Stanford University

Society

FSI researchers work to understand continuity and change in societies as they confront their problems and opportunities. This includes the implications of migration and human trafficking. What happens to a society when young girls exit the sex trade? How do groups moving between locations impact societies, economies, self-identity and citizenship? What are the ethnic challenges faced by an increasingly diverse European Union? From a policy perspective, scholars also work to investigate the consequences of security-related measures for society and its values.

The Europe Center reflects much of FSI’s agenda of investigating societies, serving as a forum for experts to research the cultures, religions and people of Europe. The Center sponsors several seminars and lectures, as well as visiting scholars.

Societal research also addresses issues of demography and aging, such as the social and economic challenges of providing health care for an aging population. How do older adults make decisions, and what societal tools need to be in place to ensure the resulting decisions are well-informed? FSI regularly brings in international scholars to look at these issues. They discuss how adults care for their older parents in rural China as well as the economic aspects of aging populations in China and India.

US Civil - Military Relations and the Implications of the Private Military Contractors

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Thomas Bruneau is a Distinguished Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. He has researched and written extensively on Latin America, especially Brazil, and Portugal. Dr. Bruneau has published more than fifteen books in English and Portuguese as well as articles in journals including Latin American Research Review, Comparative Politics, Third World Quarterly, Encyclopedia of Democracy, South European Society and Politics, Journal of Democracy, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Democratization, and Military Affairs.

In addition to his position as Professor in the NSA Department, Professor Bruneau was the Academic Associate for the curriculum in International Security and Civil-Military Relations from its founding in 1996 until 2002. Between 1998 and 2001 he served as rapporteur of the Defense Policy Board that provides the Secretary of Defense and his staff with independent and informed advice on questions of national security and defense policy.

He has three recently published books. He is co-editor, with Scott Tollefson, of Who Guards the Guardians and How: Democratic Civil - Military Relations (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006). His second book, also published by University of Texas Press, with CDR Steve Boraz, is Reforming Intelligence: Obstacles to Democratic Control and Effectiveness. His co-edited book with Harold Trinkunas, Global Politics of Defense Reform, was published by Palgrave-Macmillan in February 2008.

A native of California, Professor Bruneau received his BA from California State University at San Jose and his MA and PhD from the University of California at Berkeley

Stephen Krasner is a former director of CDDRL, former deputy director of FSI, an FSI senior fellow, and the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations at Stanford University.

From February 2005 to April 2007 he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department. While at the State Department, Krasner was a driving force behind foreign assistance reform designed to more effectively target American foreign aid. He was also involved in activities related to the promotion of good governance and democratic institutions around the world

At CDDRL, Krasner was the coordinator of the Program on Sovereignty. His work has dealt primarily with sovereignty, American foreign policy, and the political determinants of international economic relations. Before coming to Stanford in 1981 he taught at Harvard University and UCLA. At Stanford, he was chair of the political science department from 1984 to 1991, and he served as the editor of International Organization from 1986 to 1992.

He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (1987-88) and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2000-2001). In 2002 he served as director for governance and development at the National Security Council. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.        

He received a BA in history from Cornell University, an MA in international affairs from Columbia University and a PhD in political science from Harvard.

If you would like to be added to the email announcement list, please visit https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/socialscienceseminar 

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Thomas C. Bruneau CISAC Visiting Scholar; Distinguished Professor of National Security Affairs, Naval Postgraduate School Speaker
Stephen D. Krasner Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations and Former Director, CDDRL; Former Deputy Director, FSI; FSI Senior Fellow; Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Commentator
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Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945-1975

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Kelly Moore is Associate Professor of Sociology and Affiliate of Women's Studies at the University of Cincinnati.  She is the author of Disrupting Science: Social Movements, American Scientists, and the Politics of the Military, 1945-1975 (Princeton University Press, 2008), and the co-editor of The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).   Her articles have appeared in Research in Organizational Sociology, American Journal of Sociology and other journals.  She currently serves as Chair of the American Sociological Association section on Science, Knowledge and Technology, and is writing a book about neoliberalism, food, and nutrition in U.S. from 1980 to 2005. 

Rebecca Slayton is a lecturer in the Science, Technology and Society Program at Stanford University and a CISAC affiliate. In 2004-2005 she was a CISAC science fellow. Her research examines how technical judgments are generated, taken up, and given significance in international security contexts. She is currently working on a book which uses the history of the U.S. ballistic missile defense program to study the relationships between and among technology, expertise, and the media. Portions of this work have been published in journals such as History and Technology and have been presented at academic conferences. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Science, Technology, and Society Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2004 she completed an NSF-funded project entitled Public Science: Discourse about the Strategic Defense Initiative, 1983-1988.

As a physical chemist, she developed ultrafast laser experiments in condensed matter systems and published several articles in physics journals. She also received the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellowship in 2000, and has worked as a science journalist for a daily paper and for Physical Review Focus. She earned her doctorate in chemistry from Harvard University in 2002.

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Kelly Moore Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Cincinnati Speaker

Rebecca Slayton

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Slayton’s research and teaching examine the relationships between and among risk, governance, and expertise, with a focus on international security and cooperation since World War II. Slayton’s current book project, Shadowing Cybersecurity, examines the historical emergence of cybersecurity expertise. Shadowing Cybersecurity shows how efforts to establish credible expertise in corporate, governmental, and non-governmental contexts have produced varying and sometimes conflicting expert practices. Nonetheless, all cybersecurity experts wrestle with the irreducible uncertainties that characterize intelligent adversaries, and the fundamental inability to prove that systems are secure. The book shows how cybersecurity experts have paradoxically gained credibility by making threats and vulnerabilities visible, while acknowledging that more always remain in the shadows.

Slayton’s first book, Arguments that Count: Physics, Computing, and Missile Defense, 1949-2012 (MIT Press, 2013), shows how the rise of a new field of expertise in computing reshaped public policies and perceptions about the risks of missile defense in the United States. In 2015, Arguments that Count won the Computer History Museum Prize. In 2016, Slayton was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER grant for her project “Enacting Cybersecurity Expertise.” In 2019, Slayton was also a recipient of the United States Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, for her NSF CAREER project.

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Proliferating Markets: the Transnational Trade in Uranium from Africa

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Gabrielle Hecht is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan.  Her first book, The Radiance of France:  Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (MIT 1998), won awards from the American Historical Association and the Society for the History of Technology.  The French translation appeared with La Découverte in 2004, and MIT will publish a new English-language edition in 2009.  Her current project, entitled Uranium from Africa and the Power of Nuclear Things, draws on archival and field work conducted in Africa, Europe, and North America.  Focusing especially on Gabon, Madagascar, South Africa, Namibia, and Niger, this project examines uranium mining in these places and the flow of uranium from these places. It argues that the view from Africa transforms our understanding of the "nuclear" as a political, technological, and occupational category, as well as our perspective on the transnational power of nuclear things. 

Alexander Montgomery, a visiting assistant professor in 2008-09, was a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC in 2005-2006 and is an assistant professor of political science at Reed College. He has published articles on dismantling proliferation networks and on the effects of social networks of international organizations on interstate conflict. His research interests include political organizations, social networks, weapons of mass disruption and destruction, social studies of technology, and interstate social relations. His current book project is on post-Cold War U.S. counterproliferation policy, evaluating the efficacy of policies towards North Korea, Iran, and proliferation networks.

He has been a joint International Security Program/Managing the Atom Project Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has also worked as a research associate in high energy physics on the BaBar experiment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and as a graduate research assistant at the Center for International Security Affairs at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has a BA in physics from the University of Chicago, an MA in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in sociology and a PhD in political science from Stanford University.

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Gabrielle Hecht Associate Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies, Program in Science, Technology, and Society, University of Michigan Speaker
Alexander Montgomery Visiting Assistant Professor, CISAC; Assistant Professor of Political Science, Reed College Commentator
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1989 & the Architecture of Order: The Competition to Lead the Post-Cold War World

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Professor Mary Sarotte teaches in the interdisciplinary international relations program at the University of Southern California (USC).  She earned her BA in History and Science at Harvard University and her PhD in History at Yale University.  Before becoming a historian, Sarotte worked as a journalist in Europe for Time, Die Zeit, and The Economist (where she continues to write as a book reviewer).  A former White House Fellow, Sarotte has also held a Humboldt Scholarship, an Olin National Security Fellowship, and a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard's Kennedy School.  She is the author of two books and a number of scholarly articles.  Sarotte is currently finishing her third monograph, 1989 & the Architecture of Order, to be published by Princeton University Press in the series "Studies in International History and Politics" in 2009.

Norman Naimark is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies: a professor of history; core faculty member of FSI's Forum on Contemporary Europe; and an FSI senior fellow by courtesy. He is an expert on modern East European, Balkan, and Russian history. His current research focuses on the history of genocide in the 20th century and on postwar Soviet policy in Europe. He is author of the critically acclaimed volumes: The Russians in Germany: The History of the Soviet Zone of Germany, 1945-1949 (Harvard 1995) and Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in 20th Century Europe (Harvard 2001).  Most recently, he has co-edited books on Yugoslavia and its Historians (Stanford 2003), Soviet Politics in Austria, 1945-1955: Documents from the Russian Archives (in German and Russian, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2006), and The Lost Transcripts of the Politburo (Yale 2008). 

Naimark is a senior fellow by courtesy of the Hoover Institution and Burke Family Director of the Bing Overseas Studies Program at Stanford. He also was chair of Stanford's Department of History and programs in International Relations and International Policy Studies. He has served on the editorial boards of a series of leading professional journals, including: The American Historical Review, The Journal of Modern History, Slavic Review, and East European Politics and Societies. He served as President of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (1997) and as chairman of the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe of the American Council of Learned Societies and Social Science Research Council (1992-1997). 

Before joining the Stanford faculty, Naimark was a professor of history a Boston University and a fellow of the Russian Research Center at Harvard. He also held the visiting Catherine Wasserman Davis Chair of Slavic Studies at Wellesley College. He has been awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1996), the Richard W. Lyman Award for outstanding faculty volunteer service (1995), and the Dean's Teaching Award from Stanford University for 1991-92 and 2002-3. 

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Mary Sarotte Associate Professor of International Relations, USC Speaker

Norman M. Naimark

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C235
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 723-6927 (650) 725-0597
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Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Robert & Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies
Professor of History
Professor, by courtesy, of German Studies
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Naimark,_Norman.jpg MS, PhD

Norman M. Naimark is the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies, a Professor of History and (by courtesy) of German Studies, and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution and (by courtesy) of the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies. Norman formerly served as the Sakurako and William Fisher Family Director of the Stanford Global Studies Division, the Burke Family Director of the Bing Overseas Studies Program, the Convener of the European Forum (predecessor to The Europe Center), Chair of the History Department, and the Director of Stanford’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

Norman earned his Ph.D. in History from Stanford University in 1972 and before returning to join the faculty in 1988, he was a professor of history at Boston University and a fellow of the Russian Research Center at Harvard. He also held the visiting Catherine Wasserman Davis Chair of Slavic Studies at Wellesley College. He has been awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (1996), the Richard W. Lyman Award for outstanding faculty volunteer service (1995), and the Dean's Teaching Award from Stanford University for 1991-92 and 2002-3.

Norman is interested in modern Eastern European and Russian history and his research focuses on Soviet policies and actions in Europe after World War II and on genocide and ethnic cleansing in the twentieth century. His published monographs on these topics include The History of the "Proletariat": The Emergence of Marxism in the Kingdom of Poland, 1870–1887 (1979, Columbia University Press), Terrorists and Social Democrats: The Russian Revolutionary Movement under Alexander III (1983, Harvard University Press), The Russians in Germany: The History of The Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (1995, Harvard University Press), The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe (1998, Westview Press), Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing In 20th Century Europe (2001, Harvard University Press), Stalin's Genocides (2010, Princeton University Press), and Genocide: A World History (2016, Oxford University Press). Naimark’s latest book, Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty (Harvard 2019), explores seven case studies that illuminate Soviet policy in Europe and European attempts to build new, independent countries after World War II.

 

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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Norman M. Naimark Robert and Florence McDonnel Professor of Eastern European Studies; Professor of History and FSI Senior Fellow by courtesy; Member, CISAC Executive Committee Commentator
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Why Terrorism Still Does Not Work

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Max Abrahms is a PhD candidate at UCLA focusing on the interface of terrorism and international relations theory. Abrahms has published in International Security, Security Studies, Terrorism and Political Violence, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, and Middle East Policy. Prior to coming to Stanford, Abrahms was a research associate at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; a fellow at Tel Aviv University; a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and a commissioned op-ed writer on Palestinian terrorism for the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared as a terrorism analyst on ABC News, Al-Arabiyya, Al-Hurra, Al-Jazeera, BBC, CBS, CNN, CNN Financial, Fox News, National Public Radio, and PBS. Abrahms is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (summa cum laude) and Oxford University, where he read his MPhil in International Relations.

Paul Stockton is a senior research scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). He was formerly the associate provost at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and was the founding director of its Center for Homeland Defense and Security. His research focuses on how U.S. security institutions respond to changes in the threat (including the rise of terrorism), and the interaction of Congress and the Executive branch in restructuring national security budgets, policies and institutional arrangements. Stockton also serves as co-teacher of the CISAC Honors Program, which assists Stanford seniors in writing theses on international security.

Stockton joined the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in August 1990. From 1995 until 2000, he served as director of NPS' Center for Civil-Military Relations. From 2000-2001, he founded and served as the acting dean of NPS' School of International Graduate Studies. He was appointed associate provost in 2001.

Stockton is the editor of Homeland Security, a graduate text to be published by Oxford University Press in 2009. Stockton serves on the editorial review board of Homeland Security Affairs, the quarterly journal he helped establish in 2005. His research has appeared in Political Science Quarterly, International Security, and Strategic Survey. He is co-editor of Reconstituting America's Defense: America's New National Security Strategy (1992). He has also published an Adelphi Paper and has contributed chapters to a number of books, including James Lindsay and Randall Ripley, eds., U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War (1997).

From 1986-1989 Stockton served as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Stockton was Senator Moynihan's personal representative on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and was principal advisor to the senator on defense, intelligence, counter narcotics policy and foreign affairs. Stockton was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship for 1989-1990 by CISAC. During his graduate studies at Harvard, he served as a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Stockton received a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College in 1976 and a doctorate in government from Harvard in 1986.

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Max Abrahms Speaker
Paul Stockton CISAC Senior Research Scholar Commentator
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Science, Technology and Security Seminars (2009-2010)

Mumbai's Perilous Implications

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CISAC's Paul Kapur and Sumit Ganguly of Indiana University discuss the importance of probing the sources of the violence in Mumbai, and consider the attacks' implications for regional security in South Asia.

Security officials and cleanup crews are now combing through the carnage in Mumbai, following last week’s terrorist attacks in the city. As the citizens of this vast metropolis seek to restore some semblance of normalcy to their lives, it is important to probe the sources of the violence in Mumbai, and consider the attacks’ implications for regional security in South Asia.

How and why did the Mumbai attacks occur? Information at this stage is still incomplete. Nonetheless, a few points seem clear.

There is considerable evidence that Pakistan-based entities were behind the Mumbai attacks. The sole surviving terrorist is Pakistani. He claims that the attackers trained with the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba for months inside Pakistan prior to launching their assault. And Indian officials have determined that the terrorists took a boat from Karachi to the Mumbai coast, leaving behind cell phones that had been used to call Pakistan.

None of this directly implicates the Pakistani government in the Mumbai attacks. It does, however, suggest that Pakistan bears some measure of responsibility for recent events; the Pakistani government is either unable or unwilling to prevent its territory from being used to launch terrorist attacks against India.

In fact, Pakistan has a long history of supporting anti-Indian militancy. For example, during the 1980s, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) began to provide training, arms, and financial and logistical support to insurgent groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. This transformed what had been a mostly spontaneous, local uprising into a low-intensity Indo-Pakistani war. Despite repeated Indian diplomatic entreaties and military threats, Pakistan has never fully ended its support for such groups.

These outside links notwithstanding, the complexity and organization of the Mumbai attacks suggest that they also employed local Indian support. Thus, even if the operation originated in Pakistan, the terrorists may well have had the assistance of disaffected Indian Muslims.

Since independence, many Muslims have thrived in India, availing themselves of educational opportunities, achieving high levels of prosperity, and blending into the country’s vast, pluralistic society. On a day-to-day basis they have faced little religious discrimination.

Less affluent segments of the Muslim community, however, have not been so fortunate. They have long endured discrimination in aspects of everyday life ranging from employment to housing opportunities. Past generations acquiesced in these humiliations. Today’s lower middle class Muslims, however, are better educated and more politically aware than their predecessors, and thus less prone simply to accept their fate.

Against this social backdrop, two incidents have helped to spur a process of Islamist radicalization within India. The first was a spate of anti-Muslim riots that swept across much of northern and western India after Hindu zealots destroyed the Babri Mosque in 1992. Hundreds of Muslims died at the hands of Hindu mobs while the police looked on. The second episode was a 2002 pogrom in the state of Gujarat that occurred after Hindu pilgrims died in a train fire allegedly set by Muslim miscreants. Few, if any, individuals involved these incidents have been prosecuted. Not surprisingly, these two episodes helped to radicalize a small but significant minority of Indian Muslims.

The Indian government has failed to devise a set of policies to address these social roots of Islamist zealotry. In addition, many of India’s state-level police forces have not mustered the requisite intelligence, forensic and prosecutorial tools necessary to suppress the resulting violence. Instead they have resorted to the random arrests of young Muslims, employed tainted evidence, and abused draconian anti-terrorist laws. Such actions have only worsened the situation, making it easier for foreign militants to recruit domestic sympathizers inside India.

What are the Mumbai attacks’ implications for South Asian security? The Manmohan Singh government has sought to avoid confrontation with Pakistan in the wake of several recent terror attacks with potential Pakistani links. Instead, it has preferred to maintain regional stability in hopes of achieving continued economic growth. The Mumbai attacks, however, undercut this rationale for restraint; by attacking international targets in India’s financial hub, they threaten to inflict significant harm on the Indian economy. Also, considerable domestic political pressure for strong anti-Pakistani action is likely to emerge, both from the opposition Bharatia Janata Party (BJP), which has long accused the government of being soft of Pakistan, and from ordinary voters outraged by the attacks.

In 2001, a failed assault on the Indian parliament by Pakistan-backed militants managed to kill only five people and was over in the space of a morning. In response, India mobilized roughly 500,000 forces along the Indo-Pakistani border, triggering a major militarized crisis with Pakistan. The Mumbai attacks killed and wounded hundreds, and lasted for nearly three days. Given the scale of the violence, as well as the economic and domestic political factors discussed above, the Indian government will be hard-pressed to avoid a reaction similar to 2001 – particularly if the evidence from Mumbai continues to point toward Pakistan. Given that both India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons, the stakes in any ensuing confrontation will be enormous. Nuclear weapons will give both sides strong incentives to behave at least somewhat cautiously, in order to prevent a crisis from escalating too far. But they will also leave less room for error, making the costs of miscalculation potentially catastrophic.

Will a serious Indo-Pakistani crisis emerge from the Mumbai attacks, or will the Indian government manage to continue its policy of restraint, even in the face of such a brazen provocation? The pieces would appear to be in place for a serious regional confrontation. But only the coming days will tell for sure.

Sumit Ganguly is the director of research at the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University, Bloomington, and an adjunct senior fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles.

Paul Kapur is an associate professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and an affiliate at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

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Towards a New Conceptualization of Democratization and Civil-Military Relations

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The purpose of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of the contemporary
importance for democracy of the relationship between elected leaders and the security
forces. It attempts to present a conceptualization and framework to help comprehend what
security forces actually do and how they interface with democratic governments. The article
aims to extend the conceptual breadth of the literature on civil–military relations beyond
control to include two further dimensions – effectiveness and efficiency. The research is
based on the authors’ experience in conducting programmes for officers and civilians throughout the world in line with at least six different roles and missions of security forces. The conceptualization draws on literature in comparative politics, organization theory, and defence economics, as well as civil–military relations, and security sector reform.

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Democratization
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Locating the Oil Wars

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Emily Meierding is a Ph.D. Candidate in the University of Chicago Department of Political Science. Her dissertation examines the role of natural resources in interstate conflict and cooperation. She is a participant in the Center for International Studies' Project on Environmental Conflict at the University of Chicago.

James Fearon is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, a professor of political science and CISAC affiliated faculty member at Stanford University. His research interests include civil and interstate war, ethnic conflict, the international spread of democracy and the evaluation of foreign aid projects promoting improved governance. He is presently working on a book manuscript (with David Laitin) on civil war since 1945. Recent publications include "Iraq's Civil War" (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2007), "Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States" (International Security, Spring 2004), and "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," (APSR, February 2003). Fearon won the 1999 Karl Deutsch Award, which is "presented annually to a scholar under the age of forty, or within ten years of the acquisition of his or her Doctoral Degree, who is judged to have made, through a body publications, the most significant contribution to the study of International Relations and Peace Research." He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences in 2002.

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Emily Meierding PhD Candidate, Political Science, University of Chicago Speaker

James D. Fearon

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-1314
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences
Professor of Political Science
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James Fearon is the Theodore and Frances Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a professor of political science. He is a Senior Fellow at FSI, affiliated with CISAC and CDDRL. His research interests include civil and interstate war, ethnic conflict, the international spread of democracy and the evaluation of foreign aid projects promoting improved governance. Fearon was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002. Some of his current research projects include work on the costs of collective and interpersonal violence, democratization and conflict in Myanmar, nuclear weapons and U.S. foreign policy, and the long-run persistence of armed conflict.

Affiliated faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
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Conflict Resolution

Presidential Leadership, Illness, and Decision Making

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Rose McDermott is a Professor of Political Science at Brown University.  She is currently a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.  She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and an M.A. in Experimental Social Psychology, both from Stanford University. She held a National Institute on Drug Abuse Post Doctoral Fellowship in Substance Abuse Treatment Outcome Research at the San Francisco VA through the University of San Francisco Psychiatry Department.  Professor McDermott has also held fellowships at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and the Women and Public Policy Program, both at Harvard University. Professor McDermott's main area of research concerns political psychology in international relations. She is the author of Risk Taking in International Relations: Prospect Theory in American Foreign Policy (University of Michigan Press, 1998), Political Psychology in International Relations (University of Michigan Press, 2004), and Presidential Illness, Leadership and Decision Making (Cambridge University Press, 2007). She is co-editor of Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Science Research, with Rawi Abdelal, Yoshiko Herrera, and Alastair Iain Johnson (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

She has written numerous articles and book chapters on experimentation, the impact of emotion on decision making, social identity, and evolutionary and neuroscientific models of political science.  She is currently involved in a series of projects investigating the endogenous sources of aggression, and a book project on pandemic disease.

Herbert Abrams is a professor of radiology, emeritus, at the Stanford School of Medicine and a member-in-residence at CISAC, where he directs the Project on Disabled Leadership. He was Professor and Director of Diagnostic Radiology at Stanford from 1960 to 1967, and was then appointed and served as Philip H. Cook Professor and Chairman of Radiology at Harvard University from 1967 to 1985. He returned to Stanford in 1985 as Professor of Radiology in order to spend most of his time in research in CISAC. Dr. Abrams' present focus is on presidential disability and its potential impact on decision making.

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Rose McDermott Visiting Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University; Professor of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara Speaker
Herbert Abrams Professor of Radiology, Emeritus and CISAC Member-in-Residence Commentator
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Barack Obama's missile defense challenge

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Pavel Podvig
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A new administration means a new opportunity to forge a U.S.-Russian missile defense cooperative in Europe. Getting there won't be easy, but it's not impossible.

What a difference eight years makes. Following the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered a new disarmament initiative that called for reducing U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,500 warheads apiece. Although that statement was basically ignored--at the time, Washington was embroiled in the recount saga--Putin's proposal remained the official Russian position on disarmament in subsequent years.

Fast-forward to this recent president election. Instead of calling for reductions in nuclear weapons in the aftermath of Barack Obama's victory, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened to move short-range ballistic missiles to the Kaliningrad region if Obama proceeds with installing missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Thus, he quickly presented Obama with his first major foreign policy test--how to handle the issue of missile defense in Europe, the biggest irritant in U.S.-Russian relations. He also seemed determined to demonstrate that Russia is going to be a difficult and capricious partner for the new U.S. administration.

So far, the Obama team has shown great care in dealing with the thorny issue of missile defense in Europe. During the campaign, they deliberately avoided making any critical statements on the European system to avoid alienating Polish voters in battleground states such as Pennsylvania. And now that the election is over, we're hearing that they're telling the eager Polish government that their general position on missile defense--it should be deployed only "when the technology is proved to be workable"--applies to the European part of the system as well. This isn't good news for missile defense in Europe, since its technology is "workable" only in a narrow sense, if at all.

Of course, this story is far from over. If the Obama administration decides not to deploy interceptors and radar in Europe, it opens itself to a charge of yielding to Russian pressure--especially from Republicans, for whom missile defense is a signature issue. The plan to deploy missile defense in Europe also has supporters in Poland and the Czech Republic; both governments seem to believe that the presence of U.S. personnel on their soil would provide them a security guarantee far stronger than NATO membership. Finally, Russia isn't exactly interested in seeing the issue disappear: The system presents no threat whatsoever, but the controversy allows the Kremlin to score lots of rhetorical points.

Finding a solution that calms the waters and satisfies everyone won't be easy. But it's not impossible either. One thing the new administration must avoid is getting into a discussion with Russia about whether Washington has the right to deploy its military facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic, or whether Russia should have the right to veto such a decision. While a legitimate discussion, we know that it's not going to get us anywhere.

Therefore, we need to take the dispute in a different direction. Instead of arguing about the terms and conditions of missile defense deployment, Washington should accept Moscow's standing offer to use its early warning radars in Armavir and Gabala to build elements of a joint monitoring system. The offer still seems to be on the table, although Russia has been far less enthusiastic about it since the United States made clear that this joint system wouldn't replace the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The problem with those sites might seem serious, but it can be solved. A year ago, Washington considered delaying the actual deployment of the interceptors until the ballistic missile threat from Iran (or maybe some other country) becomes evident. Moscow seemed interested, but the United States withdrew the offer. It certainly could be revived now. And I believe such a compromise would satisfy missile defense supporters and skeptics alike and also buy the necessary time to make the issue less sensitive politically. History shows us that once controversy dissipates, legitimate questions can be asked about effectiveness and cost--and on these counts, the current U.S. plan for missile defense in Europe fails in any sober, independent assessment.

What would remain then is a joint U.S.-Russian project in which both countries would work together to monitor missile tests and satellite launches. It's hard to think of a better legacy of the current missile defense dispute.

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