In prescribing policies to prevent threats from spreading or worsening, the report emphasizes development as the first line of defense. Combating poverty and infectious disease, the panel argues, will save millions of lives and strengthen states' capacity to deter terrorism, crime, and proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons. The report also urges the U.N. to improve its capacity for preventive diplomacy and mediation and to forge a counterterrorism strategy.

PART THREE: The report reiterates the U.N.'s recognition of states' right to self-defense, but also suggests that the Security Council should consider stepping in more often to exercise its preventive authority. Peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and peace building are vital to global security, and developed nations should do more to transform their armies into units suitable for peace operations. Post-conflict peace building should be a core function of the U.N.

PART FOUR: The report prescribes revitalization of the Security Council and the General Assembly, and creation of a new Peacebuilding Commission. On the Security Council, the report provides two options for achieving reforms: one would appoint new permanent members, and the other would establish new long-term, renewable seats. Neither option creates any new vetoes.

In the late winter of 2003, a number of livestock animals in the Midwest were poisoned due to accidental contamination of a popular commercial feed with a lethal additive. Although all the evidence indicates this incident had no malicious or terrorist intent, it is informative as a case study highlighting potential security implications with respect to a terrorist event directed at U.S. agriculture.

In all the discussions of agricultural terrorism, the threat of deliberate and malicious introduction of a contaminant to animal feed has barely warranted a sentence in policy papers and legislation. Yet the historical record shows that individuals from New Zealand to Kenya to the U.S. have seen contamination as an easy method to kill animals.

In the November 2004 issue of the Journal of Animal Science (the leading peer-reviewed, technical animal science journal), this article discusses the poisoning of livestock alpacas (a smaller cousin of the llama) in early 2003. The animals were killed by accidental contamination of a popular commercial feed with a lethal additive parts per million (ppm) level. Although the absolute number of animals affected was small, if a similar percentage of beef livestock were poisoned, it would correspond to a loss of over 400,000 cattle in the U.S.

The article provides a brief history of incidents of chemical contamination and the political (failure of re-election bid by the Belgian Premier in 2000) and human effects (documented cases of lymphoma, breast and digestive cancers in Michigan among those who ate fire retardant-tainted meat in 1973.) Also addressed are the relative risks to agriculture by biological agent versus chemical agent and concludes with specific recommendations for bringing feed security into the agricultural terrorism dialogue.

The web of measures that comprise the nuclear non-proliferation regime continues to hold at bay the "nuclear-armed crowd" that was part of President John F. Kennedy's alarming vision in 1963. The number of nuclear weapons states in 2004 stands at only eight or nine, and assertive steps may yet keep this number from growing. The proliferation of biological weapons, however, is quite another matter. Biotechnological capacity is increasing and spreading rapidly. This trend seems unstoppable, since the economic, medical, and food-security benefits of genetic manipulation appear so great. As a consequence, thresholds for the artificial enhancement or creation of dangerous pathogens--disease-causing organisms--will steadily drop. Neither Cold War bilateral arms control nor multilateral non-proliferation provide good models for how we are to manage this new challenge. Much more than in the nuclear case, civilization will have to cope with, rather than shape, its biological future.

The dominant (though contested) wisdom among international relations scholars is that military officers tend to be more cautious than their civilian counterparts about initiating the use of force. Sobered by the experience of combat, the theory holds, soldiers are hesitant to recommend military action except under the most favorable of circumstances. It might be the case, however, that military conservatism is simply a product of strong civilian oversight. Indeed, scholars have suggested that military officers actually have powerful incentives to promote the use of force, but these predilections may be muted when civilian leaders can punish officers for botched military adventures. In this article, the author details a quantitative, competitive test of these propositions, showing that states with strong civilian control are on average less prone to initiate military action than states without it. The results suggest that civilian control should play a central role in future models of conflict initiation.

Herbert L. Abrams is one of 16 committee members who collaborated on this National Academy of Sciences report, known as Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation VII. BEIR VII develops the most up-to-date and comprehensive risk estimates for cancer and other health effects from exposure to low-level ionizing radiation. It is among the first reports of its kind to include detailed estimates for cancer incidence in addition to cancer mortality. In general, BEIR VII supports previously reported risk estimates for cancer and leukemia, but the availability of new and more extensive data have strengthened confidence in these estimates. A comprehensive review of available biological and biophysical data supports a "linear-no-threshold" (LNT) risk model that the risk of cancer proceeds in a linear fashion at lower doses without a threshold and that the smallest dose has the potential to cause a small increase in risk to humans. The report is from the Board on Radiation Research Effects that is now part of the newly formed Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.

This volume offers a unique perspective on the discussion of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by broadening the terms of the debate to include both secular and religious investigations not normally considered. The volume contains a structured dialogue between representatives of the following ethical traditions: Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, feminism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, liberalism, natural law, pacifism, and realism. There are two introductory chapters on the technical aspects of WMD and international agreements for controlling WMD. A concluding essay compares the different ethical traditions. All the authors address the same set of moral issues and this creates a dialogue both within and across traditions. The debate structure is particularly useful and appealing for pedagogical purposes. The introductory essays on the technical and legal aspects of WMD could easily be used to introduce the subject to students.

This article uses the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis to illustrate the criteria by which victory and defeat are assessed in international crises. The evidence suggests that few objective criteria are actually used in such evaluations. Indeed, examination of the specific terms of crisis settlements can prove to be less important than a range of factors that do not conform to traditional rational actor assumptions. These include: i) prior biases in perception, ii) the experience of the crisis itself and the subsequent way in which it becomes framed, and iii) public opinion management during and after the crisis. This analysis has significant implications for policymakers who have to deal with the aftermath of a crisis, and also for the wider public and media, if governments are to be held accountable for their foreign policy.

Boost-phase ballistic missile defense is alluring because rocket boosters are easy to detect and track, they are relatively vulnerable due to the large axial loads on a missile under powered flight, the entire payload (single or multiple warheads and midcourse penetration aids) may be destroyed in a single shot, and countermeasures to defeat boostphase defense are more difficult to devise than for midcourse ballistic missile defenses. Moreover, if intercepted several seconds before booster burnout, the debris will land well short of the target area, although collateral damage to other territory is a serious concern.

On the other hand, boost-phase ballistic missile defense is technically challenging because the intercept timelines are very short (1-3 minutes for theater-range ballistic missiles and 3-5 minutes for intercontinental range missiles) and missile boosters are accelerating targets, thus complicating the design of homing kinetic-kill vehicles (KKVs). This article examines the technical feasibility and nominal capability of one type of boost-phase defense, namely, airborne boost-phase intercept (ABI). Airborne laser systems are not examined here. This article concludes that ABI should be technically achievable within the next decade and that airborne platforms offer some unique advantages, especially for theater ballistic missile defense, that warrant their serious consideration in future U.S. missile defense architectures.