Glenn Schweitzer

Glenn Schweitzer is a nuclear engineer, scientist, and Former Director of the Program on Central Europe and Eurasia at the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. Glenn is the author of 12 books focused on international scientific affairs; his latest book, Roots and Trajectories of Violent Extremism and Terrorism: A Cooperative Program of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Sciences (1995-2020), was released in 2022.

From 1992 to 1994, I was the lead international scientist of the newly formed International Science and Technology Center (ISTC) in Moscow. The Center was established by the governments of Russia, Japan, the United States, and the European Union, and for two decades, it provided more than $1 billion to support 75,000 Russian scientists who were transitioning from designing and constructing weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, and biological) towards activities that supported the recovery and growth of the nation’s economy. In other words, it was redirecting them from military work to working for peace.

After those first two years in my post in Moscow – which had been devoted to obtaining approval from the government’s sponsoring countries, particularly Russia, to support the establishment of the Center – I became the executive director of the ISTC. Obviously, the entire Russian military and nuclear complex wasn’t going to be changed, but over time 70,000 Russian scientists participated and became what we called civilian scientists. We wanted to ensure there was a transformation in how Russia addressed its defense needs without causing undue threats to the rest of the world.

I was working on a book to document the Center’s earliest activities during my first visit to Bellagio, as a visiting fellow, in 1996. The Rockefeller Foundation supported me and suggested I spend a month at Bellagio to complete the project. I arrived in June, and my goal was to complete my manuscript for the publisher, Routledge, and have it endorsed by the Center’s four most important advocates: former U.S. Senators Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, and former German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher. At Bellagio, it was clear that we were all trying to understand each other. For me, this was a sign that the world was changing; the world was opening up. It was comforting to be among a cohort of like-minded people who were all as passionate as I was about doing our thing.

I had applied to visit as part of a team. My Russian colleague and I were close at the Center in Moscow, and he played an important role in ensuring that the book was consistent with the views of leading staff members. He also focused on appropriate follow-on actions, including the organization of a workshop at Bellagio that included five key Russian researchers in nuclear science who were leading internal efforts to ensure the control of nuclear weapons.

That visit to Bellagio in 1996 was a turning point in my career. While there, my Russian colleague and I were more or less labeled “the nuclear twins.” We were surrounded by artists and poets and historians, and through the other Bellagio fellows, I tried to understand the global, outsider’s view of what was happening in Russia.