NUCLEAR CONCERNS & DISARMAMENT

LAST UPDATED: 7.19.22. See * for latest update.

With the end of the Cold War, academia witnessed a withering of student and university interest in Russian studies and Russian language programs. Universities and colleges reduced their programs in nuclear strategic studies, nuclear energy and engineering. Concomitantly, University Pugwash chapters atrophied, or disappeared. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a corresponding belief that MAD-ness had somehow evaporated. It had not. It has not.

With Putin’s accession to power in Russia, there were arguments about whether or not we were engaged in a new Cold War. What is not in doubt is his aggression against Ukraine, starting in 2014 with his “little green men” and the seizure of Crimea. It is obvious that NATO, and the West with the U.S. in the lead, has now revived an extraordinarily dangerous adversarial relationship, one made more fraught by China’s tacit support of Putin’s invasion. This dialogue, sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, is an excellent rendering of expert opinion on the current situation as of July 2022. (My Institute was very fortunate to be supported by and work closely with Carnegie in our 2015 efforts to look at the Future of Russia.)

My efforts over the last years were integral to my appointment as a Research Associate of the University of Oxford’s Centre for International Studies in the Department of Politics and International Relations, working with my wonderful alum, Associate Professor of International Relations Lucas Kello, then the Director of the Centre for Technology and Global Affairs. It became very much a non-resident position, especially with COVID-19 taking travel over.

I also began working with a good friend, Professor Steven Miller, the Director of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, with whom I have often collaborated. Lucas was a post-doctoral Fellow at Belfer, reported to Steve, and had published a seminal article on cyber warfare in International Security, the journal Steve edited.

I have long respected Steve’s analytical insights. Prior to the events in Ukraine, Steve had created a still vital framework identifying the key challenges posed to global security by the current nuclear penumbra that continues to inform my efforts. The first was the worsening state of international politics. With the increased tension in the Gulf and the South Asia subcontinent, Iran’s move towards nuclear threshold, Turkey’s leadership expressing interest developing nuclear weapons capacity, the breakdown of denuclearization on the Korean peninsula, Putin’s welcoming of a “new Cuban Missile Crisis,” and right-wing populist regimes at the heart of the transatlantic alliance, the geopolitical landscape is very fraught. The second challenge was the disintegration of arms control agreements, especially with Trump’s withdrawals from the JCPOA and from the INF after Russian violations, and the likelihood that New START and the CTBT would not survive. The third was the role of evolving technologies regarding both nuclear weapons — potentially making them far more accurate, lethal, and tempting to use preemptively and tactically — and the parallel detection and surveillance of nuclear weapons through better satellite imagery and radar, cyber capabilities, and artificial intelligence.

Steve understood these advancements undermined the survivability of nuclear arsenals, even of nuclear-armed submarines, and threatened to render deterrence more unstable. In addition, the overlap between nuclear and conventional arms, and the ambiguity of distinguishing between them, renders miscalculation and nuclear use more likely and dangerous, as also expressed in this report from James Acton of the important CEIP Nuclear Policy Program.

As Chair of the Executive Committee of the Pugwash Conferences, the Co-Chair of the U.S. Pugwash Committee, and a member of the Council of International Pugwash, Steve was an ideal colleague for the Pugwash effort.

I went to London at the invitation of the President the London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Paul Webley, and their Pro-Rector Director of Studies, Nirmala Rao (now the President of Krea University in Chennai, India), to consider an appointment as the director of their MENA program. Steve took the occasion to introduce me to Sandra Butcher of the founding committee of ISYP, and I knew Professor Dan Plesch, SOAS’ Pugwash faculty advisor. He had worked with another of my wonderful Tufts friends, Shanti Sattler, a program associate with the War Crimes Project at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy on the UN Commission on War Crimes.

Steve and I shared a strong concern that the the baton had been dropped between the generations of the original Pugwash founders — many of them friends and mentors who have sadly passed — and younger people. And we knew that there was a missing generation of Russian and nuclear experts, on both technical and political levels.

We both believed that International Student / Young Pugwash was an important and wonderful example of a bridge between the generations of young experts and veterans. (ISYP membership ends at age 35, at which time they become members in Senior Pugwash.) We simply wanted to invest in it.

Our common friend Professor Robert Legvold — the co-director of the joint MA program uniting Moscow State University with MGIMO, Chair of the AAAS project on "Meeting the Challenge of a New Nuclear Age," and my Institute Scholar / Practitioner in Residence (INSPIRE) Fellow for my penultimate EPIIC year, Russia in the 21st Century — wrote me with the same critical concern:

The important role of the new generation is now surely being acknowledged and addressed by disparate valuable groups, ranging from the Carnegie Endowment and its Young Professionals track, to the important Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

Jérôme Krumenacker, an EPIIC alum and my indispensable colleague on the Trebuchet team for its first four essential years, and I visited the office of the Bulletin in March of 2018. We met with Rachel Bronson, President and CEO, who endorsed my efforts.

Steve Miller also introduced me to several core members of the then Executive Board of ISYP, Anna Péczeli and Poul Erik Christiansen. They in turn introduced me to their Board colleague, Ezra Friedman of Israel Pugwash, and to Andrew Gibson, the coordinator of the very active UK Student / Young Pugwash. I was invited to participate in the 2020 63rd Pugwash International Conference in Doha, which was to be bookended by ISYP forums. It was entitled, “Demand to be Heard: Next Generation Contributions to Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.”

I was asked to review and moderate their intended panel on emerging technologies, and to present to the global ISYP Board on the progress I had made on Trebuchet’s initiatives regarding Pugwash.

On the very day I was due to leave for Qatar on the 14-hour direct flight from Boston, the Conference was postponed at the very last minute, now indefinitely, by the Government of Qatar due to the unfortunate, debilitating spread of the coronavirus. Here is the last meeting to date of Pugwash.

Instead, the ISYP Board arranged a virtual gathering for us where I had the chance to explain my efforts and concerns. It was the beginning of what is now a very fruitful and meaningful relationship.

ISYP Executive Board

The newly expanded ISYP Board has begun to act. They understand their imperative role to attract and engage a new generation striving for a sane nuclear era and global peace. They are eager to fulfill Pugwash’s mission to deeply explore, understand and act at the complex intersection of science, technology, security and ethics. ISYP remains deeply committed to the “principles and objectives” of the original Russell-Einstein Manifesto.

ISYP’s first activity, one that I have been asked to mobilize support for, is their “New Age, New Thinking: Challenges of a Third Nuclear Age” conference to be held in Berlin (October 31st-November 2nd, 2022). Their themes include: nuclear arms control and disarmament; nuclear technologies and nonproliferation; delivery vehicles and launch technologies; and other relevant technologies; including, but not limited to: advanced communication technologies, artificial intelligence (including machine learning), and quantum computing and sensing. The conference’s funders and partners include The Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Foreign and Security Policy Division; The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists; The German Foundation for Peace Research; and the University of Duisburg-Essen.

I am now privileged to serve ISYP as a member on their redoubtable Advisory Board.

iSYP Advisory Board

*Inevitably we keep on losing our giants.

Here is what, Brian Finlay, President and CEO of the Stimson Center, sent to the Stimson Center community on the passing of Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Stimson Center, on July 16, 2022.

I am deeply saddened to share the news that Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Stimson Center and a tireless advocate for international peace and security, passed away this weekend at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Our thoughts are foremost with Sandra, Misha, Joshua, and indeed, with Michael’s entire family.

Michael was an internationally renowned leader in the fight to prevent nuclear war, and an eloquent advocate for pragmatic ways to reduce the threat that nuclear weapons pose to our civilization. For those who had the benefit of knowing him, he was a friend and mentor, a voice of conscience and kindness, and a stalwart advocate for the organization that has continued his legacy of leadership. To say that he will be missed, and to acknowledge that we owe him a debt of gratitude, would be both true and a woefully insufficient expression of this profound loss.

It was in service to others that Michael found his calling, dedicating himself to protecting humankind from our worst impulses. He was an early and influential post-Cold War advocate for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, helping to bring that idea into the mainstream. As President of the Stimson Center, with co-founder Barry Blechman, he played essential roles in the creation of the Open Skies Treaty, the permanent extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention, each landmark achievements in their own right. Michael’s impact was also especially felt in South Asia, where he worked with a generation of leaders in both India and Pakistan to apply the lessons of the Cold War, build confidence between adversaries, and reduce the chance of nuclear war on the subcontinent. He was the author of 23 books, most recently Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace: The Rise, Demise, and Revival of Arms Control, and countless papers and essays.

Michael leaves a lasting legacy in the Stimson Center, and the generations of staff, rising researchers, and budding professionals whom he taught, helped, advised, and mentored. That is why, more than three decades after Michael and Barry created it, the Stimson Center remains committed to their vision of international peace, security, and prosperity. Those who wish to support the Stimson Center in honor of Michael’s legacy or share a personal remembrance, may do so here.

There is more to say about Michael than I could possibly write today. And so I will leave you with the last words he wrote to our staff, just a few weeks ago, when he made the fact of his illness public:

“The work you do makes me proud. Your persistence, commitment, and creativity matters. You are the antidote for troubled times. I believe in you.”

Education and public awareness will always remain a core thrust. I am intent on honoring him by pursuing his admonition to us.

There is clearly a need for insights. Here is an excellent analysis by Carnegie’s Ashley Tellis.

In honor of Michael’s South Asia focus, I will pursue the creation of Pugwash chapters at SaiU, and hopefully at India’s Krea University, where my good friend Nirmala Rao has just been named President.

Surely, there is interest. Interacting with my fellow Pugwash members Steve, Francesca, and Happymon, they presented in my Sai University “Global Challenges” colloquium. Originally organized to concentrate on the dangers of South Asian nuclear proliferation, given the conflict in divided Kashmir, with the Russian Ukraine invasion, they also shared with my students what they urgently understand as the dangerous disintegration of the norms that underline the assumed rationality of deterrence, arms control, and — given the supine role of the United Nations — global governance altogether.

One member of the SPUSA program committee, David Guston, previously conducted this fascinating seminar for me in my Global Governance Challenges of Emerging Technologies colloquium at Sai University in Chennai, India.

Rachel was the principal organizer of three annual conferences that resonate with our expanded Pugwash mandate - Epidemic Success: Infecting our Future, Space & Society: Governing our Galaxy, and Climate & Society: Sustaining our Future. With the many synergies in our overlapping work, and impressed with her acumen and innovative thinking, Rachel has become a very active Trebuchet mentor. I am a strategic advisor to her latest development, the Global Futurist Initiative. As Chair of Internet Bar, Rachel and IBO founder Jeff Aresty published this chapter which reflects many of my activities.

When I first composed this segment, I thought that perhaps the origin of my concerns and efforts regarding nuclear issues lay in a graduate seminar on nuclear strategy that I enrolled in at the University of Chicago in 1968, taught by Professor Albert Wohlstetter. (For my seminar paper I proposed the naive idea of placing nuclear landmines at the entrances to the Gida and Mitla passes in the Sinai, the oft-used defiles for Egyptian and Israeli tanks in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1956 and ‘67 (and, ultimately, the ‘73 war).)

Then I recently discovered my notebook notes from my freshman year at Johns Hopkins University in 1960. I had taken two senior-level seminars in the political science department on Contemporary World Politics: “International Politics and Foreign Policy,” and second semester, “The Security Dilemma in the Nuclear Age.” Hunter Farnham, a close friend I met during orientation period playing tennis and an upperclassman at the time, encouraged me to take these senior seminars with him and told me the professor of the classes was the best professor at Hopkins: Professor Robert Tucker. He was my first “realist” IR theoretician.

I had to petition Tucker to enter. I remember skimming his book on maritime law and strategy to prepare for meeting with him. He was amused and let me in, warning me he would alert me when the drop-add date came. Studying with Hunter, I hid, learned massive amounts of fascinating previously unknown history, somehow did well, and apparently I never looked back. I subsequently read many of Tucker’s books on American foreign policy, law and war, and inequality, while respecting him, disagreeing more than agreeing on his ideas on intervention and the role of global energy policy over the years.

These are two pages from my lecture notes. I see I had written “HELL” along side my entry quantifying the destructive power of the first nuclear bombs.

Hunter was the classic early 60’s BMOC — Big Man on Campus. A Hopkins legend, he had captained the Hopkins undefeated, nationally televised Jeopardy College Bowl Team, which won five consecutive competitions. The team had to leave only because of rules against continuing more. He also captained our tennis varsity. A non-conformist, he served in the Canadian Merchant Marine. Drove Formula-one cars, played the tuba, coached lacrosse and soccer, and was a Grand Prix photographer.

An international development and humanitarian affairs expert, he served in USAID for decades in Africa, visiting 35 countries on the continent, and what really impressed me was that he really cared deeply about inequality.

Hunter remained my life-long friend over decades. I was honored that he joined my Institute’s Advisory Board. He had a profound effect on me, and subsequently many young students.

For years he directed Phillips Exeter’s Inquiry delegation. When he passed, far too soon, in 2012, I memorialized him, naming the Institute’s annual Inquiry high school simulation keynote after him. This is a recent example.

But perhaps subconsciously, I also think nuclear concerns significantly infiltrated my brain at Hopkins, where, while I majored in Political Science and minored in Art History and Architecture, my close roommates and fraternity brothers Milton Cole and James Turner were physics majors. I tried mightily, and unsuccessfully, to understand what they were discussing over their problem-sets. (Milt was also my roommate later at UC.) Both became highly accomplished physicists, and both remain very concerned with the ethical dimensions of science, and the need to educate about it.

Developing and pursuing this effort has been personally tremendously satisfying, prompting me to renew wonderful relationships with these friends and other old ones.

Nearing eighty, I am a member of the futile and ludicrous “duck and cover” generation. My Dad had to defend me when I was threatened with suspension from PS-5 in Astoria, New York City, for protesting it as useless, as my Dad had told me. Assuredly, nuclear issues, and the threat of nuclear warfare in particular, have always been of great concern to me. I have long believed our global population has been living in denial for decades under the looming specter of mutually assured destruction — aptly named MAD-ness — for many decades.

Marty, who recently passed away and who is sorely missed, also recorded the controversy as to whether or not Air Force Captain William Bassett, in command of the 873rd Tactical Missile Squadron on Okinawa, is also responsible for us avoiding a nuclear catastrophe by preventing the launching of 32 U.S. nuclear cruise missiles, each capped with a 1.1 megaton warhead at their preset targets in the Soviet Union and China.

Beyond miscalculations of hair-trigger alerts, brinksmanship, and the misguided first-strike policy doctrine, we remain radically unconscious of the persistent, everyday threat of dangerous nuclear accidents.

I believe that a tremendous mistake occurred to not confront Assad’s regime in Damascus, Syria, when President Obama did not enforce his “redline” ultimatum following the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons.

As potentially serious, we have been living unwittingly under the severe threat of nuclear accidents. One of the more serious occurred in yet another Damascus: Damascus, Arkansas, when a seemingly insignificant accident at a Titan missile silo of a fallen repair wrench could have had profound global repercussions. It is well documented by Eric Schlosser, in Command and Control: The Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. This partial compendium of what are termed “broken arrows” should give any sane citizen great consternation.

We also have a “thermonuclear monarchy,” as Harvard’s Professor Elaine Scarry has described it, that gives a US President overwhelming authority to initiate a nuclear war, thoroughly incompatible to democracy. “Waging” a war in such a circumstance would be a radical misnomer. It would be instantaneous global catastrophe. We should be very worried that an ignorant, impulsive, saber-rattling president might do something irrational. During his impeachment proceedings, President Richard Nixon had boasted, "I can go into my office and pick up the telephone and in twenty-five minutes seventy million people will be dead."

We just experienced a recent violent coup attempt to install an authoritarian US regime, whose previous suggestions to bomb drugs cartels with impunity, perhaps, swallow bleach, should alarm everyone. I saved this Times editorial from November 16th, 2017. The danger of a second Trump term is in the category of the “unthinkable.”

The brutal, criminal invasion of Ukraine, under the specter of nuclear intimidation and blackmail, is occurring as the global arms control regime, painstakingly developed over decades has withered. And after his failures in Kyiv, Putin has put in charge the most brutal of his commanders, who on behalf of Bashar Al-Assad’s Damascus government, hastened the total destruction of Aleppo, Syria. What we witnessed in Chechnya is happening on a daily basis in the Donbas, and Putin has announced it is only the start of his campaign.

When I first began to insist on alerting people to nuclear concerns, many of friends, professors and policy experts were bemoaning that attention and interest in nuclear issues had atrophied with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Too many people felt the lack of passionate concern that had accompanied previous moratorium efforts. Under current, threatening circumstances, with Putin’s and Lavrov’s bellicose statements on potential use of nuclear weapons, people have come belatedly to their own “Roads to Damascus” — that there is a heightened need to confront what we have been blithely obtuse about for far too long.

We know that Soviet-era nuclear thinking during the Cuban Missile Crisis still informs Russian doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons.

From Marty’s perspective in Gambling with Armageddon,

“Khrushchev’s view of how the United States used nuclear weapons to intimidate his country led him to develop his own version of brinksmanship: the ‘meniscus’ principle. ‘Let the enemy believe we are ready to strike at any provocation. Fill the nuclear glass to the brim … but don’t pour the last drop to make the cup overflow. Be just like a meniscus, which, according to the laws of surface tension in liquid,’ he explained to his Presidium colleagues, ‘is generated in order that the liquid doesn’t pour out past the rim’. Soviet policy, he concluded is to ‘always have a [nuclear] wine glass with a meniscus. Because if we don’t have a meniscus … we let the enemy live peacefully’ — which allows it to behave in dangerous ways.”

The Santa Fe gathering was keynoted by the distinguished former Secretary of Defense, William Perry.

Secretary Perry had recently written an extraordinary biography, My Journey on the Nuclear Brink. I honored him with the Institute’s Jean Mayer Award in 2010. He warns in his memoir, that we are sleepwalking through a nuclear era that imperils us all. Among the thirty people joining Secretary Perry were Ambassador Robert Gallucci, Editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Rachel Bronson, and author and filmmaker Eric Schlosser, as well as members of newer generations such as Mareena Robinson Snowden, and Elizabeth Kistin Keller.

My attendance was secured through the intervention of the Stimson Center’s Debra Decker, who I first met that September at a Belfer Center nuclear workshop and essay competition for international undergraduate and graduate finalists. I had conducted an informal survey with Debra at her competition to learn who among the highly selected international students, who had already won rigorous preliminary contests in their countries, and who were dedicated to and highly knowledgeable of nuclear concerns, knew of Pugwash. None knew.

Pugwash’s invaluable vision, proven track record, and experienced roster of distinguished diplomats and scientists needed far more exposure among younger generations. With the support and encouragement of many of the Santa Fe participants I determined then to engage in that effort.

With Debra, the Stimson Center and the Global Co Lab Network, we developed a proposal, the Nuclearized NextGen. From our mission statement:

“The next generation will be left with many challenges, including insufficiently secured and growing fissile materials and their possible use, but are generally unaware of these issues, not to mention their urgency and how they should be addressed. Meanwhile, the generation with memories of potential nuclear Armageddon is dying. This project is designed to build on existing studies and organizations such as N Square with a focus on utilizing small gatherings to design and incubate inter-generationally-led solutions.”

NextGen is now being renewed as part of the mission of a new citizen-activist group initiative that I have joined, the “Non-Nuclear Family,” organized by Suzanne “Suzi” Hamill, a renowned design thinker. She is joined by her eclectic friends: Diana Joseph, CEO, Corporate Accelerator Forum; Mark Rogers, Sr. Product Manager, Operational Excellence, Capital One; Dabney Hailey, Founder + Principal of Hailey Group; Danielle Duplin, Founder, Executive Producer of Innovation Programs, FreeWind Productions; and my friend and neighbor, Scott Kirshner

Trebuchet’s efforts are thoroughly multidisciplinary, and whenever feasible, integrated with visual, artistic, and performance aspects.

I introduce all of my partners to the significant work of Lovely Umayam, a nuclear non-proliferation expert and founder of the Bombshelltoe Policy and Arts Collective, who I first met in Santa Fe; Trebuchet’s design expert, my Annapolis ALLIES mentor, Anne Gibbon, and to Outrider, the fascinating educational resource; whose distinctive web site was created by my alum, Josh Goldblum, the originator of BlueCadet.

Their approach resonate educational efforts I had created with my Institute students over the years, including an atelier with the noted theater director Erika Munk, who had gone to Sarajevo in the middle of the siege to present a production of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot with Susan Sontag. We staged and presented an adaptation of the book The Suitcase: Refugee Voices from Bosnia and Croatia, working together with its author, Harvard law professor, Julie Mertus. Notable plays contending with the moral dilemmas of science and public policy that Pugwash is recommending for University staging include, Operation Epsilon, Copenhagen, and The Bomb and the Swastika.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has created Amnesia Atómica NYC, a wonderfully imaginative artistic exposition and call to reduce the dangers of nuclear weapons and commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Its curator is a friend, Pedro Alonzo with whom I had worked to create a mural at Tufts by Shep Fairey.

Photography also continues to have a critical role in the way I educate. Peter Goin’s Nuclear Landscapes was exhibited during the Institute’s 1992 EPIIC year “International Security: The Environmental Dimension.” At the Institute I created two programs, Exposure and the Program on Narrative and Documentary Practice, to allow students to explore their concerns with themes of social and political conflict, war and violence, and environmental degradation. We collaborated frequently with the renowned photojournalists of VII Photo Agency, including Gary Knight and Ron Haviv. I currently sit on the Advisory Board of the VII Foundation that they founded, and helped edit our recent book, Imagine: Reflections on Peace, an investigation of the fragility of enduring peace after conflict, in Bosnia, Cambodia, Colombia, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda. Two of the essays, one on Lebanon, another on trauma, are by my talented former students who were leaders in the Exposure and PNDP, Nichole Sobecki and Elizabeth “Biz” Herman. These efforts greatly inform and refine my work on conflict and negotiation, and Pugwash’s efforts at “Dialogue Across Divides.”

In 1954, despite opposition from eminent physicists, concerned citizens and officials, and from within the nuclear establishment itself, one of the most potentially devastating thermonuclear bombs ever developed was tested in the Castle Bravo operation, as the culmination of a decade of nuclear weapons development. In response to this decade, which witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the beginning of the Cold War arms race, a Manifesto, penned by Bertrand Russell and signed by Albert Einstein and many other eminent scientists in 1955, called for the creation of a conference of scientists to confront the further development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the threat of war.

For decades, the resulting Pugwash Conferences for Science and World Affairs lent their expertise to many critical nonproliferation and weapons-control agreements, as well as efforts at de-escalation and conflict resolution. When they received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 — “for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms” — the member to accept the Prize was the physicist and peace activist Joseph Rotblat. Read his Nobel Lecture here.

The youngest signatory to the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, Rotblat had joined the Manhattan Project in the belief that possession of a nuclear bomb by the Allies would deter its use by either side in World War II. He was the only scientist to leave the Project as a matter of conscience, when it became evident that the Nazi regime would not itself obtain a nuclear weapon capability. A survivor of the devastation of both World Wars, he dedicated his life to the Pugwash movement and to a vision of global peace achieved through science and education.

I am inspired by both Rotblat’s vision and his insistence on the necessity to mentor younger generations. In the years before his passing in 2005, he acted as an advisor and liaison to “senior” Pugwash for the nascent International Student / Young Pugwash organization. As ISYP recounts of its history:

Sir Joseph Rotblat’s contribution to the formation of ISYP should be highlighted for it was one of the stabilising elements that allowed the organisation to evolve without great discontinuities. Over the years, Sir Joseph became a crucial supporter of the Student/Young Pugwash community, endorsing many of its projects, and actively participation in several activities and projects. To a certain extent, such participation was founded in Sir Joseph’s desire to make of Student/Young Pugwash a voice that could reach other young people and communicate the dangers posed by the nuclear peril and other challenges posed by advancing science and technology.

Rotblat’s series of conversations with Soka Gakkai President Daisaku Ikeda are published in A Quest for Global Peace: Rotblat and Ikeda on War, Ethics, and the Nuclear Threat, (2002), in which he further argued:

We must think about the future. I am probably the oldest [member of Pugwash], but we older people tend to talk to others just as old as us. We have many areas of understanding and agreement among ourselves, but we must devote all our efforts to nurture the up-and-coming generation so that they can survive and build a world that is much better than the one we are leaving them. We must ensure that the tragedies of history are never repeated.

Accordingly, the Pugwash Conferences have always included and nurtured the younger generation of scientists, especially at the university level. We believe that the issues debated at the Pugwash Conferences should be part of the intellectual discourse in the educational arena.

My first effort at activism regarding nuclear security issues, as both a private citizen and an educator, was the MX Missile Awareness Project in 1980. I initiated a Boston-wide university, NGO, industrial, and military consortium to assess the dangers posed by the MIRVed MX Missile, which Reagan ironically termed the “Peacekeeper.” The Project convened a conference at MIT, broadcast citywide by local NPR station WBUR, where I was then their foreign policy analyst. Participants ranged from Helen Caldicott to Jerome Wiesner, and from Pete Scoville to Richard Garwin. It was subsequently covered in the Focus section of The Boston Globe.

Here are the actual aluminum plates from the printing drums of the Globe story given to me by their editors. The Globe, to its credit, understood the dangers of nuclear conundrum, and a year later, won the Pulitzer Prize for its ongoing reporting of nuclear issues which began with the coverage of our forum.

Almost every year, one component of our public symposia featured a professional Pugwash-related workshop — viz, our seminal 1992 EPIIC year on “International Security: The Environmental Dimension” pioneered the concept of environmental security under MacArthur Foundation sponsorship. EPIIC’s workshop during the Oil and Water symposium strengthened the creation of a university-wide Water System, Society and Science program.

Another workshop occurred in 2012, The Science, Technology and Ethics of National Security” convened in collaboration with the Tufts University School of Engineering and the Department of Philosophy. This is how we described it:

“Throughout history, technological evolution and military activity have been linked. The existential challenge to society represented by warfare, combined with the immediate advantage that new technology can deliver, tends to accelerate technological innovation and diffusion. The relationships between the resulting technology systems, and consequent social and ethical issues and changes, are quite complex, however, and understanding and managing them to enhance long-term military advantage and security, is a critical and underappreciated challenge. This is particularly true when, as now, technological change is both rapid and accelerating; posing the risk of cultural backlashes that could affect both short term mission capabilities and longer term security interests.

Many technologies of sufficient power to be of interest militarily have at least the potential to be deeply destabilizing to existing economic, social, and technological systems. Examples might include the possibility that military RFID sensor systems, insect robots and cyborgs are shifted from theatre intelligence to domestic intelligence; that telepathic helmet technology transitions from a small unit communication enhancement to a non-intrusive thought detection device in civil society; or that warrior enhancement technology results in radical life extension for selected civilian populations. Emerging technologies are likely to have similar destabilizing effects within the military as well, potentially affecting not just military operations, but military culture and organization, as well as broader social perspectives on military initiatives generally.

These challenges are far more profound than is usually realized, in part because it is not just military and security domains that are being destabilized by accelerating technologies, but also the institutions and social structures upon which they are predicated, such as the nation-state and the idea of war as a public, not private, activity. It is our belief, however, that despite the complexity and unpredictability of the environment within which we all find ourselves, it is still possible to respond rationally, responsibly, and ethically to these challenges. It is that belief which lies behind the establishment and work of this Consortium.”

With Vin’s support, we created the Distinguished Dr. Vannevar Bush Award on Science, Ethics, and Public Policy, which we inaugurated in 2012 and awarded to Richard. His acceptance lecture was on the Fukushima disaster, which occurred but two weeks earlier. We had anticipated the fragility of older nuclear plants, but not the scale of the disaster. The Award subsequently became the Vannevar Bush Engineering Dean’s Medal.

I have been extremely fortunate at every step of the Trebuchet to rely upon and receive support from a diverse, multi-generational, interdisciplinary network. Please see Convisero and its mentors.

As regards the Pugwash aspect of my work, they include technical specialists, security experts, scholars, policy-makers, and activists. Wonderfully satisfying, the network includes significant alumni of my Institute who have moved to positions of expertise and influence in the study and practice of international security. I am privileged to be able to draw on the generations of my community of former students, many of whom are now established or ascending professionals in the security-related domains, including Oxford’s Lucas Kello and the US State Department’s Matan Chorev.

Will Elias, one of my oldest alumni friends and a member of the 1988 “The West Bank and Gaza” EPIIC year, is now General Counsel at Sandia National Laboratory. He has introduced us to his professional network in the research and defense communities, including staff of the Defense Department’s Nuclear Defense Policy section, and his colleagues Elizabeth Roll and Elizabeth Kistin Keller of Sandia’s Senior Strategy team.

Among the youngest generation of my community are Jack and Kit, who are helping us create relationships within their own networks, advising on themes and substance, and exploring ways to create joint forums.

One core aspect of my work with the revitalization of ISYP’s Pugwash vision remains centered on universities and colleges.

Together with Steve Miller are other friends associated with the Belfer Center, I had the great privilege of working with many of the Belfer Center for Science and Technology’s experts, notably Steve Miller, Matthew Bunn, Kevin Ryan, and Rolf Mowatt Larssen, during “Our Nuclear Age” and other Institute efforts. Belfer’s Fellows, particularly the nuclear specialists at the Project on Managing the Atom, create workshops and publications closely aligned with the themes we intend to touch upon in formulating expert forums and undergraduate curricula.

As “Founding Dean” of the Harvard Kennedy School, I have thought hard about how to educate future leaders.  In my decades of teaching, I have come across many excellent initiatives and programs in the United States and around the world.  I have never come across a program quite as innovative and ambitious as Tufts University’s Institute for Global Leadership.

 Over the past decade, I had the privilege of speaking at a number of the Institute’s forums, including an evening with Senator Sam Nunn on the threat of nuclear terrorism, and a panel with the Carnegie Institute’s Rich Meserve on the future of nuclear energy.  The Institute’s graduate and undergraduate students are impressive — intellectually curious, analytic, and mature beyond their years.  The Institute not only prepares students to think globally but also to act globally.  A brief survey of its alumni makes clear that the Institute’s methodology produces results.

 For a case in point, consider Matan Chorev.  After graduating from the Tufts program, I hired him as a Research Assistant.  He rose to be a Research Associate.  He left to join the State Department.  Currently, he is the Speechwriter and Special Assistant to Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns.

 It has long been my view that universities should produce knowledge relevant to the real world and young minds empowered to translate that knowledge into practice.  The Institute offers a remarkable and truly exceptional approach to fill this vital space.  I only wish it would be replicated across all institutions of higher educations.

 I very much hope that Carnegie Corporation will support the Institute — I can think of no venture more deserving.

I am greatly saddened by the loss of a friend, Martin Malin, the Executive Director of Belfer’s Managing the Atom Project, in April of 2020. Marty was very supportive of the inclusion of undergraduates at Belfer, having taken on interns and research assistants from Harvard College. His leadership and his personal warmth will both be missed, and I personally will continue any of my efforts at Harvard in his honor and memory.

Fortunately, ISYP has the enthusiastic support of his superb successor, Francesca Giovannini, with whom I serve on ISYP’s Advisory Board. She and Steve recently participated in my at SaiU Global Challenges colloquium.

I am also very fortunate to have the friendship and ongoing support of Harvard’s current President Larry Bacow. During his decade-long tenure as President of Tufts he recognized my Institute as the university’s “cross-school multidisciplinary signature program,” and warmly termed us an “intellectual bootcamp.”

In remarks he delivered at Peking University in March of 2019 on the importance of academic freedom, he understood Pugwash and lauded the Pugwash Conferences for the power of collaboration across borders of scholars and scientists:

At MIT, we finally met in person in 2020 with Talia Weiss, a young student who for me personified an ideal next generation Pugwash persona. At the time, she was conducting physics research developing Bayesian models of recent and future data obtained by an experiment seeking to measure the masses of fundamental particles (neutrinos).

As an undergraduate at MIT, she had majored in both Physics and Political Science, along with a passion for theater.

I had first become aware of Talia when I came across her article on “Operation Epsilon,” the Allied operation immediately after the end of the Second World War to retain the leading physicists of the Nazi nuclear program, which exposed the extent to which the scientists had compartmentalized and discounted the political and ethical implications of their work.

Talia, herself a research physicist, concluded with an admonition to scientists of today:

Looking forward, scientists should not have to wait for some human-made cataclysm (even one far less devastating than the 1945 atomic bombings) to realize and confront the moral implications of our work. The challenge for each of us, moving forward, is to ask ourselves and one another, hopefully far earlier in the research process than did Germany’s Walther Gerlach: ‘What are we working for?’" Belatedly in 1957 Gerlach signed the manifesto against rearming with nuclear weapons.

Talia had also spoken on scientific responsibility and self-regulation at a Union of Concerned Scientists 2018 symposium. Her presentation addressed that subject by examining the implications of her University of Chicago research on the development of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology.

And while a Masters student in Political Science at the University of Chicago in 2019, she found the time and passion to collaborate with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, convening panels of students and faculty experts on nuclear weapons, genetic engineering, climate change and disruptive technology issues.

She shared with us a syllabus of the student climate change reading group that she co-convened, and the feedback that the sessions received, which spoke to the enthusiastic response of student participants.

Talia introduced us to Lucas Arthur, her collaborator as a then MIT undergraduate, also studying both physics and political science. Together they have created a proposal for a yearlong fellowship in science, security, and ethics, for undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, and faculty alike.

Lucas is a researcher at Paris’ Laboratoire de Physique de l'Ecole Normale Supérieur. He describes himself:

I am a researcher and graduate student, splitting my time between theoretical physics--especially the intersection of gravity, quantum field theory, and information theory--and other topics ranging from applying physics techniques to anthropology and archaeology, to data analysis, to the history and philosophy of science, and to the connections between science and technology and global political and social landscapes.

Talia and Lucas are avatars of the distinctive, thoughtful students Pugwash is seeking to mentor. They have broken out of the silos of disciplinary thinking, and fuse their growing technical expertise with both an informed concern with global affairs.

They have a keen appreciation of ethical concerns, and their depth of field in both the physical and social sciences and the humanities can provide the leadership needed from the next generation.

It was with great pleasure that I successfully nominated her to a long vacant seat on the ISYP Executive Board where she is now Deputy Chair.

Stacie and I approached the Carnegie Corporation to consider the development of a program with us. Here is an excerpt from Stacie’s overture:

Our overture was delayed by COVID-19. We both understood our proposal as particularly important, as the security — and particularly the nuclear security — community works to become more diverse and inclusive. Promoting the role of women in the nuclear expert arena is a goal we share with the Carnegie Corporation. Carnegie is a signatory to the Gender Champions in Nuclear Policy pledge. This article, by Carnegie staff Noelle Pourrat and Carl Robichaud, stressed the importance of women’s involvement. Here is a report by Women in International Security.

University of Wisconsin (La Crosse)

Talia is now a PhD candidate in Physics at Yale University. She has created and runs this wonderful Pugwashian initiative at Yale, the Kimball Smith Series. Some of her recent events include:

At the 2019 CEIP Nuclear Conference, the last before COVID-19, I made numerous connections with an eclectic community of experts who are enthusiastic about the revival of ISYP. Among them, a number of old friends and former collaborators at the Institute.

Of special note, George Perkovich, who oversees CEIP’s Nuclear Policy Program has been a long time supporter of Pugwash. He is an ally and active past participant in our symposia and professional workshops at the Institute. He has worked closely with our alumni, especially Matan, whose role at the CEIP was the Executive Assistant of CEIP’s Director, Ambassador William Burns, now Director of the CIA.

George is committed to engaging the CEIP’s Junior Scholars and the Global Centers of the CEIP.

He also directed us to the CSIS’ Program on Nuclear Issues, with its parallel mandate to create the "premier networked community of next generation professionals prepared to meet the nuclear challenges of the future.”

It was wonderful to renew with old accomplices and colleagues, including: Ali Ahmad, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a senior fellow at the American University of Beirut’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs; Laura Holgate, US Ambassador to United Nations Organizations in Vienna, Austria; Chen Kane, Director of the Middle East Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies; Yasuyoshi Komizo, Chairperson, Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation; Amb. Eli Levite, Research Fellow of Nuclear Security Program, CEIP; Najmedin Meshkati, who was an Associate with the Project on Managing the Atom and a Professor of Civil/Environmental Engineering at the Belfer Institute; Emily Roston, an EPIIC alum and a Senior Project Manager at ARA; and Lovely Umayam.

It was also great to meet new ISYP allies:

• Veronica Cartier, Consultant, International Conflicts Management and Initiative

• Christian Ciobanu, Deputy Director, PEAC Institute

• Julia Coulter, Senior Analyst, Natural Resources and Environment, GAO

• Tara Drozdenko, Managing Director of Nuclear Policy and Nonproliferation, Outrider Project

• Jeffrey Knopf, Professor and Program Chair, Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies, Middlebury at Monterey

• Harald Müller, the former director of the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF) and the 2019 recipient of the CEIP Delpech Award

• Annatina Müller-Germanà, Head of Nuclear Affairs, Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate

• Laura Rockwood, Executive Director, Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation

After a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19, Carnegie will regather at its 2022 Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference (it convenes on October 27 :)… again, allegedly the most dangerous date in contemporary history), where I will have an opportunity to continue to expand our network.

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