Dr. Glass is a lecturer at the University of Southern California School of International Relations. He has extensive experience and expertise in U.S. national security and foreign policy. The primary focus of his former career in Congress and the executive branch includes nuclear weapons policies and programs, non-proliferation of weapons and materials of mass destruction, and international arms control agreement.

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Introduction and Security	3 min 33 sec	Windows Media l QuickTime
Canada's Role	1 min 32 sec	Windows Media l QuickTime
Future Threats	3 min 24 sec	Windows Media l QuickTime

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Transcript

Introduction and Security

My current areas of focus include non-proliferation policies and programs, both here in the United States and globally, and my second area of focus is the transition of the former Soviet states to their current political structure. Former Soviet to post-Soviet states: how is that process going in terms of political reform, and more specifically democratization?

I find our involvement in the Persian Gulf and Middle East is so deep and so complicated right now that I see that as being the primary focus of our national security concerns. How can we manage that incredibly, seemingly intractable problem in that area in some successful way and come out of it without a regional disaster that I can’t even begin to comprehend? We are very close to the dark side here, in that part of the world. That has all sorts of ramifications—not just for the Persian Gulf, it has ramifications for energy supplies, world political stability, and domestic political support in this country and elsewhere. It’s just huge. I guess normally people would say, “The threat to North America is terrorism, international terrorism.” Well, I agree that it is certainly a major threat and we need to be cognizant of it. But my sense is that there are so many things in place that work against international terrorism these days that I think that the cost of our engagement in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East is much higher, and with the potential to be even greater, than the danger that I see coming from international terrorism right now. It is not that we’re ignoring terrorism—in fact we are spending a lot of time and money on terrorism—but in terms of our heart and our soul and our blood and our dollars, they are going into the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, and that is number one.

Related to that, of course, and a part of that, is the question of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and particularly nuclear materials. I think if there is a terrorist threat to the United States, the nightmare that everyone seems to agree on is the possibility of using a nuclear device in a terrorist event here in the United States or Canada or North America. It’s incumbent on all of us to manage this matter of nuclear weapons, nuclear materials, and other weapons and materials of mass destruction, not just in a unilateral but in a multilateral and well-coordinated way that is well funded. So, I think that is the other major threat that we need to pay attention to.

Canada’s Role

Canada played the lead role in getting the G8 to step up to international non-proliferation funding. The “10+10+10 program” (10 years, $10 billion, etc.) came out of Canada. You guys were the host of that meeting. So I think that Canada’s support for the international non-proliferation program is already on record for being a leader in the world and I think that is terrific—we need that. It can’t just be the United States beating up on everybody and telling everybody to pony up and join the gang.

I think Canada’s role in the non-proliferation program is particularly valuable because to the extent that we can get the international community donating their time and effort to put the considerable nuclear materials, particularly in the former Soviet Union, under lock and key, we are all a little safer. Unfortunately, it is not just a function of spending money; we’ve got to have the cooperation of the Russian government in order to get this program to be effective. But I think that our chances of getting that to happen, if the international community stands full-square behind non-proliferation programs, nuclear security programs... I think that is where we stand a better chance of getting the job done. As I say, I think Canada has already stepped forward and put their foot out front on non-proliferation programs, and that’s good.

Future Threats

I think it’s the challenge of our age. We are sort of in a transition from the Cold War situation—where both sides, West and East, armed with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons could obliterate each other within about 30 minutes—to an era where that seems less feasible, but more feasible that weapons of mass destruction can be used, including nuclear weapons that are every bit as dangerous today as they were during the Cold War. So in some sense, the environment is even a little bit more dangerous. But looking at it from a Cold War perspective, in some sense that sort of bilateral relationship between the West and the East, between the old Soviet Union and the West, there is some promise there because we have agreed to reduce operational deployed strategic nuclear weapons to an all-time historic low. If they have reached their goals by the time the Moscow Treaty is implemented in 2012, or whatever it is, we are down to about 1,700 nuclear weapons on each side that are actively used for deterrence. When you remember that in the old days it was up to 30,000, that is not a bad thing.

In the meantime, of course, when they are taking these nuclear weapons off of alert, off of their delivery vehicles, unfortunately they are not destroying them. They are putting them into storage. My problem with that is that it creates in effect a non-proliferation program because these warheads and the nuclear materials that go with them could become vulnerable to theft, smuggling, illicit sale or something like that. So we are going to have a stockpile of nuclear weapons building over the next 10 years, or five years, that will be in storage. So you know, we, the USA, might have a pretty good storage system. I am not sure the Russians do. That is a problem.

So, the good news is that the levels are going down, and the bad new is that we are transferring the problem from one sort of a problem to another sort of a problem. The other good news is that there have been attempts in recent years, instead of relying on strategic nuclear weapons, to rely on maybe smaller-yield, smaller devices—nuclear devices that could be used for specific aims in battlefield kinds of situations or tactical kinds of situations. Nuclear weapons, to be sure, but still, much smaller—not the Hiroshima and Nagasaki kind of explosion.

The good news about that, from my point of view, is that Congress, after annual battles, has decided to not to fund these programs. So at least as far as money going into these programs right now in the United States, it’s not happening. That doesn’t mean... I have been around for quite a long time, and every year there is a proposal to rethink this and to come back and ask for more money to get this program started. The constituencies that feed into this will never go away. So, there will always be a push by people who say, “You know, if we could do this with a smaller nuclear weapon, then we wouldn’t have to worry about this, that and the other thing.” So this is a battle that continues to be fought. The good news for now is that Congress has decided not to fund these programs.