Scott Sagan is a professor of political science and co-director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is on sabbatical in 2008-09. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989), The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons(Princeton University Press, 1993), and with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (W.W. Norton, 2002). He is the co-editor of Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James L. Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000). Sagan was the recipient of Stanford University's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and the 1998 Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching. As part of CISAC's mission of training the next generation of security specialists he and Stephen Stedman founded Stanford's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies in 2000.

His recent articles include "How to Keep the Bomb From Iran," in Foreign Affairs (September-October 2006); "The Madman Nuclear Alert: Secrecy, Signaling, and Safety in October 1969" co-written by Jeremi Suri and published in International Security in spring 2003; and "The Problem of Redundancy Problem: Will More Nuclear Security Forces Produce More Nuclear Security?" published in Risk Analysis in 2004. The first piece warns against "proliferation fatalism" and "deterrence optimism" to argue that the United States should work to prevent Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons by addressing the security concerns that are likely motivators for Iran's nuclear ambitions. The International Security piece looks into the events surrounding a secret nuclear alert ordered by President Nixon to determine how effective the alert was at achieving the president's goal of forcing negotiations for the end of the Vietnam War. It also questions many of the assumptions made about nuclear signaling and discusses the dangers of new nuclear powers using this technique. Sagan's article on redundancy in Risk Analysis won Columbia University's Institute for War and Peace Studies 2003 Best Paper in Political Violence prize. In this article, Sagan looks at how we should think about nuclear security and the emerging terrorist threat, specifically whether more nuclear facility security personnel increases our safety. His article, "Realism, Ethics, and Weapons of Mass Destruction" appears in Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, edited by Sohail Hashmi and Steven Lee. In addition to these works, Sagan is also finishing a collection of essays for a book tentatively entitled Inside Nuclear South Asia.

Gareth Evans has been since January 2000 President and Chief Executive of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (Crisis Group), the independent global non-governmental organisation with nearly 140 full-time staff on five continents which works, through field-based analysis and high-level policy advocacy, to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. Born in 1944, he went to Melbourne High School, and holds first class honours degrees in Law from Melbourne University (BA, LLB (Hons)) and in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University (MA). Evans was one of Australia's longest serving Foreign Ministers, best known internationally for his roles in developing the UN peace plan for Cambodia, bringing to a conclusion the international Chemical Weapons Convention, founding the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and initiating the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

He was Australian Humanist of the Year in 1990, won the ANZAC Peace Prize in 1994 for his work on Cambodia, was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2001, and was awarded Honorary Doctorates of Laws by Melbourne University in 2002 and Carleton University in 2005. In 2000-2001 he was co-chair, with Mohamed Sahnoun, of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), appointed by the Government of Canada, which published its report, The Responsibility to Protect, in December 2001. He was a member of the of the UN Secretary General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, whose report A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility was published in December 2004; the Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction sponsored by Sweden and chaired by Hans Blix which reported in June 2006;  the International Task Force on Global Public Goods, sponsored by Sweden and France and chaired by Ernesto Zedillo, which reported in September 2006, and the Independent Commission on the Role of the IAEA to 2020 and Beyond, which reported in May 2008. In June 2008 he was appointed to co-chair (with former Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi) the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. He had previously served as a member of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, co-chaired by Cyrus Vance and David Hamburg (1994-97), and is currently a member of the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Committee on Genocide. 

Michael May is Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000. May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the Laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971. May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards. His current research interests are in the area of nuclear and terrorism, energy, security and environment, and the relation of nuclear weapons and foreign policy. 

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Abstract: China's three human spaceflights (2003, 2005, and 2008) and 2007 anti-satellite test have put the world on notice that a new geography is emerging in 21st Century space competition, which also includes several other leading Asian countries: India, Japan, and South Korea. North Korea is also desperately trying to enter the club of space-faring nations.  Why are Asian states today so interested in space?  What are their evolving capabilities, in both the civilian and military sectors? And how are these countries' activities likely to affect the interests of the United States?  This presentation will cover each of these issues, as well as emerging Obama administration space policies, particularly in regard to China.  (Dr. Moltz recently returned from research trips to South Korea and Japan, where he conducted extensive interviews with space officials and analysts. His talk is based on a book manuscript he is currently writing.)

James Clay Moltz holds a joint appointment as an associate professor in the Department of National Security Affairs and in the Space Systems Academic Group at the Naval Postgraduate School.  >From 1993 to 2007, he worked at the Monterey Institute of International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies, where he served as deputy director from 2003-07.  Dr. Moltz is the author (most recently) of The Politics of Space Security: Strategic Restraint and the Pursuit of National Interests (Stanford University Press, 2008).  He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley and holds an M.A. in Russian and East European Studies and a B.A. in International Relations (with Distinction) from Stanford University. Dr. Moltz serves as a consultant to the NASA Ames Research Center, where he chairs the Space Futures Analysis Group.

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In 2008, the iconic doomsday clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was set at five minutes to midnight-two minutes closer to Armageddon than in 1962, when John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev went eyeball to eyeball over missiles in Cuba! We still live in an echo chamber of fear, after eight years in which the Bush administration and its harshest critics reinforced each other's worst fears about the Bomb. And yet, there have been no mushroom clouds or acts of nuclear terrorism since the Soviet Union dissolved, let alone since 9/11.

Our worst fears still could be realized at any time, but Michael Krepon argues that the United States has never possessed more tools and capacity to reduce nuclear dangers than it does today - from containment and deterrence to diplomacy, military strength, and arms control. The bloated nuclear arsenals of the Cold War years have been greatly reduced, nuclear weapon testing has almost ended, and all but eight countries have pledged not to acquire the Bomb. Major powers have less use for the Bomb than at any time in the past. Thus, despite wars, crises, and Murphy's Law, the dark shadows cast by nuclear weapons can continue to recede.

Krepon believes that positive trends can continue, even in the face of the twin threats of nuclear terrorism and proliferation that have been exacerbated by the Bush administration's pursuit of a war of choice in Iraq based on false assumptions. Krepon advocates a "back to basics" approach to reducing nuclear dangers, reversing the Bush administration's denigration of diplomacy, deterrence, containment, and arms control. As he sees it, "The United States has stumbled before, but America has also made it through hard times and rebounded. With wisdom, persistence, and luck, another dark passage can be successfully navigated."

Michael Krepon is Co-founder of the Henry L. Stimson Center and the author or editor of thirteen books and over 350 articles. Prior to co-founding the Stimson Center, Krepon worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency during the Carter administration, and in the US House of Representatives, assisting Congressman Norm Dicks. He received an MA from the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Franklin & Marshall College. He also studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo, Egypt.

Krepon divides his time between Stimson's South Asia and Space Security projects. The South Asia project concentrates on escalation control, nuclear risk reduction, confidence building, and peace making between India and Pakistan. This project entails field work, publications, and Washington-based programming, including a visiting fellowship program. The Space Security project seeks to promote a Code of Conduct for responsible space-faring nations and works toward stronger international norms for the peaceful uses of outer space.

Krepon also teaches in the Politics Department at the University of Virginia.

The purpose of this presentation is to indicate possible ways in which nuclear power plant (NPP) projects and possibly related nuclear fuel cycle facilities (should there be any) could be subverted to hide and clandestinely support nuclear weapons development programs. The discussion here is generic in nature; however, special applicability to the newly emerging nuclear programs in the Middle East is noted. The speaker's purpose is not to provide a ‘cookbook' for would-be proliferators on how to utilize NPP projects to support clandestine weapons development programs, but rather to provide indication to the nonproliferation-minded as to what to look for and guard against when a number of new NPP projects are initiated within a short time frame in a region with limited past nuclear experience as a direct response to the Iranian quest for ‘nuclear power'. This is not to imply that there are nefarious intents behind the sudden desire to acquire nuclear power capabilities by several countries that are mostly well endowed with oil and natural gas resources. My intent here is rather to provide a general assessment on how such NPP projects might be utilized, should their national owners decide to do so in situations of "supreme national interest', as a guise for clandestine nuclear weapons programs.

Chaim Braun is a CISAC consulting professor specializing in issues related to nuclear power economics and fuel supply, and nuclear nonproliferation. At CISAC, Braun pioneered the concept of proliferation rings dealing with the implications of the A.Q. Khan nuclear technology smuggling ring, the concept of the Energy Security Initiative (ESI), and the re-evaluation of nuclear fuel supply assurance measures, including nuclear fuel lease and take-back.

Braun, currently, is working on an analysis of new nuclear power plant prospects in the Middle East, and the potential for nuclear proliferation from prospective nuclear plants in industrializing countries. He also works on extensions of nuclear fuel supply assurance concepts to regional fuel enrichment plants operated on a ‘black box' mode, particularly as applied to the South Asian, Central Asian and South American regions.

Previously, Braun worked at CISAC on a study of safeguarding the Agreed Framework in North Korea, was the co-leader of a NATO Study of Terrorist Threats to Nuclear Power Plants, led CISAC's Summer Study on Terrorist Threats to Research Reactors and, most recently, chaired a working group on the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, as a part of a CISAC summer study on Nuclear Power Expansion and Nonproliferation Implications.

Braun is a member of the World Nuclear Association (WNA) committees on Nuclear Economics and Assured Fuel Supplies. He is a permanent lecturer at the World Nuclear University's (WNU) One-Week Courses. Braun was a member of the Near-Term Deployment and the Economic Cross-Cut Working Groups of the Department of Energy (DOE) Generation IV Roadmap study. He conducted several nuclear economics-related studies for the DOE Nuclear Energy Office, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the Non-Proliferation Trust International, and other organizations.

Before joining CISAC, Braun worked as a member of Bechtel Power Corporation's Nuclear Management Group, and led studies on power plant performance and economics used to support maintenance services. He also managed nuclear marketing in East Asia and Eastern Europe. Prior to that, Braun worked at United Engineers and Constructors (UE&C), EPRI and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).

North Korea’s nuclear weapon test in October 2006 and the subsequent “debate” in Japan about whether or not to ponder its own nuclear future brought renewed attention to the subject of Japan and nuclear weapons.  Pundits and policy makers in both the United States and Japan contemplated the implications of Pyongyang’s nuclear breakout, and many wondered if this marked the beginning of fundamental change in Japanese thinking on these issues.  Just as North Korea’s long-range missile test over Japanese airspace in 1998 was a major catalyst leading to Japan’s full-fledged embrace of America’s missile defense (MD) development program a few years later, might the 2006 nuclear test eventually prove to be a similar watershed moment in Japanese defense policy?  Would there be a rising tide of Japanese sentiment in favor of reexamining the three non-nuclear principles of non-possession, non-manufacture, and non-introduction? 

In pursuit of answers to these questions, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA) conducted an extended research effort over the past two years to examine not only Japan’s propensity and capacity to “go nuclear,” but also to explore the overarching issue of how deterrence is functioning and changing in the context of the U.S.-Japan alliance.  It is these latter questions in particular regarding deterrence and extended deterrence that proved most interesting and, we think, particularly important to U.S. policy makers, given the dramatic changes underway in the regional security environment in East Asia and relevant proposals in the areas of non-proliferation and arms control.  Mr. Schoff's presentation will describe the results of IFPA's study and offer steps that the allies can take to reshape extended deterrence for the twenty-first century in ways that strengthen and diversify the bilateral relationship, and ultimately contribute to regional stability and prosperity.

About the Speaker:

James L. Schoff is the Associate Director of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA) in Cambridge, MA, where he specializes in East Asian security issues, U.S. alliance relations, international crisis management cooperation, and regional efforts to stem WMD proliferation. He also contributes to IFPA’s U.S. government and military contract work relating to East Asia. Some of his recent publications include Realigning Priorities: The U.S.-Japan Alliance and the Future of Extended Deterrence (IFPA 2009); Nuclear Matters in North Korea: Building a Multilateral Response for Future Stability in Northeast Asia (Potomac Books 2008) (co-author); In Times of Crisis: Global and Local Civil-Military Disaster Relief Coordination in the United States and Japan (IFPA, 2007); “Transformation of the U.S.-Japan Alliance,” in The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs (Winter 2007); Political Fences and Bad Neighbors: North Korea Policy Making in Japan and Implications for the United States (IFPA, 2006); and Tools for Trilateralism: Improving U.S.-Japan-Korea Cooperation to Manage Complex Contingencies (Potomac Books, 2005).

Mr. Schoff joined IFPA in 2003, after serving as the program officer in charge of policy studies at the United States-Japan Foundation. Prior to that he was the business manager for Bovis Japan and Bovis Asia Pacific, and international construction and project management firm. Mr. Schoff graduated from Duke University and earned an M.A. in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He also studied for one year at International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Japan, and he lectured at Boston University in 2007.

Japan has been hit unexpectedly hard by the global economic  recession.  Although Japanese financial institutions were not  seriously damaged by the initial financial crisis in the United  States, the economy has been staggered by an unprecedented drop in  exports.  With the economy likely to shrink by five to six percent  in 2009, Japan faces the worst economic downturn in over a half  century.  Policy responses to this situation have been complicated  by the uncertain political situation, with an unpopular prime  minister and a looming election for the lower house of the national  Diet.

What does all this mean for relations with the United States?   There are several important developments.  First, one impact of the  crisis is a shrinkage of Japan's current-account surplus, implying  that (at least in 2009) Japan will be a much smaller net supplier  of capital to the United States and the rest of the world.  Second,  the government appears to be willing to respond to the crisis with  strong fiscal stimulus, which should please the Obama  administration.  Third, even with stimulus in Japan, economic  recovery will lag behind that of the United States because real  recovery will depend on an upturn in exports.  Fourth, it is China,  not Japan, that will be the key among Asian countries.  China will  continue to grow, and is also applying fiscal stimulus, so it will  likely play a significant global role in enabling an end to the  recession.
All of these factors will play into bilateral relations,  complicated by the political uncertainty in Japan.  Bilateral  relations are close, and will remain so in the Obama  administration.  But the administration is likely to view Japan as  playing only a limited role in the global effort to cope with the  consequences of the financial and economic crisis.

About the Speaker:

Edward J. Lincoln joined NYU in 2006 to be director of the Center for Japan-U.S. Business and Economic Studies and clinical professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business. Professor Lincoln teaches courses on the global economy.

Professor Lincoln’s research interests include contemporary structure and change in the Japanese economy, East Asian economic integration, and U.S. economic policy toward Japan and East Asia. His latest book, on the underappreciated importance of economic issues in international relations and American foreign policy, is Winners Without Losers: Why Americans Should Care More About Global Economic Policy, published in 2007. He is the author of eight other books and monographs, including East Asian Economic Regionalism (The Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, 2004), Arthritic Japan: The Slow Pace of Economic Reform (Brookings, 2001), and Troubled Times: U.S.-Japan Economic Relations in the 1990s (Brookings, 1998). An earlier book, Japan Facing Economic Maturity (Brookings, 1988) received the Masayoshi Ohira Award for outstanding books on the Asia-Pacific region.

Before joining NYU, Professor Lincoln was a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and earlier a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. In the mid-1990s, he served as Special Economic Advisor to Ambassador Walter Mondale at the American Embassy in Tokyo. He has also been a professorial lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Professor Lincoln received his Bachelor’s degree from Amherst College, his M.A. in both economics and East Asian Studies at Yale University, and his Ph.D. in economics also at Yale University.

Is Japan Adrift?

The political drift in Japanese politics and the meteoric rise of China have led many analysts to begin discounting Japan as a major player in the international system. However, beneath the frustration caused by Prime Minister Taro Aso's abysmal poll ratings and opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa's campaign finance scandal, Japan continues moving steadily forwrd in pursuit of a more active national security strategy. While Japanese poliics are in structural paralysis, Japanese political thought is not. Indeed, a consensus is apparent in a series of unofficial strategic documents issued by scholars and politicians this last year. Meanwhile, the Japan Self Defense Forces have recently stood up their first fully independent and joint operational commands to deal with the North Korean missile launch and Somali pirates.

Japan has always been a conservative society, slow to change well established institutions and patterns of behavior in the face of new strategic circumstances. But Japan has also historically been finely attuned to three strategic coordinates:the power of the world's leading hegemon, the power of China, and the threat from the Korean peninsula. All three are in flux, and so too is Japan's future strategic trajectory

About the Speaker

Michael Green is a senior adviser and holds the Japan Chair at CSIS, as well as being an associate professor of international relations at Georgetown University. He served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) from January 2004 to December 2005. He joined the NSC in April 2001 as director of Asian affairs with responsibility for Japan, Korea, and Australia/New Zealand. From 1997 to 2000, he was senior fellow for Asian security at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directed the Independent Task Force on Korea and study groups on Japan and security policy in Asia. He served as senior adviser in the Office of Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of Defense in 1997 and as consultant to the same office until 2000. From 1995 to 1997, he was a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and from 1994 to 1995, he was an assistant professor of Asian studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he remained a professorial lecturer until 2001.

Green speaks fluent Japanese and spent over five years in Japan working as a staff member of the National Diet, as a journalist for Japanese and American newspapers, and as a consultant for U.S. business. He graduated from Kenyon College with highest honors in history in 1983 and received his M.A. from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 1987 and his Ph.D. in 1994. He also did graduate work at Tokyo University as a Fulbright fellow and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a research associate of the MIT-Japan Program. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Aspen Strategy Group and is vice chair of the congressionally mandated Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. He serves on the advisory boards of the Center for a New American Security and Australian American Leadership Dialogue.