The Center for International Security and Cooperation is a center of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
History
Recent Events
Records 24 / 173
"Our theoreticians were armed with McNamara's arguments." Reflections on Soviet military strategy in the 1960s and 1970s.
March 3, 2018
Abstract: The quotation in the title is taken from the memoirs of Boris Chertok, a leading Soviet missile designer. In my talk I will examine significant shifts in Soviet thinking about nuclear...
The Cold War: A World History
April 19, 2017
Abstract: The Cold War was about the rise and the solidification of US power. But it was also about more than that.
Empires and Occupations: Global Dynamics of the Illiberal Wartime State, 1914-18
March 9, 2017
- This event is co-sponsored by Stanford Global Studies, The Europe Center, and the History Department - Abstract: By 1914, exploiting colonies was a well-established practice of even the most ...
The Presidency, the Media, and the Public: a Short History
February 10, 2017
Abstract: The formal constitutional character of the presidential office – that is, the method of electing the president, and the powers both granted and denied to the president -- was defined by...
Oil-Gotten Gains: Petrodollars, Abscam, and Arab American Activism, 1973-1981
September 22, 2016
Abstract: In the 1970s, soaring oil prices provided huge revenues to oil producing Arab countries, which, together with private Arab companies and individuals, invested billions of dollars in the U...
Deterrence without Bombs
September 15, 2016
Abstract: Deterrence is one of the most central concepts in international relations scholarship.
‘Expensive, prone to obsolescence, and lacking in credibility as a deterrent’: US attitudes to the UK’s independent nuclear capabilities, and McNamara’s Ann Arbor speech of June 1962 revisited
April 5, 2016
Abstract: On 13 February 2016, in a widely-reported interview for the BBC, Ashton Carter, the US Secretary of Defense, made clear that the US Government supported the maintenance and renewal of...
"The closest we came to nuclear war:" New Insights about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1995 Black Brant event
January 28, 2016
Abstract: The 1995 launch of a sounding rocket from Andoya in Norway allegedly misinterpreted as an attack in Russia and the so-called "Cuban Missile Crisis" in 1962 have one thing in common: they...
The International Atomic Energy Agency and Nuclear Safeguards, 1953-1971
December 1, 2015
Abstract: The nuclear negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran moved the International Atomic Energy Agency to the center of public attention.
Was There a German Nuclear Question? A Critical Reappraisal
October 22, 2015
Abstract: Many scholars contend that there was a specific German nuclear question. To them, asking the question “Was there a German nuclear question?” may be surprising and odd.
“No room for make-believe”: Making sense of US nuclear war plans during the Cold War
April 30, 2015
Abstract: Scholars know quite a lot about U.S. nuclear war planning from the end of World War II to the end of the Cold War.
Rethinking the Nuclear Age: The View from Africa and Its Implications for Policy
April 29, 2015
Abstract: Today’s international relations are plagued by anxieties about the nuclear state and the state of being nuclear.
The UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent and the Chevaline Program: An Overview
March 10, 2015
Abstract: Chevaline was the codename given to a highly-secret program begun in 1970 to improve the performance of the UK's force of Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missiles in order to give...
Fear and Democracy: Reflections from the 1930s and 1940s on the Presidency, Congress, and National Security
January 21, 2015
Please note that this Seminar is held on a Wednesday.About the topic: This talk explores two primary questions: (1) the origins of the modern US national security state, and what might be called a...
Cold War Internationalism: The Case of Labor
April 15, 2014
Sandrine Kott has been educated in France (Paris), Germany (Bielefeld and Berlin) and the USA (New York).
Cold War Internationalism: The Case of Labor
April 15, 2014
Sandrine Kott was educated in France (Paris), Germany (Bielefeld and Berlin) and the USA (New York).
Does Terrorism Work? The Case of the Provisional IRA
April 10, 2014
About the Speaker: Richard English is the Wardlaw Professor of Politics in the School of International Relations, and Director of the Handa Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence ...
An Army Like No Other: The Origins of Military Culture
April 3, 2014
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Gil-li Vardi joined CISAC as a visiting scholar in December 2011.
Strategy in Theory and Strategy in Practice
April 1, 2014
Sir Hew Strachan, Chichele Professor of History of War, University of Oxford, will discuss "Strategy in Theory and Strategy in Practice."
Military Operations and National Policies, 1914-1918
March 31, 2014
Sir Hew Strachan, the Chichele Professor of History of War, University of Oxford, will discuss "Military Operations and National Policies, 1914-1918."
When We Began to "Think Globally": Radioactive Fallout, the Cold War, and the Making of a Global Environmental Problem, 1945-1963
March 20, 2014
ABOUT THE TOPIC: The Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 is known as the first nuclear arms control agreement.
How the Cold War Came to Afghanistan, 1945-1952
March 6, 2014
ABOUT THE TOPIC: No country was as devastated by the Cold War as Afghanistan, yet the historical understanding of how the global conflict came to Kabul remains tentative, generally limited to...
Disarmament, Arms Control, and Stability: The Community of Nuclear Arms Controllers, 1957-1960
February 27, 2014
ABOUT THE TOPIC: The intellectual history of nuclear arms control has largely been written as a history of ideas, untethered from personal biography and social context.
Why Nuclear Weapons Became Unsustainable: Modernization Theory, International Norms, and the Environmental Roots of the Nuclear Taboo, 1958-1968
February 13, 2014
ABOUT THE TOPIC: Why was nuclear war deemed unwinnable in the United States? Pace conventional wisdom, the truth was not self-evident.
People
Michael A. McFaul Director, Senior Fellow Professor, Political Science, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution 
Norman M. Naimark Senior Fellow, by courtesy Professor, History, Professor, by courtesy, German Studies, Senior Fellow, the Hoover Institution 
