Reports & Papers

3 Items

Donald Trump and Anthony Fauci

AP/Alex Brandon

Paper - Centre for International Governance Innovation

US Intelligence, the Coronavirus and the Age of Globalized Challenges

| Aug. 24, 2020

This essay makes three arguments. First, the US government will need to establish a coronavirus commission, similar to the 9/11 commission, to determine why, since April 2020, the United States has suffered more coronavirus fatalities than any other country in the world. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic represents a watershed for what will be a major national security theme this century: biological threats, both from naturally occurring pathogens and from synthesized biology. Third, intelligence about globalized challenges, such as pandemics, needs to be dramatically reconceptualized, stripping away outmoded levels of secrecy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, holds a photograph of his father in a naval uniform, as he walks with people carrying portraits of relatives who fought in World War II, during the Immortal Regiment march in Red Square, in Moscow, May 9, 2016.

(Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Paper - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Midnight in Moscow

June 7, 2016

A quarter-century after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, authoritarianism is staging a comeback. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in Russia, where Putin is progressing from consolidating power within Russia’s borders to projecting power beyond them. In response, the world continues to watch and react.

Later this month, members of the European Union will decide whether to renew sanctions against Russia in response to Putin’s continued aggression in eastern Ukraine. In July, NATO will convene in Warsaw for its annual summit to determine the most effective steps to take in the face of an encroaching Russia. What is not likely to be discussed in these deliberations, however, are the political conditions within Russia that are influencing Putin's actions abroad.

Report

The U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment of Nuclear Terrorism

| June 6, 2011

Researchers from the United States and Russia have issued a joint assessment of the global threat of nuclear terrorism, warning of a persistent danger that terrorists could obtain or make a nuclear device and use it with catastrophic consequences. The first joint threat assessment by experts from the world’s two major nuclear powers concludes: “If current approaches toward eliminating the threat are not replaced with a sense of urgency and resolve, the question will become not if but when, and on what scale, the first act of nuclear terrorism occurs.”