February 20th, 2007

The null hypothesis in Iraq

Those for and against the "surge" in Iraq have made predictions of what will happen if their recommendations are not followed. "But there's only one thing we know for sure," according to CISAC's Michael May. "When the collection of politicians and pundits we call 'Washington' makes predictions about countries in which the U.S. has 'vital interests'(and especially about countries with which we have had bad relations), the predictions--even when they contradict one another--are almost always wrong." The solution, May writes in the Los Angeles Times, is for Washington to take a tip from scientists and start with the "null hypothesis" to guard against bias in testing predictions. Policy makers should assume that no theory starts out with more predictive value than chance, and then use data to prove which theory is more sound.

• » Los Angeles Times: "A clue to Washington's cluelessness"

January 27th, 2007

What North Korea really wants

"Those who think that dealing with North Korea is impossible are wrong," CISAC visiting scholar Robert Carlin and CISAC faculty member John Lewis write in the Washington Post. It is possible to negotiate with North Korea, for those who know what the nation wants. And what North Korea most wants is ultimately in U.S. hands--a long-term strategic relationship with the United States. Read more »

January 4th, 2007

A World Free of Nuclear Weapons

An op-ed by George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn and published in The Wall Street Journal outlines a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons together with specific steps that can reduce nuclear dangers. Read more »

January 1st, 2007

How to Keep the Bomb From Iran

Preventing the unthinkable The ongoing crisis with Tehran is not the first time Washington has faced a hostile government attempting to develop nuclear weapons. Nor is it likely to be the last. Yet the reasoning of U.S. officials now struggling to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions is clouded by a kind of historical amnesia, which leads to both creeping fatalism about the United States' ability to keep Iran from getting the bomb and excessive optimism about the United States' ability to contain Iran if it does become a nuclear power. Read more »

December 12th, 2006

Uncle Sam's lonely predicament: Op-ed by CISAC's David Laitin

Among the most publicized recommendations of the Iraq Study Group is that the United States talk with its adversaries Iran and Syria in seeking peace in the Middle East. Talking with its allies may be a more difficult proposition, CISAC's David Laitin asserts in this New York Newsday op-ed. The Bush administration has alienated once-strong U.S. allies, and winning back their trust could take years, Laitin writes.

• » Newsday: "Uncle Sam's lonely predicament"

Iraq teaches nothing about intervention in Darfur, CISAC scholar writes

With Darfur in the news, commentators are looking to Iraq to find reasons against military intervention to stop the genocide in western Sudan. But Iraq is not an example of humanitarian intervention, CISAC visiting scholar Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe explains. A better way to decide whether to intervene in Darfur, she suggests, is to follow guidelines developed from just-war theory and set forth in a report by the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change.

• » More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, A
• » San Jose Mercury News: "Why Iraq teaches nothing about intervention in Darfur"

December 7th, 2006

Real superpowers negotiate: Op-ed by CISAC honors graduate

The Bush administration should set aside its "anything-but-Clinton" policy toward North Korea and move to end a dangerous stalemate with that country, write Professor Robert C. Bordone and law student Albert Chang of the Harvard Law School. Their op-ed, "Real superpowers negotiate," appeared in PostGlobal, a moderated forum among journalists and other contributors on washingtonpost.com. Chang graduated from Stanford in June 2006 with an honors certificate in international security studies from CISAC's undergraduate honors program. Read more »

December 6th, 2006

Face facts: New York Times op-ed by CISAC's Lawrence Wein

"Pandemic influenza is probably the world's most serious near-term public health threat," CISAC's Lawrence Wein points out, yet the nation is unprepared to treat the ill if a strain similar to that of the 1918 Spanish flu breaks out. A relatively inexpensive way to keep the illness from spreading may be within reach, though. In this New York Times op-ed, Wein explains how stockpiles of inexpensive masks and respirators could provide critical protection if a deadly flu virus hits. Read more »

November 30th, 2006

In search of a North Korea policy

"North Korea's declared nuclear bomb test program will increase the incentives for other nations to go nuclear, will endanger security in the region and could ultimately result in nuclear terrorism," CISAC's William Perry, former defense secretary, writes in the Washington Post. The test, he says, establishes North Korea as a nuclear power and demonstrates the failure of the Bush administration's policy toward the nation--a policy Perry describes as "a strange combination of harsh rhetoric and inaction." Read more »

September 6th, 2006

CISAC scholar comments in Foreign Affairs on Russian nuclear forces

Russian nuclear forces are not as ill prepared as a Foreign Affairs article might suggest, writes CISAC research associate Pavel Podvig. His letter, in the September-October issue of Foreign Affairs, responds to "The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy," by Keir Lieber and former CISAC fellow Daryl Press, in the March-April 2006 issue. Read more »

August 28th, 2006

How to make Tehran blink

The best way to prevent a nuclear Iran is for Washington to offer the kind of security assurances that might reduce support in Tehran for building a nuclear arsenal, argues CISAC director Scott D. Sagan, in a Newsweek International guest column. Working out an agreement for Iran to limit itself to low-level uranium enrichment might still be possible, but would work only if Tehran accepts full IAEA inspections and a freeze on future centrifuge construction, Sagan writes. Read more »

August 7th, 2006

NSA misses big picture in phone monitoring, says CISAC fellow

One of the National Security Agency's secrets, recently revealed, is that it's monitoring millions of phone calls, in an effort to determine who might be a terrorist. Legal or not, the spying program isn't worth violating our civil liberties for. The information gathered will hardly help win the war on terror. CISAC science fellow Jonathan Farley, a mathematician, explains why in this San Francisco Chronicle op-ed. Read more »

July 3rd, 2006

The U.S. and Turkey: Rebuilding a fractured alliance

Steven A. Cook and Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall argue that Turkey is of enormous strategic importance to the United States and Europe, especially at a time when the widening chasm between the West and the Islamic world looms as the greatest foreign policy challenge. Yet Ankara's relations with Washington are strained - over Iraq, Cyprus, Syria, Iran and Hamas - and Turkey's prospects for joining the European Union remain uncertain. Read more »

June 29th, 2006

How one school district found religion

Americans have never been in greater need of understanding religious differences and cultivating respect for religious freedom. The events of 9/11 transformed America's relationship with Muslims at home and abroad, and cultural conflicts between secularists and religious conservatives occur like clockwork. CISAC postdoctoral fellow Patrick Soren Roberts and colleague Emile Lester found that a required world religion course for ninth-graders in Modesto, Calif. has helped foster understanding among the town's religiously diverse population. Read more »

June 27th, 2006

Wait out North Korean missile test: op-ed

North Korea is poised to flight test a ballistic missile that may have intercontinental range -- an action the Bush administration declares would be provocative. But is this missile test a red line that, if crossed, seriously threatens U.S. security and, hence, warrants strong action? The simple answer is "No." CISAC's Dean Wilkening explains why, in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read more »

June 22nd, 2006

If necessary, strike and destroy North Korean missile: op-ed

North Korean technicians are reportedly in the final stages of fueling a long-range ballistic missile that some experts estimate can deliver a deadly payload to the United States. If North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched. That is the opinion of CISAC's William Perry and Harvard colleague Ashton B. Carter, defense secretary and assistant defense secretary, respectively, under President William Clinton, writing in the Washington Post. Read more »

May 30th, 2006

Phone records pose math problem for NSA, writes CISAC fellow

News that telephone companies gave customer records to the National Security Agency has sparked debate over the legality of such actions. Legal or not, this sort of program probably isn't worth infringing civil liberties for, writes CISAC science fellow Jonathan Farley in the New York Times. Taking a mathematical perspective, he argues that the information collected is not likely to provide much headway against terrorists. Read more »

Domestic spying turns homeland into battlefield, warns CISAC scholar

The National Security Agency's collection of U.S. citizens' phone records is the latest evidence of a shift in the way the government uses military assets, writes CISAC fellow Laura Donohue in the Los Angeles Times. In the war on terror, the United States has become a military theater of operations. At stake, Donohue adds, is the long-held "principle, embedded in the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, that the U.S. military not be used for domestic law enforcement." Read more »

May 8th, 2006

CISAC fellow: U.S. civil rights movement shows way to Middle East peace

One century after America's Civil War, the descendants of slaves daily faced the twin terrors of homicide and arson. Yet only 15 years after the rise of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the back of segregation and neo-Confederate violence had been broken. Can Palestinians likewise mount a successful, nonviolent movement toward peaceful co-existence with their former adversaries? CISAC science fellow Jonathan Farley, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, suggests they can. Read more »

April 10th, 2006

Civil war definition transcends politics

Is the conflict in Iraq a civil war or not? Debate over this question is largely political. In this Washington Post op-ed, CISAC's James Fearon sets aside politics to explain the meaning of civil war and how it applies to Iraq. Read more »

March 30th, 2006

Math education a matter of national security

President Bush is right to stress the importance of math education for U.S. students, writes CISAC science fellow Jonathan Farley in the San Francisco Chronicle. Practical, urgent national security problems--like fighting terrorism--illustrate the need for more U.S. mathematicians, Farley says. These pressing needs may also be the key to enticing teachers and students to pursue the subject. Read more »

March 27th, 2006

Nuclear intelligence history begs policy questions for CISAC reviewer

Jeffrey T. Richelson's history of American nuclear intelligence, Spying on the Bomb, is timely, writes CISAC's David Holloway, given the faulty intelligence about nuclear weapons that was used to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In fact the book could have gone further toward analyzing the relationship between the intelligence community and policy makers, Holloway suggests in this New York Times book review. Read more »

February 28th, 2006

Iraq now - headed for civil war or already there?

Is civil war likely to break out in Iraq? It already has, according to CISAC faculty member James D. Fearon, a political science professor who studies recent civil wars. "By any reasonable definition," Fearon said, "there has been a civil war in progress in Iraq at least since the Coalition Provisional Authority formally handed over authority to the Iraqis in 2004." Fearon is among four experts Time asked to comment on what's going on in Iraq. Read more »

February 27th, 2006

Europe's defense of free speech rings false

Since the controversy over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad erupted, Europe's leaders have shown remarkable--and uncharacteristic--courage under fire. Refusing to apologize for the alleged slight to religious Muslims, a chorus of Continental voices has instead risen to the cartoons' defense, citing freedom of expression. Unfortunately, this vigorous defense doesn't square with Europe's record on free speech, writes CISAC predoctoral fellow Matthew Rojansky in this International Herald Tribune op-ed. Read more »

January 20th, 2006

Math shows long-term consequences of condoning torture

Few of us will ever be asked to torture. But, indirectly, all of us have to make a choice: to support, as citizens, those politicians who back torture, or those who seek its prohibition. This decision seems a purely moral question. But what would be the long-term consequences to society if we were to make this radical break with the past? CISAC science fellow Jonathan Farley provides some mathematical insights. Read more »