The Center for International Security and Cooperation is a center of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Institutions and Organizations
Recent Scholarly Publications
Records 24 / 270
Integrating Offensive Cyber Capabilities: Meaning, dilemmas, and assessment
August 2018
Abstract: Across the world, states are establishing military cyber commands or similar units to develop offensive cyber capabilities.
Insider Threats
February 2017
High-security organizations around the world face devastating threats from insiders—trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials.
Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons
September 2016
In Unclear Physics, Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer tells the story of the Iraqi and Libyan programs from their origins in the late 1950s and 1960s until their dismantling.
The Soviet Union and the Creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency
January 2016
The Soviet Union responded sceptically to Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech in December 1953 but eventually entered negotiations on the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Kennedy, Johnson, and the Nonaligned World
September 2015
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy initiated a bold new policy of engaging states that had chosen to remain nonaligned in the Cold War.
New Game, New Rules: Limiting the Risks of Biological Engineering
September 2015
In an article published by the Council on Foreign Relations' Foreign Affairs magazine, David Relman and Marc Lipsitch examine recent advances in biological engineering as well as lapses in...
Deterrence and Enforcement in a World Free of Nuclear Weapons (chapter)
August 2015
This report examines the importance of deterrence, from its critical function in the cold war to its current role.
Why Status Matters in World Politics (book chapter)
March 2015
According to traditional theories of world politics, peaceful power transitions only happen when the rising power continues to profit from the institutional order held together by the material...
Reassessing the All-Volunteer Force
December 2013
Karl Eikenberry, former ambassador to Afghanistan and retired U.S.
Poor Man’s Atomic Bomb? Exploring the Relationship between “Weapons of Mass Destruction”
November 2013
Abstract The causes and consequences of nuclear proliferation have received a great deal ofacademic attention. However, nuclear weapons are rarely discussed in isolation in policycircles.
The Hidden Dangers of Chop-Shop Electronics
September 2013
John Villasenor, a CISAC affiliate and professor of electrical engineering and public policy at UCLA, writes in this IEEE SPECTRUM article with Mohammad Tehranipoor, that counterfeiters sell old...
How Probable is Cyber War? Bringing IR Theory Back In to the Cyber Conflict Debate
February 2013
Many well-established explanations for war suggest that cyber weapons have a greater chance of being used offensively than other kinds of military technologies.
Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons
February 2013
How strong are normative prohibitions on state behavior?
Governing Security: The Hidden Origins of American Security Agencies
November 2012
Description from Stanford University Press:The impact of public law depends on how politicians secure control of public organizations, and how these organizations in turn are used to define...
Making China's Nuclear War Plan
September 2012
Abstract: For the last decade of Mao Zedong’s rule in China, his revolutionary thinking dominated all strategic planning and operations and directly shaped the policies of the strategic rocket...
Organizational legacies of violence Conditions favoring insurgency onset in Colombia, 1964–1984
May 2012
Abstract Why do insurgencies erupt in some places and not in others?
North Korea in 2011: Countdown to Kim il-Sung's centenary
January 2012
Abstract As the diplomatic standoff in North Korea enters its fourth year, the crisis atmosphere on the Korean peninsula sparked by Pyongyang's military actions in 2010 has eased.
Implementing Change: Organizational Challenges
December 2011
An excerpt from "Implementing Change: Organizational Challenges" (pp. 309-310): Improving organizational performance is never easy.
The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law
December 2011
From Oxford University Press: There is a broad consensus among scholars that the idea of human rights was a product of the Enlightenment but that a self-conscious and broad-based human rights...
Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq
October 2011
Abstract: We develop and test an economic theory of insurgency motivated by the informal literature and by recent military doctrine.
Assessment Paper on Non‐Proliferation
September 2011
This paper, written for a September 2011 seminar hosted by the Geneva Center for Security Policy, analyzes developments since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Action Plan was adopted by...
Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict
August 2011
Summary from Columbia University Press: For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving...
Rape Reporting During War: Why the Numbers Don't Mean What You Think They Do
August 2011
First page of the article: Reports of sexual violence during the ongoing unrest in Libya have captured headlines across the world.
People
Michael A. McFaul Director, Senior Fellow Professor, Political Science, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution 
