Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland

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Start date: 2000End date: 2009

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    Qualitative and Quantitative Assessment of the 'Dangerous Activities' Categories Defined by the CISSM Controlling Dangerous Pathogens Project
    (2005-07) Kuhn, Jens
    The Controlling Dangerous Pathogens Project of the Center for International Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) outlines a prototype oversight system for ongoing microbiological research to control its possible misapplication. This so-called Biological Research Security System (BRSS) foresees the creation of regional, national, and international oversight bodies that review, approve, or reject those proposed microbiological research projects that would fit three BRSS-defined categories: Potentially Dangerous Activities (PDA), Moderately Dangerous Activities (MDA), and Extremely Dangerous Activities (EDA). It is the objective of this working paper to assess these categories qualitatively and quantitatively. To do so, published US research of the years 2000-present (early- to mid-2005) will be screened for science reports that would have fallen under the proposed oversight system had it existed already. Qualitatively, these selective reports will be sorted according to the subcategories of each individual Dangerous Activity, broken down by microbiological agent, and year. Quantitatively, institutes and researchers, which conducted research that would have fallen under review by BRSS, will be listed according to category and year. Taken together, the results of this survey will give an overview of the number of research projects, institutes, and researchers that would have been affected had the new proposed system existed, and thus should allow estimating the potential impact of BRSS on US microbiological academic and industrial research in the future. Furthermore, this working paper might aid refining the proposed system.
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    Satellites, Security, and Scandal: Understanding the Politics of Export Control
    (2005-01) Lamb, Robert D.
    In the pre-dawn hours of 15 February 1996, a Chinese rocket carrying an Intelsat communications satellite tilted off its launch tower during take-off, flew into a hillside village a few miles from Xichang, China, and exploded with a force comparable to 20 tons of TNT. The surviving villagers, jolted out of their sleep by the explosion, soon discovered that more than a hundred of their neighbors had been killed or injured, and that much of their village was destroyed. The People's Republic of China (PRC) tried to cover up the extent of the tragedy, initially claiming that only six people had died. The world learned the truth soon enough. But in the United States, at least, the villagers were quickly forgotten, bit players in a scandal that would soon take the spotlight: An American satellite was destroyed in that blast, and Space Systems/Loral, the company that had built it, was accused of damaging U.S. national security by cooperating illegally with China's launch-failure investigators assistance, some Americans claimed, that the PRC could use to improve its spy satellites and nuclear missiles. It wasn't the first such accusation. Chinese Long March rockets carrying American-made commercial satellites had exploded twice before, in 1992 and 1995; in both of those cases, the satellites had been manufactured by Hughes Space & Communications. In all three launch failures, the satellite makers investigated the causes and, at the urging of the launch-insurance industry, shared technical information with Chinese engineers to help them correct the problems so future launches could be insured. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Loral, Hughes, and Boeing Space Systems (whose parent company, Boeing, acquired Hughes's satellite business in 2000) were investigated by U.S. export officials, found to have shared their engineers' expertise in missile-launch technology with the PRC, and fined tens of millions of dollars for providing unlicensed defense services in violation of U.S. ex-port control laws (see Appendix A: Company backgrounds). During this same period, Boeing was charged with similar violations related to Sea Launch, its satellite-launch joint venture with Russian, Ukrainian, and Norwegian companies.
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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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    The U.S. Threat Assessment Process and Oversight for Biological Research at NBACC
    (2007-12) Okutani, Stacy
    The US Department of Homeland Security finished its first bioterrorism risk assessment in January 2006. That and the upcoming 2008 assessment employs a probabilistic risk assessment methodology designed to guide prioritization of ongoing biodefense-related research, development, planning and preparedness. The methodology and the scientific work it subsequently identifies as necessary have generated some discussion about both its design and consequence. This paper clarifies the current debate, describes the current processes in place, and identifies issues that merit further discussion.
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    Requirements and Feasibility for the Transition from a Ballistic Missile Capability to an Anti-Satellite (ASAT) Capability
    (2007-12) Sankaran, Jaganath
    Ballistic missiles and anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons operate using similar technological means but not with the same level of technology or engineering maturity. ASATs require more sophisticated systems engineering and integration requirements to adapt to the challenges posed by an ASAT intercept. The main difficulties arise from the requirements for detection in space and the high closing velocities needed to execute an ASAT intercept. These difficulties have been underestimated after the recent Chinese ASAT test by those who have suggested that other nations could in the nearfuture master this technology gap and convert their primitive ballistic missile capabilities into an effective ASAT weapons capability. This report examines whether Iran could use its modest missile capability to project a viable ASAT threat to US Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. The study suggests that, even if Iran has an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM), it would not be easily able to leap-frog the technology gap from a ballistic missile to an ASAT capability. Unless it develops and tests the system vigorously and visibly, Iran would not project an ASAT threat. Chapter 1 of the report analyzes the capability of the Iranian Shahab-4 missile, including the velocity attained by the missile at an altitude of 1000 kilometers. Chapter 2 provides an analysis of the total thermal energyemitted by a model satellite in the Infrared (IR) band of interest for the given ASAT characteristics. Using the total thermal energy in the IR band, the detection range from which the ASAT can lock on to the satellite is determined. Chapter 3 details both, the ideal and real-time Proportional Navigation Guidance (PNG) law simulation performed using the parameters obtained in Chapters 1 and 2. The miss distances and acceleration requirements are shown graphically to capture the nuances and limits in the capability of an ASAT based on current Iranian technology level. The conclusion explains the limits and assumptions of this analysis and scope for further work.
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    U.S. National Security and Global Health: An Analysis of Global Health Engagement by the U.S. Department of Defense
    (2009-04) Bonventre, Gene; Hicks, Kathleen; Okutani, Stacy
    Despite a broadening consensus that global health care efforts have an impact on national and global security, the U.S. national security community’s efforts to address global health are weak and uncoordinated. The 2006 National Security Strategy states that “development reinforces diplomacy and defense, reducing long-term threats to our national security by helping to build stable, prosperous, and peaceful societies.” While the U.S. government struggles to find the right balance among the “three Ds” of defense, diplomacy, and development, the U.S. military has increased its involvement in global health where it perceives the diplomacy and development to be underresourced—or to achieve its own specific objectives. As efforts to renew the capabilities of civilian agencies proceed, it is an appropriate time to step back and consider the role that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) currently plays in global health, the impact of its health activities on national and regional security, and the role it could play to support a newly balanced U.S. foreign policy.
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    Care and Counterinsurgency
    (2009-08) Levine, Daniel
    Counterinsurgency demands different tactics than conventional warfare, and as a result requires a different moral perspective as well. Counterinsurgents face a situation in which the distinction between civilians and combatants can be obscure, and where they are expected not just to defeat an enemy but to actively promote the interests of, and build trust with, the civilian population. What counterinsurgents need is not new moral rules of war so much as new virtues that will let them conduct their activities, within the moral minimums set by the rules of war, in a way more coherent with the implicit values of just counterinsurgency. These virtues have been explored in what may be a surprising area – discussions of the 'ethic of care' inspired by the need to manage urges to violence and anger in the context of building trust relationships in the family. Reflection on the ethics of care can reveal a way of thinking about counterinsurgency that highlights the importance of developing attentiveness, creativity, and restraint in a counterinsurgent's relations both with civilians in the area of operation and even with insurgent combatants.
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    Intertwined Inequities: Micro-Level Economic Determinants of Civil Conflict
    (2009-11) Kniss, Michael
    The international community is increasingly sensitive to civil conflict's contribution to cyclical patterns of poverty, humanitarian disasters, global lawlessness, and regional instability. Increasing levels of localized violence threaten severe spillover effects, such as preventing access to foreign trade outlets, undermining freedom of the seas and global commerce, and creating safe havens for terrorist development. This last concern in particular has prompted the United States to explore assuming more responsibility for controlling global civil conflict. Unfortunately, current understandings of the conditions that enable the outbreak and sustainability of civil conflict are incomplete and often contradictory. Employing robust quantitative and qualitative analysis of micro-level horizontal inequity, however, offers a promising policy-oriented approach to illuminating the underlying determinants of global civil conflict.
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    Americans on WMD Proliferation
    (2004-04-15) Kull, Steven; Ramsay, Clay; Subias, Stefan; Lewis (aka Fehsenfeld), Evan
    A PIPA/Knowledge Network Poll dated April 2004