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Jason Bradley Curtis, 41, is an active-duty Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force.  He is a combat experienced fighter pilot with over 2,500 hours in fighter aircraft.  Jason most recently served as Commander of the 63rd Fighter Squadron flying the F-35A Lightning II aircraft where he was accountable to 45 officers, 9 enlisted, 11 civilian personnel, and $4.4B of US Government assets. 

Prior to command, Jason served as Thunderbird #5—the Lead Solo for the U.S. Air Force Aerial Demonstration Squadron—flying the F-16 Fighting Falcon.  In this role, Jason represented the pride, precision, and professionalism of 680,000 Active Duty, Guard, and Reserve Airmen to the American public.  Before the Thunderbirds, Lt Col Curtis was qualified as a nuclear readiness mission command pilot where he trained to selective contingency nuclear assurance operations abroad.  Lt Col Curtis served overseas in the Pacific and European theaters, earning three Air Medals from actions in combat during operations Enduring Freedom, Odyssey Dawn, and Unified Protector. 

At Stanford, Jason is a visiting scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute.  His research focuses on small-scale startups, venture capitalism, and emerging technologies for defense applications.

Jason is a distinguished military graduate from the United States Air Force Academy with a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering and a distinguished graduate from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University with an M.S. in Aeronautical Sciences.  At Georgetown University, Jason was Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy under Ambassador Barbara K. Bodine and became a 2017 White House Fellow National Finalist.  After Georgetown, Lt Col Curtis was a cohort member at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies in Montgomery, Alabama earning a Master of Philosophy in Military Strategy.  Presently, he volunteers with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Wounded Warrior Project, and American Field Service nationwide. Jason is a public speaker and mentor for young adults in his hometown of Kalispell, Montana.

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Ryan A. Musto
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China is ready to rock with the Treaty of Bangkok.

In a rare appearance at the special online summit for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Nov. 22, China’s President Xi Jinping announced that China is prepared to sign the protocol of a 1995 agreement that establishes Southeast Asia as a nuclear-weapon-free zone. Under the agreement, known as the Bangkok Treaty, 10 regional states renounce the right to nuclear weapons in any form within the ASEAN zone. If it joins the treaty, China would agree not to use or threaten the use of nuclear weapons within the zone or against its members. It would make China the first nuclear-weapon state to adhere.

Read the rest at Lawfare Blog 

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President Xi Jinping recently announced that China wants to adhere to Southeast Asia’s nuclear-free zone “as early as possible" to become the first nuclear state to join the pact. Musto finds that Xi wants to act now in order to distract from China’s nuclear build-up and, more importantly, counter the AUKUS security partnership.

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While much of the world has been occupied with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been active in promoting China’s claims in the South China Sea. Is it justified to argue that China is taking advantage of the global pandemic to make military gains?

In a new essay published in the Winter 2020 issue of the China Leadership Monitor, FSI Center Fellow at APARC Oriana Skylar Mastro sheds light on this question. Leveraging Chinese-language sources in addition to her own operational knowledge from over a decade of military experience, Mastro evaluates the PLA activities in the South China Sea over the eight-month period since March 2020. She includes in her analysis PLA statements, military exercises and operations, and deployment of relevant platforms and weapons in the region. Her conclusion is that the PLA has not significantly increased its operational role in the South China Sea but rather its signaling role. “Specifically, the Chinese military seems to be purposefully using, and perhaps even exaggerating, its capabilities and activities to enhance deterrence against the United States,” she argues.

Deployments of Weapons Systems and Military Exercises

After compiling a comprehensive picture of Chinese military activities in the South China Sea that includes both deployments of systems to the Paracels and Spratlys Islands and military exercises in the area, Mastro examines what these activities reveal about the PLA’s role in China’s South China Sea strategy.

PLA deployments in the area suggest it is trying to discourage the United States from countering its attempts to increase control over the South China Sea, she says. “China has been linking its deployments to U.S. activities for signaling purposes […] With new basing on the South China Sea islands and longer-range and more capable aircraft, China now has the option to move these platforms as a way to demonstrate to the United States its capability and resolve.” Over the past eight months, China has also conducted more robust military exercises to prepare for South China Sea contingencies. “But military readiness and preparedness are not the only reasons the PLA conducts exercises, notes Mastro. Instead, she argues that the PLA role has evolved beyond the operational to become a leader in a signaling strategy to bolster Chinese deterrence vis-à-vis the United States.

Chinese Discourse  

One of the strongest indicators that the Chinese military is attempting to leverage its role to signal capability to the United States is how the Chinese official media are capturing the ongoing competition. Having reviewed approximately 80 publications on the South China Sea, Mastro finds that the Chinese media are being used to amplify how capable the PLA has become in conducting complex operations in the South China Sea and to highlight that it is blameless for the current tensions in the region.

Mastro concludes that the PLA has taken a more active role in China’s South China Sea strategy, but not necessarily a more aggressive one. It is the need to enhance deterrence vis-à-vis the United States that has become a priority. “The PLA has become the main vehicle through which China is attempting to convince the United States to moderate its own South China Sea approach.” This sensitivity, and in some cases paranoia, about U.S. strategy, she claims, “suggests we are likely to hear tough talk and ostentatious military activity for some months to come.”

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Battleships patrolling in the open ocean.
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Beijing’s Line on the South China Sea: “Nothing to See Here”

China’s official denials of growing military capability in the region look a lot like gaslighting.
Beijing’s Line on the South China Sea: “Nothing to See Here”
Oriana Skylar Mastro at a conference
Q&As

Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro Discusses How Her Scholarship and Military Career Impact One Another

An expert on Chinese military and security issues, Mastro also talks about how her learning style informs her teaching style.
Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro Discusses How Her Scholarship and Military Career Impact One Another
NPR's audio streaming logo next to a portrait of Oriana Skylar Mastro.
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Update on Taiwan and China's Troubled Relationship: Oriana Skylar Mastro on NPR

"The current threat is that the CCP is running out of patience, and their military is becoming more and more capable. So for the first time in its history, there's the option of taking Taiwan by force," Mastro tells NPR's Weekend Edition host Scott Simon.
Update on Taiwan and China's Troubled Relationship: Oriana Skylar Mastro on NPR
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Analysis by FSI Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro reveals that the Chinese military has taken a more active role in China’s South China Sea strategy, but not necessarily a more aggressive one.

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During the past eight months of the global COVID pandemic, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been active in promoting China’s claims in the South China Sea.  This essay evaluates PLA statements, military exercises and operations, and deployment of relevant platforms and weapons in the South China Sea during this period. I leverage Chinese-language sources in addition to my own operational knowledge from over a decade of military experience to provide greater context for these activities. I argue that the greatest change in the PLA’s role in the South China Sea has not been operational. Instead, the most interesting development has been the fact that the PLA has taken on a more significant signaling role. Specifically, the Chinese military seems to be purposefully using, and perhaps even exaggerating, its capabilities and activities to enhance deterrence against the United States. This may be seen as necessary as the US increases its own efforts to push back on China’s militarization of the South China Sea. In other words, the PLA has taken a more active role in China’s South China Sea strategy, but not necessarily a more aggressive one.

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Issue 66
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Oriana Skylar Mastro
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This analysis by Oriana Skylar Mastro originally appeared in The Interpreter, by the Lowy Institute.


China’s strategy in responding to concerns about its intentions in the South China Sea is to claim that none of the activities, statements or behaviours that concern other countries are actually happening.

China claims it has not militarised the South China Sea, but that the United States “is the real pusher of militarisation” in these waters. Its leaders often argue that China is a peace-loving country only interested in defending itself. As the China’s General Wei Fenghe stated at the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2018, “China has never provoked a war or conflict, nor has it ever invaded another country or taken an inch of land from others. In the future, no matter how strong it becomes, China shall never threaten anyone.”

China has similarly brushed off concerns of other claimants, such as Vietnam, about its intensifying military exercises in the South China Sea and largely ignored Australia’s assertion at the United Nations that China’s claims have no legal backing.

So apparently it is all one big misunderstanding.

On 24 November, former Chinese ambassador Fu Ying criticised the United States in a New York Times op-ed for raising multiple issues that in her mind do not exist. Thus, the way to resolve the growing bilateral tensions is for the two countries “to have candid talks to better understand each other’s intentions and cultivate trust”.

So, in the Chinese communist spirit of 实事求是, or “seeking truth from facts”, I have charted the military capabilities China has deployed to the South China Sea, which are displayed with references on the map below. The Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands are under dispute; Hainan Island is a recognised part of China, but I include it because the military capabilities in situ have implications for Chinese military options in the South China Sea writ large.

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NPR's audio streaming logo next to a portrait of Oriana Skylar Mastro.
Commentary

Update on Taiwan and China's Troubled Relationship: Oriana Skylar Mastro on NPR

"The current threat is that the CCP is running out of patience, and their military is becoming more and more capable. So for the first time in its history, there's the option of taking Taiwan by force," Mastro tells NPR's Weekend Edition host Scott Simon.
Update on Taiwan and China's Troubled Relationship: Oriana Skylar Mastro on NPR
Oriana Skylar Mastro at a conference
Q&As

Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro Discusses How Her Scholarship and Military Career Impact One Another

An expert on Chinese military and security issues, Mastro also talks about how her learning style informs her teaching style.
Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro Discusses How Her Scholarship and Military Career Impact One Another
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China’s official denials of growing military capability in the region look a lot like gaslighting.

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T.V. Paul is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Paul’s main scholarship can be catalogued in four clusters: War and Conflict; International Order and Regional Order; Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Proliferation; and International Relations of South Asia/Asia-Pacific. He served as the President of International Studies Association (ISA) for 2016-17. Paul is the author or editor of 21 books and over 75 scholarly articles/book chapters in the fields of International Relations, International Security, and South Asia. He is the author of the books: Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era (Yale University Press, 2018); The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World (Oxford University Press, 2013); Globalization and the National Security State (with N. Ripsman, Oxford University Press, 2010); The Tradition of Non-use of Nuclear Weapons (Stanford University Press, 2009); India in the World Order: Searching for Major Power Status (with B.R. Nayar Cambridge University Press, 2002); Power versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000); and Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers (Cambridge University Press, 1994). Paul currently serves as the editor of the Georgetown University Press book series: South Asia in World Affairs.

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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.

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Livestream: Registration is required and will close 24 hours before the event. Click here to register.

This event is available only to CISAC faculty, fellows, staff, and honors students.

 

About this Event: Jeopardizing U.S. research enterprises, provoking regional nationalism, and building a technological panopticon to rate every citizen's behavior: these assumptions about China fuel US foreign policy shadow-boxing with misplaced concerns. Our panel challenges prevalent narratives on China, providing informed, nuanced investigations that cut across a range of research methods. Julien de Troullioud's argues that the rise of China in science and technology is not a threat to the US but instead an opportunity to jointly work to solve global issues. Data shows that the current policies to protect the US research enterprise in science is hurting American and international scientific research. Xinru Ma finds that nationalism in China and in Southeast Asia are not necessarily all anti-foreign, and is more of a liability rather than an asset for domestic regimes, according to evidences from formal modeling and social media data. Shazeda Ahmed's interviews with Chinese government officials, tech firm representatives, and legal scholars reveal that the Chinese social credit system is more limited in its data collection and fragmented in its on-the-ground implementation than the dystopic institution its foreign critics presume it to be. Our research presents new data and fresh perspectives for rethinking US-China dynamics.

 

About the Speakers:

Shazeda Ahmed is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley who researches how tech firms and the Chinese government are collaboratively constructing the country's social credit system. She will be joining CISAC and the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence in Fall 2019 as a pre-doctoral Fellow. Shazeda has worked as a researcher for the Citizen Lab, the Mercator Institute for China Studies, and the Ranking Digital Rights corporate transparency review by New America. In the 2018-19 academic year she was a Fulbright fellow at Peking University's law school.

 

Xinru Ma is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Political Science and International Relations (POIR) program at University of Southern California, and will join CISAC as a Postdoctoral Fellow for 2019-2020. Originally from China, Xinru is interested in combining formal modeling and computational social science with research on nationalist protests and maritime disputes, with a regional focus on East and Southeast Asia. Her research is informed by extensive field research in Vietnam, Philippines and China, during which she interviewed protestors, think tanks, diplomats, government officials, and foreign business owners that were impacted by nationalist protests. In addition to informing her of the complicated strategic interaction between mass mobilization, government repression and foreign policy-making, the field research further motivated her to focus on the methodological challenges for causal inference that stem from strategic conflict behavior. More broadly, Xinru is interested in public opinion and new methods of measuring it, foreign policy formation, alliance politics, East Asian security dynamics, and the historical relations of East Asia. 

 

Julien de Troullioud de Lanversin will be joining CISAC as a Stanton Postdoctoral Fellow. Julien is finishing his Ph.D. at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security. He is interested in how to verify and reconstruct past fissile material production programs with scientific tools. To that end, he developed innovative methods that use isotopic analysis from nuclear reactors to gain information on their past operation (nuclear archeology) and designed an open source software that can compute the istopic composition of fissile materials from nuclear reactors. His current research looks at the various modalities of the production of plutonium and tritium in production reactors and how transparency on tritium could be used to improve estimates on plutonium stockpiles. Julien also studies security questions related to civil and military nuclear programs in Northeast Asia through the lens of fissile material, with a focus on China and North Korea. Julien visited the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technologies at Tsinghua University for one semester in 2018 to collaborate with Chinese experts on work related to nuclear engineering and arms control. Julien’s work on nuclear archaeology has been published in the Journal of Science and Global Security. He received his Diplôme d’Ingénieur (M.Sc. And B.Sc.Eng.) from Ecole Centrale de Marseille in 2014. The same year he also obtained a M.Sc. in Nuclear Science and Engineering from the University of Tsinghua where he was a recipient of the Chinese Government Scholarship. Julien speaks and uses Chinese in his research and is a native French speaker.

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Shazeda Ahmed, Xinru Ma, Julien de Troullioud de Lanversin
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Xinru Ma is currently an assistant professor in the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at the Beijing Foreign Studies University in China. Originally from China, Xinru's research and teaching focus on nationalism, great power politics, and East Asian security with a methodological focus on big data and formal methods. Her research is informed by extensive field research in Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, and China. More broadly, Xinru is interested in public opinion and new methods of measuring it, foreign policy formation, alliance politics, and the historical relations of East Asia. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Washington Quarterly, the Journal of Global Security Studies, and the Journal of European Public Policy, and in edited volumes through Palgrave. She is also the leading author of the latest manuscript Asian Power Transitions (Columbia University Press). She is currently working on a book project that uses formal methods to explore the mechanisms through which nationalist protests influence international crisis bargaining.

Previously, Xinru was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University (2019-2020), and a pre-doctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University (2018-2019). She obtained her Ph.D. in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California in August 2019.  

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