This paper reports the results of a study of the special export control regime for high-performance computers. The history and purpose of this export control regime are reviewed, and a framework for analysis is established, which can be used to test the basic premises on which the control regime rests and to suggest viable control thresholds. The fact that the export of certain computer systems cannot be effectively controlled is established, and the limits of controllability are defined. U.S. government applications for high-performance computers are reviewed with respect to the requirement for and criticality of such computing for national security. Finally, judgments are made as to the levels of control that are possible, and the desirability and feasibility of maintaining Such controls. Near- and intermediate-term problems that may erode the liability of the basic premises underlying high-performance computer export controls are identified.

The tasks of preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention are neither self-evident nor value-neutral, as some of their proponents seem to believe. Diplomacy that aims to resolve long-standing conflicts may have to take sides and coerce powerful parties into concessions. Diplomacy that aims to manage conflict so that it does not become violent may have to sacrifice a quest for justice in deference to the powerful. Prevention might conflict with important national and even global interests. If, as President Clinton has suggested many times, the primary American interest in Bosnia is thwarting the spread of the war, then the arms embargo has been an unqualified success. If, however, the primary American and global interest has been denying Serbian aggression and upholding the principle of Bosnian sovereignty, then the embargo has failed.

A focus on prevention ignores the role that conflict plays in driving political change in societies. For grievances to be redressed, they must be vocalized. If they are vocalized, those with a stake in the status quo will attempt to suppress them. Often the balance of change depends on the ability of the grieved to amplify the conflict to increase their support. If we have learned anything from the disparate cases of conflict resolution in recent decades -- the civil rights movement in the United States, the fight for human rights in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the fight for national self-determination in the Middle East, the fight against apartheid in South Africa -- it is that some conflicts must be intensified before they are resolved.

Preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention do not lessen the difficulty of choices for leaders, nor do they really lessen costs. For either to succeed, policymakers must still spell out their interests, set priorities among cases, and balance goals with resources. The president will still need to educate the American people about the rationale behind a policy and convince them of the need for action. Absent well-defined interests, clear goals, and prudent judgment about acceptable costs and risks, policies of preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention simply mean that one founders early in a crisis instead of later.

This report is the result of a CISAC-sponsored workshop in which several American companies doing business with military research and production enterprises could have more detailed interchanges with other American companies in a systematic way, and the results could be analyzed and reported.  The primary objective was to find successful approaches that could be applied to other ventures.  A secondary objective was to illuminate critical points for further collaboration and study.

The end of the Cold War has fundamentally altered the international system, as well as the major threats to global peace and security. The ideologically driven competition between the superpowers which was the defining feature of the Cold War, with its attendant dangers of nuclear confrontation, has been replaced with a whole array of new challenges. Among the most critical is the challenge of dealing with the consequences of the collapse of the USSR.

The emergence of fifteen independent states with uncertain identities, contested boundaries, weak institutions, and enormous political and economic problems carries with it considerable potential for future instability. Although the level of both inter-state and interethnic conflict in this vast region has thus far remained relatively low, and its scope contained, the tragic conflicts in Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Chechnya, among others, are a reminder, if any is needed, that the dangers of serious escalation are very real. Moreover, the political, economic, and security environment of the entire region is critically dependent on the future evolution of Russia itself.

The rapid and unexpected demise of the Soviet system gave rise to overly optimistic expectations of Russia's rapid transition to a democratic polity, market economy, and constructive partnership with its new neighbors and with the West. It is now abundantly clear that the formulation of effective policies for dealing with this region requires a serious reassessment of these initial premises as well as the elaboration of new institutional arrangements, norms, incentives, and constraints capable of contributing to conflict prevention as well as to the more effective management of those conflicts which have already erupted in the region.

This essay by Ambassdor Maresca, presented at the Center for International Security and Arms Control in January 1995, and the varied responses it invited, are intended to stimulate further discussion of these central issues by the larger academic and policy community.

The economic, political, and social changes underway in the former Soviet Union are of unprecedented scale and importance. Figures published in March 1993 cite that 839 defense enterprises, employing a total of four million workers, were undergoing conversion; 600 conversion programs were in effect to guide the process, and conversion of 400 of those enterprises was expected to be complete by the end of the year. In this process, 410,000 people, 210,000 of them engineers and technicians, have left the employ of the military industrial complex. These changes will affect all spheres of post-Soviet society, including the economy, social integrity, science, and culture, for decades to come. The complete restructuring of Russia's economic and social life will mandate in turn significant changes in the scientific establishment and its place in post-Soviet society.

This report is an expanded version of the executive summary of a much larger report, "Defense Industry Restructuring in Russia: Case Studies and Analysis." Many people contributed to that report, and to the underlying research. In writing that report, we did not attempt to reach consensus among the authors on the interpretations to be drawn from the data.

In this study we have looked at some of the most important elements of restructuring involved in the attempt to generate a viable civilian industrial sector from the assets of the military-industrial complex. Many other reform activities must be implemented at the national level to create the environment and infrastructure necessary for the functioning of a restructured industrial sector. Although not addressed here, they are important and difficult to implement. Another issue that we have not addressed is the pandemic presence of organized crime, which is a huge financial "tax" on economic activity as well as a disincentive to entrepreneurship and investment. I join those who believe that this is the largest single problem threatening the economic stability of Russia today.

This report examines the cost and benefits, both national security and economic, of export controls on certain high-technology, dual-use items including computers, microprocessors, commercial aircraft, and methodsfor data security. We also consider the nature and implications of U.S. unilateral export controls and sanctions, emphasizing the U.S. unilateral embargoes to certain proscribed states, the Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative (EPCI), and u.s. mandatory sanctions policy under the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). We analyze a few cases in detail rather than offer a generic, and inherently less thorough, review of all dualuse items. Assessments of the utility of high-technology controls cannot be made independently of a detailed analysis of the specific items and destinations subject to controls.

This report comprises a description, summary, and analysis of an entrepreneurial training workshop for Russian nuclear scientists held at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), May 9-20, 1994. This is the third in a series of such workshops. The first workshop was held in Boston, July, 1992. The second was held in Moscow, June, 1993. The workshop was cosponsored by the U.s. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Atomic Energy (Minatom).

The goals of the workshop were to provide the Russian scientists with academic and practical background in several basic business areas, and then to assist them, in conjunction with American industry representatives, in the preparation of business plans for possible cooperative projects.

This report summarizes analytical work completed on the Trident SLBM nuclear weapons safety issue. First, we evaluated the increase in low levels of risk of death from cancer from potential plutonium dispersal accidents at the Trident base at Kings Bay, Georgia. Specifically, we estimated the number of latent cancer fatalities resulting from a hypothetical worst-case accident involving a 10-kilogram release of weapons-grade plutonium aerosol at Kings Bay with the wind direction toward downtown Jacksonville, located 55 kilometers away. The estimated number of long-term cancer deaths ranges from 5 to 3300 and depends on a number of factors and assumptions including deposition velocity, wind speed and direction, the nature of the plume, and mixing layer height.

Second, we applied a simple, "back ofthe envelope" risk-analytic approach to the Trident safety problem to try to shed some light on the key question: How much should be spent on safety modifications for Trident? Depending on a variety of assumptions and value judgments, our analysis suggests that if one believes that the probability of a serious accident over the 30-year Trident program lifetime is of order 0.01 to 0.10, then an expenditure of $1-5 billion to increase safety is not unwarranted given reasonable estimates of the consequences of such an accident.