Jacqueline L. Hazelton is the executive editor of the journal International Security. She was previously an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College and an associate of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School. Hazelton's research ranges from grand strategy, great power military intervention, and U.S. foreign and military policy to counterinsurgency, terrorism, and the uses of military power. She recently published Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare and is working on a manuscript about great powers, liberal values, and military intervention.
Prior to her faculty appointment at the Naval War College, Hazelton was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Rochester and a research fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program. Earlier experience included a stint as an international journalist with the Associated Press where she analyzed and reported on world events from Tokyo to Kabul and covered U.S. news as well. She received M.A.’s in English Literature and in International Relations from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. from Brandeis University's Department of Politics.
Just days before the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Bulletin hosted a global webinar featuring Scott Sagan, Bulletin SASB member and Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University; Allen Weiner, director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law; led by Sara Kutchesfahani, director of N Square DC Hub.
The Bulletin hosted a global webinar featuring Scott Sagan, Bulletin SASB member and Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University; Allen Weiner, director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law; led by Sara Kutchesfahani, director of N Square DC Hub.
Seventy-five years ago this month, the United States used the most powerful weapons developed until that time to attack the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Because the atomic bombings caused such extraordinary damage amid an already-disrupted wartime Japan, the number of people who died as a direct result of the attack can’t be pinpointed. Initial US military estimates placed the immediate death toll at 70,000 in Hiroshima and 40,000 in Nagasaki. Later independent estimates suggest that 140,000 people died in Hiroshima and 70,000 were killed in Nagasaki.
The Science and Security Board calls on all countries to reject the fantasy that nuclear weapons can provide a permanent basis for global security and to refrain from pursuing new nuclear weapons capabilities that fuel nuclear arms races.
Debak Das, Scott Sagan and Rupal Mehta discuss Mehta's new book, Delaying Doomsday: The Politics of Nuclear Rerversal, with James Goldgeier, Co-Director of Bridging the Gap.
Dr. David Relman, infectious diseases expert and microbiologist at Stanford Medicine, discusses the Oxford vaccine candidate and just how deadly COVID-19 can be.
US presidents tend to set maximalist objectives without necessarily providing the resourcing or laying the necessary diplomatic foundations to achieve such goals.
* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone
Livestream: Please click here to join the livestream webinar via Zoom or log-in with webinar ID 913 4480 9317.
About the Event: How do states build lasting international order? Existing explanations of order formation argue that leading states are incentivized to create binding institutions with robust rules and strong enforcement mechanisms. The stability resulting from such institutionalized orders, scholars argue, allows leading states to geopolitically punch above their weight after they have declined in power. I argue, however, that such explanations overlook the trade-off between stability and flexibility, that leading states are faced with. Flexibility calls for short-term agreements that can be renegotiated when the strategic situation changes. And it allows the leading state to take advantage of relative power increases.Whereas states face significant incentives to err on the side of stability if they predict irreversible decline in power, states face incentives to err on the side of flexibility if they predict relative rise in power.
About the Speaker: Mariya Grinberg is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago in 2019. Her primary research examines why states trade with their enemies, investigating the product level and temporal variation in wartime commercial policies of states vis-a-vis enemy belligerents. Her broader research interests include international relations theory focusing on order formation and questions of state sovereignty. Prior to coming to CISAC, she was a predoctoral fellow at the Belfer Center’s International Security Program. She holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago's Committee on International Relations and a B.A. from the University of Southern California.
On Wednesday night, U.S.-led coalition forces based out of Camp Taji north of Baghdad came under intense rocket fire. The attack killed three coalition personnel, two American and one British. It also injured nearly a dozen more personnel.
While rocket fire on U.S. military bases in Iraq is not new, this attack is the first time U.S. personnel have been killed by suspected Iranian-backed Iraqi groups since the United States killed Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani in early January. The attack is likely to anger the Trump administration, which has pursued an aggressive strategy against Iran. It also catches the White House in the middle of another ballooning international crisis — the coronavirus pandemic.
Why did this attack happen now? And will this incident spark more hostilities in the Middle East?
About this Event: Russia has employed the semi-state Wagner Group security company in Ukraine, Syria, the Central African Republic, Libya, Mozambique, and Mali (so far). Wagner is tightly connected to Russia's military intelligence organization (the GRU), and partially funded by one of Vladimir Putin's cronies, Evgeny Prigozhin, who also uses it for private duties. So why is Wagner technically illegal (and even unconstitutional) in Russia? Its use is less costly in budgetary and political terms than using the uniformed military, and it provides (limited) plausible deniability for Russian actions. But it is also unclear what Russia wants from impoverished sub-Saharan Africa. Using the best available evidence, this presentation explores these mysteries.
About the Speaker: Kimberly Marten is a professor of political science (and the department chair) at Barnard College, Columbia University, and a faculty member of Columbia’s Harriman Institute and Saltzman Institute. She has written four books, including Warlords: Strong-Arm Brokers in Weak States (Cornell, 2012), and Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation (Princeton, 1993) which received the Marshall Shulman Prize. The Council on Foreign Relations (where she is a member) published her special report, Reducing Tensions between Russia and NATO (2017). She is a frequent media commentator, and appeared on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart. She earned her A.B. at Harvard and Ph.D. at Stanford, and was a CISAC post-doc.
Virtual Seminar
Kimberly Marten
Professor of Political Science (and the department chair) at Barnard College, Columbia University
Barnard College, Columbia University
Seminars
Russian Power and Purpose in the 21st Century Seminars
Following the death of Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, five international affairs experts from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) gathered to discuss Soleimani’s prominence in Iran, the potential consequences of Soleimani’s death on the surrounding Gulf states and U.S.-Iran relations, and the rising presence of Russia and China in the region.
Several hundred people packed Encina Hall for the panel discussion, “The Strike on Soleimani: Implications for Iran, the Middle East & the World,” which was moderated by FSI Director Michael McFaul.
Soleimani was a unique figure in Iranian society, said panelist Abbas Milani, who is the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford. Soleimani had perhaps a closer relationship with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini than anyone, and his assassination was a major event that transformed the country for several days.
“Iranian television and radio were constantly talking about him, and they described him as a pious soldier, and a national hero,” Milani said. “For the first time in maybe 15 years, Iran played an iconic secular song, which to most Iranians is the equivalent of ‘La Marsailles.’ Hundreds of thousands of people turned out [for Soleimani’s funeral] — it was a huge demonstration of support.”
Soleimani was portrayed by the American media in a much different way, said Colin Kahl, the co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). The description of Soleimani by some U.S. news organizations as a “terrorist mastermind” is accurate to a certain degree, Kahl said, but it doesn’t fully describe his role in Iran.
“His title doesn’t really have an equivalent in the U.S., but you can think of him as a mashup between the director of the CIA, the Secretary of Defense, and the shadow Secretary of State all rolled up into one,” Kahl said. “You can imagine how escalatory it would be in our view if an American secretary of defense was killed on foreign soil by another state.”
The effects of the strike on Soleimani are reverberating throughout the Middle East, said Lisa Blaydes, who is a professor of political science at Stanford and a senior fellow at FSI. Iraqis are very unhappy about Iranian intervention in their country and about U.S. intervention in Iran, she said.
“A national poll conducted in Iraq last year found that most Iraqis want to open up their country more to the international economy — and guess which country they are interested in having intervene to a greater extent?” Blaydes asked. “It’s not Iran, it’s not the U.S. — it’s China.”
Brett McGurk, the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at FSI and CISAC, discussed changes to the United States’ national security strategy, which outlines the major national security concerns of the United States and how the administration plans to deal with them. The strategy that was released in 2017 — when he was still working for the government — was a major shift from what it had been in previous years, he said.
“It said that we were actually going to reduce our commitments in the Middle East — that we’ve been too invested in the Middle East,” McGurk said. “It said that we were going to shift to a great power competition, which meant we were going to shift our resource focus, our diplomatic focus, and our prioritization to Asia, China, and Russia. A few months later, President Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal and announced an uber-maximalist Iran policy.”
Meanwhile, other countries are beginning to expand their influence in the Middle East, Milani said. He told the audience that the degree of influence that China and Russia have in the region has never been as great as it is today.
“In 200 years, Russia never had a naval base in the Persian Gulf — but they’re about to get one,” Milani said. “Never in history has China, Russia, and Iran had joint naval operations in the Persian Gulf — but they just had one about three weeks ago. I can tell you with absolute certainty that China and Russia have never been as strong in the Persian Gulf as they are now.”
Panelists Colin Kahl, Abbas Milani, Lisa Blaydes and Brett McGurk shared their perspectives on what the future of U.S.-Iran relations may entail with moderator Michael McFaul (far left) at the Freeman Spogli Institute on January 10, 2020. Photo: Ari Chasnoff
All News button
1
Subtitle
Five scholars from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) discuss the potential consequences of Qassem Soleimani's death on the surrounding Gulf states and U.S.-Iran relations, and the rising presence of Russia and China in the region.
