A link between science and security

Jeffrey Boutwell and Mark H. Thiemens

The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 7, 2002

The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 impressed upon all of us just how vulnerable modern society can be to the ruthless actions of individuals who succeed in commandeering the instruments of our technology and in turning them against us. So it should come as no surprise that the prospect of terrorists gaining access to and threatening to use weapons of mass destruction has now become a central concern of the international community. The question is, how should we respond to detect and prevent this all-too-real threat?

Since 1957, the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, recipient of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize, have brought together an international network of scientists, policy analysts, and political and military figures to recommend ways of reducing the threats of weapons of mass destruction. Through annual meetings and specialized workshops, experts from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds have contributed important ideas and solutions to many of the major international security challenges facing the global community.

With their central goal of reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, the Pugwash Conferences - named after the site of the first conference in 1957 in Pugwash, Nova Scotia - have provided key inputs to such measures as the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968, the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1997.

We will continue these discussions this summer, nearly a year after Sept. 11, with an even deeper sense of responsibility of our mission and many pressing issues to discuss. Beginning on Aug. 9, the anniversary of the destruction of Nagasaki by an atomic bomb, the United States will play host to a Pugwash Conference for the first time since 1989. The conference, to be at the University of California San Diego, will bring together 300 participants from more than 60 countries to discuss, among other things, how to use new developments in science and technology to respond to terrorism, limit the access of terrorists to biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction, and address other challenges to global security and sustainability facing the international community.

The La Jolla campus, home to an institute that has worked since 1983 to reduce global conflict and promote global cooperation, is an ideal location for this 52nd Pugwash Conference on "Science, Sustainability and Security." The university's prominence in a diverse range of scientific disciplines and its location amid hundreds of leading biotechnology and information technology companies will encourage the participation of researchers from fields that have traditionally not been a focus of previous Pugwash Conferences, but that we now recognize play an important part in maintaining sustainability and security around the world.

For the first time, the Pugwash Conference will broaden its scope to include five days of workshops and panel discussions about scientific issues related to security and sustainability, such as genetically modified crops, biotechnology, computer and information technologies, global climate change and natural resource and energy technologies. Many of those sessions will be open to the public, and we hope to broadcast locally some of the discussions of specific interest to San Diegans.

Now more than ever our nations need to find creative solutions to technological problems and military security questions that didn't exist a year ago. This can only come from a diverse group of scientific and policy experts.

When Pugwash began, in the midst of the Cold War between two superpowers, the military threats were known and well identified. Now discontented individuals have found ways to harness our civilian technology to shut down governments and harm and instill fear in large segments of our societies. How do we respond? Only a broad base of expertise can hope to find viable solutions and identify threats that might not be considered.

Today, the Pugwash network of some 3,000 scientists and policy analysts and more than 50 national Pugwash groups around the world provides the basis for building international modes of cooperation to tackle the wide range of important security challenges facing the global community. In addition to the important role played by Pugwash groups in Russia, China, India and Pakistan, for example, Pugwash members in Cuba, Iran, North Korea and other countries have played key roles in these efforts. Recent Pugwash workshops in China, South Korea, India, the Netherlands, and Egypt have focused on the dangerous interactions of regional instability and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which is of increased concern to the world because of the spiraling violence in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and South Asia.

Given the large number of potential threats our governments and leaders are struggling to deal with, Pugwash may play a new and significant role by bringing together policy-makers, scientists and other scholars to think in new ways and to come up with creative strategies to address the problems of security and sustainability that face our society in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

Boutwell is executive director of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. Thiemens is dean of physical sciences at UCSD and chair of the panel on the Promises and Threats of Biotechnology at the forthcoming Pugwash Conference.