Nuclear Issues

Testimony by Belfer Center Senior Fellow William H. Tobey before the House Armed Service Committee on the importance of preventing nuclear weapon attainment by Iran for U.S. national security.

Policymakers have long focused on preventing nuclear weapons proliferation by controlling technology. Even developing countries, however, may now possess the technical ability to create nuclear weapons. The history of gas centrifuge development in twenty countries supports this perspective. To reduce the demand for nuclear weapons, policymakers will have look toward the cultural, normative, and political organization of the world.

The Spring 2014 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This edition highlights the Belfer Center’s deepening engagement with China and increasing collaboration with Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance around critical issues related to China. We announce former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as a new Belfer Center senior fellow who will lead efforts to explore possibilities and impacts of a new strategic China-U.S. relationship. Read about this and much more.

Olli Heinonen writes that though that there is no foolproof plan to chart outcomes, it remains very much within our control to take certain steps and actions that can make the future less uncertain and better managed its direction. The Task Force Assessment Report on Nuclear Monitoring and Verification Technology by the Defense Science Board is essential in providing a forward-looking framework and recommendations to better prepare us to prevent and shape nuclear proliferation choices.

Dr. Eugene Kogan examines the West's approach to Iran and Syria through the lens of coercive diplomacy. Both cases, he argues, offer a chance to revitalize coercion as a tool of American diplomacy.

"The French are the most forward-leaning of Europe's militaries....Former President Nicolas Sarkozy led the charge to get rid of Gaddafi. His successor, François Hollande, intervened rapidly and effectively to save some 6,000 expatriates, mostly French, from being overrun by Islamist fanatics in Bamako, Mali. Earlier this fall, the French were all revved up to join in an air attack on Syria...."

Prospects for success in establishing a WMD-free zone remain uncertain, but the stakes are too high to allow the effort to fail. Creativity, courage, flexibility, and goodwill—all of which are abundant among the people of the Middle East—are especially needed now for policy making on this issue.

"Because of the last four years, we face a world in which our enemies do not fear us, our friends do not believe they can trust us, and those who maneuver between the two camps feel that they will not get in trouble by crossing us. It is time, and more than time, to choose a different course."

The Belfer Center's Graham Allison, Nicholas Burns, Ashraf Hegazy, Joseph S. Nye, and Stephen Walt consider the U.S.'s shifting foreign policy in the Middle East.