Nuclear Issues

As visitors step through the doors of the Kennedy Memorial Library for events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, they will find on display Picasso's 1963 Rape of the Sabine Women - on loan from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. The connection between Picasso's painting and what is widely accepted as the most dangerous moment in human history was brought to light for many by Malcolm Wiener, a member of the Belfer Center’s International Council and the person for whom Harvard Kennedy School’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy was named.

"The East-West Institute released a study in late May by U.S. and Russian "experts" on the Iranian missile threat that concluded the threat "is not imminent and that in any event the system currently proposed would not be effective against it." The next day, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says, Iran apparently tested a multistage, solid-propellant missile with a range of 1,200 to 1,500 miles, putting much of Europe within range."

With the International Atomic Energy Agency scheduled to release its much-anticipated report on Iran within the next few days, Graham Allison offers his insight and analysis — as well as questions that remain unanswered.

Dr. Elizabeth D. Sherwood-Randall's article in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

Through the capture of and subsequent announcement that it would release 15 British sailors and marines, the Islamic Republic of Iran sent its adversaries a pointed message: just as Iran will meet confrontation with confrontation, it will respond to what it perceives as flexibility with pragmatism. This message is worth heeding as the United States and Iran seem to be moving inexorably toward conflict.

There is much to learn from the British: their reticence about disclosing details, their clear expertise in human intelligence, their non-hysterical reaction to very real threats. But how we deal with our immigrant and domestic populations is certainly not one of them.

As the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks become a more distant memory, many Americans comfort themselves with the thought that 9/11 was a freak accident or a 100-year flood.

Council on Foreign Relations publication on the U.S.-Turkey relationship

Despite this extensive activity in the energy sphere, it seems, however, that Ankara's energy policy has been undertaken without a strategic plan and with little integration of energy issues into Turkey's overall foreign and security policies.