Stanford University

When COVID-19 Delays a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Conference, Is There a Silver Lining?

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Rose Gottemoeller
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Rose Gottemoeller is the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Center for Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, and was formerly the Deputy Secretary General of NATO

On March 24, the United Nations let it be known that the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference is “likely to be postponed” because of the coronavirus pandemic. The NPT RevCon, as it’s known, was due to take place April 27 to May 22 at the UN Headquarters in New York. The gathering is an opportunity once every five years to reconfirm the basic bargain at its heart: The five nuclear weapon states under the Treaty, the U.S., UK, France, China and Russia, agree to reduce nuclear weapons and move toward their ultimate elimination, and the non-nuclear weapon states agree not to acquire nuclear weapons.  That is practically everyone else, because only India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea stand outside the NPT.  2020 is an especially important year for the Treaty, its fiftieth anniversary of sustaining this important bargain.

A postponement is inevitable.  It would not be feasible to meet in person in New York at this time, with thousands of national delegates joined by large contingents from the non-governmental community, supporting arms control and nonproliferation efforts.  Delay may even have a silver lining in that it could allow some groups, such as the nuclear weapon states, to continue working together to launch some new initiatives to bolster nuclear disarmament. 

It may also be dangerous, however.  North Korea has already been testing short-range missiles off its coastline, at the same time claiming that it is impervious to coronavirus.  As the world’s attention is riveted by the pandemic, Pyongyang may feel the temptation to make rapid progress on some aspect of its nuclear weapon program, restarting fissile material production or even conducting a nuclear test. 

The NPT community normally keeps all eyes on North Korea, and never is that behavior more in evident than during the RevCon, because of the peculiar conundrum that the country poses to the NPT system.  North Korea sought to withdraw from the NPT in 1994, notifying under the procedures of the Treaty its intention to do so.  However, the NPT community never accepted that withdrawal notification, and diplomatic efforts ever since have been focused on getting the DPRK to give up its nuclear weapons program and rejoin the NPT family.  Because of this limbo status, there is a placeholder for North Korea at every RevCon table, and an enormous amount of discussion of withdrawal policy under the Treaty. 

Iran comes to mind as another possible mischief-maker, although Iran is so immersed in fighting the coronavirus that its resources for new work on its nuclear program are likely to be limited.  In this case, perhaps the postponement could have a positive effect, for unlike North Korea, Iran has never attempted to withdraw from the Treaty.  It is clearly still a part of the NPT family.  Countries who are helping Iran to cope with disease could also use this time as an opportunity to encourage its renewed cooperation with the NPT and its nuclear nonproliferation objectives.  

Thus, although postponement of the NPT Review Conference is inevitable, the nuclear policy community needs to keep a sharp eye out during the pause, to ensure that nuclear mischief does not ensue, whether from North Korea or from other countries.  At the same time, we should look for opportunities for extra progress, whether among the nuclear weapons states, or with states who have posed proliferation concerns inside the NPT family.

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‘Just Say No’ Is Not a Strategy for Supply Chain Security

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Herbert Lin
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On Feb. 12, White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien announced that the U.S. government has “evidence that Huawei has the capability secretly to access sensitive and personal information in systems it maintains and sells around the world.” This represents the latest attempt by the Trump administration to support an argument that allied governments—and the businesses they oversee—should purge certain telecommunications networks of Huawei equipment. The position reflects the preferred approach in the United States, which is to issue outright bans against select companies (including Huawei) that meet an as-yet-unknown threshold of risk to national security.

 

Read the rest at Lawfare Blog

 

 

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As US-Russian Arms Control Faces Expiration, Sides Face Tough Choices

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Steven Pifer
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The Trump administration’s proposal for trilateral arms control negotiations appears to be gaining little traction in Moscow and Beijing, and the era of traditional nuclear arms control may be coming to an end just as new challenges emerge. This is not to say that arms control should be an end in it itself. It provides a tool that, along with the right combination of deterrence and defense forces and proper doctrine, can enhance U.S. and allied security and promote stability.

Applying that tool will require overcoming a variety of challenges, not just regarding nuclear weapons but related issues, such as missile defense and conventional strike systems. Policymakers face some hard choices.

NUCLEAR ARMS

In August 2019, the United States withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty following Russia’s violation. (More broadly, Moscow’s selective compliance with arms control agreements poses a problem.) The 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) remains as the sole agreement constraining U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons. New START expires in February 2021, but can be extended for up to five years.

For the United States, New START extension should be a no-brainer. Russia is in compliance with the treaty. Extension would continue limits on Russian strategic forces, as well as the flow of information on those forces provided by the treaty’s verification measures, until 2026. Extension would not require that the Pentagon change its strategic modernization plans, as those plans were designed to fit within New START’s limits.

Moscow has offered to extend New START, but the Trump administration has been reluctant. In 2017, U.S. officials said that, before considering the extension issue, they wanted to: 1) see if Russia met the New START limits, which took full effect in February 2018, and 2) complete the nuclear posture review, which was released the same month. Two years later, however, the administration still lacks a position on extension.

Instead, President Trump has set an unachievable objective — a trilateral negotiation with China and Russia covering all their nuclear arms. As I recently wrote in more detail, Chinese officials have repeatedly said no to such a negotiation, citing the large difference in nuclear weapons levels. The Trump administration thus far has offered nothing to entice Beijing to change its position.

Moreover, almost a year after the president set his goal, his administration has yet to offer a proposal — or even an outline — for what such a negotiation would seek to achieve. Neither Washington nor Moscow is ready to agree to have the same number of nuclear weapons as China, but it is unrealistic to think that Beijing would accept unequal limits.

Setting aside China, Russia is not ready to discuss all nuclear arms unless certain conditions are met (more on that below). The Obama administration sought a new negotiation after New START’s conclusion with the goal of including all U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons. That idea never gained traction in Moscow.

If New START expires in 2021, the United States and Russia likely would not launch major new build-ups, as both face real defense budget constraints. But their deployed strategic warhead levels could “creep up” above the number allowed by New START if the sides add warheads to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and/or submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) that currently carry fewer warheads than their capacity. With the demise of New START’s verification regime, the sides would have little visibility into the other’s actions regarding adding warheads or total warhead numbers.

Some appear to believe that holding back on agreeing to the extension of New START and/or starting from scratch in a new negotiation might increase U.S. leverage to include all nuclear arms, including non-strategic nuclear weapons. That does not appear to be the case. It is more likely that the end of New START’s constraints on deployed strategic weapons would make bringing non-strategic or non-deployed nuclear weapons under control more difficult.

MISSILE DEFENSE

Russian conditions for discussing a broader agreement focus first on missile defense. Differences over missile defense pose a challenge for arms control.

Current U.S. missile defenses hardly constitute a threat to Russian ICBM and SLBM warhead numbers. Moscow, however, has long seemed to fear the potential of U.S. technology and prospective missile defenses. The United States and Russia came close in spring 2011 to an arrangement on a cooperative missile defense for Europe, but they failed to reach agreement, after which the Russian position on limiting missile defenses hardened. Moscow showed no interest in a 2013 U.S. proposal for an executive agreement on missile defense transparency, under which the sides would have exchanged information each year on their current missile defense numbers and prospective numbers looking out each year for 10 years.

Moscow appears to want legally-binding limits on missile defenses. However, the Trump administration’s 2019 missile defense posture review stressed that there should be no negotiated limits on missile defense. Missile defense has a strong constituency in the U.S. Senate, impeding the chance that a treaty limiting missile defenses would get the necessary two-thirds approval.

The missile defense issue will become more complex in coming years. As part of its ground-based mid-course defense, the U.S. military maintains 44 ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California capable of intercepting strategic ballistic missile warheads, with another 20 interceptors planned. In a separate program, the Pentagon is now developing a new variant of the SM-3 missile interceptor. Whereas current variants (the SM-3 IA and SM-3 IB) can engage intermediate-range ballistic missile warheads, the Pentagon intends to test the new SM-3 IIA variant against an ICBM warhead.

If the SM-3 IIA proves capable of intercepting strategic ballistic missile warheads, that will raise concern in Moscow (and Beijing) about the proliferation of those interceptors on U.S. warships, at Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland, and elsewhere. Russia’s interest in limits on missile defenses would only intensify as would Moscow’s linkage of future nuclear arms reduction negotiations to a negotiation on missile defense.

LONG-RANGE PRECISION-GUIDED CONVENTIONAL STRIKE

Sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs) and air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) carrying conventional warheads have never been constrained by arms control agreements. As their precision has increased, Russian officials and experts have expressed concern that they could destroy targets that previously would have required a nuclear weapon and that the United States might consider a “conventional strategic” attack on Russia. It is unclear how realistic this concern is; would, for example, a conventionally-armed U.S. SLCM warhead be powerful enough to disable a hardened Russian ICBM silo?

Russian officials in 2011 began linking long-range precision-guided conventional strike systems to the issue of further nuclear arms cuts. The Pentagon has shown little enthusiasm for limits on these conventional systems, which are a key component of U.S. power projection capabilities. Russia may be starting to catch up, having demonstrated conventionally-armed ALCMs and SLCMs in Syria, but the U.S. military holds a significant numerical advantage.

As with missile defense, the situation with conventional strike may become even more complex. With the demise of the INF Treaty, the Pentagon is now developing or planning several conventionally-armed ground-launched missiles that would have been prohibited by the treaty. Two missiles — the Precision Strike Missile with a possible range of 700 kilometers and a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 1,000 kilometers — almost certainly are being developed with European contingencies in mind. The Pentagon’s planned ballistic missile with a range of 3,000-4,000 kilometers is intended for the Asia-Pacific region, primarily as a counter to the large number of Chinese intermediate-range missiles (most of which are believed to be conventionally-armed).

Developing and deploying these U.S. missiles — along with Russia’s continued deployment of the 9M729 intermediate-range ground-launched cruise missile plus other missiles that Russia may develop and deploy as “counters” to new U.S. missiles — would further complicate the long-range precision-guide conventional strike picture. That, if in turn linked to nuclear arms control, would impede negotiation of a new agreement reducing and limiting nuclear weapons.

HYPERSONIC, CYBER, AND SPACE

Hypersonic weapons pose another complex factor for arms controllers. Both the United States and Russia (as well as China) are developing hypersonic weapons, including hypersonic glide vehicles to mount on ballistic missiles and hypersonic cruise missiles. Russia has deployed a small number of Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles atop ICBMs to enhance their ability to overcome U.S. missile defenses. Those fall under New START’s limits, but future hypersonic weapons, such as Russia’s Kinzhal air-launched ballistic missile, do not.

A negotiation to limit nuclear arms or long-range precision-guided conventional strike systems would have to take account of hypersonic weapons. That could be difficult, as the United States, Russia, and China appear to be focusing on different types of hypersonic systems.

Cyber and space domains can also have important effects on the nuclear arms relationship. Cyber raises concern about the possibility that a side’s nuclear command, control, and communication systems might be compromised in ways that would allow an intruder either to disrupt communications, including an authorized launch order, or to spoof the system with an unauthorized instruction. The cyber domain does not lend itself readily to traditional arms control-type arrangements.

As for space, Moscow has long advanced proposals to ban the weaponization or militarization of space. Washington has resisted those proposals, in part out of concern that they might affect the ability of the U.S. military to operate space-based assets for command and control, early warning, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance purposes. It is unclear whether more limited proposals, such as a ban on anti-satellite tests that generate orbital debris or a ban on deploying strike weapons in space, might be negotiable.

DIFFICULT TRADE-OFFS

Traditional nuclear arms control is in trouble. If the United States and Russia — and perhaps other countries in the future — wish to continue to use it as a tool to promote a more stable, secure, and transparent nuclear relationship, they will have to deal with challenges that did not arise or that they could agree to set aside during past negotiations.

Washington faces a fundamental choice: Is it prepared to countenance some constraints on missile defense and possibly long-range precision-guided conventional strike systems in order to get Russia to agree to further reduce and limit nuclear arms, including non-strategic nuclear weapons? Moscow faces something of the reverse choice: Will it hold to its insistence on limiting missile defenses and conventional strike systems even if that blocks a future nuclear arms agreement with the United States?

There remains the question of China, and Russia almost certainly would seek to include Britain and France. Would those third countries be willing to consider an approach other than a full negotiation with the United States and Russia, perhaps by offering a degree of transparency regarding their nuclear forces and committing unilaterally not to increase their nuclear weapons numbers so long as U.S. and Russian nuclear forces were reducing?

It would make sense for U.S. and Russian officials to conduct regular, intense bilateral strategic stability talks on the full range of issues — nuclear arms, missile defense, conventional strike systems, hypersonic weapons, third-country nuclear forces, cyber, and space — and their various interactions. Such discussions, if they go beyond mere recital of talking points, might allay some concerns the sides hold about the other while helping U.S. and Russian officials to decide whether specific negotiations might make sense.

None of these questions will be easy, and sorting them out will take time. That bolsters the already strong argument for extending New START. Doing so would give Washington and Moscow five more years to figure out what role, if any, arms control should play in managing their nuclear relationship with one another and, perhaps, with third countries.

 

Originally for Brookings

 

 

 

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Is This the End of the Open Skies Treaty?

Authors
Steven Pifer
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Senior Trump administration officials reportedly will meet the week of March 9 to decide on withdrawing from the 1992 Open Skies Treaty. Doing so would constitute another mistake by an administration that increasingly seems set against arms control.

Originally proposed by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1955—but rejected by the Soviet Union—the Open Skies idea was revived by President George H. W. Bush in 1989 as a confidence-building measure to promote greater transparency regarding military installations, forces and activities. The Open Skies Treaty permits state parties to conduct unarmed observation flights over other state parties. It entered into force in 2002 and currently has thirty-four state parties—the United States, Canada, Russia, Kazakhstan and thirty other countries in Europe. All total, they have conducted more than fifteen hundred observation overflights.

For each state party or group of state parties, the treaty specifies an active quota, the number of observation overflights it may conduct per year, and a passive quota, the number of overflights it must accept. Observation aircraft can carry video and still cameras, infrared line scanners and synthetic aperture radars, though the capabilities of the equipment (e.g., resolution) are limited. When an Open Skies aircraft conducts an overflight, officials of the observed state party get to inspect the aircraft to ensure that it is carrying only permitted equipment and fly onboard.

Criticism of Open Skies

In October 2019, President Donald Trump reportedly signed a memorandum regarding his intention to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty. The following month, U.S. officials briefed NATO on U.S. concerns and warned that the United States would probably leave the treaty. Treaty critics seem to have three principal concerns.

First, critics note that Russia has violated the treaty. Moscow restricts the distance that observation flights can fly over the exclave of Kaliningrad and bars flights along the Russian border with the Georgian-breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The treaty limits flights near borders with non-state parties and the Russians argue that South Ossetia and Abkhazia are independent nations, a position few other countries recognize.

In response to the Russian violation, the United States has imposed roughly reciprocal limitations on Russian flights over U.S. territory, restricting, for example, overflights of Hawaii. Russia has violated the treaty, but Washington has responded proportionately within the treaty.

Second, opponents of the Open Skies Treaty argue that, over the past thirty years, commercial satellites have developed capabilities, such as camera resolution, similar to or better than the equipment carried on Open Skies aircraft. They assert that makes observation flights unnecessary and redundant.

Aircraft, however, are more flexible than satellites, which fly in fixed orbits. Moreover, aircraft can fly below cloud cover that can obscure photography taken from space.

Third, critics express concern that the Russians use observation flights to gather information on U.S. infrastructure as well as military facilities and activities. But how much of a threat is this? Critics seem to ignore the fact that, much like the United States, Russia operates imagery satellites whose capabilities are equal to or better than those permitted on Open Skies aircraft.

Advantages of Open Skies

U.S. withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty would mean forgoing a number of advantages. First, Open Skies imagery and other data can be used in ways that U.S. satellite imagery, which is highly classified, cannot. U.S. officials explained publicly only in November 2018 the basis for their 2014 assessment that Russia had violated the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty by testing a prohibited cruise missile. Satellite imagery almost certainly figured in that assessment, but that imagery remains closely held because the U.S. government wants to protect the capabilities of its satellites. Open Skies data, on the other hand, could readily be used to demonstrate a violation of an agreement or some threatening military activity.

Second, the United States conducts far more overflights of Russia and Belarus (the two are paired as a group of state parties) than vice-versa. According to the Department of State, during the first fifteen years of the treaty’s operation, the United States made 196 observation flights over Russia and Belarus while Russia/Belarus made just seventy-one flights over U.S. territory. Moreover, U.S. allies conducted five hundred other flights over Russia and Belarus.

Third, few countries possess the sophisticated space-based reconnaissance capabilities that the United States and Russia have. The treaty allows other states parties to conduct overflights and directly gather confidence-building data. U.S. allies value Open Skies; a number, including Germany, France and Britain, have urged Washington to remain within the treaty.

Fourth, Open Skies can provide a particularly useful tool in times or regions of crisis. Russian and Russian proxy forces have been in conflict with Ukrainian forces in the Donbas region since spring 2014. The United States has targeted observation flights—sometimes in cooperation with Ukraine—at Donbas and Russian territory bordering Donbas. These overflights not only gather data but send a signal of U.S. political support to Ukraine.

U.S. Withdrawal?

Should Trump unwisely decide to withdraw from the treaty, it could mean the treaty’s end. With Russia no longer having the possibility of flights over the United States, it might also withdraw. That would likely provide the death knell for the treaty; with just NATO members and a few neutral states remaining in the agreement, what would be the point? Alternatively, Moscow could choose to remain in the treaty, which would highlight the U.S. absence (and allow Russian overflights to continue over American military facilities and activities in Europe).

In either case, political blame would fall on the United States. Given allied support for continuing the treaty, a U.S. withdrawal would be seen in Europe as one more instance where Washington ignored the views of its NATO partners.

Withdrawal would constitute yet another blow to arms control inflicted by the Trump administration. It left the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran. It refused to seek ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (even though it seems to see no reason for nuclear testing). It eschewed political and military steps that would have increased pressure on Russia to return to compliance with the INF Treaty. It so far refuses Moscow’s offer to extend the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in eleven months.

Trump over the past year has said that he wants to go big on arms control and negotiate an agreement with Russia and China covering all types of nuclear arms, but his administration has yet to offer a proposal or even an outline for doing so. A decision to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty would provide the latest evidence that he sees little point in arms control.

Steven Pifer is a William Perry Research Fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. 

 

Originally for The National Interest

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Uncertainty, Risk, and Responsibility: Lessons from Three Technologies

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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/wKXawdBrCEs

 

About this Event: Are we still in the Nuclear Age? Is this the Age of AI? Are we entering the Age of Synthetic Biology? Technologies such as nuclear power, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology are “epochal,” as in epoch-making: They redefine the world in which we live, introducing new uncertainties and risks, as well as new responsibilities—but for whom? World-changing technologies are inextricably political entities, affecting distribution of power and resources throughout and between societies. However, despite decades of academic and practical experience with the political dimensions of technology, contemporary societies appear to be inadequately prepared to cope skillfully with the new worlds that their scientists and technologists are creating. Why? What lessons can be learned from existing epochal technologies that might help societies understand, evaluate, and direct their technical potentials and trajectories into the future? Within the context of growing concern about national security threats that may emerge from germline genetic engineering, Greene will consider the cultivation of a “culture of responsibility” in synthetic biology labs. Polleri will examine a set of public controversies surrounding the role of nuclear power and the threat of radioactive contamination in a post-Fukushima Japan. Garvey will map out the risk landscape surrounding AI systems and discuss strategic approaches to coping with uncertainty and disagreement in protecting against catastrophic technological risk.

 

About the Speakers:

Colin Garvey is a Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. He studies the history and political economy of artificial intelligence (AI), among other things, with a comparative focus on Japan. He is currently a PhD Candidate and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Fellow in the Science and Technology Studies Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). His dissertation “Averting AI Catastrophe, Together: On the Democratic Governance of Epochal Technologies,” challenges utopian/dystopian thinking about AI by explaining how more democratic governance of the technology is not only necessary to avert catastrophe, but also to steer AI R&D more safely, fairly, and wisely. He won Best Early Career Paper at the 2017 meeting of the Society for the History of Technology for “Broken Promises & Empty Threats: The Evolution of AI in America, 1956-1996.” His research article on the history and political economy of Japanese AI, “An Alternative to Neoliberal Modernity: The ‘Threat’ of the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project,” will be published in a forthcoming special issue of Pacific Historical Review. His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). In addition to an MS in STS from RPI, Colin double-majored in Japanese and Media Studies at Vassar College. Before starting graduate school, Colin spent several years teaching in Japan, where he became a Zen Buddhist monk. Colin is fluent in Japanese and freelances as a translator of Japanese books and scientific articles.

 

Daniel Greene is a Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC, where he works with Dr. Megan Palmer on strategies for risk governance in biotechnology. He uses computational social science methods to identify factors that influence the decisions of biology labs to engage in potentially risky research. Daniel completed a PhD at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, where he worked with Prof. Carol Dweck to develop and test social-psychological interventions to improve student motivation at scale. His dissertation identified and influenced novel psychological constructs for motivating unemployed and underemployed adults to pursue job-skill training. Outside of academia, Daniel worked for five years as a data scientist and product developer at the Project for Education Research That Scales, a nonprofit that develops resources and infrastructure for disseminating best practices from education research. He also holds a BA in Cognitive Science (Honors) from Rutgers University. Daniel's work has been supported by the Open Philanthropy Project, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Gates Foundation, the Stanford Digital Learning Forum, and an Amir Lopatin Fellowship.

 

Dr. Maxime Polleri is a MacArthur Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. As an anthropologist of science and technology, his work examines the governance of risk in the aftermath of technological disasters implying environmental contamination. His current research focuses on Japanese public and state responses to the release of radioactive contamination after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. He has published articles and op-ed in Social Studies of Science, American Ethnologist, Anthropology Today, Anthropology Now, Medical Anthropology Quarterly Second Spear, Somatosphere, Bulleting  of the Atomic Scientists, and The Diplomat. 

Virtual Seminar

Colin Garvey, Daniel Greene, & Maxime Polleri
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Research Seminar Series

US-Ukraine Relations: Strengths and Weaknesses of US Policy Toward Ukraine with Recommendations for Future Initiatives

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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/Se8UcB6HFNo

 

About this Event: Based on his recent experience in Kyiv, Ambassador Taylor will evaluate current US policy toward Ukraine and make recommendations for future initiatives.  He will argue that now is the time to re-engage with Ukraine to strengthen US-Ukrainian relations and boost US security.  He will address the two main threats to the Zelenskyy administration — the Kremlin and corrupt oligarchs.

 

About the Speaker:

Ambassador William B. Taylor served as the Chargé d'Affaires at the US embassy in Kyiv from June 2019 to January 2020. Previously, he served as the executive vice president at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the special coordinator for Middle East Transitions in the U.S. State Department during the Arab Spring.  He served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009.

He also served as the U.S. government’s representative to the Mideast Quartet, which facilitated the Israeli disengagement from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, led by Special Envoy James Wolfensohn in Jerusalem. Prior to this assignment, he served in Baghdad as Director, Iraq Reconstruction Management Office (2004-2005), in Kabul as coordinator of USG and international assistance to Afghanistan (2002-2003) and in Washington with the rank of ambassador as coordinator of USG assistance to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (1992-2002).

Ambassador Taylor spent five years in Brussels as the Special Deputy Defense Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, William Taft and earlier directed an in-house Defense Department think tank at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.  He served for five years on the staff of Senator Bill Bradley and earlier directed the Department of Energy’s Office of Emergency Preparedness.

In the Army, he fought in Vietnam as a rifle platoon leader and combat company commander in the 101st Airborne Division and flew reconnaissance missions along the West German border with Czechoslovakia in the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

William B. Taylor Former Chargé d'Affaires at the US embassy in Kyiv
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European Security Initiative

Navigating Foreign Policy in South Asia

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Open to Stanford affiliates only. 
Stanford identification will be checked at doors. 

 

This event is co-sponsored with Stanford’s Center for South Asia

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/Wc3mFRw9an8

 

About the Speaker:

Hina Rabbani Khar is the 26th Foreign Minister of Pakistan. Twice elected Member of Parliament. She is currently serving as Member of Parliament in the National Assembly of Pakistan. Hina Rabbani Khar’s term as Foreign Minister is best remembered for the ‘Regional Pivot’ to Pakistan’s foreign policy. As the 26th Foreign Minister of Pakistan, she concentrated on building ties with Pakistan’s immediate neighbours. A major policy shift was taken by starting the journey of normalization of trade relations with India. Similarly, with Afghanistan, Pakistan pursued a policy of reaching out to all political parties, and ethnicities. Pakistan also pursued an active role in an Afghan led and Afghan owned process of reconciliation. In a difficult time of increasing economic sanctions Pakistan pursued to cement ties with Iran. 

Hina Rabbani Khar has also served as Minister of State for Economic Affairs for 4 years and Minister of State for Finance & Economic Affairs for another 2 Years. During these years, she was the lead person in Pakistan’s economic diplomacy, both bilateral and multilateral. 

Hina Khar Foreign Minister of Pakistan
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Research Seminar Series

Iran and the Limits of Economic Statecraft: Sanctions, Energy, and the Effectiveness of Maximum Pressure

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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/yIthWPC99bI

 

About this Event: Since the United States left the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, the Trump administration has pursued a maximum economic pressure campaign toward Iran. The U.S. use of sanctions has gone far beyond what previous administrations have done to try to change Iran's policies, targeting large swathes of the Iranian economy, high-ranking Iranian government officials, and threatening other countries if they do not curtail their own private sector's activities with Iran. The economic consequences of these measures, particularly for Iran's domestic economy, Iran's ability to procure food and medicine from abroad, and for Iran's flagship energy industry, have been profoundly disruptive. The U.S. economic pressure strategy has also had direct impacts on the global shipping and energy industries. To better understand the impacts of the current U.S. strategy toward Iran, Elizabeth Rosenberg will discuss how the Trump administration has used unprecedented economic coercion, and how U.S. partners and adversaries have responded. She will focus on what role sanctions are likely to play going forward and whether they will be used now as a form of deescalation or escalation in U.S.-Iran tensions, which are particularly heightened following the U.S. killing of Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani. 

 

About the Speaker: Elizabeth Rosenberg is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Energy, Economics, and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. In this capacity, she publishes and speaks on the national security and foreign policy implications of the use of sanctions and economic statecraft as well as energy market shifts. Current geographic areas of focus include Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, and Venezuela. She has testified before Congress on an array of banking and trade issues, and on energy geopolitics and markets topics. She is widely quoted by leading media outlets in the United States and abroad.

From May 2009 through September 2013, Ms. Rosenberg served as a Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, to the Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, and then to the Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. In these senior roles, she helped to develop and implement financial and energy sanctions. Key initiatives she helped to oversee include the tightening of global sanctions on Iran, the launching of new, comprehensive sanctions against Libya and Syria and modification of Burma sanctions in step with normalization of diplomatic relations. She also helped to formulate anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist and counter-proliferation financing policy and oversee financial regulatory enforcement activities.

Prior to her service in the U.S. government Ms. Rosenberg was an energy policy correspondent at Argus Media in Washington D.C., analyzing U.S and Middle Eastern energy policy, regulation and trading. She spoke and published extensively on OPEC, strategic reserves, energy sanctions and national security policy, oil and natural gas investment and production, and renewable fuels.

Ms. Rosenberg received an MA in Near Eastern Studies from New York University and a BA in Politics and Religion from Oberlin College.

Outside CNAS, Elizabeth Rosenberg is providing exclusive advice on foreign policy and national security as an informal advisor to the Elizabeth Warren campaign.

Elizabeth Rosenberg Senior Fellow and Director of the Energy, Economics, and Security Program Center for a New American Security
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Seminars Co-Sponsored With MEI

Do Morals Matter?

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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/qanfBvhmTQM

 

About this Event: In Do Morals Matter?, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., one of the world's leading scholars of international relations, provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in US foreign policy during the post-1945 era.

Working through each presidency from Truman to Trump, Nye scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions: their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. Alongside this, he evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on which approaches work and which ones do not.

Since we so often apply moral reasoning to foreign policy, Nye suggests how to do it better. Crucially, presidents must factor in both the political context and the availability of resources when deciding how to implement an ethical policy--especially in a future international system that presents not only great power competition from China and Russia, but transnational threats as borders become porous to everything from drugs to infectious diseases to terrorism to cyber criminals and climate change.

 

About the Speaker: Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and former Dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and earned a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard. He has served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and a Deputy Under Secretary of State, and won distinguished service awards from all three agencies. His books include The Future of Power,  The Power Game: A Washington Novel, and (forthcoming) Do Morals Matter? He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the British Academy, and the American Academy of Diplomacy. In a recent survey of international relations scholars, he was ranked as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy, and in 2011, Foreign Policy named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers. In 2014, Japan awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus Harvard’s Kennedy School
Seminars
Directors' Seminar Series

Bolstering the Information War’s Weakest Front: How to Build Citizen Resilience to Disinformation and Fake News

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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/AJxhy6pf95U

 

About this Event: Rampant disinformation threatens democracy, security, and even public health worldwide. As malicious actors weaponize social media, societies worldwide are being challenged to find solutions. Technology and regulatory measures must be part of the solution but, especially in free societies, these solutions often fail to keep pace with rapidly evolving and escalating threats. Dr. Kristin Lord, President and CEO of IREX, an international non-profit organization focused on education and development, will argue that at a time when the cost of producing disinformation is effectively zero, building citizen resilience to misinformation and disinformation must also be part of the solution.

Dr. Lord will discuss concrete approaches to building citizen resilience to disinformation, and present and review data showing its impact. She will also highlight the research agenda needed to advance the field of media literacy if its interventions are to be effective. IREX’s own flagship media literacy program, “Learn to Discern” is currently operational in more than a dozen countries, including the US, and has demonstrated lasting behavior change in a rigorous evaluation. Such approaches can be an effective part of a counter-disinformation strategy – but only if they are urgently brought to scale.

 

About the Speaker: Kristin Lord is President and CEO of IREX, a global non-profit organization that promotes more just, prosperous, and inclusive societies by developing leaders, extending access to quality education and information, empowering youth, and supporting accountable governance and civic participation. She brings more than twenty years of experience in the fields of education, foreign policy, global development, and security and peacebuilding to this role. Prior to joining IREX in 2014, Dr. Lord served in leadership roles at the United States Institute of Peace, Center for a New American Security, Brookings Institution, and The George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. She also served at the U.S. Department of State and is currently a board member of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.

Kristin M. Lord President and CEO IREX
Seminars
Research Seminar Series
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