Published in the journal Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, this new article by Siegfried Hecker and Paul C. White below is based on content in Hecker's 2016 book, Doomed to Cooperate: How American and Russian Scientists Joined Forces to Avert Some of the Greatest Post-Cold War Nuclear Dangers:

“Nuclear weapons stink when taken apart,” a Russian nuclear weapons engineer told his audience. The year was 2000, and he spoke to a group of Russian and American experts who were attending a workshop in Sarov, the Russian Los Alamos, on how to safely dismantle nuclear weapons. The engineer was right: Nuclear weapons being disassembled smell like rotten eggs or a high-school chemistry lab gone bad. They can contain high explosives, organic substances, uranium, plutonium, and many other materials. Over the years, these materials interact, outgas, corrode, and are subject to irradiation, producing a foul smell. Hardly anyone outside the room would have had any reason to be aware of this, so the engineer’s words inspired knowing nods, and acted like a wink or a secret handshake: The Russian and American nuclear scientists in the room shared a common bond.

It was a strange phenomenon. Until just 10 years previously, the experts’ respective governments had been adversaries. But Russian and American nuclear scientists shared ties that no one else in the world could appreciate. Working far apart, they and their forebears had ushered into existence the world’s most destructive weapon, the atom bomb. They had worked to improve it, manage it, and make sure it was reliable. Now, they were trying to keep nuclear weapons safe from accidents and secure against theft and sabotage as the two superpowers downsized their arsenals. The scientists and engineers knew something that few others understood: That the most dangerous time in a typical nuclear weapon’s life cycle is not when it is being created, transported, or readied for launch. Rather, it is when it is being taken apart. Corrosion, changes in the sensitivity of chemical high explosives, outgassing of various compounds, radiation damage, and dimensional changes all challenge the skills of weapons engineers and scientists. The experts in the room might once have been one another’s opponents in some sense, but many on each side had intimate knowledge of weapons disassembly—who else could better understand what their counterparts were going through? 

An urgent problem

The story of how the United States and Russia worked together to address weapons safety had begun years before, and represents a remarkable tale of once-mortal-adversaries cooperating on matters that took them right to the edges of their respective countries’ most sensitive nuclear secrets.

It started with the disastrous Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in April 1986. After briefly denying it had occurred, Moscow reached out to the international nuclear community for help mitigating the tragic consequences. Washington assisted quickly and effectively. Years later, Russian nuclear weapon scientists told their American counterparts (including the authors of this column) that the Chernobyl accident had happened because the Soviet Union was isolated. That is, Russian nuclear reactor designers, engineers, and operators had not had the opportunity to learn from their international peers. The weapon scientists assured us that the safety of nuclear bombs had always been much more rigorous. Yet the memory of the Chernobyl tragedy, and the enormous increase in the number of weapons being moved and disassembled, made Russian nuclear scientists keen to discuss concerns and safety practices with American counterparts.

The end of the Cold War all but eliminated immediate fears of a nuclear war. In an ironic twist of fate, though, it dramatically increased the risk of nuclear accidents and the potential for theft or diversion of nuclear weapons and materials. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia had to transport unprecedented numbers of weapons from former Soviet republics to Russia for dismantlement. No one was as sharply aware of the risks as Russia’s nuclear weapons personnel.

In the wake of the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives launched by George H.W. Bush and Mikhail S. Gorbachev in September and October of 1991, which promised transparency and dialogue on safe warhead transportation and storage, the Russians gave voice to their concerns. In Washington in November 1991, Viktor N. Mikhailov, later Russia’s minister of atomic energy, specifically requested help with weapon safety and security, as well as help storing the huge excess of fissile material that would result from the accelerated dismantlement of his country’s nuclear stockpile. The US Congress responded to these requests promptly by way of the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction legislation.

The scope and timing of the Nunn-Lugar efforts matched the urgency of Russian requests. To deal with security concerns related to the surge in warhead transportation, the United States cooperated to develop accident-resistant transportation containers. It provided armored Kevlar blankets to shield warheads and warhead containers from terrorist bullets, and smart rail cars that enabled secure monitoring of warhead shipments. Washington also helped meet the new storage requirements (resulting from increased dismantlement rates) by providing containers and technical and financial support for the construction of a state-of-the-art fissile material storage facility at the Mayak site in Russia.

These Nunn-Lugar-sponsored efforts, managed by the US Defense Department and supported by the US national nuclear labs, were a good beginning, but the Russian nuclear weapons experts wanted to do more to mitigate the dangers. The extraordinary number of nuclear weapons returning from the field and waiting to be disassembled included some past their certified lifetime. During one of the first meetings of Russian and American nuclear experts at Los Alamos in December 1992, Rady I. Ilkaev, the deputy scientific director of the Russian national nuclear lab VNIIEF, proposed direct, unclassified consultations on nuclear weapon safety.

The Russians not only sought bilateral technical cooperation, but also believed that Russian-American teamwork would demonstrate an unparalleled level of transparency about nuclear safety, which would help reassure their own citizens and a worried world that remembered the Chernobyl tragedy all too well.

Ilkaev and his Russian colleagues took advantage of the lab-to-lab scientific collaborations that blossomed during the early 1990s to explore much closer cooperation on safety—an approach that resonated strongly with their US lab counterparts. Yet no government agreements were in place to allow such cooperation. So two tracks were pursued in parallel: The governments prepared for formal negotiations, while simultaneously allowing the labs to exchange sensitive but unclassified nuclear-weapon safety and security concerns and practices. This sharing took the form of symposia called the Security Technology Exchanges. 

Four such symposia were held between October 1993 and March 1994, two in each country, at which American and Russian scientists, engineers, and government officials compared experiences on a range of topics. Subjects included analyzing nuclear risk; mitigating risks posed by hazardous materials; understanding the response of engineered systems to abnormal environments; and communicating the content of technical documents. 

One of the most important topics discussed in these symposia and later exchanges was human reliability. The economic and political crisis resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union severely strained one of the foundations of nuclear weapon safety: people. One of the authors of this piece (Paul C. White) recalls that at a July 1993 planning meeting in Ekaterinburg, his Russian counterpart asked, “What do you do when you can no longer count on people to do what they’re supposed to do—to obey the rules?” Although the Russians’ confidence in the loyalty and patriotism of their nuclear workers remained high, they expressed concern that the fraying of the decades-old system of authority could give rise to insider threats.

A mutual strategic interest

These symposia opened doors, established a foundation for building trust, and nurtured professional and personal friendships that endure to this day. They also helped pave the way for government negotiations on the Weapons Safety and Security Exchange agreement, or WSSX, which the US energy secretary and Russian minister of atomic energy signed in December 1994. It entered into force in June 1995. 

In a March 1996 directive, US President Bill Clinton stated that cooperation on weapons safety and security was necessary to facilitate other US policy objectives, such as getting Russia to agree and comply with a true zero-yield Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Clinton authorized lab-to-lab collaboration between the three Russian and three US nuclear weapons labs, with the goal of sustaining the scientific competence of those responsible for the two countries’ respective nuclear stockpiles. His statement was remarkable for declaring that maintaining the expertise of Russian nuclear weapons scientists—America’s Cold War adversaries—was now a US strategic interest.

Although WSSX was an agreement between governments, the nuclear labs provided the driving energy and remained the centers of engagement for all related activities. Over the life of the agreement, which was renewed for five years in 2000, the two sides organized dozens of technical interactions, including symposia, joint studies, workshops, and exchanges of technical papers. The participants completed more than 100 collaborative projects on far-reaching and mutually beneficial topics. Among them were projects on accident response, responding to wildfires near nuclear facilities, and safety during warhead dismantlement. When Americans shared their experience of using a well-known industrial solvent—DMSO, or dimethyl sulfoxide—instead of mechanical methods to remove high explosives that had bonded to metal weapon parts, a Russian participant stood up and declared, “you have just given us a gift!” Such “gifts” were exchanged reciprocally to improve warhead disassembly on both sides.

The discussions on responding to wildfires would also prove mutually beneficial. It wasn’t just technical staff from Los Alamos and Sarov who got to participate in exchange visits. So, too, did the fire departments of the two cities. In May 2000, Los Alamos experienced a devastating fire that burned more than 400 residences and 30 percent of the lab’s real estate, and threatened facilities that housed high explosives, plutonium, and tritium. In 2010, Sarov had to battle a peat fire at the boundary of its nuclear complex. Los Alamos experienced another serious wildfire in 2011. 

The WSSX exchanges allowed experts to learn new ways of looking at similar problems, unquestionably benefiting each country’s handling of the safety and security of its nuclear weaponry. In the book Doomed to Cooperate, one Russian nuclear safety expert said the exchanges led his country to adopt new federal regulations on nuclear weapons safety and emergency response. 

Sadly, the WSSX agreement was not extended in 2005. The end of this remarkable period of cooperation came at the hands of governments, not scientists. Washington imposed more legal and bureaucratic strictures on joint projects, and veered away from prioritizing nuclear safety to promote an agenda of arms control and transparency. Moscow became increasingly resistant to the presence of US technical personnel at its nuclear facilities. During the last three years, as relations between the US and Russian governments have seriously deteriorated, virtually all nuclear cooperation has ended.

Nuclear safety has become more challenging as the designers and engineers who developed the weapons in today’s arsenals retire, and the experience of nuclear testing fades into distant memory. The older generation has passed on as much experience as possible to the younger engineers—particularly the idea that ensuring nuclear safety is a never-ending job. The WSSX projects demonstrated that cooperation has great safety benefits, and can be accomplished without jeopardizing either side’s nuclear secrets. The scientists and engineers on both sides are prepared to resume cooperation. The bonds they forged endure, reflecting a unique like-mindedness, a sort of simpatico professional relationship (or sympatiya in Russian) that helped make scientific engagement such a success and the world a safer place.

CISAC's Rodney Ewing and co-author Allison Macfarlane explain in this commentary article in Science magazine how the U.S. can overcome major obstacles to its current nuclear waste program. They note, "Nuclear facilities, whether for disposal or interim storage, take decades to plan, license, and build. Moreover, sustained opposition to a nuclear facility can prevail, simply because opponents only need to succeed occasionally to derail large, complicated projects. The United States needs a strategy that can persist over decades, not just until the next election." Read more.

The CISAC Fellowship Program is training and educating the next generation of thought leaders and policy makers in international security.

Our fellows spend the academic year engaged in research and writing, and participate in seminars and collaborate with faculty and researchers. Every summer, many complete their fellowships and move on to new career endeavors. For the 2016-17 academic year, CISAC hosted 21 fellows (the center has 399 former fellows).

Some of our fellows, in their own words, explain what they will be doing next:

Andreas Lutsch

Having spent two years as a nuclear security postdoctoral fellow at CISAC, I return to my home institution, the Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg, Germany. As a historian of late modern history, I do so in great gratitude for an excellent and abundantly rich scholarly experience at Stanford. Once I am back in Germany, I will publish my first book early next year, the manuscript of which I finalized at CISAC. I will also proceed to publish the manuscript of my second book, which I wrote entirely at Stanford. And I will move towards the pursuit of the so-called “habilitation,” which is required (in Germany) to qualify for a position as a full professor in my home country. 

It is not easy to put into a few words how much my CISAC experience has helped me with making progress at a crucial juncture of my career. CISAC fellowships offered me a transformative opportunity to make my research more rigorous, to think more creatively and more carefully, to appreciate interdisciplinary approaches in addressing complex problems, to improve my teaching abilities, and to establish relationships with leading scholars and specialists, which I hope will be long-lasting ties to communities at CISAC, Stanford, and the U.S.

Anna Péczeli

I have a tenured position at my institute in Hungary so I will move home in August and get back to teaching and research.

My CISAC experience was amazing, from the beginning I felt that I was part of a community here. I got much useful feedback on my research, and I really feel that my work improved in quality and I became a better researcher. I learned a lot about how to present my ideas so that it would be relevant for policy makers, and my fellowship opened new doors for me. I am grateful for this opportunity, and I am certain that I will continue to be an active member of the CISAC community wherever I go.

Eric Min

During the 2017-2018 academic year, I will remain at CISAC. As a social sciences postdoctoral fellow, I will study how international actors and third parties utilize diplomacy to manage and resolve interstate conflicts. This builds upon my broader research agenda, which uses new quantitative data and statistical methods to analyze the strategic logic of negotiations during war. 

Given that I came from a predominantly social science background, my year at CISAC was invaluable in helping me to understand the policymaking world and how my research could more effectively communicate the technicalities of my research to a broader informed yet general audience. I also learned about what kinds of pressing questions concern policymakers, which I will use to shape my future work. I look forward to meeting another group of diverse and knowledgeable individuals next year. 

Jennifer L. Erickson

This fall, I will return to my regular life at Boston College, where I am an associate professor of political science and international studies. In the upcoming academic year, I will continue to work on the research I worked on at CISAC on new weapons and the laws and norms of war and the nuclear weapons portion of my project in particular. I will also teach two sections of the Introduction to International Studies for BC undergraduates and the Field Seminar in International Politics for BC graduate students. In the fall, I also look forward to being affiliated with the Security Studies Program at MIT. 

CISAC has been a tremendous source of academic support for my research. Not only has it given me time and resources to do research and write, but it has also introduced me to new colleagues, who have generously provided insights and expertise that have improved that research. It also made it possible for me to attend events like a conference on New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology, and War at the Air Force Academy in April 2017, the Military Immersion Map Exercise at RAND in May 2017, and the UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons in June 2017.

These experiences, as well as all of the opportunities to attend events and meet people at CISAC itself, will continue to shape how I think about my research and teaching and have helped me build new professional networks for the long term.

Cameron Tracy

In the next academic year, I will be a postdoc in Stanford’s Department of Geological Sciences. There, I will continue my work on the role of geologic disposal (burial) of weapons plutonium in the global arms control and disarmament regimes. I will also conduct scientific research on the manner in which nuclear materials change in response to their environments. For example, I am currently starting a project in which I attempt to determine the conditions in which uranium-bearing materials have been stored by studying the oxidation and hydration of their surfaces. This could help to determine the provenance of smuggled uranium that has been interdicted by law enforcement or security authorities. 

My fellowship at CISAC has allowed me to translate my scientific skills to the policy realm, and to greatly expand the impact of my work. I have long been interested in science policy, but lacked the resources, connections, and experience necessary to effectively analyze critical issues and to communicate the results to both scholarly and governmental audiences. Through interactions with CISAC’s resident policy experts, I learned about the role that technical analysis can play in the policymaking process.

While my transition to policy-relevant work is ongoing, my efforts have already yielded some impact on international policy, with an Australian Royal Commission report citing my work on quantifying the long-term risks associated with the burial of nuclear materials. I expect that the valuable experience and mentorship I received over the course of my CISAC fellowship will continue to inform and enhance my work at the interface of nuclear science and policy.

Jooeun Kim

I will become the Jill Hopper Memorial Fellow at Georgetown University and will be teaching a course, the History and Politics of Nuclear Proliferation, in spring 2018. From August this year, I will be a visiting scholar at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University. CISAC provided me with amazing resources. I loved my intellectually stimulating meetings with my mentor Scott Sagan and other amazing scholars who opened their office doors to me. CISAC is an ‘intellectual candy store.’ I am grateful to everyone there for creating such a special environment.

Andrea Gilli

Starting July 1, I will be a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs where I will keep working on my research about technology and international security.

The CISAC experience helped my career in three main ways. First, CISAC is a fantastic academic environment where young researchers can deal with leading scholars in a plurality of fields: the constant interactions between different views and expertise represent a unique source of intellectual growth that has helped me develop new ideas and identify new questions in my field.

Second, CISAC's activities and professional growth initiatives help fellows gain the skills and acquire the knowledge to succeed not only as an academic but also, more broadly, as public intellectual. CISAC has helped me improve my understanding of policy dynamics as well as my capacity to present to non-experts the findings of my research. Third, CISAC's "be-good" motto combined with its strong mentorship provides fellows with a perfect working environment.

Eva C. Uribe

This fall, I will be starting my position as a systems research analyst at Sandia National Lab. For my research here at CISAC, I have taken a broad, holistic look at the proliferation impact of the thorium fuel cycle. Therefore, CISAC has given me valuable experience in thinking through difficult problems using a systematic, top-down approach, which is a skill that I will take with me to my next position.

Accepting a postdoctoral fellowship with CISAC was an unconventional career move for me, personally. I got my doctorate in chemistry from UC Berkeley in 2016. Most of my peers in the chemistry department went on to conduct postdoctoral research at another university, a national lab, or in industry. A few made the leap into science policy fellowships in Washington, D.C. For me, CISAC provided a happy compromise between these two options. It allowed me the freedom to continue conducting technical research (albeit outside the chemistry lab), while still exploring the policy implications of my research.

My experience at CISAC helped my career progression in two ways. First, through targeted workshops, reading groups, and less formal daily interactions, CISAC provided me with the opportunity to view my research and interests from a different lens, that of the policymaker.  It was interesting to see my fellow fellows, of all academic backgrounds, struggling with how to translate the finer points of their academic research into policy-relevant media. I learned a lot from their experiences and challenges. The second way that CISAC has helped my career progression was through exposure to others who have done this transition successfully. This was achieved through fantastic seminar series, as well as through daily interaction with faculty and fellows here at CISAC. Speaking with people who have worked at high levels in Washington, D.C. made me realize that I would prefer to continue doing policy-relevant academic and technical research in nuclear science, rather than to transition to policy completely.

Fellowship information

Current fellowship opportunities at CISAC include: 

•  Social Sciences or Humanities International Security Fellowship

•  Natural Sciences or Engineering International Security Fellowship

•  Cybersecurity and International Security Fellowship

•  Law and International Security Fellowship

•  Nuclear Security Fellowship

•  William J. Perry Fellowship in International Security

For more information about CISAC fellowships, email cisacfellowship@stanford.edu.

Congratulations to CISAC honors program Class of 2017! On June 16, students in the CISAC Interschool Honors Program in International Studies graduated in a conferral of honors ceremony on the front lawn of Encina Hall. 

We are proud to add our 12 new graduates to our expanding list of graduates from the program since it began in 2001. In total, CISAC has 193 alumni in honors. For the students, their graduation reflects an intellectual adventure that included a two-week honors college program in Washington D.C., tours of government agencies, meetings with influential policy makers, and weekly seminars with CISAC faculty. Honors students are also required to research and complete an original thesis on an important national security issue.

The 2017 program was co-directed by Martha Crenshaw and Chip Blacker. Crenshaw said, "We stress hard work, independent thinking, intellectual honesty, and courtesy and civility.  Our students are critical without being disrespectful, open to new ideas and ways of thinking, and self-made experts in the subjects they have chosen."

In his remarks, Blacker said several features of the CISAC program make it distinctive. "These include the diversity of the disciplines represented by the student's major fields of study, which range this year from political science, history and international relations, on the one hand, to computer science, energy systems engineering, and materials science and engineering, on the other. ..." 

While each project is different, "they all share the unifying and overarching themes of advancing the international security agenda and having value and utility in policy terms," Blacker said. The program, he added, places a "premium on knowledge of the real world, and of the art and science of policymaking in particular, coupled with intensive training in research and writing."

During the conferral ceremony, CISAC honors teaching assistant Shiri Krebs read statements from the students' thesis advisors regarding their final papers. Read below for those comments:

Ken-Ben Chao

A New Journey to the West: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Chinese Foreign Policy

Thesis Advisor: Coit. D. Blacker

"What is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and, to be blunt, why should we care? In essence, this is the question that Ben Chao seeks to answer in this thoughtful, comprehensive and well-written senior thesis. Ben’s answer, like the question, comes in two parts. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, he tells us, is neither an emerging alliance nor a diplomatic “talk shop.” Rather, it has been – and it continues to be – a subtle instrument of Chinese foreign policy that has waxed and waned in importance since its creation in 2001 depending on Beijing’s assessment of the international security environment. In Ben’s judgment, this is reason enough for us to care and for us to pay attention. Ben’s thesis is a superior piece of scholarship that tells us a great deal about something most of us know little about and does so in an informed and wonderfully entertaining way."

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Marina Elmore

When Things Are Not What They Seem: Explaining the Success of Countering Violent Extremism in Los Angeles

Thesis Advisor: Martha Crenshaw

"A policy of countering violent extremism and radicalization, known as “CVE,” was a hallmark of the Obama Administration as it struggled to respond to the threat of “homegrown” jihadist terrorism. But what is CVE? And is it effective? These questions motivated Marina Elmore’s fascinating inquiry into the apparent success of the Los Angeles program, highly praised as a model on the national level. Marina probed deeply into the case to discover that special circumstances predetermined the outcome and that the model was not easily transferable to other cities. For one thing, Los Angeles did not actually face a challenge of violent extremism because it lacked a population susceptible to the appeal of jihadist propaganda. For another, the city had already implemented most of the newly prescribed CVE “best practices,” such as community policing, in efforts to solve earlier social and political problems. Marina’s conclusions are astute, balanced, and fair, and she persuasively demonstrates both how important it is to test commonly held assumptions and how difficult it is to establish standards for policy effectiveness in the counterterrorism field."

Gabbi Fischer

Towards DIUx 2.1 or 3.0? Examining DIUx’s Progress Towards Procurement Innovation

Thesis Advisors: Herb Lin, Dan Boneh

"In 2015, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced the creation of Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx).  Through some great case-based work, Gabbi cuts through the complexity of the traditional acquisition system to observe that DIUX fills two important niches in the defense innovation ecosystem: it facilitates connections between DoD users and the tech community and it exercises non-traditional acquisition authority (called Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs)) to expedite contracting.  But she also cautions that the use of OTA may not be compatible in the long run with the traditional acquisition system, and suggests that future DIUX efforts may have to take advantage of other existing acquisition authorities (which do exist but which are rarely used) to make further progress in improving the coupling between the tech sector and the DoD.  She makes also substantive recommendations that DIUX should take seriously if it wants to survive in the long term."

Wyatt Horan

Evaluating the U.S. Foreign Policy Institutions in Permitting a Coercive Russian Energy Policy

Thesis Advisor: Coit D. Blacker

"Following the twin “oil shocks” of the 1970s, the U.S. Government moved effectively to reduce the potential economic and political impact of any future such events by reorienting and reshaping key foreign policy institutions. When, thirty years later, the Russian government under Vladimir Putin began to manipulate Russian deliveries of natural gas to its customers in Europe, the U.S. failed to respond in a focused, deliberate and coordinated way. In this provocative senior thesis, Wyatt asks whether the clumsy American response to Russia’s manipulation of this vital energy resource contributed to Moscow’s alarming behavior. He answers in the affirmative and by so doing forces us to think hard about how seemingly obscure organizational issues impact the effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy. Wyatt’s thesis is bold and a little unsettling. It also reads like a detective novel, which is a tribute to the author’s willingness to run risks in search of a good story."

Tori Keller

The Rise and Fall of Secular Politics in Iraq

Thesis Advisor: Lisa Blaydes

"As you know from interacting with Tori over the past year(s), she is a passionate – almost obsessively curious – student of contemporary Iraqi politics. Her drive to understand the case has led her to write a normatively-motivated, policy-relevant thesis on the failure of democratic consolidation in Iraq. Her research suggests that a non-sectarian political future for Iraq was possible; the historical antecedents for such a vision existed. But as a result of a combination of US missteps, Iranian interference and, most importantly, the way these factors manifested into an insecure security environment, secular parties never really had a real chance to succeed even if a plurality of voters supported such an outlook. To write this thesis, Tori invested in her own human capital development in impressive ways. She studied Arabic, learned ArcGIS mapping software, collected original data, and undertook statistical analysis – deploying the skills she had acquired in her four years at Stanford with the goal of answering this research question. In the end, I believe she has the right answer as well. If there was any doubt left in her mind about whether she got it “right,” I feel confident that she would still be puzzling through the research today."

Alexander Lubkin

Plutonium Management and Disposition in the United States: History and Analysis of the Program

Thesis Advisor: Rod Ewing

"Alex’s thesis examines the issues related to the failure of the U.S. program for the disposition of excess plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons. Based on his survey of the literature and interviews with key actors in this program, Alex analyzed the U.S. program and has made a number of important observations and conclusions concerning the causes for the failure of the U.S. program. His most significant conclusion is that one of the major causes of failure was that the U.S. program to use irradiated MOX fuel for the disposition of the plutonium was not consistent with U.S. nuclear policy. The U.S. is pursuing an open nuclear fuel cycle, and thus has limited experience with large scale processing of radioactive materials and the fabrication of MOX fuel. Alex was able to identify a number of other issues, such as over reliance on cost and schedule estimates of the different strategies and a failure to utilize advances in materials science for the development of actinide waste forms. I am very impressed with Alex’s dedication to this research project, and his persistence in the review of an often confusing and obscure literature. We have met regularly over the past year. I outline broad areas that he might investigate, but then he took these ideas and developed them according to his on evaluation of a variety of different sources. He also did an exceptional job of synthesizing the information from the interviews into an interesting and informative chapter in his thesis. Alex’s research will be the basis for a publication, but most importantly, he has opened the door to a whole series of policy issues that require more detailed analysis. He has certainly educated me on a number of these issues."

Jian Yang Lum

To Bomb or Stab? The Impact of Ideology and Territorial Control on Rebel Tactics

Thesis Advisors: Joseph Felter, Jeremy Weinstein

“Lumpy” as we know him- explores how rebel groups’ ideology and degree of territorial control affect the type of violence they choose to employ in pursuit of their aims. Using fine grained conflict data and case studies from thirty-six years of insurgency and counterinsurgency in the Philippines, Lumpy finds both quantitative and qualitative evidence in support of the predictive model he develops in his thesis. In sum, rebel groups with weaker ideological commitment and more limited control of the territory they operate in are more likely to initiate indiscriminate attacks such as bombings and employment of improvised explosive devices. More ideologically committed rebels, and those exercising greater territorial control, initiate violence that is comparatively more discriminate such as targeted raids and assassinations. The human toll and economic costs incurred by civil war and insurgency around the world are staggering and continuing to mount. There is an urgent need for policy relevant scholarship that increases our understanding of the local level violence associated with these deadly conflicts and how states can better anticipate and respond to these threats. Lumpy’s thesis makes a significant contribution to these important ends."

Elizabeth Margolin

Should I Retweet or Should I Go? Pro-ISIS Twitter Communities and American Decapitation Strategy

Thesis Advisors: Martha Crenshaw, Justin Grimmer

"There are many studies of the U.S. Government’s use of military force in “decapitation” strikes against terrorist leaders, particularly the effects of these strikes on levels of violence and degree of organizational cohesion. Researchers have also analyzed the relationship between social media and terrorism generally. But the specific question of the social media reactions of jihadist sympathizers to decapitation strikes directed against Islamic State leaders was neglected until the idea occurred to Eli Margolin, who took it up as the subject of her honors thesis. This difficult, demanding, and often frustrating research project required Eli to master new cutting-edge analytical methodologies and struggle to acquire elusive data from the archived Twitter accounts of now banned users, obstacles that she overcame with impressive ability, determination, and sophistication. After extensive and thoughtful consideration of three carefully selected cases, she found that Twitter followers of jihadist causes react quite differently to the deaths of different types of terrorist leaders. Her intellectual ambition and tenacity produced a thesis that is excellent in terms of conceptualization, analytical rigor, and empirical foundation."

Lauren Newby

From Zero to Sixty: Explaining the Proliferation of Shi’a Militias in Iraq after 2003

Thesis Advisor: Martha Crenshaw

"Why has there been a sharp increase in the number of Shia militias in Iraq, a troubling development that may jeopardize Iraqi progress toward stability and democracy? Lauren Newby could not find a good answer in her review of the theoretical literature, so she proposed an original one of her own. Most scholars attribute the proliferation of violent non-state actors to the fragmentation of existing groups through splintering and splitting, whereas Lauren shows that in Iraq the increase is due to the emergence of new groups. Researchers typically focus on groups directly opposing the state, whereas the Iraqi militias side with the incumbent government. Most studies are limited to groups operating in a single bounded conflict zone, whereas the politics of Iraq and Syria are linked. Lauren concludes that the Syrian civil war has been a major impetus for the formation of Shia militias in Iraq and that most are established by Iraqi political parties. Her thesis is exemplary in making a clear and convincing claim, contrasting it to alternative explanations, and providing new supporting evidence from primary sources."

AnhViet Nguyen

Territorial Disputes in Court: Power, Compliance, and Defiance

Thesis Advisor: Kenneth Schultz

"In the wake of the arbitration ruling over the China-Philippines dispute in the South China Sea, AnhViet wanted to understand what the prospects were for this ruling to help resolve the conflict. To do so, he placed this case in the context of other territorial disputes that have involved great powers or states who were significantly more powerful than their adversaries. This led to the central research questions: why and under what conditions do great powers comply with adverse court rulings over territorial issues? The thesis draws nicely on the existing literature to articulate several hypotheses and then tests these hypotheses using a variety of methods. Case studies of the US-Mexico dispute over the Chamizal tract and the Nigeria-Cameroon dispute over the Bakassi Penninsula show that great powers who initially reject adverse court decisions might later find these rulings to be a convenient basis for settlement. He also makes a very important and sophisticated point that great power compliance with court rulings may reflect their ability to keep high salience issues off the agenda. The conclusion is mildly optimistic about the prospects for (eventual) compliance while remaining appropriately clear-eyed about the limits of international law in this context. Overall, AnhViet does an admirable job blending theoretical material, historical case studies, and large n data to develop his argument. Moreover, his application of these lessons to the contemporary case of the South China Sea dispute is nuanced and compelling. In short, AnhViet’s thesis represents an excellent example of how academic research can be made relevant to current policy issues."

Thu-An Pham

On Treaties and Taboos: U.S. Responses to International Norms in the NPT and Genocide Convention (1945-1999)

Thesis Advisor: David Holloway

"Thu-An Pham has written an outstanding thesis on the role of norms in international relations. The United States has not tried strenuously to enforce the Genocide Convention of 1948, which calls for the prevention and punishment of genocide. It has, however, actively sought to enforce the nonproliferation norm expressed in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty of 1968. What explains the difference? On the basis of a subtle theoretical analysis and detailed empirical research, Thu-An offers three answers. First, the Nonproliferation Treaty is better supported than the Genocide Convention by institutions that monitor and enforce compliance. Second, the United States has regarded the norm of nuclear nonproliferation as more important for its national security than the ban on genocide. And third, the nonproliferation norm supports the current international order, which is based on the primacy of states in international relations. The Genocide Convention, by contrast, threatens to weaken the foundations of that order by challenging the primacy of states. Thu-An’s thesis suggests that there are limits on the role that international norms can play in a system of states. This is a wonderful thesis on a crucial issue in international security."

Jack Weller

Counting the Czars: Extra-Bureaucratic Appointees in American Foreign Policy

Thesis Advisor: Amy Zegart

"White House czars are frequently discussed in the press, but most people don’t really know what they are and very few scholars have studied them. Yet the use of czars has serious implications for the presidency—signaling when the regular bureaucracy cannot get the job done. Jack Weller’s thesis provides a novel and important contribution to the study of the American presidency. He compiles an original dataset of every foreign policy czar created during the past 100 years and examines alternative explanations for why some presidents used czars more than others. He finds something surprising: czar creation is NOT driven by the individual management style of the president. Instead, it is driven by the external threat environment. Presidents facing simultaneous wars – as FDR did in World War II and George W. Bush did after 9/11 – are more likely to create czars than others. Jack’s thesis is beautifully written and masterfully argued, earning him the honor of being Stanford’s czar of czars."

Countries like the Asian “tigers” that experienced rapid economic growth inevitably encounter slowdowns that signal a fundamental shift in their economies. At this juncture, transitioning their institutions and policies often proves to be a most daunting task. Cautionary comparisons like these set the tone for the conference titled “China’s Possible Futures” on May 12, 2017, when the China Program celebrated its 10th anniversary.

As China nears the end of four decades of reforms, “China’s Possible Futures” was a fitting theme to mark the China Program’s first decade at Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. The launch of the Program in 2007 began with an international conference titled “Growing Pains: Tensions and Opportunities in China’s Transformation,” which resulted in a book of the same title. This year’s 10th anniversary conference appropriately heralded both change and continuity of the themes that were explored in 2007. A decade ago, the conference showcased the tremendous reach and rise of China as an economic and international powerhouse, and in 2017, the conference expanded to highlight the critical juncture that China is again facing on its developmental path.

The full-day conference, held under Chatham House Rule, was divided into four sub-themes with speakers addressing China’s economic future; its political future; the future of its international relations and global economic engagements; and a comparative panel that examined China’s prospects from experiences drawn from Japan, South Korea and former Soviet and Eastern European countries.

Panel I: China’s Economic Future

Speakers agreed that China’s tremendous growth over the last 40 years has no easy parallels in history. Some argued, however, that the policies realized over the next few years will prove critical to China’s long-term growth. Favorable factors, such as demographic, migratory and structural changes supported by a stable international order, enabled China’s spectacular, double-digit growth over the last 40 years. When “miracle growth” countries of Northeast Asia – like Japan, Korea and Taiwan – entered their periods of moderate growth, however, painful readjustments were necessary. Restructuring was required because the very policies and institutions set up to enable rapid growth were counterproductive to creating a foundation for moderate, sustained growth. Speakers variously emphasized China’s need to invest in human capital and undertake financial reforms, urban-rural reforms and state-owned sector reforms.

In addition, several speakers noted that China is facing mounting demographic challenges as its population ages and as its elderly population lives longer. According to one speaker, people who are aged 60 and over in China will equal the population of people aged 0 to 14 within the next couple years; and by year 2045, the population of people who are 65 and older in China will be as large as the entire population of the United States today. This situation implicates rising costs in healthcare and calls for major institutional reforms in China’s health sector.

One speaker spoke of the rapid rise in China’s returns to education, i.e., the rise in income for each additional year of education, over the past four decades, which now looks more closely aligned with that of the international average of approximately 10 percent. Another speaker asked whether China was now pursuing a different developmental model with increasing focus on inland industrial development and explored what this might mean for social inclusion and labor conditions of workers.

Panel II: China’s Political Future

One speaker argued that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s reform agenda does not mark a break with the past, as many have argued, but rather continuity with his predecessors’ policies. Other speakers discussed the scope and scale of Xi’s corruption crackdown; fiscal imbalances in central-local state relations that underpin China’s corruption problems; and the implications of social media on Chinese governance. All speakers spoke about mounting difficulties in the political sphere, including powerful interest groups; local paralysis arising from corruption crackdowns; mounting local government debt and misalignment of central-local interests; and governance challenges stemming from the social media revolution. Overall, speakers seemed to suggest mounting difficulties for Xi’s reform agenda, which the Chinese government must push through to avoid a sharper downturn and slower growth prospects for China’s future.

Panel III: China’s International Relations and Global Economic Engagements

Speakers spoke at length regarding the history of U.S.-China relations since Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening”; territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas; China’s “Belt and Road” policy; and China’s outbound capital flows into various regions of the world. The speakers held varying views regarding Beijing’s motivations and intentions in the world, both militarily and economically. Speakers held different opinions about whether Beijing has a well-defined vision for its global role. One speaker questioned whether China’s maritime assertiveness in the South and East China Seas characterizes the expansionary policies of a rising power; or whether it represents something more singular as China protects what it considers its “core interests” in the region. One speaker expressed the view that the United States and the U.S.-led international order is still too important for China’s development for it to threaten its functioning in any meaningful way. Another speaker discerned a “broad brush strokes” of a developmental concept in China’s “One Belt, One Road” policy that the United States might do well to heed as it considers whether to join any parts thereof.

Panel IV: China’s Future: A Comparative Perspective

The conference also included speakers who provided comparative examples from Japan, South Korea, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to inform their views on China’s “possible futures.” One speaker warned against directly applying Japan’s development model to China, warning that Japan experienced a massive credit boom and debt accumulation in the 1980s like China is experiencing today. Zombie firms were a key factor in Japan’s economic stagnation. As the speaker warned, zombie firms also proliferate in China’s economy. Another panel member highlighted Korea’s struggles to attract and retain global talent and drew lessons for China as it strives to escape the middle-income trap and build an innovation-driven economy.

Another panel member spoke of the key difference between China’s political environment in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping announced his “reform and opening” policy and today when Xi is implementing his Third Plenum decision of 2012. Vested interest groups are stymieing the implementation of urgently-needed reforms, especially in the state-owned sector and in China’s financial sector. In 1978, by contrast, the catastrophic results of the Cultural Revolution ironically enabled Deng to successfully champion and implement his agenda because bureaucratic interests had been gutted by Mao. The speaker spoke of the urgent need for Xi to change course in the next 3-4 years and use his personal power to push through tough, market-oriented reforms. Beijing’s leaders must not only craft correct policies and identify the most effective structural correctives, they must also break through the political logjam of entrenched interests that have benefited from the current system.

Panelists pointed to the increasingly difficult challenges that the government faces as China tries to avoid the middle-income trap after four decades of impressive gains and usher in sustained economic growth driven by innovation and domestic consumption. Speakers also agreed that the leadership is encountering a more complex and diverse society, a fractured elite, and the Gordian knot of economic and demographic predicaments, which require not only painful structural adjustments but also tremendous political will to realize policies that will ensure an optimal future for China.

Related links:

Brochure: Celebrating the First 10 Years of the China Program

Former ambassador reflects on US-China relations, Thucydides Trap

Siegfried Hecker won a national award this week from the American Association for State and Local History for his book, Doomed to Cooperate. Subtitled "How American and Russian Scientists Joined Forces to Avert Some of the Great Post–Cold War Nuclear Dangers," the work tells the story of nuclear scientists from two former enemy nations who reached across political, geographic and cultural divides to solve the new nuclear threats that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

The two-volume set, edited by Hecker, a CISAC senior fellow and Los Alamos National Laboratory director emeritus, describes the lab-to-lab collaboration involving more than 100 scientists and leaders through papers, vignettes, and interviews. The book illustrates the challenges they faced, the friendships resulting from the collaborations, and the team's ultimate success in rendering Russian's nuclear materials and facilities safe for the world.

In a press release, Trina Nelson Thomas, the association's awards chair and director, said, “The Leadership in History Awards is AASLH’s highest distinction and the winners represent the best in the field."  

The American Association for State and Local History's awards program was initiated in 1945 to establish and encourage standards of excellence in the collection, preservation, and interpretation of state and local history throughout the United States. More information is available in this article in the Los Alamos Daily Post.