Limited number of lunches available for registered guests on day of event.

About the event: Studying the social construction of norms has been a fashionable way to approach understanding European Union politics. Indeed, following the outbreak of the Ukrainian war (2022- present day), scholars of the EU have published a large number of articles exploring norm-driven politics. Many scholars of the EU have seen its engagement with Ukraine as driven by common norms and/or a shared identity. However, this talk will argue that self-interest in the form of the balance of threat assessments of individual countries remains the most crucial factor in understanding patterns of support for Ukraine, as well as explaining the percentage of GDP spent on the military by EU member states. Moreover, defense priorities are driven by a broader set of threats than just that posed by Russia. This talk will further explore how free riding and defense spending are determined by states’ interests in survival rather than shared norms or solidarity. This talk will suggest that scholars should pay greater attention to smaller ad hoc alliances between states that share specific threats, a neglected dimension of the current security environment in Europe.

About the speaker: Stig Jarle Hansen was a Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) before joining Stanford in 2024. At NMBU, he led Norway’s only master's program in International Relations. In 2016-2017, he was a Renee Belfer fellow at Harvard University. He is also a senior nonresident associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. His work is at the intersection of crime, security, and great power politics.

Professor Hansen’s books have received good reviews in Foreign Policy (the best book of the year) and The Economist, and Newsweek published a chapter of one of them. He has contributed to Jane’s Intelligence Review, the MES Insights of the United States Marine Corps, and West Point’s CTC Sentinel. He has commented for CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Reuters, CCTV 4, and many other international media outlets.

Professor Hansen has also given presentations to various defense and governance institutions, including the NATO Intelligence Fusion Center, NATO Defense College in Rome, United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), has testified in hearings in the British House of Commons, and has been invited to give presentations to the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He is a board member of the RAAD institute in Mogadishu, the Abaad center in Aden, and a member of the editorial board of Small Wars and insurgencies.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.