Asia & the Pacific

Matthew Bunn, Nicholas Burns, Ash Carter, John Park, Gary Samore, and Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall provide expert analysis on nuclear tests and threats from North Korea.

Matthew Bunn is a professor of practice at Harvard Kennedy School and co-principal investigator for the Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom. Bunn’s research focus is on nuclear theft terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and innovation in energy technology. During the Clinton administration, Bunn served as an advisor to the White House Office of Science Technology Policy, where he played a major role in U.S. policies related to the control and disposition of weapons-usable nuclear materials in the United States and the former Soviet Union. We asked Bunn about the current crisis in U.S.-Russian relations and its impact on nuclear security.

"Researching Asian security issues has never been more topical," Yvonne Yew said in discussing her work at the Belfer Center. Despite Asia's economic growth, she said, "simmering tensions, territorial disputes, nuclear proliferation concerns, and military skirmishes serve to potentially undermine the region's peace and prosperity. As a former Singaporean diplomat and representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yew is in a unique position to view security issues spurred by the momentous and ongoing rise of Asia."

As threats from North Korea intensified this spring, Korean Peninsula experts from the Belfer Center provided insight and analysis.

Most of the global growth of nuclear power over the coming decade will occur in China. The safety and security policies guiding that growth are significant far beyond China, since an accident or act of terrorism would affect the use of nuclear energy around the world. In January, the Managing the Atom Project (MTA) held a workshop in Shenzhen, China, to discuss safety and security at China’s nuclear power and fuel cycle facilities.

Given new urgency by last year's Fukushima accident, China is considering new legislation that will help determine the role that nuclear plants will play in powering one of the biggest and fastest-growing economies in the world. This summer, the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) hosted a workshop that brought together experts from Peking University's Nuclear Policy and Law Center with American nuclear experts both from within and outside the Belfer Center. MTA Project Co-Principal Investigator Matthew Bunn chaired the meeting. The visitors from Peking University, who are engaged in helping to draft the new nuclear law, included professors Wang Jin, Wang Yugang, and Tang Yingmao.

A small sampling of Belfer Center perspectives on the future of North Korean politics.

John Park, a senior research associate at the U.S. Institute of Peace and currently a visiting fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom, recently sat down with for a one-on-one interview where he talked about his work with the Center and his contributions to the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit.

The Belfer Center’s Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) has received a major grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to support a fellowship and training program aimed at helping prepare the next generation of nuclear policy leaders.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former director of intelligence and counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, argues that despite not falling victim to a major terrorist event in the last 10 years, the United States must not be complacent in its counter-terrorism efforts. Mowatt-Larssen said in a Belfer Center seminar in September that he believes the possibility of a major attack is higher in the next 10 years than in the preceding decade.