The Foreign Policy In Focus project presents:

Weapons of Mass Destruction: Cold War Legacies in a Post-9.11 World
Conference at New York Univerisity on November 26-27

John Snow Room, 12th Floor, Bobst Library
New York University
70 Washington Square South
New York, New York

International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University
Foreign Policy In Focus, Institute for Policy Studies
The Nation Institute · Harriman Institute, Columbia University
Center for War, Peace and the News Media, NYU
Ploughshares Fund · Mainstream Media Project

co-sponsors:
Global Green USA · Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
World Policy Institute · Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council
Henry L. Stimson Center

On November 26th and 27th, Foreign Policy In Focus convened a conference on “Weapons of Mass Destruction: Post-Cold War Legacies in a Post-911 World” at New York University’s Bobst Library, about a mile from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. The conference was attended by some 300 people and involved 18 speakers, and included an innovative transatlantic press conference enabling journalists in New York, Washington, and Moscow to question the conference speakers and a group of experts in Moscow via video-conferencing technology.

The conference took place just after the Bush-Putin summit in which the two leaders verbally agreed to nuclear arms reductions. Several conference speakers were critical of the agreements, saying there was much less to these agreements than met the eye. Others denounced the gap between the Bush administration’s pledge to curb proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and its actions. Dr. Kenneth Luongo, former director of the Energy Department’s Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation, pointed out that the President’s budgeting for the anti-terrorism supplemental appropriations bill includes “not one cent … to control weapons of mass destruction, not just in Russia but anywhere in the world.”

The Bush-Putin agreements were also in the spotlight during the transatlantic press conference. Journalists quizzed the experts on the real results of the summit, as opposed to its haze of good feeling; on the prospects for the ABM Treaty; on Russian stockpiles of chemical weapons; and on the issue of tactical nukes, which was missing from the Bush-Putin agreements.

The conference’s original concept was that it would serve as an evaluation of the world’s progress in getting rid of the arsenals of unimaginably destructive weapons that were amassed during the cold war period ten years after the breakup of the Soviet Union. September 11th gave us all an unwelcome education in new dimensions of the U.S. failure to address seriously issues of proliferation and reduction of weapons of mass destruction; it seemed more urgent than ever to bring people together to examine the new security threats facing the U.S. and the world. Accordingly, the agenda was reworked to include presentations on topics such as chemical and biological weapons and instability in South Asia.

Event sponsors included NYU’s International Center for Advanced Studies, Columbia’s Harriman Institute, the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, the World Policy Institute, and the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council. The Moscow branch of NYU’s Center for War, Peace and the News Media organized the Russian end of the teleconference. Funding came from the Ploughshares Fund, NYU, Columbia, and the Nation Institute. The Mainstream Media Project helped with press work. Notable speakers included Jonathan Schell, author of the seminal work on the imperative of nuclear abolition, The Fate of the Earth; Frances Fitzgerald, author of the scathing critique of National Missile Defense, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War; and Bob Alvarez, IPS Senior Scholar and former coordinator of nuclear material strategic planning at the Energy Department.

Now Available from this Conference:

Conference agenda

Biographies of speakers

Speeches by:

Author	Title
Michael T. Klare	U.S. Supremacism and Weapons of Mass Destruction in the 21st Century
Jonathan Schell	Living on the Brink, Again
Frances Fitzgerald	The Black Comedy of Missile Defense
Robert Alvarez	Nuclear Safety and Terrorism
Bruce G. Blair	Cold War Thinking Persists
Leon V. Sigal	Cooperative Security Between the U.S. and Russia 1985-1994
Amy Smithson	Soviet Union's Bio-Chemical Threat

Transcript of trans-Atlantic press conference

Selected media coverage

Information about buying tapes

The Foreign Policy In Focus project presents:

Weapons of Mass Destruction: Cold War Legacies in a Post-9.11 World Conference at New York Univerisity on November 26-27

John Snow Room, 12th Floor, Bobst Library New York University 70 Washington Square South New York, New York

Now Available from this Conference:

Author

Title

Weapons of Mass Destruction: Cold War Legacies in a Post-9.11 World
Conference at New York Univerisity on November 26-27

John Snow Room, 12th Floor, Bobst Library
New York University
70 Washington Square South
New York, New York