Science, Technology, and Public Policy

"Belfer Center Newsmakers" highlights members of the Belfer Center community who have been featured recently in the news.

"The key to a solution to both — the quagmire that has unfolded in Syria and the threat posed by Islamic terrorism — is to deprive the terrorist groups of their main propaganda tools and to form a new Syrian government that excludes Assad (and his foreign Shiite allies) but includes representatives from all of the non-fundamentalist groups involved in the civil war."

In the lead-up to the nuclear security summit, Advancing Nuclear Security: Evaluating Progress and Setting New Goals outlines what was accomplished in a four-year effort launched in 2009 to secure nuclear material around the globe—and what remains to be done. The effort made significant progress, but some weapons-usable nuclear materials still remain “dangerously vulnerable." The authors highlight the continuing danger of nuclear and radiological terrorism and call for urgent action.

There has been much speculation as to what might replace the Nuclear Security Summits after 2016. One candidate touted as a suitable inheritor of the summits’ mantle is the International Atomic Energy Agency. In this discussion paper, Trevor Findlay examines whether and to what extent the IAEA could and should do so, what form its role might take, and how the Agency and summiteers might prepare for such an eventuality.

"The post-election era will require economic construction. Much of this will start with building essential infrastructure needed for growth — especially in transportation, energy and in telecommunications. The World Bank estimates the DRC's infrastructure needs at over US $5 billion a year over the next decade. After all, the country is the size of Western Europe, but has only 2,800 kilometres of all-weather paved roads running through it. This is about the same as Rwanda's networks of roads — even if Rwanda is some 90 times smaller than the DRC. The DRC also has extensive potential navigable waterways that need to be developed. And massive investment in air transportation infrastructure could make the country a hub for the rest of Africa, given the DRC's geographical centrality on the continent."

On the eve of the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea, a new study finds that an international initiative to secure all vulnerable nuclear stockpiles within four years has reduced the dangers they pose.

The Summer 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features analysis and advice by Belfer Center scholars regarding the historic upheavals in the Middle East and the disastrous consequences of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The Center’s new Geopolitics of Energy project is also highlighted, along with efforts by the Project on Managing the Atom to strengthen nuclear export rules.

The Spring 2011 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 continuing efforts to build bridges between the United States and Russia to prevent nuclear catastrophe – an effort that began in the 1950s. This issue also features three new books by Center faculty that sharpen global debate on critical issues: God’s Century, by Monica Duffy Toft, The New Harvest by Calestous Juma, and The Future of Power, by Joseph S. Nye.

The Managing the Atom (MTA) Project and the Russian Research Center’s "Kurchatov Institute" collaboratively authored a report entitled Promoting Safe, Secure, and Peaceful Growth of Nuclear Energy: Next Steps for Russia and the United States. This report is intended to provide recommendations for enabling large-scale growth of nuclear energy while achieving even higher standards of safety, security, and nonproliferation than are in place today.