Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland

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Author: search.filters.author.Steinbruner, John

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    Anticipating Climate Mitigation: The Role of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs)
    (2014-07) Steinbruner, John
    Global warming is likely to force assertive redirection of global energy markets in order to achieve a prudent standard of mitigation; the resulting process of energy transformation will fundamentally alter prevailing policies and institutional relationships. Efficiency gains and renewable technologies—wind, solar, and biomass—will presumably make substantial contributions, as will carbon sequestration to some extent. But at the moment it seems quite apparent that global mitigation cannot be achieved without a very substantial expansion of nuclear power generation. While current light water reactor technology will likely play a role, this paper argues that smaller modular reactors (SMRs) of innovative design, with innovative institutional arrangements, could contribute to meeting energy demands in a more safe and secure manner. Though many SMR designs are currently being developed, it is doubtful that any of them will be brought to the point of serial production by their current developers under currently projected market conditions. Completed prototype development would almost certainly have to be a public sector initiative undertaken in support of eventual mitigation. This paper explores the potential of developing international structures whereby multiple states and entities could develop several SMR prototypes and serial manufacturing hubs. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor development process could prove to be a useful analogue to the arrangements necessary to support such large-scale SMR development and deployment.
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    The Localized Nature of Violence in Iraq
    (2007-08) Gulden, Tim; Steinbruner, John
    Understandably and perhaps inevitably, the ever more urgent effort to comprehend the causes of violence in Iraq has so far relied on familiar conceptions. The conflict occurring there is variously described as an insurgency, a civil war, and a manifestation of global terrorism. Standard religious and ethnic categories are used to identify the participants and impute their motives. It is becoming evident, however, that the pattern of violence reflects not only a collision of organized purposes but more fundamentally a profound disintegration of Iraq’s social fabric, a process that exposes innocent victims but also limits the capacity of predators. Violence resulting from the breakdown of legal order does not have the same character as that which occurs between managed opponents. Better understanding of that distinction is likely to be one of the more important lessons to be learned.
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    Potentially Constructive Implications of Disaster in Iraq
    (2007-08) Steinbruner, John
    It now appears likely that the invasion of Iraq will prove to be a seminal event in the evolution of international security generally. Legal order has evidently collapsed throughout the country, and the occupying forces have not been able to control the resulting pattern of predatory violence. The central reason is that the United States forfeited at the outset the critical asset of legitimacy necessary to establish and maintain consensual rule, and its continued presence undermines the indigenous institutions it is attempting to nurture. Similar breakdowns have occurred in other parts of the world, and the consequences have been tolerated over extended periods of time. Because of timing, location and the entanglement of the United States, however, intractable violence in Iraq can be expected to have much stronger global resonance. American forces alone are not likely to be able to master the situation but neither can they be withdrawn without intensifying internal violence and extending it into an already volatile region. The potential consequences of that dilemma are ominous, but for that reason the situation presents opportunity as well as danger. Calamity is sometimes a catalyst for greater wisdom.
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    Security Policy and the Question of Fundamental Change
    (2010-11) Steinbruner, John
    Over the course of the 2008 election, the idea of fundamental change became the dominant theme of American politics, and to some degree the capacity to undertake it was displayed in response to a crisis of confidence in financial markets. When the flow of credit necessary to support normal economic activity virtually ceased in the final quarter of the year, prevailing ideology was abandoned and long-established policies radically altered in feats of reaction that would have been considered inconceivable just a few days before they actually occurred. The initial actions taken did not master the problem, and the process of doing so will apparently be lengthy and torturous. Nonetheless the ability to redirect policy in response to calamity was demonstrated at a moment—the final weeks of a presidential election—when it normally would have been considered least likely to occur.
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    The Strategic Implications of Global Warming
    (2012-11) Steinbruner, John
    At least to the frontline climate scientists, it is becoming increasingly evident that the process of global warming presents a threat to human societies of essentially unprecedented proportions. They know beyond any reasonable doubt that the thermal impulse now being imparted to the earth’s ecological system by aggregate human activity is occurring at a rate greater than any that has been documented in the entire 65 million year paleoclimate record. The current rate of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere is ten times higher than at any time over the past 400,000 years for which annual estimates have been made based upon ice core data. For earlier periods estimates are made for longer time periods, but the natural rate of CO2 accumulation that 50 million years ago drove atmospheric concentrations and deep ocean temperatures to the highest estimated levels on record was a factor of 20,000 less than the current rate. That distant process occurred over millions of years. At the higher rates currently prevailing, the inexorable process of reestablishing energy equilibrium will occur over a time span that will certainly be much shorter and will certainly affect the operating conditions of human societies, but the exact character, magnitude, timing, or location of the consequences cannot yet be determined.
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    Reconsidering the Morality of Deterrence
    (2012-03) Steinbruner, John; Wigg-Stevenson, Tyler
    In 1983, at one of the more intense moments of the Cold War period, the United States Catholic Bishops issued a pastoral letter addressing the moral implications of the deterrence doctrine. The letter observed that the mass attack plans on which the operational practice of deterrence was based could not be reconciled with traditional just war principles and declared that the practice was only provisionally acceptable in moral terms. That formulation expressed reluctant deference to the prevailing belief that national security depended on the deterrent effect of a massively destructive threat actively deployed and that there was no viable alternative. A decade later, after the alliance confrontation that defined the Cold War had dissolved, the bishops issued a commentary on the original letter. They reaffirmed their original judgment on deterrence and broadened their discussion to address the problems of civil conflict and basic human rights then emerging into greater prominence. They reiterated their support for policies that would restrain the practice of deterrence, but they did not intensify their moral prescription. They acknowledged differing judgments regarding the strategic justification of the deterrence doctrine and set no time limit on provisional moral acceptance. They did not issue a moral mandate to transform the legacy practice. Nearly three decades after the pastoral letter, the practice of deterrence continues essentially unaltered. The number of operationally deployed nuclear weapons has been substantially reduced, but their destructive potential has not been proportionately affected. Urban industrial infrastructure and human population concentrations are nearly as vulnerable as they ever were. If the mass attack plans embedded in continuously alert deterrent forces were ever implemented, they would inflict tens of millions of immediate casualties and so damage social capacity that recovery would be a distant and uncertain question. The potential destructiveness of contemporary deterrent forces poses by far the greatest immediate physical threat to human life as we know it. As a result the security of all people and all countries fundamentally depends on the justifying doctrine – that is, on the assumption that continuously wielding a massive threat reliably assures it will never be carried out. Because of its central importance and potential consequence, the deterrence doctrine has become both an axiom of security policy and a matter of intense personal belief. In both countries primarily engaged in the operational practice of deterrence – The Russian Federation and the United States -- the doctrine has evolved beyond the status of a justifying assumption and is generally treated as an elemental truth not open to meaningful doubt. But that is an attitude not an assured reality, and there are strong reasons not only to question the core validity of the basic deterrent assumption but also to fear that prevailing operational practice involves an unacceptable and unnecessary risk of catastrophe. That in turn implies that provisional moral acceptance of the doctrine needs to be reconsidered.
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    Faith and Global Policy Challenges Questionnaire
    (2011-12) Kull, Steven; Steinbruner, John; Gallagher, Nancy; Ramsay, Clay; Lewis (aka Fehsenfeld), Evan; Siegel, Jonas; Jones, Kevin; Subias, Stefan
    This document includes the complete survey questionnaire for the study "Faith and Global Policy Challenges," as well as the study's raw data.
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    Faith and Global Policy Challenges
    (2011-12) Kull, Steven; Steinbruner, John; Gallagher, Nancy; Ramsay, Clay; Lewis (aka Fehsenfeld), Evan; Siegel, Jonas; Jones, Kevin; Subias, Stefan
    In an effort to understand how the general public and individuals with specific religious traditions think that their spiritual faith intersects with global policy challenges, the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) and its Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) conducted a public opinion poll. This poll is part of a larger effort to engage faith communities in addressing these challenges. As national governments and civil society contend with these issues, the involvement of religious communities and the application of their convictions could prove decisive.
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    Controlling Dangerous Pathogens
    (2007-03) Steinbruner, John; Harris, Elisa D.; Gallagher, Nancy; M., Stacy
    Advances in science has led to a situation where dangerous pathogens that are enormously beneficial for research can also be greatly destructive. However, scientific institutions are not prepared to handle such a burden. Proposals advanced by scientific societies are voluntary by nature but do not alone provide robust global protection. This monograph outlines an advanced oversight arrangement, provisionally labeled the Biological Research Security System (BRRS), which is designed to help prevent destructive applications of biology, whether inadvertent or deliberate. Unfortunately, in order to provide adequate protection, constraints might be necessary on freedom of action at the level of fundamental research, and infringing on autonomy of researchers. In addition a great deal of conceptual innovation, legal specification, institutional design and political accommodation would admittedly be required to establish oversight processes. The author concludes that due to the demands and burdens imposed, that human societies might accept lesser standards of protection and rather acquiesce to more limited and incremental measures.
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    Comprehensive Nuclear Material Accounting
    (2014-03) Siegel, Jonas; Steinbruner, John; Gallagher, Nancy
    Existing national and international standards for accounting for nuclear materials, including those designated for military use, are insufficient to meet current and future nuclear security, nonproliferation, and weapons reduction demands. Improved accounting practices are needed to provide reliable assurance that nuclear materials designated for peaceful use have not been diverted to state-level nuclear weapons programs or stolen by non-state actors, as well as to deter or detect diversion or the, were it to occur. Implementing an effective and efficient comprehensive, global nuclear accounting system is also a critical element of creating the conditions for future nuclear security if global nuclear energy use increases as part of the effort to mitigate climate change and countries make deep cuts to, or potentially eliminate, their stockpiles of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials designated for military use. Policy makers from around the globe have recognized the importance of ensuring that all countries with nuclear materials or weapons practice high standards of material control and accounting (MC&A), but the emphasis of current initiatives to improve MC&A has been on national laws and regulations—and primarily in states without nuclear weapons. States have yet to develop comprehensive requirements that address the full scope of nuclear risks and that are meant to be adopted by all states—including nuclear weapons states. This study examines a range of current material accounting practices and requirements and argues that in order for MC&A to fully perform the functions necessary to reduce global nuclear risks to an acceptably low level, its emphasis needs to transition from ensuring the non-diversion of nuclear materials to military uses to providing positive inventory control of nuclear materials, whereby national and international authorities can actively account for the location and form of all designated nuclear materials on a continuous and detailed basis.