When a state is “shamed” by outsiders for perceived injustices, it often proves counterproductive, resulting in worse behavior and civil rights violations, a Stanford researcher has found.

Rochelle Terman, a political scientist and postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), recently spoke about how countries criticized by outsiders on issues like human rights typically respond -- and it's contrary to conventional wisdom. Terman has published findings, “The Relational Politics of Shame: Evidence from the Universal Periodic Review,” on this topic in the Review of International Organizations. She discussed her research in the interview below:

What does your research show about state "shaming"?

Shaming is a ubiquitous strategy to promote international human rights. A key contention in the literature on international norms is that transnational advocacy networks can pressure states into adopting international norms by shaming them – condemning violations and urging reform. The idea is that shaming undermines a state’s legitimacy, which then incentivizes elites into complying with international norms.

In contrast, my work shows that shaming can be counterproductive, encouraging leaders in the target state to persist or “double down” on violations. That is because shaming is seen as illegitimate foreign intervention that threatens a state’s sovereignty and independence.  When viewed in this light, leaders are rewarded for standing up to such pressure and defending the nation against perceived domination. Meanwhile, leaders who “give in” have their political legitimacy undermined at home. The result is that violations tend to persist or even exacerbate.

When and where does it work better to directly confront a country’s leadership about such injustices?

At least two factors moderate the effects of international shaming. The first is the degree to which the norm being promoted is shared between the “shamer” and the target. For instance, the West may shame Uganda or Nigeria for violating LGBT rights. But if Uganda and Nigeria do not accept the “LGBT rights” norm, and refuse to accept that homophobia constitutes bad behavior, then shaming will fail. In this case, it is more likely that shaming will be viewed as illegitimate meddling by foreign powers, and will be met with indignation and defiance.

Second, shaming is quintessentially a relational process. Insofar as it is successful, shaming persuades actors to voluntary change their behavior in order to maintain valued social relationships. In the absence of such relationship, shaming will fail. This is especially so when pressure emanates from a current or historical geopolitical adversary. In this later scenario, not only will shaming fail to work, it will likely provoke defensive hostility and defiance, having a counterproductive effect.

Combing these insights, we can say that shaming is most likely to work under two conditions: when the target is a strong ally, and the norm is shared.

What are some well-known cases where "shaming" backfired?

The main example I use in my forthcoming paper is on the infamous “anti-homosexuality bill” in Uganda. When Uganda introduced the legislation in 2009 (which in some versions applied capital punishment to offenders) it provoked harsh condemnation among its foreign allies, especially in the West. Western donor countries even suspended aid in attempt to push Yoweri Musaveni’s government to abandon the bill. According to conventional accounts, the onslaught of foreign shaming, coupled with the threat of aid cuts and other material sanctions, should have worked best in the Uganda case.

And yet what we saw was the opposite. The wave of international attention provoked an outraged and defiant reaction among the Ugandan population, turning the bill into a symbol of national sovereignty and self-determination in the face of abusive Western bullying. This reaction energized Ugandan elites to champion the bill in order to reap the political rewards at home. Indeed, the bill was the first to pass unanimously in the Ugandan legislature since the end of military rule in 1999. Museveni – who by all accounts preferred a more moderate solution to the crisis – was backed into a corner.

A Foreign Policy story quoted Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda as saying, “the mere fact that Obama threatened Museveni publicly is the very reason he chose to go ahead and sign the bill.” And Museveni did so in a particularly defiant fashion, “with the full witness of the international media to demonstrate Uganda’s independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation.”

Uganda anti-homosexuality law was finally quashed by its constitutional court, which ruled the act invalid because it was not passed with the required quorum. By dismissing the law on procedural grounds, Museveni – widely thought to have control over the court – was able to kill the legislation “without appearing to cave in to foreign pressure.” But by that time, defiance had already transformed Uganda’s normative order, entrenching homophobia into its national identity.

Does this 'doubling down' effect vary in domestic or international contexts?

Probably. States with a significant populist contingent, for instance, are especially hostile to international pressure, especially when it emanates from a historical adversary, like a former colonial power. Ironically, democracies may also be more susceptible to defiance, because elites are more beholden to their constituents, and thus are less able to “give in” to foreign pressure without undermining their own political power. 

The international context matters a great deal as well. States are more likely to resist certain norms if they have allies who feel the same way. For instance, we see significant polarization around LGBT rights at the international level, with most states in Africa and the Muslim world voting against resolutions that push LGBT rights forward. South Africa – originally a pioneer for LGBT rights – has changed its position following criticism from its regional neighbors. 

Does elite reaction drive this response to state "shaming?"

To be quite honest, this is a question I’m still exploring and I don’t have a very clear answer. My hunch at the moment is no. The “defiant” reaction occurs mainly at the level of public audiences, which then incentives elites to violate norms for political gain.  These audiences can be at either the domestic or international level. For instance, if domestic constituents are indignant by foreign shaming, elites are incentivized to “double down,” or at least remain silent, lest they undermine their own political legitimacy.

That said, elites can also strategize and manipulate these expected public reactions for their own political purposes. For instance, if Vladimir Putin knows that the Russian public will grow indignant following Western shaming, he might strategically promote a law that he knows will provoke such a reaction in order to benefit from the ensuing conflict. This is what likely occurred with Russia’s “anti-gay propaganda” law, which (unsurprisingly) provoked harsh condemnation from the West and probably bolstered Putin’s domestic popularity.

Any other important points to highlight?

One important point I’d like to highlight is the long-term effects of defiance. In an effort to resist international pressure, states take action that, in the long term, work to internalize oppositional norms in their national identity. In this way, shaming actually produces deviance, not the other way around.

Follow CISAC at @StanfordCISAC and  www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Rochelle Terman, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 721-1378, rterman@stanford.edu,

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Whether it’s WikiLeaks and CIA documents or nuclear thieves, the danger from insiders in high-security organizations is escalating in our Internet age.

But many threats from within go unrecognized or misunderstood, according to Stanford professor Scott Sagan, who co-edited a new book Insider Threats with Matthew Bunn, a professor of practice at Harvard University. Their work analyzes the challenges that high-security organizations face in protecting themselves from employees who might betray them. Sagan, a core faculty member in Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Bunn recently participated in an online discussion of the book’s key arguments. They will hold a talk and book signing at 3:30 p.m. on May 16 in the CISAC Central Conference Room.

Sagan and Bunn wrote, “Perhaps the most striking lesson we learned in working with scholars and officials who have dealt with this problem was the sheer scale of the red flags – from explicit statements of support for Osama bin Laden to behavior leading other staff to fear for their lives – that organizations are able to ignore.”

They found that organizations tend to have biases that cause them to downplay insider threats. In particular, organizations with high-security needs face significant risks from trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials. 

The researchers highlight "worst practices" from these past mistakes, suggesting lessons and insights that could improve the security situations at many workplaces. Amy Zegart, co-director of CISAC, has a chapter in Insider Threats that provides a detailed account of the organizational dysfunction that allowed Nidal Hasan to carry out his massacre at Fort Hood.

Other chapters include the following topics and authors:

• An analysis of the similar problems that led Bruce Ivins, who probably carried out the anthrax attacks in 2001, to continue to have access to deadly pathogens (by Jessica Stern, then of Harvard and now at Boston University, and Ron Schouten, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School);
• An analysis of the rapid rise and subsequent fall of “green-on-blue” attacks in Afghanistan – that is, Afghan soldiers and police officers attacking Americans there to help them (by Austin Long of Columbia University); and 
• An assessment of how casinos and pharmaceutical plants, with a profit incentive to protect against insiders, cope with the problem (by Bunn and Kathryn Glynn, then of IBM Global Business Services and now at the National Nuclear Security Administration). 

Another chapter examines the potential terrorist use of nuclear insiders, offering new data that shows that jihadist writings and postings contain only a modest emphasis on possible nuclear plots, and essentially no mention of the possibility of using nuclear insiders. However, the authors warn this is no reason for complacency – insiders have been largely responsible for past nuclear theft incidents.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Scott Sagan, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-2715, ssagan@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

The Center for International Security and Cooperation is educating the next generation of thought leaders and policy makers in international security. Toward this, fellows produce policy-relevant research on topics they are studying. One way they connect research with the policy arena is through journal articles, op-eds and essays. Three recent publications by CISAC pre- and post-doctoral fellows on the subject of nuclear risks include:

• Sayuri Romei’s op-ed The Hidden Costs of our Nuclear World appeared March 10 in the Monkey Cage blog that's published by the Washignton Post. Her research with Japanese people who have survived radioactive exposure in World War II and Fukushima suggests that they long endure discrimination and shame, as well as a government and society relecutant to come to grips with the human effects. "For a long time after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, Japanese citizens had no clear and reliable information on the health effects of the bomb. That opacity continues in the secretive and contradictory way information is coming out about the Fukushima nuclear accident," she wrote.

• Jooeun Kim’s op-ed ‘Actions speak louder than words’: Rhetoric and nuclear policy realities’ was published in the Freeman Spogli Institute's Medium site on March 7. She explored why it is so important for the U.S. to be viewed by its Asian allies as a dependable nuclear and military power that can help them during a crisis. She notes that "the greater the number of nuclear states, the higher the risk of nuclear war by miscalculation or accident." She concludes that if the Trump administration provides support to allies when they are in need, the president's "rhetoric from the campaign trail can be forgotten amid the policy realities of the international order."

• Anna Péczeli’s journal article Russia, NATO and the INF Treaty was featured in the Strategic Studies Quarterly on Feb. 28. She noted that Russia’s leadership must understand that continued noncompliance with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty will yield no political or military gains for them – a message that must be communicated to the Kremlin by the U.S. government. She wrote, "The INF treaty, long a cornerstone of European security, is in acute danger of collapse since the United States and Russia are operating on the basis of different, indeed contrasting, logic."  

CISAC has had 399 fellows since its founding more than 30 years ago. They conduct research, write about their findings, and spur informed public discussions about policy. To learn how to apply to the CISAC fellowship program, click here.

Published in the journal Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, this column by Seigfried Hecker below is based on content in his 2016 book, Doomed to Cooperate: How American and Russian Scientists Joined Forces to Avert Some of the Greatest Post-Cold War Nuclear Dangers:

On February 23, 1992, less than two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I landed on the tarmac in Sarov, a city the government had removed from maps to keep secret its status as a nuclear weapons center. I was then director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and­­ accompanied by two senior scientists from my own lab plus three colleagues from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The six of us were about to walk through the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear bomb, the technological and intellectual powerhouse behind the sophisticated arsenal that had been pointed at our country for the previous 40 years.

Shockingly, after an hour-long flight from Moscow, we stepped out of the Aeroflot turboprop into the open arms of our Russian hosts: Yuli Borisovich Khariton, the scientific leader of the Soviet nuclear program, and other senior lab staff who had waited in the chilly wind to welcome us. Just as remarkable was the fact that this wasn’t the first time we met our Russian counterparts. Two weeks earlier, directors of the Russian nuclear weapons labs, VNIIEF in Sarov and VNIITF in Snezhinsk, had for the first time in history set foot in our labs in Livermore and Los Alamos. This exchange of visits a quarter century ago marked a new turn in relations between the world’s two nuclear weapons superpowers.

The road to Sarov

Our first meeting on Russian soil would have been deemed improbable just a few months earlier. The encounter on the Sarov tarmac grew out of both persistence by determined individuals and larger historical forces. As the Soviet Union scrambled to adjust domestic and international policy in the face of mounting economic and social challenges in the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev reached across the political divide to US President Ronald Reagan to take steps toward nuclear disarmament. One such step was the Joint Verification Experiment of 1988, in which the Soviet Union and the United States asked their nuclear weapons scientists to conduct parallel nuclear-explosion yield measurements at testing grounds in Nevada and Semipalatinsk, located in what is now Kazakhstan. The experiment helped overcome a stumbling block related to verification procedures needed to ratify the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT). The 1988 nuclear tests enabled the two sides to sign a new ratification protocol in Geneva in June 1990, and the TTBT entered into force in December 1990.

As history would have it, an unintended outcome of the TTBT ratification effort proved to be the most momentous. Viktor Mikhailov, head of the Soviet team that took part in the Joint Verification Experiment and later Russian minister of atomic energy, was right when he said that “the main result of the Joint Verification Experiment was not the development of procedures and extent of nuclear test monitoring of the joint development of technical verification means, but the chance for interpersonal communications with the American nuclear physicists.”

Indeed, it was working side by side at each other’s test sites that gave rise to deep-rooted affinity and built trust. Over the years, we had only caught glimpses of our Soviet nuclear scientist counterparts at a few international conferences where they disguised their institutional affiliations, saying they were part of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. It was through months of collaboration at our test sites that the contours of their true home institutions—the nuclear weapons labs VNIIEF and VNIITF—began to emerge. As we would discover eventually, these Soviet labs were remarkably similar to our own. We realized that in addition to nuclear weapons work, they were conducting outstanding fundamental science. We became consumed with curiosity to learn more about it first-hand. The Russians were curious about our work as well.

We were all interested in cooperation, but the Russians even more so because they sensed before we did just how dramatically the Soviet Union was changing. Lev D. Ryabev, who headed the atomic ministry at the time, told me years later that Russian nuclear weapons scientists were so eager to work with their American counterparts because “we arrived in the nuclear century all in one boat—movement by any one will affect everyone. We were doomed to work together.”

It was during a 1990 trip to Moscow by Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore lab scientists for technical discussions supporting the Geneva test ban talks that Mikhailov extended an impromptu invitation to visit the USSR’s secret nuclear city Sarov (then called Arzamas-16) for the first time.

The American scientists returned with specific proposals from the VNIIEF director and his senior scientists for collaboration with the US labs, along with an invitation to Lawrence Livermore Director John Nuckolls and me to visit the secret Russian cities.

Convinced by my Los Alamos colleagues that this was a great opportunity to collaborate scientifically in important areas of research, I tried a number of avenues in Washington to get approval for exploring potential cooperation. I got little traction until the second half of 1991, after the Soviet Union had begun to disintegrate. As it did so, President George H.W. Bush became concerned that brain drain from the Soviet nuclear complex could lead to the spread of knowledge about how to build these weapons of mass destruction.

Driven by that concern, US Energy Secretary James D. Watkins approved my request for the laboratory directors’ exchange visits, and two months after Gorbachev’s formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, we entered the surreal world of the Soviet Los Alamos.

A tradition worth sustaining 

Our visits to Sarov and Snezhinsk shattered our Cold War preconceptions of the Soviet nuclear program. We were particularly impressed by the depth of scientific talent. Although they lacked modern computers and electronics, their computational achievements were remarkable, and their experimental facilities were innovative and functional. We found the scientists’ dedication to their mission deeply patriotic, and their attention to nuclear weapons safety reassuring. During our briefings and tours, Russian scientists described leading-edge research in the fundamental science that underpinned their nuclear weapons program. The visits convinced me that our US nuclear labs should collaborate with their Russian counterparts, not only to help solve immediate problems like proliferation and loose nukes, but also because in doing so we would benefit scientifically.

Our Russian colleagues were prepared with proposals for cooperation in a surprisingly broad range of areas. During a daylong session in Chief Weapon Designer Boris Litvinov’s office in Snezhinsk, watched by portraits of Lenin and Igor Kurchatov, one of the fathers of the Soviet Bomb, we hammered out a protocol for cooperation that we would take back to our governments. We came up with a long list problems we wanted to work on together. It included enhancing the security and safety of nuclear weapons during reduction and dismantlement; preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons knowledge; promoting the conversion and diversification of nuclear facilities; preventing non-nuclear states and terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons; developing joint mechanisms for emergency response; enhancing the safety of nuclear arsenals; preventing unauthorized use of remaining weapons; and promoting protection and cleanup of the environment at nuclear weapons facilities.

It turned out that we scientists were far ahead of what the US government was prepared to authorize at the time. We heard that when members of the National Security Council staff, which coordinated interagency government issues with Russia, received a copy of the protocol, they declared it did not exist and threw it in the waste paper basket. However, Nuckolls and I presented the protocol to Watkins and received approval to proceed, though only in fundamental science cooperation.

By May 1992, even though the US Energy and State Departments had only agreed to general principles, the former had provided us with the necessary financial support and the latter with the required permissions for travel to Russia. Just as importantly, we had defined what we wanted to do first in the collaboration we called lab-to-lab. We planned for joint experiments in high-energy-density physics and conferences on computer modeling and simulation.

In spite of the initial US government concerns, we would eventually end up cooperating in almost all the areas outlined in the initial protocol. A spirit of collaboration prevailed for nearly a quarter century, and was essential to successfully mitigating the dangers resulting from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, that cooperation has all but come to an end during the past few years as relations between Moscow and Washington have soured. But the benefits of future cooperation are potentially enormous, as a new report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative makes clear. The US and Russian governments, as well as the two countries’ scientists, should seize any opportunities that arise to rekindle nuclear cooperation.

When governments and scholars work together on data security, society benefits from better safeguards and protections, a U.S. intelligence expert said Wednesday.

The difficulty is keeping up with technology and societal trends, Admiral Bobby R. Inman said at the Center for International Security and Cooperation's annual Drell Lecture for 2017. His talk was titled, “The Challenges of Providing Data Security.”

Inman, whose U.S. Navy career spanned 31 years, served as the director of the National Security Agency, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and held other influential positions in the U.S. intelligence community. After retiring from the Navy, Inman worked on start-ups in the private sector, in higher education, and as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. He is currently the Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair in National Policy at the University of Texas, Austin.

'9/11 changed everything'

During his talk, Inman recounted the early days of cryptography and the dialogue between government officials like himself and scholars at universities such as Stanford and UC Berkeley. Cryptography or cryptology is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties typically known as adversaries.

Inman was a key driver behind establishing the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 1978. The purpose of the “FISA” court was to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Today, technology has overwhelmed many issues regarding how the government tracks the communications of foreign entities, Inman said. And events have ushered in a different orientation on what type of information and from whom is sought by U.S. intelligence. “9/11 changed everything,” he added.

After 9/11, U.S. intelligence began to focus on foreign individuals in addition to the traditional foreign state actors, Inman said. He pointed out the value of such data collection, as penetrating small groups with human agents is extraordinarily difficult and dangerous.

“The only way you’re likely to get a lead on them (terrorists or narcotic traffickers) is through their communications,” he said.

The Internet, especially social media, has exploded in usage and made data security efforts even more complex, Inman said. “A vastly different world.” As a result, serious privacy, commercial usages and intellectual property issues need to be resolved more than ever. He noted that the rule of law is important to follow when the governmnt or other entities collect and examine communications data.

Inman is particularly worried about how “basic issues of ethics and morality” have eroded in society, which results in people scheming to sell private data for profit that puts others at risk. Another issue involves how to prevent terrorist groups from preying upon mentally weak people and recruiting them over the Internet.

A key reason Inman was invited to be the Drell speaker this year was his connection to Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie, two pioneering cryptographers from CISAC who drew Inman’s attention in the mid-1970s when they wrote a groundbreaking paper in their field of study. The three later established long-running friendships that produced strong cryptography frameworks.

Inman said, “We were privileged to start the dialogue. That’s where you begin to solve problems,” as fears and misperceptions can be resolved through discussions and openness. “I think what we need is a repeat of pulling together people” from academia and government to deal with today’s security threats. “We need to assess where we are.”

His concern is who would convene such a dialogue. “We’re in a pretty bumpy time, nationally,” said Inman, who urges a neutral party to be such a convener. On broader security fronts, Inman said he is most apprehensive about a possible nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India.

Legacy of Drell

The event included a tribute to Sidney Drell, who passed away last December at the age of 90. Drell co-founded CISAC, and jointly directed it from 1983 to 1989. The Drell Lecture, which is named after him, is an annual public event sponsored by CISAC. By tradition, the lecturer addresses a current and critical national or international security issue that has important scientific or technical dimensions.

In her opening remarks, Amy Zegart, co-director of CISAC, described Drell as a “true giant in the field of theoretical physics” who devoted his life’s work to reducing the threat of nuclear catastrophe. One trademarks of the Drell lecture was that its namesake had the opportunity to ask the first question of the speaker. “He had a unique way of asking penetrating questions" with gentle decency and fairness, she added.

CISAC’s William Perry, also on hand to discuss Drell’s legacy, said, “Sid Drell was truly a man for all seasons” who excelled in various fields of academic and policy. Perry first met Drell 55 years ago when he was beginning his own career in nuclear arms control. “Sid’s deep interest in arms control led to him teaming up with John Lewis” to launch CISAC, he noted.

“He was an extraordinary man,” Perry said, “and we shall never see his like again.”

Drell was a fan of classical music, especially the St. Lawrence String Quartet, a chamber music group whose music was piped in to the Bechtel Conference Room before the event began.

Follow CISAC at @StanfordCISAC and  www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC

MEDIA CONTACTS

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Stanford University has expressed its views on the recent executive order on immigration, and is offering resources for students who could be affected. News accounts indicate that as many as 17,000 students across the country fall into this category. On Jan. 27, President Trump signed an executive order restricting travel to the United States of people from seven largely Muslim countries -- Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Amy Zegart, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, said CISAC's "mission is generating knowledge to build a safer world. We bring scholars, ideas from everywhere. And always will."

Looking ahead, Stanford is planning campus events and initiatives on this issue. Some information already to note: 

• Stanford launched a new website on immigration issues for students and scholars. This includes centralized campus information about international travel guidance and other information. Stanford will continue to add content to this site.

• A letter to the campus community from Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, provost John Etchemendy, and incoming provost Persis Drell affirming the university's support for international students. "As events unfold, the university intends to continue vigorously advocating before Congress, the Executive Branch, and beyond for policies consistent with its commitment to members of our community who are international, undocumented and those who are impacted by the recent executive order."

Russia’s desire to be a great power, nuclear deterrence and naval strategies are the reasons behind its rapid Arctic military build-up, a Stanford expert says.

The issue is complicated. “There are three basic drivers: military-strategic calculations, economic development, and domestic objectives,” said Katarzyna Zysk, a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Zysk has a forthcoming paper on this topic to be published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. Last year, she presented her findings at the conference, "The Russian Military in Contemporary Perspective," held by the American Foreign Policy Council. She also discussed her research at the Hoover Institution's Arctic Security Initiative meeting in November 2016. 

Putin’s foreign policy

Despite claims it would not do so, Russia since 2012 in particular has embarked on a large-scale military modernization in the Arctic across basically all defense branches, with a special focus on the air and maritime domain, Zysk said.

“The military ambitions have expanded with the more nationalist and isolationist turn in Russian policies after (Vladimir) Putin’s return as president in May 2012,” said Zysk, an associate professor at the Norwegian Defence University College who specializes in Russia’s security and defense policies.

In 2014, Russia decided to deploy military forces along the entire Russian Arctic coast, from Murmansk to Chukotka, and on permanent basis. A modernization effort is underway, too.

This trend has deepened the asymmetry of power between Russia’s forces and those of other countries in the region, such as the United States, Zysk said.

“The Arctic contributes to maintaining Russia’s great power status, which has been one of the main driving forces behind Putin’s foreign policy in recent years,” she said.

‘Startling’ military build-up

The Arctic appears as one of the most stable Russian border regions, which makes the rapid defense build-up by a Russian government with a slowing economy quite perplexing to many observers, noted Zysk.

Apart from the economy, she explains the military strategies involved:

“Russia has revived the Cold War ‘Bastion’ concept in the Barents Sea: In case of conflict, the Northern Fleet’s task is to form maritime areas closed to penetration for enemy naval forces, where Russia would deploy strategic submarines and maintain control. In the areas further south, Russia would seek to deny control for potential adversaries. It also gives Russia a possibility to attack an enemy’s sea lines of communication,” she said.

On top of this, Russia’s modernization efforts are focused on modernizing its nuclear deterrent, including building fourth-generation strategic submarines of the Borei class: three are completed, and five are under different stages of construction, according to Zysk.

Russia is also building new attack submarines, as well as new frigates and corvettes, though the shipbuilding industry is struggling with delivering these on time, she added.

Also, the Artic provides Russia a strategic gateway to both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Zysk said, which is important given that Russia’s naval forces are separated between four theaters of operations – the Pacific, the Arctic-Atlantic, the Baltic and the Black Sea.

As a result of climate change, Russia may be able to more freely move its warships between its main bases along the Northern Sea Route, she added.

“Importantly, the forces in the Arctic are not going to stay only in the Arctic. With the increased mobility, the military units can be transferred rapidly to support Russia military operations in other regions, as we have observed in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has used a brigade deployed in the High North. The trend is likely to continue, also because Russia’s military capabilities remain limited, despite the ongoing modernization,” she said.

Perceived threats

Russia considers that if it engaged in conflict with other great powers, such as the United States, the Arctic would be a major target, Zysk said. Russia has also rehearsed scenarios when the biggest part of the Russian Navy based in the Arctic, the Northern Fleet, would be activated during conflicts escalating in other regions. That’s a reason for the strengthening of its defenses in the region.

“In the Russian assessment, an aerial attack from the Arctic region may pose military threats to the entire Russian territory. In particular, however, Russia is concerned about the sea-based nuclear deterrent deployed in the Arctic. As a result, Russia has devoted a strong focus to increasing air defense and air control across the Arctic,” she said.

Apart from threats from state actors, environmental accidents, trafficking, terrorist attacks on industrial infrastructure or increased foreign intelligence also make the Arctic, in Russia’s view, a vulnerable territory. Finally, the issue of Russia’s vast energy reserves and other rich natural resources in the Arctic are another factor. The development of the Arctic is seen as one of the solutions to what ails the Russian economy.

Zysk said, “Since the early 2000s, the Russian political and military leadership has systematically argued that there will be an acute shortage of energy resources worldwide, which may lead to a conflict, and that the West, led by the United States, may attempt to seize Russia’s oil and gas.”

While this assessment is controversial, Zysk points to statements by the top Russian political and military leadership, including Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, that suggests the Russian leadership believes such scenario may occur by 2030.

“It may also explain some of the military investments in the region, such as reactivating 13 military airfields across the Arctic, paratroopers’ exercises and amphibious landing operations along the Northern Sea Route,” she said.

In addition, the Arctic holds a symbolically important place in Russia’s history and national identity, according to Zysk.

“Displays of military strength, accompanied by rhetoric that portrays Russia as the Arctic superpower, resonate well with the Russian public, especially in communities where feelings of nationalism and isolationism run deep,” she said.

As a result of the military modernization, she added, Russia is today better prepared to participate in complex military operations than a decade ago, especially in joint operations, strategic mobility and rapid deployments.

“Russia’s ability to limit or deny access and control various parts of the Arctic has increased accordingly,” Zysk said.

Follow CISAC at @StanfordCISAC and  www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC

MEDIA CONTACTS

Katarzyna Zysk, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 723-6840, kzysk@ifs.mil.no

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

CISAC fellow Joseph Torigian writes in this new War on the Rocks article, "The Shadow of Deng Xiaoping on Chinese Elite Politics," that China's leadership never came to terms with the lessons of the Cultural Revolution. In recent decades, top leadership power has become increasingly concentrated in singular figures like Deng Xiaoping and current Chinese leader Xi Jinping, rather than expanding into a collective leadership framework. Joseph Torigian is a postdoctoral fellow researching the politics of China, Russia, and North Korea with a specific focus on power struggles.

After Zhao Ziyang was made acting general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 1987, key party elder Chen Yun asked Zhao why the Politburo Standing Committee never had any meetings. Zhao was in a bind – while Chen wanted more opportunities to express his opinions, preeminent leader Deng Xiaoping wanted to simply tell Zhao what to do. Zhao told Chen, “I am just a big secretary. As for a meeting, we can have one after you discuss with Comrade Xiaoping.” Chen muttered to himself, “A big secretary…”

Anecdotes like this one challenge the narrative that Deng, who became China’s top leader a few short years after Mao Zedong’s death but never formally assumed the party’s top post, was the father of collective leadership and institutionalization in elite Chinese politics. According to this viewpoint, after Mao’s disastrous Cultural Revolution, a radical political experiment that included the persecution of huge swathes of the Chinese elite, China’s leaders, led by Deng, are said to have introduced rules to deliberately prevent such a catastrophe from ever occurring again.

For example, Alice Miller has written of “a deliberate effort engineered by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s to establish an effective collective leadership system that builds in checks and balances among the leadership oligarchy against attempts by any individual member – and especially by the party general secretary – to assert dominating power over the others.” Carl Minzner has concluded that “The searing experience of the Cultural Revolution convinced [Deng] and other leaders of the need for deep change… Unlike Mao, Deng never exercised one-man rule.” According to Susan Shirk, “Xi is trying to live the antithesis of what Deng Xiaoping recommended.”

We can now see that this is a myth. New research based on previously unavailable documents and memoirs decisively shows that in fact Deng does not deserve credit for introducing real changes that would restrict the power of top leaders. Journalists, analysts, and scholars writing about Chinese leadership struggles should take note.

This might seem like a tiny footnote to the arc of history, but there is more at stake. Deng, who enjoyed an astounding level of authority, was probably the last leader who could have brought real change to Chinese politics. The 1980s in China are often portrayed as a time of introspection and change in elite politics, but that is not the case. The decade was instead defined by “old person” politics and a failure to truly come to terms with the lessons of the Cultural Revolution.

These findings suggest that even if elite Chinese politics later became increasingly shaped by traditions and principles in a relative sense, policymakers have reason to doubt the robustness of those rules a hypothesis supported by recent news from Beijing about current Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Without unambiguously legitimate rules guaranteeing both collective leadership and a stable succession, Xi may feel he has little to lose and much to gain by concentrating personal power in his hands.

The Evidence

Certainly, Deng never concentrated everyday decision-making in his own hands, and he did bring more institutionalization to the promotion of cadres. He never formally led the party or the government, and he even gave up his Politburo Standing Committee membership in 1987 and chairmanship of the Central Military Commission in 1989. But on the key issue of the power of the top leader, evidence for Deng’s own lack of respect for rules is ubiquitous in the historical record.

New evidence shows Mao Zedong’s initial successor, a man named Hua Guofeng, actually did embody a spirit of consensus and collective leadership. Marshal Ye Jianying described Hua as “modest, careful, sincere, he has a democratic style.” He was a figure fundamentally different in personality from Deng. In the words of the great China watcher Michel Oksenberg, while Hua was the “reconciler” Deng was the “asskicker.” Mao called Deng a steel factory, and Marshal Ye described Deng as a man that monopolized power and did not listen to the opinions of other people. According to party elder Li Rui, “Deng Xiaoping was half a Mao Zedong.”

Warren Sun and Frederick Teiwes show that no real policy differences between Hua from Deng on economic reform. However, Deng used mean-spirited political machinations and false charges to climb to the predominant position within the party. For example, Deng accused Hua of blocking old cadres from returning to work and maintaining a dogmatic political ideology – two charges that have now proven to be false.

Scholars who believe Deng took rules and norm-based governing seriously often point to a famous speech he gave to the Politburo in August 1980. Then, Deng said, “It is not good to have an over-concentration of power” and called for a solution to “the problem of succession in leadership.” According to Miller, Deng’s desire to channel competition “within institutional constraints” was explicit in this speech, which she calls “a text that bears continual re-study and so merits placement on analysts’ bedside tables.”

Yet taking Deng at his word fails to appreciate the political context. At the time, Deng was seeking to complete Hua’s political defeat and needed to provide a theoretical justification. The notorious leftist politician Deng Liqun wrote that“this speech by Comrade Xiaoping in actuality was directed against Hua Guofeng, it was preparation for Hua to leave his position, to find a theoretical justification.” When a friend of Zhao Ziyang pointed out that this speech was a reason many people believed that Deng supported real inner-party democracy and institutionalization, Zhao, then under house arrest, discounted this analysis: “At this time Deng was primarily addressing Hua Guofeng, he was struggling against Hua Guofeng.” In October 1980, a decision was made to no longer distribute Deng’s August speech because of the political instability in Poland caused by strikes and the formation of Solidarity.

The defeat of Hua Guofeng was not only a transition in authority. This historical moment also represented the closing of a different path for Chinese politics – one of collective leadership. Unlike Deng, individuals like Hua and Ye didlearn the lessons of the Cultural Revolution and tried to honestly make collective leadership work.

Hua later told a group preparing his official biography:

After the destruction of the “Gang of Four” and when I was Chairman, collective leadership was very strongly emphasized, democratic centralism. It was not one or two people who could make decisions, collective leadership was needed. If collective leadership was good, matters would be dealt with well. The party center all lived at Yuquanshan together, stabilizing measures were all discussed collectively. All of my speeches were discussed by the Politburo collectively.

In fact, Hua was so democratic that he refused to fight for his position because he was afraid it would hurt the party:

If the party had another internal struggle, the regular people would suffer. I stubbornly resigned from all positions. I told Marshal Ye before I did it. Some said that I was a fool. Some said that I was too honest. I do not regret it.

Almost two years before Deng’s August 1980 speech, Hua had already spoken of the importance of collective leadership, both at the famous Third Plenum of the 11th Party Congress and preceding work conference in 1978. Deng’s only reference to collective leadership at those proceedings was negative: “Lenin said: using collective leadership as an excuse to avoid responsibility is the most dangerous disaster.” In Deng’s mind, the party could only have one “mother-in-law” – himself.

Deng also rejected attempts by Hu Yaobang, Hua’s replacement as general secretary of the party, to create a true system of collective leadership. Hu had wanted to create a “chairman system [主席团]” in which every individual was considered equal, had a single vote, and each would take turns running meetings.

In 1987, Deng removed Hu in a way that offended many party leaders, including Xi Jinping’s own father. The process was so obviously against party rules that when Jiang Zemin replaced Zhao Ziyang as leader in 1989, he refused to be installed in a similar process.

The protests in the spring of 1989 centered on Tiananmen Square ended with force, despite the personal opposition of a majority of the PSC, military leadership, the Chinese state legislature, and even many key revolutionary elders. In 1992, Deng flaunted his relationship with the military and threatened to remove the newly elected party secretary, Jiang Zemin, even though at the time Deng held no formal high-ranking position in the party or state.

Some scholars have argued that Deng’s power was limited because he had to compete with other formidable revolutionary figures like Chen Yun. Chinese historian Yang Jisheng, for example, describes Chinese politics in the 1980s as consisting of “twin peaks.”

However, the evidence suggests that Deng clearly dominated. Chen’s health was so bad that, after cancer surgery in 1979, he refused to plan his life any more than two years ahead. Through the early 1980s, Deng and Chen had no major differences on policy. But after reform deepened and their differences grew more important, Chen was unable to block Deng’s plans to expand the number of special economic zones, introduce price reforms in 1988, or prevent the reform process from starting again in 1992. Deng often refused to hold meetings to avoid giving Chen an occasion to argue with him. Shortly before the violent end to the Tiananmen protests in 1989, Chen even referred to Deng as the “boss” with a Chinese word that has mafia connotations (头子). This expression was so problematic that in official versions of the speech it was changed to “core.”

Deng’s behavior is especially important given the lively discussions during the 1980s at the elite level in China about how political reform within the party really could be achieved.

Before he was removed from the leadership because of his opposition to a violent solution to the Tiananmen Square protests, former party secretary Zhao had already complained: “Many of our rules and regulations are only principles, I’m afraid that it is necessary to create specific guidelines.” He concluded that “now we always over-emphasize a ‘core,’” and that it would be necessary to more clearly delineate the relationship among various decision-making bodies.

But Deng rejected the formalization of party rules, suggesting that it was too reminiscent of a “separation of powers” and would hurt the party’s advantage of centralized leadership. For Deng, collective leadership left a potential for disagreements to split the party and imperil the drive for modernization. Instead, Deng argued that “any leadership collective must have a core, without a core the leadership is unreliable… In actuality I was the core of the second generation.”

Serious discussions of real change ended after Tiananmen Square. Zhao Ziyang, the former general secretary of the party, believed that after Deng no one would have the power to accomplish real reforms of the party. Instead of using his special authority as a revolutionary elder and military leader to lay the foundations for truly collective leadership, Deng had instead continued to emphasize the importance of a single leader unchecked by “inner-party democracy.”

Recent news from Beijing supports the argument that norms shaping collective leadership and succession are weak. At the sixth plenum of the 18th Party Congress in October, Xi Jinping was elevated to the status of “core” leader – a title never given to his predecessor, Hu Jintao. Before the plenum, major Western news outlets were already reporting that next year Xi will change the age-ceiling for membership of the Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee  and refuse to name a successor. In October, one party official described as “folklore” the supposed rule that 68-year-olds must retire from the Politburo Standing Committee, thus raising the possibility that Xi ally Wang Qishan will remain on that body despite his age.

Ambiguous rules make judgments about the future difficult. The “institutionalist” school of Chinese politics may still be right. We may not see a drastic change in leadership norms in 2017. But if that proves to be the case, Deng does not deserve the credit. In the meantime, we can see his influence in what has happened already – the naming of Xi as “core” is not a rejection of Deng’s legacy but a return to it.

Doubts about the future are already a factor of instability. Zhao’s words from before his removal may therefore prove prophetic: “With the current system, when there is no crisis it is very good. But this system cannot guarantee there will be no crisis. Chinese people are disputatious behind the scenes but face to face they are polite. Therefore, Chinese politics is never predictable.”

Today, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “doomsday clock” moved 30 seconds forward to 2 and a half minutes to midnight. The closer the minute hand gets to midnight, the closer the bulletin predicts humankind is to destroying itself. The symbolic clock was created in 1947 when Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer (the father of the U.S. nuclear program) founded the publication.

The following experts from the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies offered these perspectives:

William J. Perry, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), said: "Last year the Doomsday clock was set at 3 minutes to midnight, the closest it has been to global 'midnight' since the iciest days of the Cold War. This ominous pronouncement reflected my own fears that we were now in greater danger of nuclear catastrophe than we were during the Cold War, with the growing threat of nuclear terrorism, the continued risk of accidents and miscalculation, and the possibility of regional nuclear war and continued nuclear proliferation around the world."

He added, "Today the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that we have moved closer to global catastrophe, for the first time setting the clock 30 seconds ahead to 2 and a half minutes to midnight, approaching a time not seen since the United States and Soviet Russia first developed the H-bomb. We must heed this dire warning as a call to action. There are concrete steps that we can take to reduce the risk of nuclear annihilation, but we must start today."

Siegfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and senior fellow at CISAC, said, "The bulletin’s keepers of the clock made the correct call to move the clock 30 seconds closer to midnight. The disregard for fact-based analysis of issues such as global climate change during the recent presidential campaign is truly alarming. However, my immediate concerns focus on the world having become a more dangerous nuclear place."

He said, "Developments in North Korea top the list: 2016 was a very bad year as Pyongyang greatly expanded its nuclear complex to increase the size of its arsenal to perhaps as many as 20 to 25 weapons, conducted two more nuclear tests to enhance the sophistication of its weapons, and launched two dozen missile tests. All of this while Washington cut all communications with a regime about which we know so little, while continuing the failed policies of sanctions and leaning on China to solve the problem."

"Confrontation," Hecker said, "has replaced cooperation between Russia and the United States. For the first time since the end of the Cold War the specter of a nuclear arms race was raised in 2016. President Putin put the finishing touches on suspending or terminating most of the cooperative nuclear threat reduction programs with the United States. Nuclear safety and security concerns appear to have taken a back seat to nuclear saber rattling and cyber attacks."

He noted, "Tensions between China and the United States have increased substantially over Beijing’s more muscular role in international affairs, particularly with its actions in the South China Sea. Moreover, tensions over Taiwan prompted by President Trump’s comments about the One-China policy renew the possibility of conflict."

"South Asia has inched closer to potential nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan. India’s expanding economy and its concerns about Chinese military expansion has prompted it to strengthening its nuclear arsenal by moving toward a full triad – land, air and sea-based nuclear weapons. Pakistan, its much smaller and weaker neighbor, feels increasingly threatened by India’s expanding military. It has moved to what is called a posture of full-spectrum nuclear deterrence, which includes very dangerous tactical battlefield nuclear weapons that lower the nuclear threshold," Hecker said.

"Preventing and responding to potential acts of nuclear terrorism require close international cooperation. Unfortunately, all signs point in the opposite direction at a time when the atrocities perpetrated by terrorists are increasing. Greatest among these pullbacks was President Putin’s decision not to participate in the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit held in Washington, DC. With President Obama’s tenure having ended, this very effective collaborative international effort is now in limbo," he said.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Chaney Kourouniotis, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Relations: (6650) 724-9842, chaney.kourouniotis@stanford.edu