Event Summary
On December 9, the Brookings Institution and the Italian Embassy will host a discussion with a keynote address by Joseph S. Nye, Jr., distinguished service professor at Harvard University, on how the forthcoming G8 Italian presidency might provide a stronger impetus towards cooperation on nuclear security—one that begins with civilian nuclear power and also addresses all of the traditional nuclear security questions. He will compare how the trade-off between nuclear energy and non-proliferation was seen under President Jimmy Carter's policy in the 1970s with the situation today.
Event Information
When
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
11:15 AM to 12:15 PM
Where
Auditorium
Embassy of Italy
3000 Whitehaven Street, NW
Washington, DC
Map
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Joseph S. Nye Jr. is the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations and former dean of the Harvard Kennedy School. He has served as an assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, chair of the National Intelligence Council and deputy under secretary of state for security assistance, science and technology. In 2004, he published Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics; Understanding International Conflict, 5th edition (Public Affairs, 2004) and The Power Game: A Washington Novel (Public Affairs, 2004).
Minister Luca Giansanti, director general for multilateral political cooperation and human rights of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will provide introductory remarks on the priorities of the forthcoming Italian G8 presidency. Brookings Senior Fellow Daniel Benjamin, director of the Center on the United States and Europe, will introduce Professor Nye and Brookings Visiting Fellow Federiga Bindi will moderate the discussion. After the program, Professor Nye will take audience questions.
Transcript
PROFESSOR NYE: That essentially is the story of the split atom. We have known that it's been a mixed blessing for more than half a century now. We've also known from the start that the difference between the peaceful and destructive sides of the split atom was politics and not physics, and wrestling with that problem of how you set up barriers to create a distinction between the destructive and the constructive dimensions of the split atom is what we've been trying to do for the last half a century of so.
It's interesting that the dilemma that we face today resembles the dilemma that's been there right from the start, but there are two new elements that get a lot of attention today. One of course is the new element of climate change and the concern about CO2 and fossil fuels which has led to the talk of a nuclear renaissance. We heard a little bit of this in the panel just before this. If you look at something like this nice little piece that Sharon Casoni has done about the nuclear renaissance, is it coming and should it, she estimates that you could have two to three times as much nuclear energy on the planet in 2050 as you have today. So that's one thing that is new I would say from the 1970s. The other is transnational terrorism, the new scale of transnational terrorism, and particularly the idea of transnational terrorists getting a hold of nuclear materials or weapons of mass destruction.
These are not entirely new concerns.
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Participants
Featured Speaker
Joseph S. Nye, Jr
Distinguished Service Professor, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University