- search:
-
hoover.org
-
archives
-
library
The cold war may have ended but not the nuclear threat. Small and weakened governments may not safeguard or account for all their warheads, more countries are seeking to join the nuclear club, and terrorist cells can easily obtain the know how to create small and dirty nuclear devices.
“And when you think of the relative lack of success the United States has had in keeping drugs from being imported into the country, you can imagine the relative ease of bringing in a piece of plutonium the size of a grapefruit (which could kill tens of thousands),” said Hoover fellow and former U. S. secretary of defense William Perry.
Hoover international security experts have been assessing the security threats of nuclear weapons for some time. These experts lend insight and analysis to the problems of nuclear weapons, nonproliferation, and national security in opinion pieces and scholarly articles, podcasts, television and press interviews, blogs, and books—a comprehensive list follows.

The archives’ Richard B. Foster collection now has a finding aid. The Foster papers document the work of a leading US national security analyst during the Cold War. In a long career at SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute), Foster specialized in strategic forecasting, attempting to predict future military and political developments on the basis of existing trends. He conducted research and wrote about many aspects of US defense policy, especially possible strategies in the event of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Building on its rich collections related to peacemaking and diplomacy, the Hoover Institution has now obtained audiocassettes of the proceedings of the national Conference on Peace Research, Education and Development (COPRED) held November 7-10, 1984. The conference brought together leading peace activists and political figures to discuss global challenges in security, institution building, conflict management, nuclear nonproliferation, and the role of public diplomacy in easing international tensions and improving international understanding.
Hoover Institution Press today released The Nuclear Enterprise: High-Consequence Accidents: How to Enhance Safety and Minimize Risks in Nuclear Weapons and Reactors, a book edited by George P. Shultz and Sidney D. Drell in which contributors examine risks associated with the nuclear enterprise of weapons and power plant accidents. This book emphasizes the importance of adopting essential safety and security measures so as to minimize these risks globally in view of the potentially devastating consequences of accidents in the nuclear enterprise.
Sparing no effort to ensure safety and security. To listen to Sidney Drell and Tod Lindberg, click below.
Hoover Institution Press today released The Nuclear Enterprise: High-Consequence Accidents: How to Enhance Safety and Minimize Risks in Nuclear Weapons and Reactors, a book edited by George P. Shultz and Sidney D. Drell in which contributors examine risks associated with the nuclear enterprise of weapons and power plant accidents. This book emphasizes the importance of adopting essential safety and security measures so as to minimize these risks globally in view of the potentially devastating consequences of accidents in the nuclear enterprise.
Sparing no effort to ensure safety and security. To listen to Sidney Drell and Tod Lindberg, click below.

Abraham Sofaer, who served as legal adviser to the US Department of State from 1985 to 1990, is the first George P. Shultz Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Sofaer’s most recent book is Taking on Iran, in which he details the dangers faced by humanity from nuclear weapons. Sofaer notes that renewed negotiations between the UN Security Council and Iran may fail despite the threat of increased sanctions. He offers various options to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons; should it do so, he provides alternatives to war or containment. Click here for more information.

The Partnership, by Philip Taubman, a former Hoover media fellow and former New York Times reporter and now a consulting professor at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, cites a January 2007 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that “captured both the long-term vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and a set of more immediate steps to reduce nuclear dangers.” The ideas about how to disarm our nuclear establishment evolved over many years of detailed work, but The Partnership gives much credit for building support to ban nuclear weapons as well as providing hope that the world could be free of nuclear weapons to the 2007 Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Click here to read the full review
William Perry, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor at Stanford University, discusses his concerns about the broadly emerging proliferation of nuclear weapons and growing access to the ingredients for making them. The Cold War may be twenty years in the past, but Perry, who turned eighty-four in October, is engaged in its aftermath: the danger remaining in the massive US and Russian nuclear stockpiles and the clamor by countries and rogue military groups to make use of them.

Condoleezza Rice, the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and a professor of political science at Stanford University, discusses, with Fox and Friends, the elections, noting that she is not interested in being vice president. Rice also discussed Israel and Iran, saying that Iran needs a strong message concerning nuclear weapons and should understand that the United States will use military force if necessary.

Peter Berkowitz, the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, discusses his upcoming book Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War.


The archives’ Richard B. Foster collection now has a finding aid. The Foster papers document the work of a leading US national security analyst during the Cold War. In a long career at SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute), Foster specialized in strategic forecasting, attempting to predict future military and political developments on the basis of existing trends. He conducted research and wrote about many aspects of US defense policy, especially possible strategies in the event of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Building on its rich collections related to peacemaking and diplomacy, the Hoover Institution has now obtained audiocassettes of the proceedings of the national Conference on Peace Research, Education and Development (COPRED) held November 7-10, 1984. The conference brought together leading peace activists and political figures to discuss global challenges in security, institution building, conflict management, nuclear nonproliferation, and the role of public diplomacy in easing international tensions and improving international understanding.
A workshop on deterrence in a changing world was held at Hoover on May 16, 2012 to examine the arguments that support the status quo in nuclear deterrence strategies. Participants commented on a paper presented by Benoit Pelopidas, a French scholar who is now a lecturer at the University of Bristol, England. Experts on several regions of the world assessed how nations in those regions would react to the debate over nuclear deterrence; two distinguished religious leaders reviewed the ethics of nuclear deterrence in contemporary conditions. (This summary report was written by Peter Jones, a Hoover visiting fellow.)

On Monday, September 12, 2011, the Hoover Institution hosted a panel discussion on the publication of Deterrence: Its Past and Future (edited by George P. Shultz, Sidney D. Drell, and James E. Goodby). Drawn from the third in a series of conferences on the nuclear legacy of the cold war at the Hoover Institution on November 11–12, 2010, this report examines the importance of deterrence, from its critical function in the cold war to its current role.

In Nuclear Tipping Point, a film featuring Hoover distinguished fellow George P. Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former US secretaries of state; Hoover senior fellow William Perry, former US secretary of defense; and Sam Nunn, former US senator, the four men share the experiences that led them to write the now famous Wall Street Journal op-eds that describe their efforts to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, to prevent their spread into potentially dangerous hands, and ,ultimately to end them as a threat to the world.

Putting numbers to the news, Hoover fellow Bruce Bueno de Mesquita lays his bets on issues such as climate change and Middle East peace.

The movie Nuclear Tipping Point was shown on the campus of Stanford University on April 20 to a standing-room-only crowd. It has been shown to great acclaim in other venues, including the White House on April 6, at which time President Barack Obama viewed it.
For informed, reasoned discussion regarding nuclear threats facing the world and opportunities to address these threats, the Hoover Institution has compiled the work of its scholars on the subject into one comprehensive, easy-to-access section.
Former Secretary of State George Shultz, a Republican, defends Obama’s nuclear strategy and discusses his vision of a world without nukes.
As world leaders convene in Washington for a summit on halting the spread of nuclear weapons, a global debate is rising on the merits – and feasibility – of total nuclear disarmament.
Nuclear Tipping Point, a documentary film on today's global nuclear dangers, will be screened tonight at the White House.
The president could not have been more justified when he condemned “the evil scourge of terrorism.” I am quoting Ronald Reagan, who came into office in 1981 declaring that a focus of his foreign policy would be state-directed international terrorism...
The four of us have expressed our belief that the potential use of nuclear weapons is one of the gravest dangers the world faces and have expressed our support for moving toward a world without nuclear weapons. . . .

At their October 1986 meeting in Reykjavik, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev agreed on the need to eliminate nuclear weapons. That historic meeting ultimately led to the end of the cold war. “Since that time, the nature of the nuclear threat in the world has changed, but the twenty-year-old lessons of Reykjavik may well help us achieve the goal of a modern world free of nuclear weapons,” said former secretary of state George P. Shultz.
October 2007 marks the 21st anniversary of the landmark 1986 Reykjavik Summit where President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev famously reached a verbal agreement to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
Join the Hoover Institution in a roundtable session exploring: Implications of the Reykjavik Summit on its Twentieth Anniversary.
North Korea and other outlaw states may soon be capable of targeting missiles at the American mainland. What are we doing to defend ourselves? Precious little. Hoover media fellow Michael Barone on the need for an antimissile defense.