FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.
Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions.
Two of CISAC's scholars, William J. Perry and Jeremy Weinstein, received honors in recognition of their groundbreaking work in international affairs.
Paying homage to William J. Perry's lifetime commitment to national security, the National Defense University renamed its Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies in a ceremony with U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Ashton Carter and Acting Perry Center Director Ken LaPlante.
At a meeting of regional defense ministers in 1996, then-U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry proposed the establishment of a center where civilian and military leaders in the Western Hemisphere could collaborate on defense and international security. Today, the Perry Center is the pre-eminent academic institution for defense and security issues affecting the Americas. Perry is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at FSI and a CISAC faculty member.
Professor Jeremy M. Weinstein received the prestigious Karl Deutsch Award from the International Studies Association, following in the foosteps of four other CISAC scholars who have received the award. The ISA recognizes scholars younger than 40 - or within 10 years of defending their dissertation - who have made the most significant contributions to the study of international relations and peace.
Weinstein, former Director for Development and Democracy on the National Security Council staff at the White House, is a leading international scholar in the study of civil war, political violence, international political economy and democracy. He is an associate professor of political science and a CISAC affiliated faculty member.
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Jeremy Weinstein (left) and William J. Perry (right), 2013.
In an homage to William J. Perry's lifetime commitment to national security, the National Defense University has renamed its Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies. U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Dr. Ashton Carter and Acting Perry Center Director Ken LaPlante gave remarks.
At a meeting of regional defense ministers in 1996, U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry proposed creating a center where civilian and military leaders in the Western Hemisphere could collaborate on defense and international security issues. Today, the Perry Center is the pre-eminent academic institution for defense and security issues affecting the Americas.
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William J. Perry meets with students involved in his project to educate the public about the threat of nuclear weapons. | Light @11B
“I love a book party because we’re all devoted to the advancement of knowledge, but we all know it’s really hard to do and it’s not always appreciated when we do it,” Stanford Law School Dean Mary Elizabeth Magill told a gathering of law faculty to honor the book by Cuéllar, a law professor who also will be the next director of CISAC’s umbrella organization, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. The law faculty were also honoring law professor Michele Landis Dauber’s new book, “The Sympathetic State: Disaster Relief and the Origins of the American Welfare State.”
Cuéllar’s book explores the history of two major federal agencies: the Roosevelt-era Federal Security Agency – today the Department of Health and Human Services – and the Department of Homeland Security, established in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Through the stories of both agencies, Cuéllar shows how Americans often end up choosing security goals through overlapping ambitions and conflicts over agency autonomy, presidential power and gut reactions to national security crises.
“More than other academic monographs which tend to be dry, impersonal affairs, I could see the person behind the prose in this book,” David Engstrom, an assistant law professor, told the gathering. “In the introduction, Tino crafts a beautiful metaphor by noting how easy it is to stand just to the north of the United States-Mexico border and to think that it’s somehow timeless, and to forget that it was state action that made that border such a consequential part of the social world for so many people. Now as you read, you soon realize that this book really isn’t about nation-state borders, in that sense, but rather about the border between domestic policy and national security and about the boundaries between public agencies.
“But then you also realize,” Engstrom continued, “Who better than Tino, who grew up along that U.S.-Mexico border, first to see and then to show us how seemingly arbitrary borders and boundaries can, through administrative action, become so consequential.”
The Islamic Republic of Iran continues to defy UN Security Council resolutions calling for an end to its uranium enrichment program. Is Iran trying to develop nuclear weapons, as many fear, or does it just want to produce nuclear energy, as the Tehran government claims? What would be the likely consequences if Iran does get the bomb? What diplomatic and military options are available to address this serious crisis? Four expert panelists will discuss this issue.
Abbas Milani
Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies; Visiting Professor in the department of Political Science; Co-director of the Iran Democracy Project; CDDRL Affiliated Faculty
Speaker
Abraham Sofaer
George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and National Security Affairs, Hoover Institution, Stanford
Speaker
Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo. She first joined CISAC as a visiting associate professor and Stanton nuclear security junior faculty fellow in September 2012, and was a Stanford MacArthur Visiting Scholar between 2013-15. Between 2008 and 2010 she was a predoctoral and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Braut-Hegghammer received her PhD, entitled “Nuclear Entrepreneurs: Drivers of Nuclear Proliferation” from the London School of Economics in 2010. She received the British International Studies Association’s Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize that same year for her work.
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
(650) 725-2715
(650) 723-0089
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ssagan@stanford.edu
The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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PhD
Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, where he previously served as the social science co-director. He is the Inaugural Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellow for Nuclear Ethics and Security at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (2026-2027). Sagan also serves as co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.
Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).
Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).
In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.
Former co-director, Center for International Security and Cooperation
Jeremy M. Weinstein, an associate professor of political science and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, received the Karl Deutsch Award from the International Studies Association (ISA).
The award recognizes scholars younger than 40 - or within 10 years of defending their dissertation - who have made the most significant contributions to the study of international relations and peace research.
Weinstein, 37, focuses his research on civil wars and political violence; ethnic politics and the political economy of development; and democracy, accountability, and political change. He is the Ford Dorsey Director of Stanford’s Center for African Studies and is also an affiliated faculty member at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.
He was presented with the award on April 4 by ISA, which promotes research and education in international affairs.
Ryan Crocker is the first Kissinger Senior Fellow at Yale University 2012-2013. Born in Spokane, Washington, he grew up in an Air Force family, attending schools in Morocco, Canada and Turkey, as well as the U.S. He received a B.A. in English in 1971 and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 2001 from Whitman College (Washington). He also holds an honorary Doctor of National Security Affairs from the National Defense University (2010) and honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from Gonzaga University (2009) and Seton Hall University (2012). He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Association of American Ambassadors.
He retired from the Foreign Service in April 2009 after a career of over 37 years but was recalled to active duty by President Obama to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan in 2011. He has served as U.S. Ambassador six times: Afghanistan (2011-2012), Iraq (2007-2009), Pakistan (2004-2007), Syria (1998-2001), Kuwait (1994-1997), and Lebanon (1990-1993). He has also served as the International Affairs Advisor at the National War College, where he joined the faculty in 2003. From May to August 2003, he was in Baghdad as the first Director of Governance for the Coalition Provisional Authority and was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from August 2001 to May 2003. Since joining the Foreign Service in 1971, he also has had assignments in Iran, Qatar, Iraq and Egypt, as well as Washington. He was assigned to the American Embassy in Beirut during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the bombings of the embassy and the Marine barracks in 1983.
Ambassador Crocker received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, in 2009. His other awards include the Presidential Distinguished and Meritorious Service Awards, the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award (2008 and 2012), the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Civilian Service (1997 and 2008) and for Distinguished Public Service (2012), the Award for Valor and the American Foreign Service Association Rivkin Award for creative dissent. He received the National Clandestine Service’s Donovan Award in 2009 and the Director of Central Intelligence’s Director’s Award in 2012. In 2011, he was awarded the Marshall Medal by the Association of the United States Army. In January 2002, he was sent to Afghanistan to reopen the American Embassy in Kabul. He subsequently received the Robert C. Frasure Memorial Award for “exceptional courage and leadership” in Afghanistan. In September 2004, President Bush conferred on him the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the Foreign Service. In May 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the establishment of the Ryan C. Crocker Award for Outstanding Achievement in Expeditionary Diplomacy. In July 2012, he was named an Honorary Marine, the 75th civilian so honored in the 237 year history of the Corps.
[Co-sponsored by CISAC, CREEES, Center for South Asia, Stanford Humanities Center, and the Stanford Initiative for Religious and Ethnic Understanding and Coexistence, supported by the President's Fund, CCSRE, Religious Studies, and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies]
Bechtel Conference Center
Ryan Crocker
2012-2013 Kissinger Senior Fellow, Yale University; Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon
Speaker
North Korea announced on April 2 that it would restart its nuclear facilities, including its 5-megawatt-electric (5-MWe) nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, north of the capital, which had been disabled and mothballed since an agreement in October 2007.
Pronouncements from Pyongyang during the past few weeks have been ominous, including threatening the United States and South Korea with pre-emptive nuclear attacks. On April 2, 2013, a spokesman for North Korea’s General Department of Atomic Energy told the Korean Central News Agency that at the March 2013 plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea: “A new strategic line was laid down on simultaneously pushing forward economic construction and the building of nuclear armed forces.”
The pronouncement continued: “The field of atomic energy is faced with heavy tasks for making a positive contribution to solving the acute shortage of electricity by developing the self-reliant nuclear power industry and for bolstering up the nuclear armed force both in quality and quantity until the world is denuclearized.”
We ask Stanford Professor Siegfried S. Hecker – former CISAC co-director and now a senior fellow at CISAC and the Freeman Spogli Institute – to weigh in. Hecker has been invited seven times to North Korea and he made international headlines when he returned from his last trip in November 2010 and announced the isolated North Asia nation had built a modern uranium enrichment facility.
Q: How concerned should we be about North Korea’s announcement that it will restart all its nuclear facilities? Does this fundamentally change the threat imposed by Pyongyang?
Hecker: It does not immediately change the threat, but it really complicates the long-term picture. This announcement indicates that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is severely limited by a lack of fissile materials, plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU) to fuel its bombs. Despite its recent threats, North Korea does not yet have much of a nuclear arsenal because it lacks fissile materials and has limited nuclear testing experience. In the long term, it’s important to keep it that way; otherwise North Korea will pose a much more serious threat. So, it is important that they don’t produce more fissile materials and don’t conduct more nuclear tests. The Kim Jong Un regime has already threatened to conduct more tests and with this announcement they are telling the world that they are going to make more bomb fuel. I should add that they also need more bomb fuel to conduct more nuclear tests.
Q: What do you make of the previous threats to launch an all-out nuclear war against the United States and South Korea? Does North Korea have the technical means to do so?
Hecker: I don’t believe North Korea has the capacity to attack the United States with nuclear weapons mounted on missiles, and won’t for many years. Its ability to target and strike South Korea is also very limited. And even if Pyongyang had the technical means, why would the regime want to launch a nuclear attack when it fully knows that any use of nuclear weapons would result in a devastating military response and would spell the end of the regime? Nevertheless, this is an uneasy situation with a potential for miscalculations from a young and untested leader.
Hecker spoke about North Korea with Christiane Amanpour on CNN, April 2, 2013.
Q: The Kim Jong Un regime has reiterated and apparently put into law that North Korea will not give up its nuclear arsenal. Does the current announcement really make things that much worse?
Hecker: I have previously stated that North Korea has the bomb, but not yet much of an arsenal. It has been clear for some time that North Korea will not give up its nuclear weapons, so what we should have focused on is to make sure things don’t get worse. I have stated it as the three No’s: no more bombs, no better bombs and no export. We don’t know much about North Korea’s nuclear exports, but that potential is a serious concern. Pyongyang took a step toward better bombs with its successful Feb. 12 nuclear test, although it still has little test experience. The current announcement demonstrates that they will now redouble efforts to get more bombs by increasing their capacity to make plutonium and HEU. It won’t happen quickly because these are time-consuming efforts – but it bodes ill for the future.
Q: Let’s look at the technical issues of the latest announcement. What do you think Pyongyang means by “readjusting and restarting all the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon?
Hecker: The restarting is easy to decipher: They plan to take the 5-MWe gas-graphite plutonium production reactor out of mothballs and bring the plutonium reprocessing facility back into operation. The “readjusting” comment is less clear. It may mean that they will reconfigure the uranium enrichment facility they showed to John Lewis, Bob Carlin and me in 2010 from making low enriched uranium (LEU at 3 to 5 percent for reactor fuel) to making highly enriched uranium (HEU at 90 percent for bomb fuel).
Q: What did you learn about the 5-MWe reactor during your November 2010 visit to Yongbyon? Will they really be able to restart it?
Hecker: Lewis, Carlin and I were shown the beginning of the construction of the small experimental light-water reactor. The containment structure was just going up. I pointed to the 5-MWe reactor right next door and asked the chief engineer of the reactor, "What about the 5-MWe gas-graphite reactor?" He replied: “We have it in standby mode.” I told him that people in the West claim it is beyond hope to restart. He chuckled and said, "Yes, I know, that's what they also said in 2003, and they were wrong then as well." The reactor had been mothballed since 1994 as part of the Agreed Framework. The North Koreans restarted it in 2003 without much of a problem and ran two more campaigns to make plutonium.
Q: Is there any indication that they actually have an HEU bomb?
Hecker: We really don’t know. To the best of our knowledge, the first two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 used plutonium for the bomb fuel. We do not know what was used in the most recent test on Feb. 12. It could have been either HEU or plutonium. It would not surprise me if they have been pursuing both paths to the bomb; that’s what the United States did during the Manhattan Project.
Q: Will we know when they restart the reactor?
Hecker: Yes, using satellite imagery we should be able to see the steam plume from the cooling tower as soon as they rebuild and restart it.
Q: Didn’t North Korea also have a 50-MWe reactor under construction? What happened to that?
Hecker: As part of the Agreed Framework in 1994, North Korea agreed to freeze the operation of the 5-MWe reactor and the construction of its bigger cousins, a 50-MWe reactor in Yongbyon and a 200-MWe reactor in Taecheon. We saw the 50-MWe reactor in 2004 and were told that they were evaluating what it would take to get it restarted. During later visits we were told and saw for ourselves that it was not salvageable. We were told the same was true for the Taecheon reactor. The North Koreans had been willing to trade these two gas-graphite reactors for the KEDO light-water reactors that the United States, South Korea and Japan had agreed to build at Sinpo. However, the deal fell apart when the Agreed Framework was terminated in 2003.
Q: What would it take to restart the 5-MWe reactor? And how much plutonium could it make?
Hecker: The reactor has been in standby since July 2007. In June 2008, as a good-will gesture to Washington (and a reputed fee of $2.5 million from the U.S., according to North Korean officials), Pyongyang blew up the cooling tower. In addition, based on our previous visits, we concluded that they also needed to do additional work to prepare the fresh 8,000 fuel rods required to restart the reactor. If they restart the reactor, which I estimate will take them at least six months, they can produce about 6 kilograms of plutonium (roughly one bomb’s worth) per year. What they may do is to run the reactor for two to four years, withdraw the spent fuel, let it cool for six months to a year, and then reprocess the fuel to extract the plutonium. In other words, from the time they restart the reactor, it would take roughly three to four years before they could harvest another 12 kilograms of plutonium. The bottom line is that this is a slow process.
Q: How difficult would it be for North Korea to adjust its centrifuge facility to make HEU? And, if they did, how much HEU can they make?
Hecker: Not very difficult. It just requires reconfiguration of the various centrifuge cascades and adjusting operational procedures. That could be done very rapidly. They most likely had everything prepared in case they ever wanted to make this move. If they reconfigure, then based on our estimates, they could make roughly 40 kilograms of HEU annually in that facility – enough for one or two HEU bombs a year.
Q: How big is North Korea’s plutonium stockpile?
Hecker: After our 2010 visit, I estimated that they had 24 to 42 kilograms of plutonium, roughly enough for four to eight bombs. If the 2013 nuclear test used plutonium, then they may have 5 or 6 kilograms less now. Because they have so little plutonium, I believed that they might have turned to uranium enrichment to develop the HEU path to the bomb as an alternative.
Q: Could you explain what you see as North Korea's capabilities in regard to putting nuclear warheads on short-, medium-, and long-range missiles?
North Korea has conducted only three nuclear tests. The 2006 test was partially successful; the 2009 and 2013 tests likely were fully successful. With so few tests, the North Korean ability to miniaturize nuclear warheads to fit on its missiles is severely limited. After the first two tests, I did not believe North Korea had sufficient test experience to miniaturize a nuclear warhead to fit on any of its missiles. I believed the nuclear devices tested were likely primitive -- on the order of the Nagasaki device, which weighed roughly 5,000 kilograms. Official North Korea news outlets implied they were more advanced, and some Western analysts agreed. I stated that they needed additional nuclear tests to miniaturize.
Q: After the test in February, Pyongyang announced that it had successfully tested a smaller and lighter nuclear device. North Korean news media also specifically stated that this was unlike the first two, confirming that the earlier tests involved primitive devices. The Kim Jong Un regime followed the claim of having smaller and lighter warheads with threats of launching nuclear-tipped missiles against the United States and South Korea.
My colleague, CISAC Affiliate Nick Hansen, and I do not believe that the North Koreans have the capability to miniaturize a warhead to fit on a long-range missile that can reach the United States because the weight and size limits are prohibitive for them. They have insufficient nuclear test experience. Although last December they were able to launch a satellite into space, it is much more difficult to develop a warhead, fit it into a reentry body, and have it survive the enormous mechanical and thermal stresses of reentry on its way to a target. In April 2012, Pyongyang paraded a road-mobile long-range missile we call the KN-08. It may have been designed to reach as far as Alaska and the US West Coast, but to our knowledge it has never been test fired. There is some evidence that the first-stage engine may have been tested last year and early this year at the Sohae (Tongchang) launch site on North Korea's West Coast. North Korea would need a lot more missile tests as well as more nuclear tests to present a serious long-range threat.
In this piece for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Pavel Podvig dispels the myth that Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as "Star Wars," helped bring the Soviet Union to an end. According to Podvig, these enduring myths about the program create an illusion that missile defense the answer to making the world more secure.
