Stimson’s Past Projects

Since its founding in 1989, the Stimson Center has completed a number of key projects in the area of international security, including:

 

Naval Arms Control

In 1989, as talks began to reduce land forces in Europe, the Stimson Center began a study of options for naval arms control. The result was an October 1990 Stimson Center report and a book, Naval Arms Control: A Strategic Assessment (St. Martin's Press, 1991). Several of its recommendations, including changes in US submarine operations, cuts in nuclear-powered attack submarine fleets, and removal of tactical nuclear weapons from naval vessels, have since become policy in both the United States and Russia. William Durch headed the project, which lasted from July 1989 to September 1990.

 

Verification of Multilateral Arms Control Agreements

The Multilateral Verification Project focused on increasing public understanding of verification issues for agreements involving more than two countries, with particular emphasis on the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Open Skies Treaty. The project also addressed the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.

The Stimson Center's work was presented in a series of occasional papers, at luncheon meetings, in congressional testimony, and through numerous publications in professional journals and newspapers. Some of the project's essays were published in Open Skies, Arms Control, and Cooperative Security (St. Martin's Press: 1992). Alan Platt headed this project, which lasted from July 1989 to September 1992.

 

Impact of Declining Defense Expenditures

This study, headed by Barry Blechman, examined the economic implications of a declining defense budget for the US industrial base, its workers, and the overall competitiveness of the US economy. Through a bipartisan task force comprised of members of Congress and representatives from industry, labor, and academia, the project produced a consensus report focusing on worker and community readjustment, civil military industrial integration, and US federal technology policy. The accompanying research effort also produced a book, Technology Policy and America's Future, by Steven M. Irwin published by St. Martin's Press (1993). This project lasted from January 1990 to March 1993.

The Politics of Treaty Ratification

This project, funded by the Ford Foundation, investigated previous ratification strategies employed by the executive branch, searching for keys to success and mistakes to avoid. A team of historians, political scientists, and practitioners investigated seven cases, ranging from the 1919 Versailles Treaty to the 1987 Intermediate range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The results were briefed to the executive branch and Capitol Hill and published in a book, co-edited by Michael Krepon and Dan Caldwell, The Politics of Arms Control Treaty Ratification (1991). The Stimson Center and Woodrow Wilson Center co-sponsored a conference on this subject, resulting in a conference report and a transcribed panel report, "The Role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Treaty Ratification Process." Michael Krepon headed the project from March 1990 to September 1991.

 

UN Peacekeeping

The project derived "lessons learned" from twenty UN peacekeeping operations, traced the structure and process of decision making inside the UN Secretariat, and made recommendations for change in its main policy report, Keeping the Peace: The United Nations in the Emerging World Order. Released in March 1992, several of its recommendations were reflected in the UN Secretary General's landmark June 1992 report, An Agenda for Peace. The project also led to a book, The Evolution of UN Peacekeeping: Case Studies and Comparative Analysis (St Martin's Press: 1993).

When this project began in 1990, with support from the Ford Foundation, relatively few officials in the US government and, remarkably, even fewer officials at UN Headquarters paid close attention to peacekeeping on a daily basis. Moreover, the UN's procedures for planning, managing, and funding these operations, and the on-the-ground realities of UN peacekeeping were at best hazily appreciated in Washington. The Stimson Center set out to clarify this picture, interviewing over 100 practitioners and officials in the US government, at the United Nations, at country missions to the UN, and in troop contributing countries.

The Ford Foundation funded the project, which began in July of 1990 and ended in April of 1992. William Durch was the project director.

 

Roles and Missions of the US Armed Forces in the 21st Century

Barry M. Blechman headed this project from April 1991 to December 1993. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US military lost both its main adversary and a substantial part of its operational purpose. But because the nation's interests are so widespread and varied, and because the United States continues to desire a stable and peaceful international system, it will continue to require well trained and equipped military forces. This study assessed the likely roles of US military forces in the changed international environment of the Twenty-first Century and how military roles and missions might best be allocated among the armed services to create flexible, cost-effective forces able to support U.S. national interests. Basic functions that the US may require of its military were the focus of the project (for example, defense of the homeland, rapid power projection, force reconstitution, and special operations). The project also determined minimum-size forces able to perform those functions and assessed the pros and cons of different force configurations.

In April 1993, the project released a report entitled Key West Revisited: Roles and Missions of the US Armed Forces in the Twenty first Century. This report summarized the findings and recommendations of the study and was discussed widely within the Pentagon and other government agencies.

The study's full report, The American Military in the Twenty-first Century, was published by St. Martin's Press in November 1993.

 

Confidence-Building Measures for the Korean Peninsula

The Stimson Center has been working to promote confidence-building measures (CBMs) in regions of tension since 1991. CBMs are diverse arrangements -- such as hotlines, people-to-people exchanges, and prior notifications of military exercises -- that can help reduce tensions and promote good neighborly relations.

This project evaluated the extent to which CBMs, devised and implemented to ease the strain of the Cold War in Europe, might usefully be modified and introduced on the Korean Peninsula. Special attention was paid to the lessons learned from the division and reunification of Germany. The study concluded that while there may be some modest "translatability" of the European CBM experience to regions such as Korea, expectations should be limited for the Korean case in the near term. The project lasted from May of 1991 to May of 1992.

 

Multilateral Arms Transfer Guidelines for the Middle East

The world's five major arms suppliers have made modest progress on an agreement to exercise, in principle, arms transfer restraint to the Middle East, but has accomplished little beyond this. The Stimson Center convened a bipartisan study group in late 1991 to discuss and design multilateral arms transfer guidelines for the Middle East that are likely to be widely supported. The Project Director was Dr. Alan Platt.

The group, co chaired by four congressional leaders, also included fifteen other members from think tanks, industry, and academia. A study entitled Report of the Study Group on Multilateral Arms Transfer Guidelines for the Middle East was released in May 1992. This project lasted from May 1991 to June 1992.

 

The US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

The Stimson Center studied the successes and failures of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) throughout its thirty-year history and sought to identify the reasons for its varying effectiveness. The project's findings, presented in a report and in congressional testimony, called for either rejuvenating ACDA around the non-proliferation mission or merging it with the State Department and taking appropriate safeguards.

This report helped shape the debate about how to organize the US government to handle arms control affairs. The Clinton Administration and Congress subsequently agreed on a formula to rejuvenate ACDA. Michael Krepon, Amy Smithson, and James Schear all worked on the project, which lasted from May 1991 to February 1993.

 

Arms Control in the Middle East

In the wake of the Cold War and the prosecution of the Gulf War, this project took a new look at the possibility of adopting conciliatory steps in the Middle East. Project Director Alan Platt paired experts in East-West arms control and confidence-building measures with Middle East specialists. They were charged with investigating the possibility of adapting steps used to end the Cold War to the Arab Israeli conflict.

Commissioned essays were presented at a seminar sponsored by the United States Institute of Peace, which funded part of this project, along with the Carnegie Corporation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and W. Alton Jones Foundation. Platt's edited volume, Arms Control and Confidence Building in the Middle East, was published by the US Institute of Peace in 1992. This project lasted from October 1991 to November 1992.

Alan Platt is now a Senior Advisor at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

 

US Interests and the Future of the Multilateral Export Control Policy

This study assessed the past record of export controls in order to identify lessons learned for application in the post-Cold War world. The study also suggested what might be done to improve existing controls and explored what additional steps might be taken to stem the proliferation of destabilizing military technologies.

The study entailed a detailed historical examination of the US experience in the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls and was published in May as a Stimson Center Report entitled The Origins of COCOM: Lessons for Contemporary Proliferation Control Regimes, written by John Henshaw. The project lasted from December of 1991 to May of 1993.

 

International Center for Support of the Chemical Weapons Convention

Once the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) was concluded, it became clear that many signatory states would need help implementing their obligations under the Convention, including complex data submissions and intrusive verification. With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Stimson Center worked with a group of corporate leaders and arms control experts to establish an International Support Center (ISC) to solicit and coordinate contributions from the chemical industry to facilitate the CWC's implementation. The ISC's technical assistance efforts were to complement, not substitute for, actions taken by the CWC's international implementing agency and national governments. Although the ISC's steering committee made important strides toward recruiting industry participation and sponsorship, sufficient industry support was not forthcoming.

The project concluded by helping to fund two September 1994 regional seminars that were held to inform South American and African governments and industry representatives of the CWC's requirements. Amy Smithson headed the project, which lasted from June 1992 to November 1994.

 

The United Nations and US Foreign Policy

Over a relatively short span of time, just six years, interest in and enthusiasm for the United Nations as a vehicle for advancing international peace and stability after the Cold War has waxed and waned. The principles of post-war peacekeeping, honed over several decades of experience in places like the Middle East, and the moral authority of studied neutrality proved inadequate for the civil war situations into which members of the UN Security, including the United States, sent UN forces. Initial Clinton Administration enthusiasm for US participation in such operations was tempered by its experiences in Somalia and Bosnia. The US Congress balked at funding new operations without better articulation of the UN's role in US foreign policy and better articulation of foreign policy, period.

This project sponsored research that prepared case studies of peace operations since 1991; a roundtable series where government officials, congressional staff, and outside experts discussed practical problems of peacekeeping policy and operations; and a policy group co-chaired by Senator Nancy Kassebaum and Representative Lee Hamilton that discussed basic questions of finance, organization of the executive branch to support peacekeeping, and the role of the Congress.

The project produced a report, Peacekeeping and the US National Interest, a Handbook on United Nations Peace Operations, an Occasional Paper, Keeping the Peace in the Borderlands of Russia, and a book, UN Peacekeeping, American Policy, and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s. William Durch headed the project for the Stimson Center. It lasted from April 1993 to July 1995.

 

Training for Peacekeeping: Alternative Means of Strengthening Current Standards

In the early 1990s, the increasing number, complexity, and danger of UN peacekeeping missions highlighted long-standing questions about the preparedness of the civilians and national military contingents used in these missions. Experiences in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia suggested that peacekeeping differed significantly from traditional military and civilian activities.

This project identified deficiencies in the preparedness of peacekeepers. It then examined how national military contingents and civilian participants used in these peace operations could benefit from specialized training, evaluating alternative means through which the United Nations could strengthen the effectiveness of peacekeeping forces. Based on these evaluations, the project formulated a pilot training program, much of which was implemented subsequently by the United Nations. This pilot program is described in the report entitled Training for Peacekeeping: The United Nations' Role.

Bill Durch was project director for this project that lasted from July 1993 to April 1995.

 

Campaign for the Non-Proliferation Treaty

A major bulwark in combating proliferation, the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), came up for a renewal vote in 1995. A unique coalition of nineteen non-governmental organizations was formed to coordinate efforts in support of a successful NPT Extension Conference. The Campaign for the Non-Proliferation Treaty lasted from December 1993 to July 1995. Member organizations included:

  • Arms Control Association
  • British American Security Information Council
  • Center for Defense Information
  • Committee for National Security
  • Council for a Livable World
  • Federation of American Scientists
  • The Stimson Center
  • Institute for Science and International Security
  • Lawyers Alliance for World Security
  • Manhattan Project II
  • Natural Resources Defense Council
  • National Security News Service
  • Nuclear Control Institute
  • Peace Action
  • Physicians for Social Responsibility
  • Plutonium Challenge
  • Union of Concerned Scientists
  • Washington Council on Non-Proliferation
  • Women's Action for New Directions

The project was housed at the Henry L. Stimson Center. Joseph Cirincione was the Executive Director of the Stimson Center project and Michael Wilkinson was the Research Assistant.

The coalition worked to advance policies that increased the prospects of the NPT's indefinite extension, in particular, progress in negotiating a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The project provided expert briefings and analysis of the positions of the various NPT parties, tracked the projected votes for the NPT's extension, and surveyed public attitudes towards nuclear weapons issues. The project also brought together diplomats, experts, and journalists in a series of panel discussions, including events featuring the Chairman of the NPT Conference, Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapala, and Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary. The project also published several briefing papers on the issues including "The Comprehensive Test Ban and the Non-Proliferation Treaty," by Ambassadors Paul C. Warnke, Herbert F. York, and James F. Leonard. The project was a major source of independent information for journalists and government and private experts.

In May 1995, 175 nations agreed to extend the NPT indefinitely and to strengthen the treaty by adding regular review conferences and new principles for non-proliferation. The successful conference also increased prospects for the conclusion of a nuclear test ban in 1996.

 

Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction

The Stimson Center's project on Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction was a major multi-year effort designed to encourage policy-makers and publics, both in the United States and abroad, to consider seriously the objective of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from all countries. The program began in January 1994, and consists of three components:

  1. A high-level Steering Committee, chaired by General Andrew J. Goodpaster, and consisting of former and current high-ranking US military and foreign policy officials and respected analysts of security policy
  2. A research program, and
  3. Outreach and educational activities.

The first two years of programming focused principally on encouraging a national debate about the long-term nuclear future; during the second phase, the main emphasis was on international education and exchange, and on expansion of the program's research component. In the spring of 1997, the project launched a series of global electronic conferences probing key questions regarding the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. The first of which was the Electronic Conference on the utility of Nuclear Weapons. The second was called Deterring the Chemical and Biological Weapons Threat: What Role for Nuclear Weapons? The third was The Future of the Conference on Disarmament.

Cathleen Fisher directed the project, with overall guidance provided by Barry Blechman. The Ford Foundation and the Public Welfare Foundation supported the project.

 

Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers

In the post-Cold War era there one of the major issues that concerns worldwide policy makers is the question of nuclear non-proliferation. The United States, its allies and friends, and the international community deserve a coherent, sustained, and concerted program of action to reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear dangers. The Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers was the Stimson Center's contribution to this effort.

The Henry L. Stimson Chair for this project was Joe Cirincione. The Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers was founded in April, 1996 to coordinate the largest and most active arms control and disarmament groups in a common effort to strengthen national and international security by reducing the threats posed by nuclear weapons. The nation's leading nuclear arms control and non-proliferation organizations worked together through the Coalition to build support for a practical, step-by-step program to reduce the dangers of nuclear weapons and prevent new nuclear threats from emerging. Although the Stimson center is no longer involved the Coalition continues its work. The Coalition's 14 current members include:

  • Arms Control Association
  • British American Security Information Council
  • Council for a Livable World Education Fund
  • Federation of American Scientists
  • Institute for Science and International Security
  • International Center
  • Lawyers Alliance for World Security
  • Women's Action for New Directions
  • Union of Concerned Scientists
  • 20/20 Vision
  • Public Education Center, Inc.
  • Physicians for Social Responsibility
  • Peace Action Education Fund
  • Natural Resources Defense Council

The Committee on Nuclear Policy

The Committee on Nuclear Policy was a unique collaborative effort by the directors of over fifteen independent research projects. The Committee facilitated cooperation among the projects so that their expertise and analyses could be made available to journalists, policy analysts, and policy-makers in a timely and usable fashion. Jesse James, a Senior Associate at the Stimson Center was the Executive Director of the Committee after October 1998. Caroline Earle was the Research Associate. Joseph Cirincione, a former senior associate at the Stimson Center, now head of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Nonproliferation Project, was the Committee's first Executive Director. The Committee was housed at the Henry L. Stimson Center.

The Committee brought together organizations working actively on studies of nuclear war issues. The Committee facilitated cooperation among the projects so that their expertise was made available to journalists, policy analysts, and policy-makers in a timely and usable fashion. The Committee conducted activities that benefited all the projects, such as joint briefings, meetings with Administration officials, polls of the public attitude and policy-makers' attitudes towards nuclear weapons policy, and outreach on nuclear weapons policy issues.

The Committee was composed of scholars from a host of institutions: The Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Center for International Security Studies at the University of Maryland, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Henry L. Stimson Center, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Princeton University, the Progressive Policy Institute, the State of the World Forum, and others.

The end result of the Committee was Jump-Start: Retaking the Initiative to Reduce Post-Cold War Nuclear Dangers.

 

The Project on the Advocacy of US Interests Abroad

A group of distinguished national foreign-policy leaders launched a project aimed at examining how the US government is organized to conduct its foreign affairs in the twenty-first century. The Project on the Advocacy of US Interests Abroad, a privately funded effort, assessed the purposes of US diplomacy in the post-Cold War world, explored how best to organize the US government and representation abroad to conduct US foreign-affairs, and determined how to link resources effectively with the nation's foreign policy needs. The following fourteen former senior government officials served on the Project's Steering Committee:

  • Frank Carlucci
  • Warren Christopher
  • Carla Hills
  • Max M. Kampelman
  • Ralph S. Larsen
  • Donald F. McHenry
  • Sam Nunn
  • Philip A. Odeen
  • Colin L. Powell
  • Condoleezza Rice
  • George P. Shultz
  • Robert S. Strauss
  • Cyrus Vance
  • John C. Whitehead

John Schall was Executive Director of the Project. The Project lasted from March of 1997 to October of 1998. The final result of this Committee was the release of Equipped for the Future: Managing US Affairs in the 21st Century, outlining a series of structural and management innovations, collectively termed Dynamic Representation, for revamping the methods and procedures of US diplomacy.

 

Foreign Policy Project

(A Collaboration of the Stimson Center and the Overseas Development Council)

The Foreign Policy Project was established to reassess the principles and purposes of US foreign policy in the post-Cold War world. In the process it described the emerging environment for foreign policy. It also assessed America's stakes in that environment. The Project was co-chaired by Barry M. Blechman, Chairman of the Stimson Center, and Catherine Gwin, Senior Vice President of the Overseas Development Council (ODC), and co-directed by William J. Durch for Stimson and David F. Gordon for ODC. Project research staff was made up of Todd Moss and Jolie Wood.

The project sought to describe the emerging international environment as seen from a variety of perspectives. The Ford Foundation funded the project. It attempted to generate ideas and analyses that would contribute to and reenergize an informed national debate on US foreign policy and America's role in the post-Cold War era.

The project had five main components:

  1. The Strategy Group, comprised of experts from disparate fields and backgrounds (in research, public policy, the media, and business) and different parts of the country, met in Washington at regular intervals throughout the 18-month life of the project.
  2. Regional Workshops were held in California, Texas, and the Midwest, to explore issues relevant to those areas and incorporate the perspectives, interests, and expertise of local leaders in state and local government, business, labor, academia, and community groups.
  3. A Washington Roundtable series provided a forum for mid-level executive branch and congressional staffers to bring together key foreign policy players.
  4. Research resulted in six occasional papers. The project also produced a final report during the 1996 presidential transition period.
  5. Outreach communicated its existence, its progress, and its conclusions through a combination of written and electronic products.

The six occasional papers included:

Peacekeeping and the US National Interest

Non-UN Peacekeeping in the Middle East

Keeping the Peace: The United Nations in the Emerging World Order

Alternating Currents: Technology and the New Context for U.S. Foreign Policy

Peacekeeping in the New Era

The Partnership Imperative

Reducing Nuclear Dangers, Building Cooperative Security

William Durch and Cathleen Fisher headed the Cooperative Security Project. The Cooperative Security Project, completed in 1999, was an ambitious look at the obstacles to further reductions in global nuclear weapon arsenals. These obstacles included enduring worldviews and assumptions of policy makers with regard to nuclear weapons and other threats to America's well being.

The project took into account the nature of current international threats. It then looked at assumptions about nuclear weapons' contributions to meeting these threats and it determined the cost imposed by traditional views of the world and traditional foreign policy tools. The findings of the project addressed both traditional Cold War era threats and non-traditional occurrences, such as terrorism. The results of this project were the reports entitled Reformation and Resistance: Nongovernmental Organizations and the Future of Nuclear Weapons by Cathleen Fisher and Searching for National Security: Threat and Response in the New Age of Vulnerability by Bill Durch. These reports took a hard look at the state of Russia's nuclear weapons and the usefulness of deterrence in the post-Cold War world.

This project worked closely with the Foreign Policy Project and the Project on Eliminating Weapons of Mass Destruction.