LOTTMAN: Based on the information available to you, what is the nature and extent of the threat posed by the rogue states? In what ways are potential enemies capable or incapable of challenging the US and its allies?

PIKE: In principle, the so-called "rogue states", such as Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, could threaten the United States by terrorist attack. In practice, none of the states currently have the ability to directly threaten the United States itself with a military attack such as with long-range missiles.

LOTTMAN: How about our allies who are neighbors of theirs? What's the balance of power if you take the massive US commitments out of the picture?

PIKE: Obviously the main concern about the "rogue states" is the threat that they pose to their immediate neighbors. We've already seen Iraq grabbing Kuwait. North Korea has been poised to attack South Korea for nearly half a century now. The bottom line, though, is that these states, if warned of American resolve to resist such attacks, recognize that they would lose such wars, which is the reason we've had a military stalemate on the Korean peninsula for so long. North Korea recognizes that if they started a war, the United States would end it.

LOTTMAN: Compare the level of the threat as it is today with, say, ten years ago. What sort of quantitative or qualitative changes do you perceive there?

PIKE: It's very clear that during the Cold War, the Soviet Union was a worthy adversary. The Soviet military was approximately the same size as that of the United States and the Western alliance. Today we're faced with….. (noisy truck rolls by)…. Take 4.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact had a very large military, roughly comparable in size to that of the United States and the Western alliance. Of course, building that military bankrupted the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. Today, the regional adversaries that we face, such as Iraq or North Korea, are much smaller countries, with much weaker economies, and consequently they have much smaller militaries. They could put up a formidable fight for a couple of weeks, perhaps a few months. But given the strength of the American economy and the size of the American military, and its sophistication, there's no doubt that in a war with Iraq or North Korea, the United States would certainly win and win fairly quickly.

LOTTMAN: Some observers say that potential enemies of the US are not gearing up to challenge the US or its allies in any conventional military sense, but are focusing on other ways to threaten US interests (e.g. crude terrorist devices, ballistic missiles, etc.). How are the military and intelligence communities adapting to potential real-world threats? What are they not doing that they could or should be?

PIKE: Well, the threats that we're facing today from an Iraq or North Korea are very different from those that we faced from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The intelligence community really has been fairly slow to adapt to these new threats, because they create new requirements. There's clearly a need for reorganization, to be more focused on dealing with intelligence that we need to deal with counter-terrorism or non-proliferation. At the same time, these potential adversaries like North Korea recognize that American tolerance for their provocations are not unlimited. And while they may be annoying at the margins, I think they're extremely reluctant to take on the United States head-on.

LOTTMAN: What potential (i.e. emerging) threats are generally of most concern to you?

PIKE: I think with the end of the Cold War the two main threats facing…. With the end of the Cold War, the two main threats facing the United States are the residual Russian nuclear arsenal, which is at an excessively high state of alert and has far too much nuclear material that isn't nearly secure enough, and secondly the possibilities of terrorism using weapons of mass destruction, particularly chemical weapons. Unfortunately we continue to spend far too much money on Cold War responses to security problems. We're not putting nearly enough focus on Cooperative Threat Reduction to reduce the Russian nuclear hazard, on the things we need to be doing to deal with unconventional terrorist threats.

LOTTMAN: The US has assumed an almost unquestioned leadership role in preserving stability and balance of power in nearly all of the world's key strategic regions. This takes a number of forms, from troop presence to fortifying borders to supporting international and even domestic law enforcement. Is the US trying to do too much in this regard-in terms of regional stability?

PIKE: The United States, obviously, has global political, cultural, and economic interests that have gotten us involved in an awful lot of countries that many Americans can't find on a map. The real danger that we face is that we're going to get over-extended, spend too much money, get involved in local situations that we have only a limited ability to influence or change, and ultimately get involved in some counter-productive situations. At the same time there's no way around it. The American people have a commitment to American values, we want to make the world safe for America, and I think that unavoidable, we're involved in a lot of places around the world today in order to protect those interests.

LOTTMAN: Are America's regional allies, or regional security organizations, capable of carrying more of this burden? What is the desirable apportioning of this burden?

PIKE: I think it's very clear that our NATO allies have been….

There's clearly a need for the United States to understand what our contribution to an alliance such as NATO is, and understand what we expect out of some of our regional allies. In the Korean peninsula, the United States has been very eager to deploy an advanced anti-missile to defend against North Korea. The South Koreans have decided they don't want any part of such a project. I think the United Staes needs to make sure that our commitment to defending a particular region, such as South Korea, is matched by their own commitment to do so. Far too often, our ideas about what ought to be done about these regional adversaries seem to be a lot more robust and forward-leaning than those of the countries most directly affected.

LOTTMAN: Does North Korea have ballistic missiles that legitimately threaten its neighbors or Japan?

PIKE: North Korea is a very small, very poor country, in a neighborhood composed of very large, very powerful countries. They were devastated by the last Korean War, and they clearly have an interest in discouraging people from launching another war against them. It's easy to understand why they have a missile program, and why they've been working on nuclear weapons. At the same time, it's important not to overstate the nature of that threat. They clearly are not able to strike directly at the United States. And it's also important to understand their risk calculus. They've been devastated by war before. They clearly don't have a great deal of appetite for repeating that experience.

LOTTMAN: How would North Korea's missile program compare to, say, South Korea's?

PIKE: It's very clear that the North Koreans have a much larger, more robust ballistic missile program than the South Koreans do. South Korea, under an agreement with the United States, can only produce short-range missiles. The North Koreans obviously don't face those sorts of constraints.

LOTTMAN: Do Russia and/or China's militaries represent a significant threat to the US? I'm talking in today's world.

PIKE: The Russian military today has a significant fraction of the nuclear weapons that the Soviet military did during the Cold War. The problem is that those Russian nuclear weapons are still on hair-trigger alert, posing the danger of accidental nuclear war, and a lot of their nuclear material doesn't have security adequate to protect it from terrorists stealing that material. So the Russian nuclear threat today is I think almost as great as the Soviet threat was, but it's different, and we need different approaches to deal with it.

The Chinese nuclear threat today is about the same as it's been over the last 10 or 20 years. They have a small number of missiles that can reach the United States. I think the concern has to be, though, that if we start building an anti-missile system, the Chinese are gonna want to retain the ability to deter us, which means they're going to have a lot more missiles in response to our anti-missile system, starting the sort of arms race that we're having trouble liquidating from the Cold War.

LOTTMAN: Is Russia in any condition to… Is there a danger of Russian aggression against their European neighbors to the West. Is that at all feasible given the condition of the Russian military. I'm not talking about lobbing missiles at someone, I'm talking about invasion-type scenarios.

PIKE: If you look at all the difficulties that the Russians had in the domestic Chechnya crisis, where their military didn't do very well at all, it's very clear that the Russian military today does not pose a significant threat to any of its neighbors, even if it wanted to. And clearly Russian politicians have far better things to do than get involved in wars. They learned the lesson in Afghanistan, and they certainly learned that lesson in Chechnya. The Russian military today simply is not in a position to pose a military threat to its neighbors.

LOTTMAN: Let's discuss this new threat paradigm, if you will, where it's no longer the strength of our potential adversaries-the large militaries and aggressive postures towards their neighbors-that we have to fear, so much as it is the weakness and the instability of these countries.

PIKE: During the Cold War the main thing we were concerned about was how strong the Soviet Union is. Today, I think quite properly, we're much more worried about how weak Russia is. When you think about missile troops that may not have been paid recently, or guards out foraging for food rather than protecting nuclear materials, you got a lot to worry about with the weakness of Russia. Some of the other countries, or substate actors that might be opposed to American interests, I think are a lot more likely to be launching terrorist attacks, possibly using chemical weapons, than they are launching the sort of big invasions with tank armies that worried us during the Cold War. These are new threats, they require new policies, and a lot of the stuff that we're doing that's left over from the Cold War really isn't addressing these new problems.

LOTTMAN: What does any of that have to do with the posture of the US military?

PIKE: The problem with today is that we're spending $30 billion a year maintaining our nuclear arsenal. We're only spending a few percent of that amount reducing directly the danger from the Russian nuclear arsenal. I think we need to be spending far more money securing Russian nuclear materials against terrorist threats and reducing the alert level of their forces. And we can certainly afford to get that money out of reducing spending on our own nuclear forces.

LOTTMAN: China looks to us for technologies, to help them economically, our market is very important to them. There's lots of rhetoric from the Administration about making China a strategic partner. How does that jibe with this idea that China is potentially an aggressive nuclear adversary of the United States? Which is the more realistic.

PIKE: Over the last half-century, we've known China both as an extremely alarming military adversary as well as an annoying country that we've been engaged with politically and economically. Given the choice between engagement and military confrontation, I think it's clear over the long run that we're a lot better off keeping China in the annoying column rather than trying to force them into the military enemy column. We've seen the results of doing that in the past.