The Atomic Heritage Foundation is pleased to partner with the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and the Federation of American Scientists to host the event, “Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences” on Tuesday, June 5, 2012 from 10am-Noon in Washington, DC.

The program will focus on the life and legacy of nuclear physicist Joseph Rotblat (1908-2005); his dedication to world peace and reducing the threat of nuclear weapons as the founder and driving force behind the international Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs for six decades.  The program will consider the Pugwash Conferences’ contributions to ending the Cold War and reducing the nuclear threat in the post-Cold War world.

Program speakers include:

• Dr. Andrew Brown, radiation oncologist and author of recent biography, Keeper of the Nuclear Conscience: The Life and Work of Joseph Rotblat;
• Dr. John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy;
• Dr. Matthew Evangelista, professor of history and political science at Cornell University;
• Dr. Steve Miller, Director of the International Security Program at Harvard University and co-chair of the U.S. Pugwash Committee.

For more information view the event flyer here.

To RSVP, please contact the Atomic Heritage Foundation at 202-293-0045 or via e-mail at info@atomicheritage.org.

Describing the NIC report as “sobering,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was a “landmark document” that placed global water security in its “rightful place” as part of U.S. national security.  After mentioning Yemen as a country of acute concern due to its water scarcity, she discussed some of the report’s findings on the role of water in conflict, terrorism, and state failure to drive the point home:

The assessment also highlights the potential threat that water resources could be targeted by terrorists or manipulated as a political tool. These difficulties will all increase the risk of instability within and between states. Within states, they could cause some states to fail outright. And between and among states, you could see regional conflicts among states that share water basins be exacerbated and even lead to violence. So these threats are real and they do raise serious security concerns.

Actually, the NIC report noted how meeting water scarcity challenges tended to drive states to cooperation more often than to conflict, and was more nuanced on how water scarcity can contribute to political disruptions and state failure than Clinton’s remarks implied. According to the NIC:

Water shortages, poor water quality, and floods by themselves are unlikely to result in state failure. However, water problems—when combined with poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions—contribute to social disruptions that can result in state failure. [emphasis added]

The NIC report went on to note that the most effective approaches to addressing water-related social tensions was, “improving water management, trade of products with high water content, and institutional capacities to treat water and encourage efficient water use.” This is particularly true in Yemen, which, perhaps more than any other state, sits at the nexus of water and national security. As Charles Schmitz pointed out in a recent paper, the water problems result more from a lack of institutional capability to manage water (e.g. by regulating well water extraction and making accessible new irrigation technologies) than from a lack of water per se. Building the legitimacy and institutional capacity of the Yemeni state is therefore crucial to ensuring effective oversight and operation of public utilities and to harmonizing water, energy, agricultural, and environmental policy.

However, from the perspective of U.S. policy, this raises difficult questions about the relationship between water security and other “important” objectives, namely military operations targeting Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and Ansar al-Sharia. Recently, drone strikes have triggered reprisal attacks on oil pipelines, thereby diminishing the Yemeni government’s access to what it needs most: cash. Although Yemen is trying to transition an economy more reliant on domestic labor than oil sales, the new government is facing enormous economic challenges and oil exports still account for ~25% of GDP and ~75% of government revenue. Friends of Yemen, a collection of international donors, can help stabilize the economy over the short-term, but sustainable growth will depend on Yemen’s ability to meet its own needs.

A related problem is that the broader military campaign against terrorist groups can undermine efforts to affirm the legitimacy of the fledgling Yemeni government and build its capacity to meet the needs of the people. According to Jeremy Scahill, military support to Yemen when former president Ali Abdullah Saleh was in power backfired by creating incentives for the security forces to halfheartedly pursue AQAP so that they could keep the revenue stream open, even as AQAP strengthened and gained control of large swaths of territory. Current president Abed Rabbo Mansour al-Hadi does not have the same incentives to manipulate the system that Saleh did, and has, reportedly, been even more aggressive in confronting AQAP and Ansar al-Sharia. Even so, left unanswered are fundamental questions about the efficacy of the approach and, for the U.S., how efforts to build Yemeni institutional capacity to address water security will co-exist with military operations that jeopardize this capacity and tend to alienate people from the government.

It is tempting to say that the U.S. will simply have to walk and chew gum at the same time – diligently working to strengthen the Yemeni government while aggressively pursuing AQAP. Although this sounds perfectly reasonable in the abstract, experience so far suggests that the approach is fraught with risk of unintended consequences.

The point is that U.S. policy must navigate a two-way street:  water insecurity may indeed adversely affect U.S. national security in the future, but certain U.S. national security operations can also contribute to water insecurity today.  Ultimately, the rhetorical alignment of water and national “security” will not by itself harmonize disparate policies towards Yemen or other countries facing a similar confluence of political, economic, and natural resource challenges.

Mark Jansson is the Special Projects Director for the Federation of American Scientists and manager of the International Science Partnership, a pilot project that connects U.S. scientists with peers from developing countries to address issues of shared concern. He can be reached at mjansson@fas.org.

The 2012 Nuclear Security Summit is currently underway in Seoul, South Korea, where 53 heads of state and international organizations have come together to discuss international cooperative measures to protect nuclear materials and facilities from terrorist groups.

The Nuclear Security Summit comes at a critical juncture. Global terrorist attacks have prompted concerns about nuclear terrorism, and many states may continue to shop for nuclear reactors to meet their energy supply needs, despite the horrific incident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Against this backdrop, world leaders are charged with the difficult task of agreeing on measures that will secure vulnerable materials around the world.

Listen above to the new edition of the FAS podcast series, “A Conversation With An Expert”, featuring FAS President Dr. Charles Ferguson. In the podcast, Dr. Ferguson discusses policies implemented as a result of the first summit in 2010, the significance of South Korea hosting the summit and main goals of the 2012 summit. Additionally, Dr. Ferguson discusses the security of radioactive materials, which was the subject of a new paper released in March 2012.

The podcast transcript is available here (PDF).

March 11th marks the one year anniversary of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that struck the northeast coast of Japan. These natural disasters resulted in the crisis at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant. One year later, there are massive amounts of nuclear waste and high levels of radiation, and those citizens who live near the plant have not been able to return to their homes.

As a result of this crisis, many questions still remain. What is the future of nuclear power usage not only for Japan, but other countries such as the United States, South Korea, Germany and China? How should Japan properly dispose of the radioactive waste as a result of this accident? Finally, what should Japan’s new energy policy look like post-Fukushima?

Listen above to the  new edition of the FAS podcast series, “A Conversation With an Expert”, in which FAS President Dr. Charles D. Ferguson answers these questions, and examines the safety of U.S. nuclear power plants post-Fukusima.

The podcast transcript is available here (PDF).

Nuclear power is all over the news today, yet there remains many unanswered questions regarding this power source.  A new article written by Dr. Frank Settle and Dr. Charles D. Ferguson, (editors of the recently published report, The Future of Nuclear Power in the United States), examines questions such as how nuclear power differs from other sources of electricity and future expansion of the nuclear power industry in the United States.

Click here to read the article.

The transcript from the event is available online here.

Robert Norris and Kristensen published an article in the November 2011 issue of Arms Control Todayabout the review process and outlined several area where the president could change the requirement for U.S. nuclear forces.

Also in the panel will be Morton Halperin, who served in the Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton administrations, and Amy Woolf from the Congressional Research Service.

Future of the U.S. Nuclear Arsenal: Issues and Policy Options
Friday, January 20, 2012
9:30am to 11:00am

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Choate Room
1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW,
Washington, D.C.

Speakers:
Morton Halperin served served in the Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton administrations working on nuclear policy and arms control and was a member of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, which released its report in 2009.

Hans Kristensen is director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists and co-author of “Reviewing Nuclear Guidance: Putting Obama’s Words Into Action,” in the November issue of Arms Control Today.

Amy F. Woolf is a specialist in nuclear weapons policy at the Congressional Research Service. She is the author of “Modernizing the Triad on a Tight Budget,” which will appear in the Jan./Feb. issue of Arms Control Today.

Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of ACA.

To RSVP contact Tim Farnsworth at tim@armscontrol.org or call 202-463-8270, ext. 105

Kazuko Goto, FAS Research Fellow, presented at the Public Health Health Response in the Japan Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Plant Disaster symposium at the 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene  in Philadelphia on December 6, 2011. You can view the presentation here (PDF).

To read the podcast transcript, click here (PDF).