Nuclear Issues

The last seven decades without war among the great powers – what historians describe as “the long peace” – is a remarkable achievement. “This is a rare and unusual fact if you look at the last few thousand years of history,” said Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center and moderator of the IDEASpHERE panel “Winning the Peace.” “Furthermore, it is no accident. Wise choices by statesmen have contributed to ‘the long peace,’ which has allowed many generations to live their lives.”

The Summer 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 longtime efforts to improve nuclear security and the Center's critical role in the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit to prevent nuclear terrorism. This issue also features a timeline and analysis of significant events in Ukraine during the past 20 years. We also note a bright spot in U.S.-Russian relations – a statement by the Elbe Group of retired Russian and U.S. generals cautioning the two governments not to let Ukraine and Crimea interrupt the joint efforts of the two countries to protect “our shared strategic interests.”

And much more...

Since Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and Crimea, much attention has been focused on the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which provided Ukraine with security assurances in return for Kyiv signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and giving up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the collapse of the USSR. Twenty years ago––before that memorandum was signed by the Russian Federation, the United States and the United Kingdom––Ukraine and Crimea were also plunged into a state of turmoil. The Russian government of President Boris Yeltsin put economic, security and territorial pressure on Kyiv to press Moscow’s advantage in a series of disputes about Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal and the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol and other Crimean peninsula ports.

The Belfer Center’s Eben Harrell and Pulitzer Prize-winning author David E. Hoffman for the first time report the details of one of the largest nuclear security operations of the post-Cold War years — a  secret 17-year, $150 million operation to secure plutonium in the tunnels of Degelen Mountain.

"So Snowden has left the building. The NSA leaker’s departure from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, for an undisclosed location in Russia, on Thursday is turning into a real blessing for the US-Russian relationship," writes Simon Saradzhyan. "It may sound perverse, but both Barack Obama, and, to a lesser extent, Vladimir Putin, have good cause to thank the man whom the US government has fruitlessly asked Russia to extradite and whom the Russian government has just granted temporary asylum."

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.

On the 50^th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and Foreign PolicyMagazine invited policymakers, scholars, students, and members of the public to propose 300-word lessons for today’s leaders from the 13 days in 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. Today, the Belfer Center and Foreign Policy are pleased to announce the winners of the Cuban Missile Crisis lessons contest.

Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs today launches a new website to commemorate the 50^th 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.

Russian leaders have previously promised to improve the survivability of their offensive nuclear missile force as a means of ensuring that they would retain an effective nuclear deterrent, and that will likely happen.  But recent events and announcements indicate that Russia is also investing money in its own increased missile defenses.

Nicholas Burns recounts one of the most important events in American history—the beginning of the end of the Cold War, 20 years ago this week—and pays tribute to President George H.W. Bush's notable foreign policy achievements during his presidency. As the Republican primaries begin, Burns encourages voters to look critically at the foreign policy credibility of their candidates and who is best prepared to lead us through the thickets of the most complex foreign policy landscape we have ever encountered.