Despite accelerating economic growth in India over the last thirty years, India’s structural transformation remains stunted, said economist Hans Binswanger-Mkhize at a May 10 FSE symposium on global food policy and food security. Unlike China, urban migration and labor absorption have been slower than expected, especially in the typically labor-intensive manufacturing sector. Formal sector jobs are few and declining as a share of employment, and agricultural employment (and growth) remains low.

The rural non-farm sector has been left to pick up the slack, and has emerged as the largest source of new jobs in the Indian economy. This will likely remain so over the next few decades given that two-thirds of India’s growing population is projected to live in rural areas. Add to the equation the need to increase crop yields by 50 percent under changing climate conditions and it becomes apparent that improving rural incomes and supporting agricultural growth is essential to decreasing poverty and unemployment in India now and in the future.

“The importance of India's rural non-farm sector shows us that structural transformation does not follow a recipe,” said commentator Marianne Banziger, a senior scientist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico.

While non-farm jobs offer significantly higher wages than farm labor, most jobs are informal and/or insecure (i.e., no health benefits, unemployment insurance or pensions). These jobs go mostly to men 18-26 years old who have some education, while the illiterate and women struggle to transition into this sector. Retail trade and transport, construction, and services (internet and phone booths, maintenance and repair of motor vehicles, and hotels and restaurants) are growing especially fast, partly due to urban-rural spillovers, but manufacturing is still only 20 percent of non-farm jobs.

“For rural households, non-farm employment is not distress employment, but a profitable diversification strategy,” said Binswanger-Mkhize. “At the same time, it has selectively absorbed young males into wage employment, decreased the number of farmers, and increasingly concentrated women in agriculture, contributing to a progressive feminization of agriculture.” 

As a result, farms on average have declined in both land and household size, and have moved toward the production of higher-valued goods and a modern model of part-time farming. This transformation concerned Banziger.

“Will the urban and land-less poor be held hostage by part-time farmers?” she asked.

Banziger projects in the next 20 years food and energy price inflation will likely exceed the income growth of the urban poor. Food price increases will push net consumers, who spend a third of their income on food staples, back into poverty.

“For food prices to remain constant, farmers yield gains will have to increase by 50 percent on essentially the same land area, with less water, nutrients, energy, labor and as climate changes,” said Banziger. "The more we delay investments, the steeper the challenge.”

Fortunately, small farmers are now better equipped to respond to these challenges, but are still limited by scale. Precision irrigation and fertilization technology coupled with remote sensing and cell phone technology enable better yield predictions that affect nutrient application. Better farm-level nutrient management increases farmer income and nutrient use efficiency.

For an optimistic Indian future to be realized government policy must support ways in which households increase their incomes, said Binswanger-Mkhize. A positive outcome for rural areas depends on continued urban spillovers, and on better agriculture and rural development policies, institutions, and programs.

Productivity growth needs to be sustained at very high levels. This requires more responsive, accountable, and better-financed research systems, more diversification of agriculture, and larger, better financed, and more accountable agricultural extension system. India currently employs one-seventh the number of extension workers as China.

"Rapid policy and institutional change will be required to overcome poor performance of many government programs," said Binswanger-Mkhize. "Current subsidies to fertilizer, electricity, water, and support to crop prices are already large, but are an inefficient means to transfer income to farmers."

Direct payments may be a more efficient way of supporting income growth. This is beginning to happen with fertilizers, but should be extended to electricity and food subsidies, said Binswanger-Mkhize.

“Maybe the people who have been disadvantaged in the past are the core for future change. With appropriate support, smallholder farmers can become the engines for agricultural productivity growth and transform India's growing economy,” concluded Banziger. 

At a ceremony at the Harvard Faculty Club on May 23, 2012, the Centennial Medal — the highest honor awarded by Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences — was given to Karl Eikenberry, the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

The Centennial Medal is awarded each year to a select group of Harvard University’s most accomplished alumni. Centennial Medalists are Graduate School alumni who have made fundamental and lasting contributions to knowledge, to their disciplines, to their colleagues, and to the world at large. The medal was first awarded in June 1989, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

At the award ceremony, the Graduate School’s interim dean, Richard J. Tarrant, read a testimonial to Eikenberry’s accomplishments and leadership. Following is a slightly condensed version of that testimonial. 

The Soldier-Statesman: Karl Eikenberry, AM ’81, regional studies–East Asia

Karl Eikenberry, who served as US ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011, is the “very model of a modern soldier-statesman,” says Graham Allison, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, with a nod to Gilbert and Sullivan.

Eikenberry, a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, is now the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford. He had a 35-year career in the Army, retiring as lieutenant general in 2009 when President Obama tapped him to lead the diplomatic mission in Afghanistan.

His involvement with that country has been long and deep. Prior to becoming ambassador, he was deputy chairman of the NATO Military Committee in Brussels, where he was heavily involved in the mission in Afghanistan, and regularly traveled there. From 2005 to 2007, he guided military efforts on the ground as commander of US-led coalition forces, and earlier, he served as US security coordinator and chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, where he aided efforts to establish and strengthen the Afghan army and police force. “Karl was given extremely difficult assignments in Afghanistan,” says his Harvard mentor Ezra Vogel, the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Emeritus. “He has, under trying circumstances, provided assistance to the Afghan government and Afghan people and leadership to Americans in Afghanistan.”

Over the course of his career, Eikenberry served in key strategy, policy, and political-military positions, including as director of strategic planning and policy for the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii, as defense attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, and as the Defense Department’s senior country director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mongolia.

In addition to his master’s degree from Harvard, Eikenberry was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School. He earned a second master’s in political science from Stanford, and he has an advanced degree in Chinese history from Nanjing University in China. His wide curiosity and astute grasp of the history and culture of the Far East, the Middle East, and international politics are revealed in his numerous articles on military training and tactics, history, and Asia-Pacific security issues. When he was appointed ambassador, Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that it was “Karl’s experience as a soldier-scholar” that would prove crucial to fostering the kind of strong civil-military relationship required to enable good governance to take root and hold. Mullen added, “He knows the enemy, he knows our allies, and he knows himself.”

Since leaving Afghanistan, Eikenberry has written and spoken about the ethical dilemmas of war, political use and misuse of military deployment, and the need for military accountability. He has also become a leading voice in a conversation about the relationship between the economy and our national security.

“Integrity, service, honor, commitment, decency, intelligence. Karl Eikenberry embodies what it means to be an American patriot,” says Stephen Krasner, the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford. Indeed, Eikenberry’s service and achievements have earned him the highest military and diplomatic honors, including the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, and the Bronze Star.  
 

During the annual China-Japan-Korea summit, held mid-May in Beijing, Premier Wen Jiabao, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, and President Lee Myung-bak announced their intention to begin negotiating a trilateral free trade agreement (FTA).

The news closely followed the implementation of the Korea-U.S. FTA and negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) FTA championed by the Obama administration, both taking place in March. It potentially places Japan and Korea on awkward footing as they balance relations with China, an important regional leader, and the United States, an ally of many decades’ standing.

What could this proposed East Asia FTA mean for the United States, for the three countries pursuing it, and for global economics and security?

Joseph L. C. Cheng, a visiting professor at Shorenstein APARC and a professor of international business at the University of Illinois where he also serves as director of the CIC Center for Advanced Study in International Competitiveness, suggests the FTA could have a far greater impact beyond boosting economic growth in East Asia. Possible outcomes range from reducing resources for strengthening the U.S. domestic infrastructure to providing leverage for negotiating with North Korea over its nuclear program.

In a recent interview, Cheng spoke in-depth about the nuances of the trilateral East Asia FTA.

If the proposed China-Japan-Korea FTA is realized, what could the impact be on the U.S. economy and economic policy?

These three countries are currently ranked the second (China), third (Japan), and fifteenth (Korea) largest economies in the world. With a combined population of 1.5 billion, they account for about 20 percent of the world’s GDP and total exports. In 2011, their three-way trade reached $690 billion, and the United States sold them a total of $213.6 billion worth of merchandise (over 14 percent of U.S. total world exports in 2011).

If realized, the proposed FTA could have both negative and positive effects on the U.S. economy. On the negative side:

• First, cross-border trade and investment would most likely increase among China, Japan, and Korea, but not with the United States. Whether the FTA would result in decreased U.S. trade and investment with these countries and by how much will depend on the range of industries and product categories covered by the FTA and how rigorously it will be enforced. Most of this negative impact from the FTA would be with China. This is because the United States already has an FTA with Korea, and Japan (along with Canada and Mexico) is likely to join the U.S.-led TPP FTA which is currently under negotiation.

• Second, if the FTA did cover the industries and product categories that disadvantage the United States, small-and-medium sized export firms (SMEs) would be the most negatively affected by the decline in U.S. exports to the three member countries. This is because over 90 percent of U.S. SMEs do not conduct manufacturing overseas (and thus cannot produce and sell in these three countries to benefit from the FTA), and their market access is dependent on the U.S. government’s trade initiatives. The SMEs account for about one-third of total U.S. exports and provide most of the domestic job growth.

• Third, not only would the three member countries import less from the United States, they would also invest less in the United States (but invest more in one another). When announcing the FTA talks, China’s Premier Wen expressed hope that Japan and Korea will be the primary destination for China’s outward investment. This decline in foreign investment from the three member countries in the United States could have a negative impact on domestic job growth and funding for business expansion and public revitalization projects (e.g., infrastructure replacement and modernization).

• Fourth, because FTAs disadvantage trade from non-member countries, U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs) could be forced to produce and sell goods from their plants in the three member countries (instead of those in the United States) in order to stay competitive. This would mean moving jobs overseas. Also, because these member countries have bilateral FTAs with many other countries in Asia (e.g., the China-ASEAN FTA introduced in January 2010), U.S. MNCs might find it beneficial to increase production there (China, Japan, and Korea) for export to the region. Again, this would result in transfers of jobs overseas and also reduced investment by U.S. MNCs at home (which could help create jobs and grow the domestic economy).

On the positive side, the proposed FTA could result in fewer imports from the member countries into the United States. This would provide an opportunity for U.S. manufacturers, particularly the SMEs, to increase their domestic production to fill the demand-gap and recapture the market-share that has been lost to imports. If U.S. manufacturers could produce unique, high-quality products at an affordable price, they would be able to not only attract new domestic customers and keep them but also open new export markets in other countries, including China, Japan, and Korea.

As for potential impact on U.S. economic policy, the Obama administration might feel the need to speed up the TPP negotiations (which might require making the final FTA less comprehensive and less rigorous than originally proposed) and put the agreement in place ahead of the proposed China-Japan-Korea FTA. Also, the administration might be pressured by the business community to start FTA talks with China, as has been suggested by Maurice Greenberg, chairman of Starr International Company Inc. and former AIG chief. These FTA talks will take years to conclude and implement. In the meantime, the United States should introduce new economic policies to revitalize the domestic manufacturing sector and help position it for enhanced international competitiveness.

Could there be an impact on the struggling economies of Europe?

The proposed FTA would most likely have a similar impact on Europe, namely decreased trade and investment with the three member countries of China, Japan, and Korea (assuming the agreement included industries and product categories that disadvantage Europe). Because of Europe’s worsening debt crisis, the negative impact there would likely be greater than it would be on the United States. Currently, the European Union (EU) has an FTA with Korea, but not with China or Japan. Also, with the exception of Norway, none of the European countries is in FTA talks with China. Switzerland is the only European country with an FTA with Japan. This is not good news for Europe if it wishes to benefit from increased trade and investment with China, Japan, and Korea.

Is there a potential upside for the global economy?

Most of the expected economic benefits resulting from the proposed FTA will go to the three member countries of China, Japan, and Korea. The Chinese government estimates that the FTA could raise China’s GDP by up to 2.0 percent, Japan by 0.5 percent, and Korea by 3.1 percent. The Korean finance ministry estimates that the FTA could boost the nation’s economic growth by up to 3.0 percent and create as many as 330,000 jobs over a decade. This is consistent with the experience of the introduction of the China-ASEAN FTA in January 2010, which caused trade in the region to increase by about 50 percent in that year.

The expected economic growth in the three member countries (and the Asia-Pacific region) could, in the longer term, lead to increased imports from the United States and other Western countries for goods and services that they cannot produce or do not produce enough of. This might result from increased spending by individual consumers on luxury and unique goods and/or government purchase of advanced technologies for infrastructure projects. The increased imports would certainly help lift the global economy by creating more jobs and generating greater incomes in the exporting countries.

When announcing the proposed FTA in Beijing, the three leaders from the member countries made it a point that they will work together to ease regional disputes and tensions, particularly on the Korean Peninsula. They also expect the FTA to help provide a comprehensive and institutional framework in which a wide range of bilateral and trilateral cooperation would evolve, with the goal of maintaining the Asia-Pacific region as the growth center of the world economy. (Currently over 50 percent of the world’s economic growth is taking place in Asia.) To the extent that this can be accomplished, the proposed FTA will have farther-reaching consequences than being just a regional trade agreement.

What is driving the announcement about the intended FTA at this specific point in time?

It is not clear if the announcement was purposefully timed to meet certain strategic objectives. However, a number of factors and recent developments suggest that the timing is quite beneficial to the member countries.

First, the three countries had been in discussion about the proposed FTA for over ten years prior to the announcement. Two of the three principals, China’s Premier Wen and Korea’s President Lee will be leaving office by year’s end and would certainly like to be remembered as architects of this important treaty by participating in its announcement. 

Second, the deteriorating economic crisis in the EU and the slow recovery of the U.S. economy make it very clear to the three leaders that they need to stimulate internal consumption and investment to maintain economic growth in their respective countries. Announcing the proposed FTA now helps ease concerns about the global economy and signal to international investors that the Asia-Pacific region will remain the center of the world’s economic growth for many years to come.

Third, from China’s standpoint, the recent scandals of Bo Xilai and the blind civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng brought negative attention to the country for the entire month of April. The mid-May announcement of the proposed FTA helps redirect the world’s attention to the economic success of China and its influential role in shaping the future of the global economy.

Finally, the recent threat of a third nuclear test from North Korea might have been another contributing factor to having the announcement made sooner rather than later. China might have thought about the proposed FTA as a message to North Korea that China is now working closely with South Korea and Japan to maintain the Asia-Pacific region as the world’s center of economic growth, and thus any new nuclear provocation from North Korea would be considered an unfriendly act.

What could be the biggest challenges to the ratification of the FTA? Can they be overcome?

Historical animosity and territorial disputes between the three member countries will be the greatest challenges to both the FTA negotiation and its final ratification. Korea has recently suspended the signing of agreements on military cooperation with Japan because of public opposition, particularly from the older generations who have bitter memories of Japan’s colonial rule. Japan and China have long been in dispute over territorial claims in the East China Sea. Both Japan and Korea have also been calling for China to put more pressure on North Korea to stop further nuclear provocations. 

In addition to these historical and political obstacles, there will be opposition from interest groups within each country against the proposed FTA for fear of negative economic consequences. For example, Chinese manufacturers might not want increased imports from Japan and Korea to reduce their market share. Japan currently has a big surplus from trade with Korea; thus Korea might not want to have more imports from Japan. Also, the three member countries are quite unbalanced in terms of the liberalization steps that they have already taken and they also have different visions for their economic future.

It will take great diplomatic skills on the part of the negotiators to overcome these challenges. The FTA talks will be difficult and take many years to produce an agreement. Alternatively, the three member countries might choose to smooth the negotiations by avoiding sensitive issues and making the agreement far less comprehensive and rigorous. This would, however, also make the FTA less economically important and consequential. 

On May 18, 2012, the Pentagon released its annual report about the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) recent military developments. The PRC Ministry of Defense has sharply criticized the report, saying it portrays China as rapidly building up its military for non-defense purposes.

Military strength is only one part of the national security strategies of both countries and stable U.S.-China relations are an important factor for the overall peace and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region, said Karl Eikenberry during the annual Oksenberg lecture, held May 14 at Stanford.Eikenberry, FSI’s Payne Distinguished Lecturer and a Shorenstein APARC affiliate, discussed key factors shaping China’s national security strategy and corresponding developments in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA); constraints on China’s military capabilities; and implications of China’s economic and political growth for U.S. defense strategy.

In his opening remarks, Eikenberry, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011 and whose distinguished military career included three decades of significant China experience, described Shorenstein APARC senior fellow Michel Oksenberg’s passionate commitment to teaching Stanford students about China. The annual lecture, established by Shorenstein APARC in 2002, honors the memory of Oksenberg’s academic career and the major role he played in normalizing and strengthening U.S.-China relations.

The key drivers behind the PRC’s current national security strategy, Eikenberry said, include preserving the legitimacy and power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), resolving territorial and sovereignty issues, and maintaining China’s rapid economic growth. The PLA, which has watched its budget grow at an annual rate of 10 percent nearly every single year since 1989, exists to support the goals of the CCP. Its own tasks are, in turn, driven by the most urgent needs of the CCP, including protecting China’s economic and territorial interests in the Asia-Pacific region, bringing it into potential conflict with the United States. A major goal of the PLA at present, Eikenberry said, is to develop its technological capabilities, in areas such as space and naval defense, to prevail in regional conflicts if peaceful resolution is not possible. He said China’s immediate motive, however, is less about driving the United States out of the Asia-Pacific as it is about reconfiguring the region’s—and the overall U.S.—power paradigm, which has remained unchanged since World War Two.

China’s defense budget is second in the world only to the United States—approximately 1.3 percent of the country’s GDP—but it faces several potential challenges to its continued rapid expansion and operational capabilities, Eikenberry said. Maintaining economic growth and social stability are likely to tax the CCP in the coming years, he said, and domestic security concerns could constrain the pace of Chinese defense modernization. In addition, issues within the PLA itself, such as corruption and the over-centralization of its command, could hold China’s military capabilities back. 

Eikenberry concluded his remarks with thoughts on how the United States should respond to China’s “rise” and increasing military strength. An important first step, he said, is to address U.S. domestic issues, including balancing the national budget while still allowing significant resources for military R&D and personnel training. Eikenberry also advocated supporting regional and global institutions, both economic and security oriented, in which China can participate as a responsible stakeholder. He further stressed the importance of improved engagement with U.S. regional allies. Finally, he emphasized the significance of developing processes of dialogue for avoiding and managing future conflicts between the United States and China.

Eikenberry’s remarks were followed by a lively question-and-answer session with the audience, which included numerous China experts from the Stanford community, students, and members of the general public.

As the Soviet Union was dying in December 1991, a quiet collaboration between Russian and American scientists was being born. The Russians were bankrupt, the KGB was in disarray and nuclear scientist Siegfried S. Hecker – at the time director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory – was alarmed as tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and much of the more than 1,000 tons of fissile materials across the broken Soviet states stood poorly protected.

Thousands of Soviet scientists were suddenly in limbo and President George H.W. Bush worried some might turn to Iran or Iraq to sell their nuclear knowledge. Washington suddenly found itself more threatened by Russia’s weakness than its strengths. That recognition drove U.S. Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar to launch cooperative threat reduction legislation, subsequently known as the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act.

Secretary of Energy Admiral James Watkins echoed President Bush’s concern when he called a meeting in December 1991 with Hecker, today the co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

“I told him, I’ve been trying to get us together with the Russians for several years,” Hecker said. “Why don’t we go to their lab directors and say, `What’s it going to take to keep your guys home and from selling their knowledge someplace else?’”

Several weeks later, in February 1992, Hecker was on a tarmac in the once-secret Russian nuclear city of Sarov, shaking hands with Yuli Khariton. The Soviet physicist was the chief designer of Russia’s atomic bomb – their Robert Oppenheimer, creator of our nuclear bomb and first director of the Los Alamos laboratory in New Mexico.

Hecker would go on to make 44 trips to Russia in the name of nuclear nonproliferation and cooperation. His most recent was last month with CISAC researchers Peter Davis and Niko Milonopoulos and a dozen Americans scientists, to commemorate 20 years of laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation. They hosted a conference with their Russian counterparts in Sarov, the Russian version of Los Alamos 300 miles east of Moscow.

Some 100 Americans and Russians attended various legs of the conference, including the scientific directors of the three Russian nuclear weapons laboratories: Rady Ilkaev, Evgeny Avrorin and Yuri Barmakov. The American delegation included Jeffery Richardson, CISAC affiliate and former head of chemistry and proliferation prevention at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; James W. Toevs, former project leader for the Nuclear Cities Initiatives at Los Alamos; and K. David Nokes, former vice president of national security and arms control at Sandia National Laboratory. 

CISAC Co-director Siegfried Hecker and Rady Ilkaev, a scientific director within the Russian Federal Nuclear Center, swap gifts during their April 2012 conference in Sarov, Russia.

Hecker is determined to reignite the collaboration efforts, which have diminished dramatically in the last decade due to stark differences at the highest levels of our governments and because the Russian secret service agency has again tightened their grip on the nuclear complex.

“The 1990s were the heydays for us,” he said. “The scientists played a major role; we actually pushed the envelope on what we could do cooperatively. We worked well with the Russians.”

The U.S. Department of Energy supported and financed the joint efforts of the American and Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard Russian nuclear facilities and materials. They enlisted the help of civilian institutes to make urgent security upgrades at their nuclear facilities and the Americans brought the Russians to the U.S. nuclear sites – including the plutonium facility at Los Alamos – to let them see firsthand how Americans handled protection, control and accounting of nuclear material.

“The Sandia National Laboratories actually helped provide Kevlar blankets to protect Russian nuclear weapons while they were transporting them so that in case somebody shot at them, you didn’t get a mushroom cloud,” Hecker recalled.

Then, Russian President Vladimir Putin came to power for the first time in 2000 and the Federal Security Service – formerly the KGB – started tightening the screws. U.S. visas became difficult to obtain after the 9/11 terrorist attacks ratcheted up consular bureaucracy. Scientists on both sides began to feel less welcome at the labs and sites they had readily visited for a decade.

During his April trip, Hecker felt as if he were under house arrest in the worst security squeeze he’d seen in the 20 years of visiting Russia. He was followed by a security agent when he jogged, until the mud along the river became too deep for the agent’s shiny black shoes; Davis and Milonopoulos had their access denied at the last minute and were not allowed to enter Sarov to attend the three-day portion of the conference.

Many lab-to-lab cooperative agreements were allowed to expire by the Russian side in the last decade; even collaborations on fundamental research have been restricted and there is little nuclear power engineering cooperation. Worst of all, Hecker said, joint efforts to battle nuclear terrorism and compare means by which each side keeps its nuclear warheads safe and secure without nuclear testing are now virtually nonexistent.

“We ought to be working together, for heavens sake,” he said. “We’re not going to terrorize each other; we’ve got to keep the terrorists away from the rest of the world. We just have to get back to working together.”

CISAC researchers Peter Davis, left, and Niko Milonopoulous, right, with the U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul at the ambassador's residence in Moscow in April 2012.

Their first step will be to compile the proceedings of the meetings with their Russian counterparts in Sarov, Nizhny Novgorod and Moscow. The document will be provided to the U.S. Department of Energy and policymakers in the Obama administration, as well as the three current U.S. nuclear lab directors, who are making their first joint visit to Russia in June. Hecker said his Russian counterparts are trying to coax Moscow into jumpstarting the collaboration efforts while wooing a new generation of nuclear scientists to the table.

Hecker, along with two former Russian nuclear weapons lab directors, is working on a book to document 20 years of nuclear collaboration between Russian and American nuclear scientists.

“The book is going to do a thorough job of looking at: What we did, why did it matter, what conditions made it possible and, then, what lessons were learned that might allow us to reestablish the relationship,” he said.

Hecker had another mission on his recent trip to Sarov. He wanted to reassure his Russian counterparts that their personal relationships truly mattered.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, scientists in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus were confronted with a new reality: They went from lives of privilege to poverty. Programs launched by the U.S. Departments of State and Energy brought financial support to Russia’s closed nuclear cities, showed the Russian nuclear workers that they had a future in non-weapons research – and that someone cared about their well-being.

“One thing that came out, talk after talk during this trip, was how important the social relationships were between the scientists; how they are absolutely crucial,” Hecker said. Those little-known relationships – many of which became enduring friendships that celebrate marriages and grandchildren – led to significant steps in the U.S.-Russian nuclear threat reduction program.

President Ronald Reagan used one of his signature phrases, “Trust, but verify,” when he and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987, eliminating nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with intermediate ranges. The phrase was taken from an old Russian proverb.

A year later, that proverb was put in effect with Hecker’s hand on the nuclear button at the Nevada test site for the Joint Verification Experiment.

“In August of ’88, the Soviets were at our test sites in Nevada and I was in the control room, essentially pushing the button to blow up one of our nuclear devices down hole, while the Russians had a cable that ran down the hole with which they were going to measure the magnitude of the nuclear explosion,” Hecker said. The following month, American scientists were in Russia to do the same.

“So I was sitting there in our control room, with the Russians right across the table from me,” he recalls. “That introduced us to the Russian nuclear scientists for the first time. You know what we said? These guys are just like us. They just want to do exactly the same thing for their country that we were doing for ours: keep their country safe and secure. And that started the process of working together.”

Today, the Russian proverb made famous by an American president could be turned on its head if the Russian-American nuclear collaboration is allowed to thrive: Verify through Trust.