About the event: The Untold Story of China’s Nuclear Weapon Development and Testing offers the most comprehensive account of China’s nuclear weapons development from 1955 to 1996. Hui Zhang examines the purpose and technical specifics of each nuclear test and provides new details about China’s pursuit of warhead miniaturization. Based on a number of new Chinese-language sources that have not previously been analyzed, this book reveals that China has the ability to produce smaller, lighter warheads than some have suggested, as well as more options for missiles that could carry a larger number of warheads.

The book also provides a new framework for understanding China’s efforts to modernize its nuclear arsenal and offers clues about the future of China’s nuclear program. As the international community watches China’s rapid nuclear expansion with concern—and, in particular, as the United States considers whether it will be confronting two peer nuclear-armed adversaries (Russia and China) in the future—this book is a significant contribution to the policy debate over a potential new three-way nuclear arms race.

About the speaker: Hui Zhang is a Senior Research Associate at the Project on Managing the Atom in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Hui Zhang is leading a research initiative on China's nuclear policies for the Project on Managing the Atom in the Kennedy School of Government. His research includes verification techniques of nuclear arms control, the control of fissile material, nuclear terrorism, China's nuclear policy, nuclear safeguards and non-proliferation, and policy of nuclear fuel cycle and reprocessing.

Before coming to the Kennedy School in September 1999, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Princeton University from 1997-1999. Hui Zhang received his Ph.D. in nuclear physics in Beijing in 1996.

Dr. Zhang is the author of several technical reports and book chapters, and dozens of articles in academic journals and the print media including Science and Global Security, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of Atomic Scientist, Disarmament Diplomacy, Disarmament Forum, the Nonproliferation Review, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Nuclear Materials Management, INESAP, and China Security. Dr. Zhang gives many oral presentations and talks in international conferences and organizations.

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About the event: At the end of the Cold War, donors sought to bolster environmental programs and exchanges to build confidence and trust among scientists and NGOs and to support civil society activity in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In the years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the United States and European Union channeled financial resources to civil society organizations to empower local civil society actors, which were seen as essential for consolidating democracy in many Eastern European countries and with integration into the European Union. This project revisits efforts during the Cold War and its aftermath to assess the political and environmental impact of linking scientific and environmental efforts to political cooperation and democracy building. In doing so, the project examines the political and environmental impact of these programs along with what lessons can be drawn for current efforts to leverage the environment and natural resources as a tool for peacebuilding.

About the speaker: Erika Weinthal is John O. Blackburn Distinguished Professor of Environmental Policy at Duke University. She is Chair of the Environmental Social Systems Division in the Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the Bass Society of Fellows. She was a prior Chair of Duke’s Academic Council. Weinthal is the President of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association and an associate editor of its journal, Environment and Security. In 2017, she received the Women Peacebuilders for Water Award under the auspices of “Fondazione Milano per Expo 2015.”  Her most recent book is The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics (2023).

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Communal disputes over local issues such as land use, cattle herding, and access to scarce resources are a leading cause of conflict across the world. In the coming decades, climate change, forced migration, and violent extremism will exacerbate such disputes in places that are ill equipped to handle them. Local Peace, International Builders examines the conditions under which international interventions mitigate communal violence. The book argues that civilian perceptions of impartiality, driven primarily by the legacies of colonialism, shape interveners’ ability to manage local disputes. Drawing on georeferenced data on the deployment of over 100,000 UN peacekeepers to fragile settings in the twenty-first century as well as a multimethod study of intervention in Mali – where widespread violence is managed by the international community – this book highlights a critical pathway through which interventions can maintain order in the international system.

About the speaker: William G. Nomikos is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he directs the Data-driven Analysis of Peace Project (DAPP) lab. His research looks at how domestic political considerations shape the conduct of international interventions in fragile settings. His first book, Local Peace, International Builders: How the UN Builds Peace from the Bottom Up, examines the conditions under which international actors successfully bring order, peace, and stability to fragile settings. His follow up work on this subject examines what peacekeepers can do to mitigate climate change-induced social conflict in weakly institutionalized settings.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: For almost four decades, the United States has tried to stop North Korea’s attempts to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Based on more than 300 interviews with officials in Washington, Seoul and Beijing, as well as his own encounters with North Korean government officials over two decades, Joel Wit’s new book, Flashpoint: The Inside Story of How America Failed to Disarm North Korea, tells the up until now untold story of how six American presidents failed to stop Pyongyang. The book uncovers the policy debates, diplomatic gambits, military planning and covert operations that shaped the struggle to halt North Korea’s Manhattan project. He points to Barack Obama and Donald Trump as the two presidents most responsible for that failure. As a result, North Korea’s nuclear armed missiles can now threaten American cities.

About the speaker: Joel S. Wit is a Distinguished Fellow at the Henry L. Stimson Center and former director of the 38North program.  As a State Department official, he helped negotiate the 1994 U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework and was in charge of its implementation until he left government in 2002.  He held countless talks with North Korean officials over the next 15 years. Wit served as a Senior Fellow at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins from 2017-2018 and at the Henry L. Stimson Center until 2022. He is a co-author (with Robert Gallucci and Daniel Poneman) of Going Critical: The First North Korea Nuclear Crisis.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.