Mailing address
Littauer 368
Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs
79 John F. Kennedy Street, Mailbox 53
Cambridge, MA, 02138
Graham Allison
Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School
Member of the Board
Contact:
Telephone: (617) 496-6099
Fax: (617)-495-8963
Email: graham_allison@harvard.edu
Experience
Director of Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Graham Allison has for three decades been a leading analyst of U.S. national security and defense policy with a special interest in terrorism. As Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Clinton Administration, Dr. Allison received the Defense Department's highest civilian award, the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, for "reshaping relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to reduce the former Soviet nuclear arsenal." This resulted in the safe return of more than 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons from the former Soviet republics and the complete elimination of more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads previously targeted at the United States and left in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus when the Soviet Union disappeared.
As Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Dr. Allison has assembled a team of more than two dozen leading scholars and practitioners of national security to analyze terrorism in its multiple dimensions. Products include: Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy (1996), America's Achilles Heel: Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Terrorism and Covert Attack (1998), Catastrophic Terrorism (1998), and others.
Dr. Allison's latest book, Nuclear Terrorism: the Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, was published in 2004, is now in its third printing, and was selected by The New York Times as one of the "100 most notable books of 2004." It presents a strategy for preventing nuclear terrorism organized under a doctrine of "Three Nos:" no loose nukes; no new nascent nukes; and no new nuclear weapons states.
A 1995 Washington Post op-ed by Dr. Allison warned that: "In the absence of a determined program of action, we have every reason to anticipate acts of nuclear terrorism before this decade is out." Dr. Allison was the organizer of the Commission on America's National Interests (1996 and 2000) that included leading Senators and national security specialists from across the country (former Senator Sam Nunn, Senators John McCain, Bob Graham, and Pat Roberts, Condoleezza Rice, Richard Armitage, Robert Ellsworth, and others). The Commission's work highlighted the threat of mega-terrorism as a major challenge to U.S. national interest. Senator Roberts credited the work of the Commission as inspiration in his creating a Subcommittee on Emerging Threats of the Senate Armed Services Committee. At the initial session of that Subcommittee on March 11, 1999, he warned that there is "a real opportunity for a handful of zealots to wreak havoc on a scale that hitherto only armies could obtain. Targets will be selected for their symbolic value, like the World Trade Center in the heart of Manhattan, because terrorists need to escalate their attacks, making each more spectacular and horrific than its predecessor." Dr. Allison is also a leading analyst of Russia and its transformation to democracy and market economy as well as an authority on the threat of loose nukes and weapons of mass destruction. He is the author of a dozen books, hundreds of articles in the foremost journals and newspapers and is a sought-after speaker and commentator. Dr. Allison's seminal book, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, first published in 1971, and significantly revised and re-issued in 1999, ranks among the bestsellers in political science with more than 400,000 copies in print.
Dr. Allison was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was educated at Davidson College; Harvard College (B.A., Magna Cum Laude, in History); Oxford University (B.A. and M.A., First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics); and Harvard University (Ph.D. in Political Science).
Case Studies:
ISP-202 -- Iran
ISP-202 -- Energy and Climate
AP Photo
September 30, 2008
"The Fragility of the Global Nuclear Order"
Op-Ed, The Boston Globe
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School and Ernesto Zedillo
Belfer Center Director Graham Allison joins Ernesto Zedillo, former president of Mexico, in cautioning that the global nuclear order is "under severe stress" and that the International Atomic Energy Agency must be strengthened in order to save the nonproliferation regime. The Nonproliferation Treaty, they argue, "is eroding to the point of 'irreversibility' beyond which there could be a 'cascade of proliferation.'"
August 22, 2008
Memo to President-elect McBama
Memorandum, Aspen Strategy Group
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School
Graham Allison writes in a memo to a fictional President-elect McBama on the suject of nuclear terrorism, "You pledged that you would make preventing this catastrophe an organizing principle of your administration. This memo provides a brief outline of strategy and organization to fulfill that promise."
siavush
July 24, 2008
Securing the Nuclear Renaissance
Testimony
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School
Belfer Center Director Graham Allison testified before the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade. He discussed the findings of "Reinforcing the Global nuclear Order: The Role of the IAEA," a report developed by the independent Commission of Eminent Persons, of which he was a co-executive director, that examined the global nuclear order from the perspective of the IAEA.
AP Photo
July 19, 2008
"Bush's U-turn Toward Common Sense"
Op-Ed, Los Angeles Times
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School
Graham Allison applauds the decision by the Bush administration to send U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns to the European Union meeting with Iran on Saturday (July 19). This "flip-flop toward reality," Allison says, "represents a major step in overcoming fierce internal struggles within the U.S. and Iran that had left both stuck at stalemate."
AP Photo
June 13, 2008
Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order: The Role of the IAEA
Memorandum
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School and Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom
The high-level Commission of Eminent Persons advising the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that meeting the current nuclear challenges and seizing the current opportunities will require a fundamentally reinvigorated global nuclear order, featuring a strengthened IAEA with "additional authority, resources, personnel, and technology." Without a "bold agenda" of steps to strengthen the nuclear order, the Commission warned that there were real risks that terrorists might get a nuclear bomb, that a nuclear accident might occur, or that, as the UN High-Level Panel warned, the world could suffer "a cascade of nuclear proliferation." Preventing such events, the Commission emphasized, is essential for nuclear energy to grow enough to contribute to mitigating climate change, making safety, security, and nonproliferation essential foundations for nuclear energy's future.
AP Photo
June 9, 2008
"Sitting Down at the Nuclear Table with Iran"
Op-Ed, The Boston Globe
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School
Graham Allison, director of the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, argues that President Bush's Iran strategists have "struck out" in their efforts to force Iran to suspend enrichment activity through isolation and sanctions. Allison says direct negotiations are "imperative for solving the nuclear standoff."
Summer 2008
From the Director
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School
Now more than ever, the current economic situation drives home the relationship between the economy and national security. Several of our Belfer Center colleagues — among them Larry Summers, Marty Feldstein, Paul Volcker, and Jeff Frankel — not only warned about the coming economic troubles well ahead of the rest of the pack, they also are leading the search for solutions.
April 23, 2008
"Nuclear Attack a Worst-Case Reality?"
Op-Ed, Washington Times
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School
Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center, argues against contrarians who claim that nuclear terrorism is not an immediate threat, but a "worst-case fantasy." He argues that if countries, including the United States, do not begin to work harder to develop techniques to control and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, then the probability of a nuclear attack occurring is extremely likely.
AP Photo
April 29, 2008
"Averting an Energy Crisis"
Op-Ed, The Boston Globe
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School and Robbie Diamond
Graham Allison and Robbie Diamond warn readers of the grave impacts of rising oil prices to US security. "Add to this continued instability - and in some cases, hostility - in some of the world's most prolific oil-producing nations, and the conclusion is clear: America's dependence on oil, particularly oil from unstable and undemocratic parts of the world, threatens national security and economic stability."
AP Photo
April 24, 2008
Case Study: Red Teaming Iran's Supreme Leader
Memorandum
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School
When the key finding of the December National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran was emerging, the intelligence community assigned a group to "red team" Iran's behavior. They were asked to assume that Iran's intention was to deceive the United States into concluding that the Iranian nuclear program had been halted. Although the red team made a persuasive case that Iran's actions were consistent with this objective, the intelligence community ultimately rejected that hypothesis and came to the conclusion it reported.
