Asia & the Pacific

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.

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.

A paper by the National Security Advisory Group

Drawing on the Caspian Studies Program's ongoing research, my colleague Emily Van Buskirk and I prepared a case on U.S. policy on Caspian energy development and exports for a Kennedy School course I teach with Ambassador Robert Blackwill. Using the case, our sixty students examined central questions including: What is the most effective way to promote the development of Caspian energy resources? What is the proper role of government in large-scale capital projects? Where does the Caspian Basin rank in the hierarchy of U.S. national interests?

In this era of American predominance, alliances are more compelling than ever. The United States needs allies to generate capabilities that amplify its power, create a basis of legitimacy for the exercise of its power, avert impulses to counterbalance its power, and steer partners away from strategic apathy or excessive self-reliance.

Thanks to the collapse of European communism, it is possible to envisage a new community embracing most of the states of the Northern Hemisphere. Voters in most of the former Soviet bloc countries have affirmed their commitment to democracy in repeated elections. Because of these elections, especially those in Russia, it is possible to think realistically of creating a Commonwealth of Democracies from Vancouver to Vladivostok to Tokyo.

On April 23, 2003, Harvard?s Caspian Studies Program, Center for International Development, and Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe co-sponsored an address at Harvard?s Kennedy School of Government by Dr. Kalman Mizsei, Assistant Administrator and Director of the Regional Bureau for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States of the UN Development Program (UNDP), and Assistant Secretary-General of the UN.