Articles

The current global nuclear order is extremely fragile, and the three most urgent challenges to it are North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan. If North Korea and Iran become established nuclear weapons states over the next several years, the nonproliferation regime will have been hollowed out. If Pakistan were to lose control of even one nuclear weapon that was ultimately used by terrorists, that would change the world. It would transform life in cities, shrink what are now regarded as essential civil liberties, and alter conceptions of a viable nuclear order.

Matthew Bunn and Martin B. Malin examine the conditions needed for nuclear energy to grow on a scale large enough for it to be a significant part of the world’s response to climate change. They consider the safety, security, nonproliferation, and waste management risks associated with such growth and recommend approaches to managing these risks. Bunn and Malin argue that although technological solutions may contribute to nuclear expansion in the coming decades, in the near term, creating the conditions for large-scale nuclear energy growth will require major international institutional innovation.

Hurricane Katrina devastated our region in 2005. With the help of volunteers, we have been rebuilding. If oil prices rise high enough to make travel unaffordable for volunteers, our resurrection will falter.

In a public hearing last week, the New Orleans City Council tangled with the Office of Recovery and Development and Administration over a state tax credit program to promote cultural activities. Some council members felt their districts were being ignored. The mood turned contentious. As a result of this debate, approval of funding for the city's 17-zone recovery plan was put off -- at Dr. Ed Blakely's request -- for at least another week.

G. John Ikenberry, professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, and Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, participated in a debate at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University on May 8, 2007. Christopher Lydon hosted the debate.

One year after Katrina, what if it’s not just once in a lifetime? Making sense of our disaster-prone future.

"In the 1988 presidential election, Michael Dukakis was pilloried — rightly — for running a soulless campaign whose message consisted of the phrase, “It’s not about ideology, it’s about competence.” But times change. That was before the Federal Government’s response to Hurricane Katrina so overwhelmed us with its incompetence that America was humiliated before the world. The response to Katrina, however, was only the most dramatic in a long series of government failures, from the planning of the war in Iraq, to the failure of the occupation, to the design of the Medicare prescription drug policy...."