Nuclear Issues

The Summer 2013 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 expanding work on complex cybersecurity issues and Middle East challenges, offers reflections on the role of the U.S. in Iraq, and spotlights work being done by the Center and its affiliates on environment and energy issues.

This section of the Belfer Center newsletter includes highlights from the Fall 2011 edition of the International Security journal.

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.

The Winter 2010/11 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 issue highlights a major Belfer Center conference on technology and governance, the Center's involvement in the nuclear threat documentary Countdown to Zero, and a celebration of Belfer Center founder Paul Doty.

When the Academy Award-winning producer of An Inconvenient Truth,Lawrence Bender, wanted to create a new nuclear proliferation film, he turned to leading experts at the Belfer Center.

The Summer 2010 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 issue highlights the Belfer Center's involvement with the Nuclear Security Summit, which was organized by Center alumni Gary Samore and Laura Holgate.

In this Q&A, we asked Belfer Center alumni Gary Samore and Laura Holgate to comment on the planning and successes of the Nuclear Security Summit, which they were responsible for organizing. The Summit that brought 46 global leaders to Washington, D.C. in April was a major step by President Obama to "ensure that terrorists never acquire a nuclear weapon." Samore, coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, proliferation, and terrorism, and Holgate, senior director for weapons of mass destruction terrorism and threat reduction, are alumni of the Belfer Center's International Security Program.

Graham Allison notes that the themes developed at President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit and its agenda of action, including countries' specific work plans, reflect the Belfer Center's analytic efforts over more than a decade.

Belfer Center alumni Gary Samore and Laura Holgate played a key role in organizing President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit in April. Additionally, MatthewBunn's Securing the Bomb 2010 was released the day the Summit began, and Graham Allison provided attending leaders with materials that included a nuclear terrorism threat assessment and fact sheet.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen spent more than two dozen years in intelligence, both in the CIA and U.S. Department of Energy. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he led the U.S. government's efforts to determine whether al Qaeda had WMD capabilities and to prevent a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States. He is now a senior fellow at the Belfer Center. In January, Mowatt-Larssen published a timeline of al Qaeda's attempts to acquire WMD.