Homeland Security Watch's author since February 2007, Jonah Czerwinski, transitioned into a position in government and thus handed the blog over to new hands. Joining CISAC Senior Research Scholar Paul Stockton in writing for HLSWatch on a weekly basis will be Philip Palin, senior fellow with the National Institute for Strategic Preparedness.

Management Science and Engineering Professor Siegfried S. Hecker, an expert on nuclear weapons, recently returned from a visit to North Korea, where he frequently checks on the country's denuclearization process. Hecker has researched extensively in fields of plutonium science-he served as director of Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986 through 1997, and remains an emeritus director to the Laboratory. Through a series of Track Two, non-governmental, non-official visits to North Korea, Hecker has worked closely with the previous and current administration's North Korean negotiations team. The Daily spoke with Hecker about his experiences in the country, and his insight into nuclear issues in North Korea and elsewhere.

The Stanford Daily (SD): This is your sixth visit to North Korea. You made one each year from 2004 to 2009. How is this trip different from the previous ones? Any change in North Korean society, diplomacy?

Siegfried Hecker (SH): We visited North Korea from Tuesday, Feb. 24 to Saturday, Feb. 28, and first of all it was quite a relief from Beijing in that the air was quite clear and that the weather was beautiful. In Beijing, it went day to day from being smoggy to being almost impossibly smoggy. So the first thing that we found when we got off at Pyongyang, was the relief of having reasonably clean air.

Even though it was in February and still quite cold, the greatest impression left is that Pyongyang and the people just looked more prosperous this time than I have seen them look in the past. There were more cars on the road; there were more tractors, especially when we got off into the countryside. The people were better dressed.

Particularly, one of the things I look for is color. Years ago, North Korea, like the Soviet Union, was all drab, gray and black. Now you see lots of colors; lots of down jackets, for example, on little children and women with bright colors from yellow to green to red. There was more construction in Pyongyang. We've seen many cranes working on the ground.

All the way around, while some people believed that North Korea and its economy is sinking, we've actually seen it rising and looking better than we've seen in the past. I would say this is the starkest observation of how it struck differently as the previous times.

[Diplomatically,] we've seen a change of attitude since October 2006, when they conducted a nuclear test. Even though, by technical standards, that nuclear test was of limited success, politically for them it was very successful. So the principal attitude change is one of greater confidence on their part. They now tell us, you must deal with us as a nuclear weapon state. We have demonstrated that we have nuclear weapons. We've tested a nuclear weapon, and so we expect to be treated as a state that has nuclear weapons. That confidence will most likely harden their negotiating position. Then, of course, they're also still trying to get a sense of what the new administration will do. They are entering the negotiations with a new administration from what they considered to be a position of strength.

SD: How is North Korea's disablement process of its nuclear facilities going?

SH: In July 2007, they stopped operations and began disabling the nuclear facilities. When I was there almost exactly one year ago, they showed me the nuclear facilities, allowed me to take photographs of the nuclear facilities to demonstrate that they are disabling those facilities that produce the bomb fuel-the plutonium. Disabling the facilities means making it more difficult to restart. They have finished most of the disablement actions, but still need to complete the unloading of the fuel from the nuclear reactor.

They made the decision last year to slow down the unloading because the other parties did not meet their obligations of providing heavy fuel oil or equivalent energy aid. At this point, Japan and South Korea have not finished their obligations, so the slow-down continues.

If the other parties complete their obligations, then I believe North Korea is prepared to complete the disablement. However, the next important step is to dismantle the facilities-that is, take them apart. The terms of that dismantlement have not yet been negotiated. Subsequently, they will need to give up their nuclear weapons. That seems a long way off now based on their comments.

SD: In one of your reports, you discussed the idea of a scientific fingerprint that could deter North Korea from exporting its plutonium. This is very interesting. Can the method have wider use?

SH: One of the concerns with North Korea would be the possibility of them selling or exporting plutonium or nuclear technologies. We know enough about the North Korean plutonium that we have what you call a scientific fingerprint. The makeup of plutonium is determined by the type of reactor and by how long it was in the reactor. We know that about the North Korean plutonium so we can identify North Korea's plutonium. This should be a deterrent for North Korea ever exporting its plutonium because we would know it came from North Korea.

We, of course, don't know whether or not North Korea would ever want to sell its plutonium, but just in case, the fingerprint represents a deterrent. This fingerprinting of plutonium is not as useful for plutonium from the rest of the world, because there are so many different types of reactors and we know less about their fuels and operating schedules.

SD: Do you think the example of North Korea contributes much to a solution of nuclear problems in other regions-for example, Iran?

SH: Right now, the second nuclear hot spot is Iran, and the difference between North Korea and Iran is that North Korea has declared its nuclear program now to be a weapon's program and has demonstrated that at least it can detonate a nuclear device, even though it wasn't fully successful. Iran, I believe, is developing an option for nuclear weapons but under the umbrella of doing it strictly for civilian purposes. They say, "We're not a nuclear weapon state and we have no intention of developing nuclear weapons," but they are continuing to put most of the capabilities in place should they decide to build weapons.

The dividing line between military and civilian is a very fine line, so North Korea and Iran are two very different problems. However, those countries certainly watch each other and look at the diplomatic responses during each other's negotiations.

SD: Are you advising anyone in the new administration?

SH: We work very closely with the U.S. government on this, although our visits are strictly track two visits, which means non-governmental, non-official visits. I don't go as an official, but rather as a Stanford University employee. In the past, we worked very closely with the previous North Korean negotiations team led by Ambassador Christopher Hill. We have now begun to work with the new team that is just being put in place.

SD: During your visits, you met with North Korean officials in education, public health, and explored possibilities of cooperation in these areas. How do you envision these future exchanges?

SH: We met with officials from the ministry of education and one of the economic universities to discuss potential cooperation in educational and technology exchange. In the past, we have also met with officials from the health ministry. So, in addition to working the nuclear issues, we're very interested in trying to engage the North Korean community in a broader set of activities than simply nuclear, and technology is one of those. They're very interested in material science, biotechnology, information technology, and so we explored the possibility of exchange visits and particularly having some Stanford professors go to North Korea and lecture on those topics.

SD: What classes do you currently teach at Stanford? How do you like being a professor at Stanford?

SH: I have a terrific time-that's one of the reasons why I'm at Stanford. The two classes that I teach are both Management Science and Engineering classes. They both focus on the intersection of technology and policy. One is a very large class, MSE 193/293, that Professor William Perry, former Secretary of Defense, and I teach together. We cover everything from history of technology and warfare to modern times and what the current challenges are in the security arena. Both Prof. Perry and I try to teach that in the spirit of our own experiences in these areas. It's a very, very large class-over 200 students.

Then I teach a course by myself in spring that's exactly the opposite. It's a sophomore seminar, MSE93Q, and I have approximately 16 students. The title is "Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Terrorism," and in essence, it's everything nuclear. So I cover in that 10 weeks the whole nuclear problem. I try to get students to understand the basics of nuclear technology and how that interfaces with the policy issue of nuclear weapons, energy, proliferation and terrorism. We cover topics such as: If you develop nuclear energy, why do you have to be concerned about nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation? What is the connection between nuclear energy and nuclear weapons? That's what we cover in 10 weeks' time, and I've enjoyed the interaction with students immensely.

SD: What do you aim to teach students in the classroom and outside?

SH: Particularly, I want students to understand the intersections of technology and policy. The nuclear field is a very good one to do that because you must understand the basics of nuclear technology to make good policy. And we also now have 60 years of very rich history of the interplay of those two in so many different countries and so many different ways. For example, in both of my classes the students have to write policy papers that show they have at least a basic understanding of the technology, even though they may be social science, political science, international relations majors, but I want them to understand the difference between plutonium and uranium, between fission and fusion, between weapons and energy. That's what I like to be able to contribute to the University.

What I like about the students is how truly interested and dedicated they are and how experienced so many of them are in the international arena. In addition, what's also fascinating is that we have students from all over the world. Whether it is a physics major from Palestine, or somebody who grew up in Iran, Pakistan, India or in China, Vietnam, Africa, they bring a totally different outlook on the world to the table, which then of course helps the rest of the students to understand that this world is much more than just about the United States of America, and Stanford is a great place to do it.

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a senior research scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has been named special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council.

Prior to her appointment, Sherwood-Randall served as a founding senior adviser to the Preventive Defense Project (PDP), a Stanford-Harvard initiative that focuses on security problems and threats. She also was an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"We are delighted that President Obama has asked Liz to advise him on European issues critical to our mutual political, military, and economic security, particularly during these challenging economic times," said Coit D. Blacker, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute and the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies.

"Liz brings a wealth of experience and knowledge that will help strengthen effective, constructive relationships between this country and our friends and allies in Europe."
- Coit Blacker

This is the second time Sherwood-Randall has served in the executive branch. From 1994 to 1996 during the first Clinton administration, she was deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. In this role, she developed and implemented regional security policy toward the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, including Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, and also established defense and military relationships. Sherwood-Randall was instrumental in extending NATO's Partnership for Peace program across Eurasia and in building the foundation for cooperation between Russia and NATO in the joint peacekeeping operation in Bosnia. For her work at the Pentagon, she was awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal by then-Secretary of Defense William Perry, who now co-directs the PDP at Stanford.

"I am delighted that Liz has been selected for this important job," Perry said. "Her achievements during her tenure at the Pentagon while I was secretary of defense were significant and far-reaching.  I expect in her new role at the National Security Council she will make equally powerful contributions."

From 2007 to 2008, Sherwood-Randall was a member of the Review Panel on Future Directions for Defense Threat Reduction Agency Missions and Capabilities to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. In 2008, she served on the National Security Strategy and Policies Expert Working Group that advised the Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, which Perry also leads.

Prior to her service in the Department of Defense, Sherwood-Randall was co-founder and associate director of Harvard's Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project. She also has served as chief foreign affairs and defense policy adviser to then Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and as a guest scholar in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. 

Sherwood-Randall earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard College and a doctorate in international relations from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar in 1981.

Stanford political science Professor Michael McFaul has been tapped by President Barack Obama to serve as special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council.

McFaul, who has been deputy director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and director of its Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, was a senior adviser on Russia and Eurasia during Obama's campaign, and he continued to advise on foreign policy issues during the transition. He now joins the National Security Council headed by retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones.

"President-elect Obama was fortunate to have the benefit of Mike's counsel on a range of vital issues during the campaign—including dealing with a resurgent Russia," said Freeman Spogli Institute Director Coit D. Blacker, the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies. "Now, from the White House, the president can call on Mike's expertise and experience in the region to build more constructive relationships with Russia, Eurasia and our allies across a broad strategic front."

McFaul is an expert on U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-Russian relations, political and economic reform in the post-communist world and democracy promotion. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough, which he co-edited with Anders Aslund; Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Postcommunist Political Reform, which he wrote with Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov; and After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions, which he edited with Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, a senior research scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

McFaul is a non-resident senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He serves on the editorial boards of Current History, Journal of Democracy, Demokratizatsiya, Perspectives on European Politics and Society, Post Soviet Affairs and the Washington Quarterly. He has served as a consultant for numerous companies and government agencies and has testified before Congress on U.S.-Russian relations.

McFaul, the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is a frequent commentator on international politics and American foreign policy in the national and international media. He has appeared on all major television and radio networks, and his opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New Republic, International Herald Tribune and Moscow Times.

McFaul earned bachelor's degrees in international relations and Slavic languages and literatures and a master's degree in Russian and East European studies from Stanford in 1986. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship and completed a doctorate in international relations at Oxford in 1991.

The Obama administration seems ready to resuscitate relations with Russia, including by renewing nuclear-arms-reduction talks. Even before the inaugural parade wound down, the White House Web site offered up a list of ambitious nuclear policy goals, with everything from making bomb-making materials more secure to the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.

That's welcome news, but for such goals to be realized, the White House will need to be prepared to reimagine and reshape the nuclear era and, against strong opposition, break free from cold war thinking and better address the threats America faces today.

George W. Bush actually started down this road. He reached an agreement with the Kremlin in 2002 to cut the number of operational strategic warheads on each side to between 1,700 and 2,200 by the year 2012, a two-thirds reduction. Washington is likely to reach that goal ahead of schedule. President Bush's efforts were propelled by the Nuclear Posture Review - a periodic reassessment of nuclear forces and policies - in December 2001. While still grounded in the belief that nuclear weapons are the silver bullets of American defense, the review let a little daylight into the nuclear bunker by acknowledging that nuclear-weapons policy had to be readjusted to deal with rapidly changing threats. Soon, however, the president's initiatives were overshadowed by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, his administration's absorption with the threat of terrorism and the gradual breakdown in relations with Russia.

President Bush's agreement with Moscow, which was built upon weapons reductions made by Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush, is President Obama's starting point. But rather than settle for the next level - 1,000 active weapons seems to be the likely goal - the White House should reconsider the entire superstructure of nuclear-weapons strategy. This won't be easy. The mandarins of the nuclear establishment remain enthralled by elaborate deterrence theories premised on the notion that the ultimate defense against a variety of military threats is a bristling nuclear arsenal.

It's true that America's nuclear weapons still offer the hope of deterring attacks from countries like North Korea and, if it soon goes nuclear, Iran. But it is hard to imagine how they would dissuade a band of elusive, stateless terrorists from making a nuclear bomb and detonating it in New York, Washington or Los Angeles.

One provocative road map for moving away from nuclear deterrence comes from a quartet of cold war leaders - Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former secretaries of state; William Perry, a former secretary of defense; and Sam Nunn, a former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Two years ago, they bridged their ideological differences to call, improbably, for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and they proposed a series of interim steps to reduce nuclear dangers, stop the spread of bomb-making materials and lay the groundwork for a nuclear-free world.

Even the quartet recognizes that "getting to zero" will be exceedingly difficult. But the issue today isn't whether the elimination of nuclear weapons is feasible. That's a distant goal.

An achievable immediate goal should be to cut the United States' and Russia's nuclear stockpiles down to the bare minimum of operational warheads needed to backstop conventional forces. As long as these two countries have far and away the most nuclear weapons, Washington looks hypocritical when it lectures other nations about the size of their arsenals or their efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

There's reasonable disagreement among experts about the minimum number of nuclear weapons the United States and Russia should maintain. The more emphasis you put on nuclear deterrence, the more potent you think the arsenal should be. And the more you want to engage the world in arms reduction and prevent proliferation, the more you consider radical cuts. To bring the number down below 1,000 would require determined presidential leadership.

The president's determination will be measured by how effectively he makes the case for Senate ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Leading scientists say that technological advances over the past decade have erased doubts about whether an international monitoring system can detect and locate underground tests outlawed by the treaty. The scientists also say that the United States has the technical expertise and tools to maintain the effectiveness of its nuclear weapons without underground testing, as has been successfully demonstrated since the United States stopped testing in 1992.

Ratification of the test-ban treaty would help build momentum for a 2010 review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the increasingly frail 1968 accord aimed at limiting the spread of nuclear weapons and eventually eliminating them. American leadership is essential to reinvigorating the treaty and buttressing nonproliferation efforts. The best way to avoid nuclear terrorism is to prevent terrorists from acquiring the highly enriched uranium needed to make the simplest nuclear bomb.

Listening to the discussion at a recent nuclear-weapons conference in Washington, I felt as though I had slipped back in time to the cold war and its arcane, often surreal debates about waging nuclear war and the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. It's heartening to see President Obama and his national-security team promising to elevate nuclear-weapons policy and free it from the shibboleths of cold war nuclear theology. Now they must put their words into action.