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For a Center that has spent much of the past decade analyzing -- and anticipating -- megaterrorism, the days since September 11 have been tumultuous. Belfer Center scholars have been inundated with requests from policymakers, the press, and the public for coordinates and context about terrorism.
The landmark publication Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy by a Belfer Center quartet (Graham Allison, Owen Cote, Jr., Richard Falkenrath, and Steven Miller) asked: Must we wait for the morning after? "On the morning after the first act of nuclear terrorism, what will the President of the United States wish he had done earlier? What will the leaders of Congress be willing to support in the aftermath? What will the Administration do then? What prevents us from pausing, reflecting, and summoning the wisdom to act now?"
In various forms, those questions reappear in a dozen subsequent studies. In the after math of September 11, the Center''s earlier analytic work has helped the public and policy makers not only to understand the challenges the U.S. now faces, but has also provided answers about what we should do now. From preventing megaterrorism -- including biological and nuclear terrorist assaults -- to local domestic preparedness by police, fire, and public health agencies, to the analyses and recommendations of several high-profile task forces, the Belfer Center has analyzed and anticipated the threat of terrorism.
This issue highlights the Center''s wide ranging work on terrorism including special projects on Domestic Preparedness and Preventive Defense , numerous books and reports on the subject, recent opinion articles, and other resources.
Center leaders focusing on terrorism include Graham Allison (Director of the Center and former Assistant Secretary of Defense); Joseph Nye (current Dean of the Kennedy School and former Assistant Secretary of Defense); Ashton Carter (former Assistant Secretary of Defense); Richard Falkenrath (former Executive Director of BCSIA, now on Tom Ridge''s homeland security team); Jessica Stern (former National Security Council staffer); John Holdren (for mer member of the President''s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology), Matthew Bunn (former White House advisor) Juliette Kayyem (former member of the National Commission on Terrorism); and many others.
Together these efforts have sought first to sound the alarm about a clear and present danger; second to provide frameworks for understanding this extraordinarily complex challenge that has so many deep international roots; and third to provide prescriptions for combating terrorism that recognize America''s commitment to liberty as well as security, and that grapple with the realities of the American government as it exists today.