When the Soviet Union dissolved on Dec. 25, 1991, the nuclear threat changed from the Cold War concern of ending civilization as we know it to one of securing "loose nukes" in chaotic Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union. I had the opportunity to visit the secret cities of the Russian nuclear complex six weeks after the collapse and to initiate a program of scientific collaboration between U.S. and Russian nuclear scientists. Together, we made remarkable progress in reducing the threat in the early and mid-1990's because of the trust we were able to build based on mutual respect, similar objectives, and a common heritage in the great early-20th century school of European physics.

Although the number of joint U.S. - Russian cooperative threat reduction programs increased and the U.S. funding rose dramatically at the turn of the millennium, real progress slowed as U.S. and Russian objectives began to diverge, and the programs became politicized and bureaucratized. Major opportunities to reduce the long-term threat were lost. Cooperation was re-energized by the tragic events of 9/11 and the emerging threat of nuclear terrorism. Today, both Presidents Bush and Putin agree that keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists is their highest security priority. Yet, strategy and commitment on both sides appear incommensurate with the threat. I will discuss critical barriers to and opportunities for renewed cooperation to meet the threat.

Siegfried S. Hecker is currently a Senior Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker was Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986-1997. He joined the Laboratory as technical staff member of the Physical Metallurgy Group in 1973, following a postdoctoral assignment there in 1968-1970 and a summer graduate student assignment in 1965. He served as Chairman of the Center for Materials Science and Division Leader of the Materials Science and Technology Division before becoming Director. From 1970 to 1973 he was a senior research metallurgist with the General Motors Research Laboratories.

Dr. Hecker received his B.S. in metallurgy in 1965 and M.S. in metallurgy in 1967 from Case Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in metallurgy in 1968 from Case Western Reserve University.

Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the TMS (Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society), Fellow of the American Society for Metals, Honorary Member of the American Ceramics Society, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among other awards, Dr. Hecker received the American Nuclear Society Seaborg Medal (2004), the Acta Materialia J. Herbert Hollomon Award (2004), the Case Western Reserve University Alumni Association Gold Medal (2004) and Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award (2001), the New Mexico Distinguished Public Service Award, (1998); was named Laboratory Director of the Year by the Federal Laboratory Consortium, (1998); received an honorary Doctor of Science degree (Honoris Causa) from Case Western Reserve University (1998); received the Department of Energy's Distinguished Associate Award, (1997); the University of California's President's Medal, (1997); the ASM Distinguished Life Membership Award, (1997); an Honorary Degree of Scientiae Doctoris, Ripon College (1997); the Navy League New York Council Roosevelt Gold Medal for Science (1996); the Aviation Week Group Laurels Award for National Security (1995); the James O. Douglas Gold Medal Award (1990); the ASM International's Distinguished Lectureship in Materials and Society, (1989); the Kent Van Horn Distinguished Alumnus Award, Case Western Reserve University (1989); an Honorary Degree of Scientiae Doctoris, College of Santa Fe, (1988); the Year's Top 100 Innovations Award from Science Digest (1985); the Department of Energy's E. O. Lawrence Award, (1984); the American Society for Metals, Marcus A. Grossman Young Author Award (1976); and the Wesley P. Sykes Outstanding Metallurgist Award, Case Institute of Technology (1965). He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Council on Foreign Relations, Tau Beta Pi Honorary Engineering Fraternity, Alpha Sigma Mu Honorary Metallurgical Fraternity, and the Society of Sigma Xi.

In addition to his current research activities in plutonium science and stockpile stewardship, he works closely with the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy on a variety of cooperative threat reduction programs. Dr. Hecker is also actively involved with the U.S. National Academies, serving on the Council of the National Academy of Engineering, serving as chair of the newly established Committee on Counterterrorism Challenges for Russia and the United States, and as a member of the National Academies Committee on Nuclear Nonproliferation. He is a member of ASM International and TMS, the Minerals/Metals/Materials Society, having served both in numerous local and national positions, and a member of the Materials Research Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council. He serves on the Corporate Advisory Panel of the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment, is a member of the Advisory Group to the Cooperative Research and Development Foundation (CRDF), and previously served on the Board of Regents for the University of New Mexico.

Dr. Sarah Mendelson is a senior fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Before joining CSIS in 2001, she taught international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Dr. Mendelson received her B.A. in history from Yale University, and her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University. She also earned a certificate from the Harriman Institute.

At CSIS, she manages several projects that explore the links between security and human rights. Her current research includes collaborative work on public opinion surveys of Russian attitudes on democracy, human rights, Chechnya and the military. She directed a collaborative study evaluating the impact of Western democracy assistance to Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In addition, she has served on the staff of the National Democratic Institute's Moscow office, and was a resident associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has also been a fellow at CISAC and at Princeton University's Center of International Studies.

Dr. Mendelson serves on the steering committee of Human Rights Watch, the editorial board of International Security, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Program on New Approaches to Russian Security.

Tonya Putnam has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and received her Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Stanford University in March 2005. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC, but will be moving to the Center on Globalization and Governance at Princeton University for a postdoctoral fellowship next academic year. Her dissertation, Courts Without Borders? The Politics and Law of Extraterritorial Regulation, explores the extraterritorial reach of U.S. federal courts and regulatory institutions, and implications for the development of de facto international regulatory frameworks. Other research areas have included human rights in peace implementation missions, comparative legal responses to the threat of cybercrime and cyberterrorism, risk communication in the context of radiological terrorism (dirty bombs), and obstacles to military reform in Russia.

Linda Kirschke is a predoctoral fellow at CISAC. She is a PhD candidate at Princeton University, in the Department of Politics, and her research focuses on state politics and ethnic violence. She published "Informal repression, zero sum politics and late third wave transitions" in the Journal of Modern African Studies in 2000. Drawing on the cases of Cameroon, Rwanda and Kenya, this article shows that transitions to multiparty politics place Sub-Saharan South Africa at high risk for civil violence. Kirschke was a Eurasia Title VIII Fellow at the Social Science Research Council in 2002-03, working on Russian language training. In 2003-04, she was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Pre-Dissertation Fellowship at Columbia Universityís Council for European Studies. Kirschke has a BA in French and African studies and has worked for human rights organizations in France, London and Africa.

Has the Bush administration used the War on Terror to consolidate power in the executive branch? Is the United States in danger of undermining civil liberties and laying the foundation for an American police state? Arguing against conventional wisdom the authors answer these questions with an emphatic No. Drawing on evidence from the USA Patriot Act, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration, intelligence reform, and the detention of enemy combatants, the authors argue that what is most striking about US homeland security policy in the wake of 9-11 is just how weak the response of the American state has been. This outcome is contrary to both conventional wisdom and theoretical expectation. The authors argue that this puzzle is best explained by focusing on the institutional structure of US domestic politics.

Jay Stowsky is an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) and is the executive drector of UC Berkeley's Services Science Program. Previously, he directed UC Berkeley's program on Information Technology and Homeland Security at the Goldman School of Public Policy and served in the Clinton administration as senior economist for science and technology policy on the staff of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Stowsky has also served as associate dean at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and as director of research policy for the University of California system. He has authored several studies of U.S. technology policy, including "Secrets to Share or Shield: New Dilemmas for Military R&D in the Digital Age," in Research Policy (Vol. 33, No. 2, March 2004) and "The Dual-Use Dilemma," in Issues in Science and Technology (Winter 1996). He is co-author, with Wayne Sandholtz, et al., of The Highest Stakes: The Economic Foundations of the Next Security System (Cambridge Oxford University Press, 1992).

Matthew Kroenig is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley and a Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Fellow at the Institute of Global Conflict and Cooperation. Kroenig's dissertation research explains the conditions under which states provide sensitive nuclear assistance to nonnuclear weapons states. Previously, he was a research associate with the Information Technology and Homeland Security Project and has also served in government as an intelligence analyst.