Nuclear Issues

90 Items

Donald Trump in Syracuse, New York, April 16, 2016; Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia, April 14, 2016

Carlo Allegri/Reuters; Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Analysis & Opinions - The Cipher Brief

Top-Down Presidential Leadership: The Helsinki Summit

| July 11, 2018

Two conditions are clear as the U.S. and Russian Presidents prepare meet in Helsinki. First, U.S.-Russian relations are arguably at their lowest point since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Second, both presidents have domestic realities that constrain their flexibility to achieve compromise in the many areas that have caused relations to falter.

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with Russian businessmen in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Monday, Dec. 19, 2016.

(AP)

Analysis & Opinions - The National Interest

A Blueprint for Donald Trump to Fix Relations with Russia

| December 18, 2016

In a "policy memo" to President-elect Donald Trump, Graham Allison and Dimitri K. Simes write: "The two Chinese characters that make up the word “crisis” can be interpreted as meaning both “danger” and “opportunity.” Russia today offers your administration not only a serious challenge but a significant opportunity.

Russia is no longer the Evil Empire the United States confronted over decades of Cold War. Nonetheless, Russia remains a player whose choices affect vital U.S. interests profoundly across the agenda of global issues. First and foremost, Russia remains the only nation that can erase the United States from the map in thirty minutes.

The eternal flame shines in the early morning light at the grave of John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery on Friday, Nov. 22, 2013, on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's death.

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Analysis & Opinions - CNN

What would JFK have done about Iran?

| November 22, 2013

As we mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, it is instructive to consider what he might have done if faced with the Iranian nuclear challenge today.

In what historians agree was his “finest hour,” Kennedy successfully led the U.S. through the most dangerous confrontation in history, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.  The odds of war were, in Kennedy’s view, “between 1 in 3 and even.”

When the Soviet Union was found emplacing nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba, 90 miles off American shores, Kennedy declared that totally unacceptable — as President Obama has declared an Iranian nuclear bomb.  The question was how to eliminate this danger without war.

Press Release - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center Launches Website Marking Cuban Missile Crisis 50th Anniversary

August 6, 2012

Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs today launches a new website to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Designed to help policymakers, students, and interested citizens draw lessons from these critical events half a century ago, www.cubanmissilecrisis.org not only provides background on the crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster in October 1962 but also offers tools to understand how it can inform contemporary policy.

Magazine Article - Time

How It Went Down

| May 7, 2012

"While journalists have provided a number of histories of the events that led to bin Laden's death, the purpose of this analysis is to examine White House decisionmaking for lessons that can be applied to future foreign policy challenges."

In a TIME magazine cover story, Belfer Center Director Graham Allison writes about decisions behind the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden. Allison, whose analysis is the result of more than 100 hours of interviews, is author of the prize-winning analysis of the 1971 Cuban Missile Crisis, Essence of Decision.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Belfer Center Newsletter Winter 2011-2012

| Winter 2011-2012

The Winter 2011-2012 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features news, analysis and insight by Belfer Center scholars on issues that include increasingly important info-tech policy challenges and the first U.S.-Russian joint threat assessment on nuclear terrorism. The Center’s deepening impact on defense policy is highlighted with an article about the recent appointments of Ashton B. Carter and Eric Rosenbach to senior Pentagon posts and a Q&A with Carter, the new deputy secretary of defense. Additional articles focus on issues ranging from the Palestinian bid for statehood to Calestous Juma’s role in Lagos’ launch of the first innovation advisory council in Africa.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Newsletter

Terrorist Threat Demands Creative Intelligence

    Author:
  • Dominic Contreras
| Winter 2011-2012

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former director of intelligence and counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, argues that despite not falling victim to a major terrorist event in the last 10 years, the United States must not be complacent in its counter-terrorism efforts. Mowatt-Larssen said in a Belfer Center seminar in September that he believes the possibility of a major attack is higher in the next 10 years than in the preceding decade.