Science & Global Security Journal

By Lamya Hamad

Atomic weapons control, or arms control, is not a new concept. The birth of this movement began directly after World War II. At this time the United States of Americamanaged to thrust the world into a new era of exceedingly destructive military weaponry by dropping 20,000 tons of TNT on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Unfortunately, even with attention beginning to focus on the crucial topic of arms control in the late forties; nuclear weapons with two to three thousand times the destructive power of the first atomic bombs had emerged two decades after Hiroshima.

With the growing of massive nuclear arsenals in the United States and Russia, countries began to realize the need for weapons control, considering that the use of such power by any side could put the survival of civilization at risk.

Three months after the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, steps to control nuclear arms began with the United States, Britain, and Canada issuing a declaration that called for placing atomic weapons under international control. Ever since, there have been many treaties and declarations, some have been ratified, others not. However, in 1970, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) was ratified after 189 states signed. This treaty is an international treaty brought forward by Ireland, with Finland being the first to sign. The three main angles of the treaty are nonproliferation, disarmament, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Nonproliferation basically requires nuclear weapon states to "not in any way assist, encourage, or induce" a non-nuclear weapon state (NNWS) to acquire nuclear weapons (Article I). NNWS parties to the NPT agree not to "receive," "manufacture" or "acquire" nuclear weapons or to "seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons" (Article II).

Political scientists and others have long debated over the definition of international security, and so the definition has varied over time. However, after the end of World War II, definitions typically revolved around the subject of realpolitik (realistic politics) that developed between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.  

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, tensions between the superpowers eased allowing for academic discussions of the definitions of security to expand encompassing a far broader range of threats to peace, including, particularly environmental threats associated with the political implications of resource use of pollution. It is now widely acknowledged that environmental factors play both direct and indirect roles in both political disputes and violent conflicts. 

On an academic level, environmental security is defined as the relationship between armed conflict and the natural environment. There are three sub-elements in Environmental Security; preventing or responding to environmentally caused conflicts, preventing or repairing military damage to the environment and, protecting the environment due to its inherent moral value.

S & GS … Academic Perspective

Science and Global Security (S & GS) is an international journal for peer-reviewed scientific and technical studies relating to arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation policy. The journal was first published in 1989, and it currently publishes 3 issues per year. Fourteen volumes of the journal have been issued, it is published in English and Russian and they intend to begin publication in Chinese. Their office is located in Princeton, New Jersey in the United States of America, specifically at Princeton University, one of the biggest and most prestigious universities in North America.

S & GS does not have an independent website on the internet however some information on the journal can be accessed from Princeton University's website athttp://www.princeton.edu/~globsec. They provide information on the aim and scope of the journal and they have available 13 volumes of S & GS online, with the fourteenth volume being available online in 2008.

Princeton University's interest in science and global security started before the publication of the journal by more than a decade with the initiation of its Program on Science & Global Security in 1975; it is now a unit of Woodrow Wilson School since July 2001.

The Program on Science & Global Security is a research group at Princeton university with the goal of carrying out technical and policy research for nuclear arms control, disarmament, nonproliferation and cooperative security.

An essential role of the Program is to train U.S. and foreign scientists interested in informing their publics and governments about nuclear arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation policy options.

It seems that the journal was later an offspring of this program which made it possible for more people to access information on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. The Program is geared more toward professionals and scientists directly related to the arms control issue; however, the journal feeds into the public-interest movement while allowing more involvement in critical discussions.  

S & GS … The Beginning

When Science and Global Security began publishing in 1989 with Gordan & Breach, the journal's subtitle was "The technical basis for arms control and environmental policy initiatives".

In the first volume of the journal in 1989, Frank von Hippel, the co-chairman of the Board of Editors included a forward with the title "Every Profession Needs Its Own Journal" explaining the reason behind issuing such a journal.

Von Hippel believed that since the development of nuclear weapons, the future of civilization depends on how scientists' expertise is being used. He elaborated on the concept of modern science and its role in assisting policy-making decisions, "modern science is ruled by the democratic principles that everyone's work is subject to question and that no-one knows who may achieve the next breakthrough." Von Hippel mentioned that at the time of the first publication, a growing community of scientists had emerged that believed in extending this openness in thought to discussions of the technical basis of public policy for technology.

The movement toward "public-interest science", science influencing discussions and policy-making, began with the nuclear scientists' movement after the bombing of Hiroshima andNagasaki. Concerns were voiced that technology was becoming powerful enough to pose a threat to many environmental processes that sustain humankind.

Von Hippel explained in his forward how public concern about the nuclear arms race and environmental degradation had encouraged the formation of many private foundations and public interest groups that promoted "public-interest science". These anti-nuclear weapons and environmental movements extended beyond the borders of the U.S., with countries such as theSoviet Union embracing such initiatives. As Von Hippel pointed out, "some leading Soviet Unionscientists concerned about the arms race established in 1983 the Committee of Soviet Scientists for Peace and Against the Nuclear Threat (CSS)."

With these movements flourishing at the time, scientists were able to find common ground and a platform to engage in discussion on crucial issues, center of which was the safety of the environment and, of course, civilization. The CSS is seen as a counterpart to public-interest-science in the West and has engaged in discussion on the technical basis for arms control and disarmament. These discussions later spawned a joint demonstration project between the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the US Natural Resources Defense Council on in-country cooperative seismic-monitoring of a nuclear test ban in 1986. By 1987, the CSS and the US Federation of American Scientists agreed to a cooperative research project on arms reduction.

In 1989 the journal for Science & Global Security was issued with the mission to "publish articles on the technical basis for arms control and environmental policy initiatives". The journal intended to focus initially on the US-Soviet arms control because that is where their cooperative nuclear agenda was furthest advanced. However, as seen in later volumes of the journal, their focus broadened to include other important countries such as China, India, andPakistan as well as other significant topics. 

The other co-chairman of the board of editors, at the time of publication of volume one, was Roald Sagdeev, a prominent Russian physicist. He mentioned that active discussions on critical international issues between different parties improved relations between the East and West immensely. "A substantial part of this progress is a result of active discussions on critical international problems (especially arms control problems) within the international scientific community. In a few instances, these discussions have directly influenced important political decisions." 

However, Sagdeev warned in the first issue of the journal that the degree of armament both conventional and nuclear was still at a high and dangerous level and that the role of scientists who were willing to analyze new arms control initiatives and submit their research to the public and to policy-makers was extremely important.

In 1989 Russia was still the Soviet Union, thus the atmosphere in the Soviet regarding discussions on critical issues such as disarmament, as Sagdeev mentioned in volume one, was rigid and conservative. With the creation of the new journal, he hoped that publishing research to the public, policy-makers and peers in the same field would encourage a growing number of Soviet scientists to work on the problem of global security.

As the journal evolved, the areas covered grew in scope releasing the journal from its initial US-Soviet focus. The first volume revolved around detecting warheads, banning space nuclear power and the detrimental effects of radiation amongst other topics. From volume three, the journal shows some interest on Modern Energy Technology in China, volume four highlights North Korean and South African nuclear missiles, volume five incorporates article on Japanese Strategic Uranium Reserve, volume six includes article on Kuwait's Desalination Industry, and volume seven has two articles on Pakistani Ghauri Missile, and India's Prithvi Missile.

Disarmament and Nonproliferation

In 2001, the editor changed publishing houses and began cooperation with Taylor and Francis. When this publishing house took over, the journal's subtitle changed on its ninth volume to "The technical basis for arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation initiatives." The change in the subtitle reflected the change in policies of the journal and the focus of their coverage. The editor explains in the tenth volume that few of their previous articles examined environmental issues unless they were related in some significant way to security concerns; and that the journal's staff believe there is a more "pressing need for technical analyses of arms control and disarmament" which, at the time, was not addressed regularly by any other publication. Thus, the change of the subtitle made it clear that disarmament and nonproliferation policies were inherent in the journal's main aim especially since few, if any; journals were discussing these topics in the international arena. They also added a new feature in their journal beginning from the tenth volume called "Occasional Report". The aim of the report is to describe programs in the USA and elsewhere that overlap with the principal subjects covered by the Science & Global Security journal.

By this change, the journal's objective is to help create a common understanding of the technical basis for new policy initiatives and to provide an archival source for further works of scholarship and policy analysis, as stated on the website. 

Articles in the past several years have included technical studies of missile defense, the proliferation of intermediate-range missiles, options for the disposal of plutonium, the potential contribution of commercial satellites to the verification of arms control agreements, and the proliferation resistance of new nuclear reactor concepts and fuel cycles. 

Later volumes discuss early warning systems in Asia and the effectiveness of nuclear weapons against buried biological agents; which sheds light on the detrimental effects of using nuclear weapons to destroy biological weapon reserves.

Notably, volume 11, published in 2003, contains an article discussing "Research reactor vulnerability to Sabotage by Terrorists" which indicates that the events of September 11 impacted the journal. The article aimed to "consider the likelihood that sophisticated terrorist groups could successfully launch sabotage attacks against nuclear research reactors and cause radiological releases that threaten nearby populated neighborhoods."

International Dialogue

Discussions on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation directly concern the Muslim and developing world because the mere existence of certain players, such as Iran, North Korea,Pakistan, and India in the nuclear arena has jaded many of the 'super-powers'. With Pakistanand India now possessing nuclear arsenal, and North Korea claiming to have weapons of mass destruction; Asia has certainly become a crucial area to focus on especially since China, Asia's largest nation, has spearheaded nuclear advancements long ago.

However, most of the West's displeasure, in particular the United States of America, has been channeled unequivocally toward Iran. Iran is one of the largest Islamic states in the Middle East, sparking concern from the US that a 'nuclear-armed' Iran would tip the balance of power in the Middle East disadvantaging US influence. This has not always been the case between the US and Iran. In fact, Iran's nuclear program was launched in the 1950's with the assistance and blessing of the US administration under the Atom's for Peace program, while the country was under the Shah's rule. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the new government took a hiatus from the program, but later restarting it under less western assistance.  

Although Iran has recurrently insisted that their program is intended to develop nuclear power plants to use them to generate 6,000 MW of electricity by 2010, Western governments still fear that they have intentions to develop their program further. According to the IAEA (the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency), Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, or even weapons-grade uranium; they announced in "September 2007 that it has been able to verify that Iran's declared nuclear material has not been diverted from peaceful use" as stated in CNN's article "Iran angry with France over war warning", CNN, 2007).

It is interesting that S & GS has focused in certain volumes on some of the nuclear programs in Asia, as well as including articles from Indian scientists, such as M.V. Ramana; whereas no attention has been given to the Iranian situation, nor have any Iranian scientists contributed to this journal. In order to encourage discussions between nations, and also support international efforts of non-proliferation and disarmament it seems logical that scientists from countries such as Iran should be included in these dialogues.

The journal interweaves critical nuclear issues with current affairs topics, its main goal being the promoting of global security initiatives. The journal publishes research articles from all around the world with some papers from European and Asian scientists, but predominantly the contributions are American. However, a notable Russian presence exists since from the initiation of the journal, Russian involvement has been crucial. This broadens areas of coverage and encourages international dialogue between scientists. S & GS would be right to encourage the participation of more international scientists, particularly from Islamic states whose contributions would shed light on important counterparts in this field.  

Notably, the articles are written in a style that can be understood by non-specialists, while providing technical detail so that results can be reviewed and reproduced by peers. As well as being a basis for policy, the articles also seek to provide tutorial material suitable for university courses.

*Lamya Hamad is the Reviews Section Editor. 

Source: BiblioIslam.net