Stanford cybersecurity expert Herb Lin said America may be at a “tipping point” regarding the rewards and risks of the Internet, unless new cybersecurity policies are adopted by the incoming Trump Administration. He speaks Dec. 7 at Stanford on the issue.

The costs of using the Internet and computational devices due to inadequate security may soon outweigh the benefits unless dramatic cybersecurity measures are taken, a Stanford scholar said.

Herbert Lin, a senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), serves on the President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, which on Dec. 2 issued strong recommendations to upgrade the nation’s cybersecurity systems.

Lin will speak Dec. 7 at Stanford about the report – his talk will be featured live on video. The 100-page report aims to inform the incoming Trump Administration about how to approach escalating cybersecurity dangers. The effort follows significant hacking of U.S. government systems in and accusations by the White House that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election.

The commission suggested both short- and long-term measures, such as fixing problems from the weakly protected ‘internet-of-things’; creating an assistant to the president for cybersecurity; and re-organizing responsibility for the cybersecurity of federal agencies, among others.

The report also urged getting rid of traditional passwords, which could help reduce identity theft. It also advised that the new administration train 100,000 new cybersecurity workers by 2020.

A research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Lin was recently interviewed by CISAC about the report:

What is the reason to move the burden of cybersecurity away from the user to higher levels of companies, government?

Taking the necessary and appropriate measures for cybersecurity is, for practical purposes, too complex for average end-users. A successful effort to push cybersecurity measures farther from the user will result in better security because security decisions will be made by those who are security experts rather than users that are unfamiliar with security.

Why is the White House the best entity to lead cybersecurity efforts?

Enhancing national cybersecurity requires a whole-of-government effort, indeed a whole-of-society effort.  The task is making a meaningful dent in a problem that is so large. Only with high-level leadership does that effort have any chance of success.

Will the distrust of the U.S. government by the technology community in general hinder this approach to cybersecurity? How can the tech world's trust in the government on cybersecurity issues be improved?

Distrust harms both sides – the U.S. government and the technology community.  The U.S. government loses the ability to enlist the cooperation of the private sector, which has many capabilities that it does not have, capabilities that would be useful in fulfilling its responsibilities to the American people. The tech sector invites harsh legislation and suspicion that work against its interests. At the same time, the distrust is not entirely unfounded, as both sides have indulged in apocalyptic rhetoric that has raised the temperature of the debate without much productive result.  But what I’m saying here represents a personal perspective, and isn’t part of the commission’s report.

What happens if these recommendations are not enacted or adopted? What happens to the typical American computer user? In the long run, if we do little or nothing, how will this affect the Internet – as an economic driver or engine for the economy, place where people connect?

President Obama created the commission because he believed that cybersecurity was a high national priority, a sentiment with which both presidential candidates agreed. If the nation does too little to improve its cybersecurity posture, the gap between the security we have and the security we need will only grow because the cybersecurity threat we face is growing. And if that is the case, the costs of using the Internet and computational devices due to inadequate security will outweigh the benefits – indeed, there is evidence that we are near such a tipping point today. Even now, a large fraction of Americans are unwilling to use the Internet for certain purposes due to security concerns – and I can tell you that I personally refrain from conducting certain transactions online for just such reasons.

Any other issues?

One of the most surprising aspects of the report was the process that produced it.  The chair of the commission is known to be a Democrat. The vice-chair is known to be a Republican.  Other than that, you would be hard-pressed to identify the political affiliations of anyone else on the commission on the basis of what they said. So it was thoroughly a nonpartisan effort that produced the report.

Herb Lin will speak at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 7 in the NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building Room B3. More information and live video information is available at http://ee380.stanford.edu. The title of the talk is “Charting a Cybersecurity Path for the Next Administration: Report of the President's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.” In February, President Obama announced a Cybersecurity National Action Plan to take a series of short-term and long-term actions to improve our nation’s cybersecurity posture.  A central feature of that plan is the non-partisan Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.

Follow CISAC on Twitter at @StanfordCISAC and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Herbert Lin, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 497-8600, herbert.s.lin@stanford.edu

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

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia, will join Stanford University as a visiting fellow in January.

Ilves, whose title will be the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow, is set to work at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He served as the fourth president of Estonia from 2006 to 2016. During his career, he has been a diplomat and journalist, and was the leader of Estonia’s Social Democratic Party in the 1990s.

Ilves’ tentative start date at CISAC is Jan. 9, and his appointment will run through June 30. Afterwards, the Hoover Institution will extend his appointment for another full year. During his time on campus, Ilves said he plans to delve deeply into the intersections between information technology and security policy, areas that have long fascinated him during his career.

“Stanford has long been a place I enjoy visiting as one of the few if only universities to have top minds from both realms,” Ilves wrote in an email interview, noting how many Stanford scholars are studying these types of issues. He has some big projects in mind.

“After spending the past quarter of a century on digitizing Estonia, a country also faced with daunting security challenges, I plan to write a book on the foundations of a functioning digital society,” he said.

Ilves added, “Much of what we have seen in the past decade – massive hacks, data theft, privacy violations – come from fundamental weaknesses in the haphazard way our digital world has developed, where security is primarily an afterthought and a patch.”

He said that a secure and functional digital society has to be based on both legally and technically sound foundations. “I have argued and written for years that it’s the analog, legal basis of our digital world that determines if we are technologically secure.”

Parallel to this topic, Ilves said his most recent speeches and articles have examined the “challenges of an increasingly fissiparous and nationalist Europe.”

Michael McFaul, the director of FSI, said that Ilves’ interest in FSI and CISAC is a reflection of their scholarly reputations around the world.

"As president of Estonia, Toomas Ilves emerged as a world leader on issues related to cyber security, e-governance, and liberal ideas more generally. His intellectual and policy agenda fits perfectly with what we do at FSI,” McFaul said.

He noted, “We are very lucky to have him as the first Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow.”

Ilves also served in the Estonian government as the minister of foreign affairs from 1996 to 1998 and again from 1999 to 2002. In that position, he was in charge of European Union enlargement and NATO issues. Later, he was a member of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2006.

Ilves believes the challenge for all small European countries, Estonia included, is to maintain a functioning European Union as well as a strong NATO, the primary treaty basis of trans-Atlantic relations. Many significant political and security issues exist on the Continent, he noted.

“With elections across Europe increasingly demonstrating a turn toward nationalism and populism, the EU and NATO currently face their greatest challenge since their founding. As a small country that has consistently supported the EU and NATO as a matter of national security, for Estonia, this is a question of national survival,” said Ilves.

Follow CISAC on Twitter at @StanfordCISAC and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC.

MEDIA CONTACT

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

In this new article, Megan Palmer, a senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, talks about the different ways that the FBI is collaborating with the biotech community in order to be prepared to respond to an emerging biological threat. One of them is by reaching out to student bioengineers at programs like the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) Competition. The purpose of that event is to demonstrate how synthetic biology can be used to address pressing global issues.

As the article states, whether it’s an accidental outbreak or a biological attack, the FBI seeks to create a culture of trust and transparency with the biotech community. Palmer discussed this topic recently at the Biofabricate conference for synthetic biology and design in New York City.

As Palmer noted, biological attacks are a historical reality. In 1984, cult members poisoned patrons of 10 salad bars in Oregon with salmonella, sickening more than 750 people. And in 2001 shortly after the 9/11 attacks, anthrax spores that were mailed to newsrooms and government offices killed five people. While other incidents may have simply failed, it seems prudent to prepare for future attacks that could be even more deadlier.

Enter the FBI's foreay into the biotech community. Collaboartion between the public and private sectors is increasing in this area. As Palmer said, examples exist of iGEM students acting as "white hat biohackers" to help biotech companies detect weaknesses in their systems that  all in collaboration with the FBI, Palmer says. 

“There’s the overall sense that the government has acknowledged that it is not necessarily the center of influence in technological development,” Palmer told the publication. “We’re going to start seeing many more examples of partnerships between the government and the private sector where you wouldn't have necessarily expected them before. People should be willing to give them a chance.” 

To Palmer, the key to the collaboration is open communication. She reports progress with the FBI and biotech community on this front. Palmer herself asks the FBI questions about its involvement and interest in biotech dangers. So far, they have “been willing to have more of those conversations,” she said. The true test will come when the relationship is finally tested by what Palmer describes as a “triggering event,” either a situation where there is reason to believe a biotech has occurred or one in which the FBI is prying a bit too much into the lives of biologists. Palmer said that if the relationship doesn’t withstand this type of challenge, the trust between the FBI and the community would weaken, and communication would break down.

Follow CISAC on Twitter at @StanfordCISAC and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC.

Reality stands in the way of a quickly transformed U.S.-Russia relationship, Stanford historian Norman Naimark said. Naimark, an expert in Russian history and faculty affiliate at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), anticipates that "strategic constraints" will set in for the incoming Trump administration as it begins to understand some of the fundamental differences between Moscow and Washington.

The relationship between the two longtime global rivals may not change as fast or dramatically as some suggest, Naimark said. In fact, “deals” may be harder to make with the Putin regime in Russian than Trump anticipates.

CISAC recently interviewed Naimark on the subject of future U.S.-Russia ties:

How might the election of Donald Trump change the U.S.-Russia relationship?

There are many important things we do not yet know about the future Trump administration. How will his foreign policy team reflect (or not) the views of the Republican establishment, including the vice president, on issues towards Russia? How wedded is Trump to his campaign rhetoric and promises about Russia? How influential will the new president be in the making of foreign policy, when his interests and self-proclaimed competence clearly relate to domestic issues? How ready will the Trump administration be to reverse long-standing U.S. treaty and alliance obligations, both formal and informal?

Answers to those questions would help us assess the range of possibilities for any changes in Russian-American relations, which are presently worse than at any time since the beginning of the 1980s, the period of what some call the “second Cold War.” If Hillary Clinton had won the election, one could have been fairly certain that relations would have continued at their present parlous, if steady state, with both sides taking actions to undermine the other, while criticizing the other’s motives. Some commentators have suggested that the Trump victory opens a door for concessions on the part of the Americans – on Crimea, on Ukraine, on Syria, on sanctions, on NATO troops in the eastern member nations – that might encourage Putin to respond accordingly, improving the tone and content of Russian-American relations.

But I would caution against thinking that this will come fast, if it comes at all, or that the impact will be groundbreaking or of significant duration. There are some fundamental differences between Moscow and Washington that reflect deep and abiding issues. For example, both look at Russia’s “sphere of influence” from opposite perspectives: while Putin seeks to expand and consolidate it, the U.S. follows a revived containment policy. “Deals” may be harder to make with Russia under these circumstances than Trump anticipates.

If U.S. foreign policy establishment generally holds skeptical views of the Putin regime, how difficult will it be for Trump to strike off on his own in reshaping the relationship?

The history of American foreign policy since the Second World War has demonstrated that the president and his immediate advisors can have enormous influence on the flow of events. Again, nothing happens at once, independent of a cumbersome process of formulating and executing policy changes. But profound shifts do happen and they can alter the trajectory of American foreign policy. Still it is important to remember that Putin’s determined anti-American stance has Russian domestic political determinants that will impede change, even if President-elect Trump initiates steps to improve the character of the relationship.

What are the biggest flashpoints or challenges between Russia and the U.S.?

Ukraine, Syria, and the lifting of sanctions are probably at the top of the list, though the recent slippage of the arms control regime is a matter of great concern. The problems associated with Ukraine – both the issue of the illegal annexation of Crimea and the Russian destabilization of and military interference in Donbass – have been “handed off” by Washington to the Europeans in general and Germany, with Angela Merkel in the lead, in specific.

The Minsk II sanctions are a European initiative to get the Russians to conform to international norms on a Ukrainian settlement. Trump could hardly make a deal with Putin about Ukraine without serious European input.

Syria is different, though the constraints here also seem extremely difficult to overcome, given the U.S.’ principled opposition to strengthening Assad in power. Secretary of State John Kerry’s dogged attempts to come to an agreement with the Russians about Syria involved, as best we know, a number of important American concessions. Though both the United States and the Russian Federation are deeply hostile to ISIS, and it makes sense for both to join forces to attack the terrorist entity, the maintenance of the Assad regime would be very hard for the U.S. foreign policy and military establishment to accept.

Why does Putin seemingly think Trump is better for Russia than Hillary Clinton would have been?

Some of it is personal: Trump and Putin have said positive things about one another, though these exchanges were based in part on a mistranslation of a supposed compliment to Trump by Putin. Trump has been more conciliatory about dictators and has explicitly promised better relations with Russia. But the issues go deeper. Trump has indicated that he would reduce the United States’ support of NATO and reevaluate U.S. support of Ukrainian interests, both of which would weaken the American position in Europe, one of Moscow’s major foreign policy goals.

The Russian president also welcomes Trump’s readiness to recalibrate American involvement in Syria. Meanwhile, Clinton was seen as having tried to undermine Putin’s election to the Russian presidency in 2012 and as supporting an aggressive democratization program in Russia. She is the personification for him of the liberal, internationalist, and interventionist wing of the Washington foreign policy establishment that advocates, in his view, the Americanization of the international order.

With this said, Putin is surely nervous about Trump’s inconsistencies and volatility, which could exacerbate rather than calm Russian-American tensions.

What does history tell us about the U.S.-Russia relationship and what may happen in the future?

Since the beginning of the Cold War (some might argue since the Russian Revolution, almost a century ago), the relationship between the U.S. and Russia has been fraught with deep tensions and mutual hostility. The Cold War was a very dangerous period of relations, when proxy wars, dramatic international crises, and the potential use of nuclear weapons dominated the relationship. One of the major disappointments of the post-Cold War period is the unsuccessful integration of the Russian Federation in the international system as a force for peace and stability. Putin is an important part of the story. But there are also deep historical and structural reasons for this problem and they will not be solved by the waving of an American president’s magic wand. Though both countries are changing, we may have to wait a good long while for the Putin-era enmity to disappear.

Naimark is also the Donald Andrews Whittier Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor of East European Studies in the history department, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and an affiliated faculty fellow at the Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He recently published a new book, Genocide: A World History.

Follow CISAC on Twitter at @StanfordCISAC and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Norman Naimark, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 723-2674, naimark@stanford.edu

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

Amy Zegart, co-director of CISAC, wrote the following op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle:

Donald Trump’s stunning win has made many wonder: Just how dangerous could a Trump foreign policy be? There are plenty of reasons to be afraid, very afraid.

Marjorie Kiewit, a former CISAC researcher and longtime supporter, passed away at her home in Boston on Nov. 12, 2016.  She was 95.

Kiewit was a researcher for the Center for International Security and Cooperation under John W. Lewis, CISAC co-founder and the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics. She was also a generous and enthusiastic supporter of CISAC’s mission to make the world safer through knowledge and education.

Lewis said, “Marjorie worked throughout CISAC in its formative years and supported with wonderful gifts the entire center. In the last 10 years or so, she primarily supported my project (the Project on Peace and Cooperation in the Asian-Pacific Region), but she embraced the overall center's commitment to peace.”

For example, Lewis and his co-author acknowledge the support of Kiewit that made this 2016 research paper on China’s interests in the South China Sea possible. Always maintaining such connections after her two-plus decades at Stanford, Kiewit worked on campus at the Northeast Asia-United States Forum and then CISAC. She also served as a member of Stanford’s Board of Visitors for the Institute of International Studies. 

One Stanford colleague said Kiewit possessed an “intuitively correct understanding of the world events and world leaders.”  Another described her as “engaged, intelligent and relevant to how we faced extraordinary challenges and opportunities with the Chinese, North Koreans and Russians. She brought light and joy into all of our work."

Roots and results

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Kiewit maintained her association with Stanford for over three decades until her death, during which time she traveled with high-level delegations to China, Russia, and North and South Korea and cultivated close relationships with Chinese educators and senior policy makers to share ideas and proposals in the field of educational and foreign policy. She was also the founder and served as longtime chairperson of the Helios Foundation, which supports charitable institutions throughout the world and promotes philanthropy for future generations. She spent the last 20 years living in Boston to be near family, which was always a priority in her life, her family stated.

Kiewit was preceded in death by her two husbands; parents; two brothers, John and William Harkins; and her daughter, Linda Jacob.  She is survived by her sister, Barbara Belle of Belleville, Wis.; her daughters Barbara (Jack) Aalfs of Sioux City, Iowa and Nancy (Tom) McLoughlin of Mystic, Conn.; her son John (Lynne) Buchanan of Appleton, Wis.; her son-in-law Jonah Jacob of Boston; and seven grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren, and three step-grandchildren. 

A celebration of Kiewit's life will be held next summer in Appleton, Wis.  Donations in her memory may be made to the Marjorie Buchanan Kiewit Scholarship Fund at Lawrence University. The address is:

Development Office, Lawrence University

711 E. Boldt Way

Appleton, WI 54911

Stanford students are applying lean start-up techniques to some of the world’s most difficult foreign policy issues.

The fall 2016 quarter class, Hacking for Diplomacy: Tackling Foreign Policy Challenges with the Lean Launchpad, is a first-of-its-kind course for studying statecraft, created as a reflection of the best that Stanford and Silicon Valley offers in the way of pioneering paradigms. Hacking for Diplomacy is co-taught by Joe Felter, a senior researcher at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). It is based on the Lean LaunchPad methodology, created by course designer Steve Blank, a Stanford lecturer and entrepreneur.

The teaching team also includes Jeremy Weinstein, a political science professor at the Freeman Spogli Institute; Zvika Krieger, the U.S. Department of State's Representative to Silicon Valley; and Steve Weinstein, the CEO of MovieLabs.

'Breaking free'

The class is based on cultivating ideas and imagination, breaking free of the traditional “business plan” approach to rolling out new products and solutions. In the case of diplomacy, the lean start-up method is fast and flexible above all. It has three key principles based on concepts such as "mission model canvas," "beneficiary development," and "agile engineering,” according to Felter, also a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

“The first principle is accepting that any proposed solution to a problem whether in the commercial world or public sector is initially just a set of untested hypotheses – at best informed guesses – as to what may solve the needs of a customer or beneficiary,” said Felter.

Regarding beneficiary development, he said, experiential learning is central.

“There are no answers to complex challenges ‘inside the building,’ if you will, and students must ‘get out of the building’ to find out –in as intimate detail as possible – the various pains and gains experienced by the various beneficiaries, stakeholders and end users that must be addressed to find viable and deployable solutions to their problems,” Felter said.

The last principle, “agile development,” is based on the view that proposed solutions are generated and constantly updated through a collecting of data and feedback. This in turn, Felter explained, is rapidly tested and new solutions are designed based this iterative process.

Overall, he noted, the core idea is that entrepreneurs are everywhere, and that lean startup principles favor experimentation over elaborate planning, offering a faster way to get a desired product or solution to market.

Real-world instruction

In the class, student teams analyze real-world foreign policy challenges. They then use lean startup principles to find new approaches to seemingly intractable or very complex problems that have bedeviled the foreign policy world. The teams actually work with mentors and officials in the U.S. State Department and other civilian agencies and private companies.

Each week, the teams present their findings (“product”) to a panel of faculty and mentors, who will critique their solutions. The outcomes will range, as they vary from problem to problem. Examples include human rights, food security, refuges and labor recruitment, and mosquito disease threats, among others.

On Oct. 10, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited the class. “Brilliant minds are applying technology to world’s toughest problems. Their perspective will inform,” Kerry tweeted after the class.

Kerry’s State Department gave the students seven challenges to address – human trafficking, avoiding space collisions, tracking nuclear devices, and countering violent extremism. The students will explore and analyze these issues through the rest of the quarter.

One student, Kaya Tilev, later asked Kerry what the students should be striving for to make their “solutions” a reality for national policymakers.

Kerry said, “Well, you’re doing it. You’re in it. You’re in the program. And I have absolute confidence if you come up with a viable solution it is going to be implemented, adopted, and institutionalized.”

Zvika Krieger, the state department official, told the students that Kerry was impressed with them and the class.

“He (Kerry) brought up our class in all of his meetings that day, including at a lunch with the CEOs/founders of Google, Airbnb, and Lyft; in a podcast interview with Wired magazine, and in remarks at the Internet Association's conference,” Krieger wrote in an email to them.

Global flashpoints are proliferating around the globe – the Syrian War, conflict and civil wars across the Middle East and in parts of Africa; the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction by states and non-state groups; the most significant flow of refugees since World War II; North Korea nuclear testing; Russian adventurism on its borders; China’s forays into the South China Sea; and a changing climate.

In other words, there is no shortage of thorny problems for young minds to solve as they embark on their careers.

‘Hungry to apply their energy’

Jeremy Weinstein, the political science professor, described the students as “hungry to apply their energy and talents to real-world problems, and to use hands-on experiences as a way of accelerating their learning.”

The class taps into that motivation by bringing together data scientists, engineers, and social scientist, he noted. In the end, the idea is for students to learn how to “innovate inside government.”

Weinstein is optimistic that this class – and a stronger connection between the State Department and Stanford’s technical and policy expertise – can drive more innovation inside government.

“Technology can play a critical role in addressing many of today’s foreign policy challenges, and this class is one new way for senior U.S. officials to tap into the passion, creativity and talent of Silicon Valley,” he said.

Hacking for defense

Last year, Felter and Blank also led a Hacking for Defense class based on the same lean start-up principles. Hacking for Diplomacy is co-listed as both an International Policy Studies and a Management Science and Engineering course – it counts for international relations and political science majors as well.

Blank, a consulting associate professor in engineering, told the Stanford News Service in a recent story that he seeks to cultivate in students a passion for giving back to society and their world.

“We’re going to create a network of entrepreneurial students who understand the diplomatic, policy and national security problems facing the country and get them engaged in partnership with islands of innovation in the Department of State,” said Blank, who also wrote about the new hacking for Diplomacy course in the Huffington Post.

“Teams must take these products out to the real world and ask potential users for feedback,” he noted.

CISAC nuclear scientist Siegfried S. Hecker earlier this year released a book, Doomed to Cooperate, about how American and Russian scientists joined forces to avert some of the greatest post-Cold War nuclear dangers. Physics Today and Arms Control Today recently ran reviews on the work. Below is a Nov. 1 article that Hecker wrote on this subject for Russia Matters:

By Siegfried S. Hecker

The consequences of state collapse anywhere in the world can be devastating and destabilizing for neighboring and even distant countries.

The complexity of each situation demands a tailored response, according to Stanford scholars embarking on a new American Academy Arts & Sciences project to identify the best policy responses to failing states embroiled in civil wars.

A failed state is that whose political or economic system has become so weak that the government is no longer in control. Such instability has already threatened or affected Syria, Libya, Yemen and other polities.

The project, Civil Wars, Violence and International Responses, is led by Stanford’s Karl Eikenberry and Stephen Krasner. Eikenberry is a faculty affiliate at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. Krasner is a faculty member in the political science department and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Relations and Hoover Institution.

Other Stanford scholars involved include Francis Fukuyama and Steve Stedman of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law; CISAC's Martha Crenshaw, political scientist James Fearon; Paul Wise of the Center for Health Policy and the Center for Health Policy and the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research; and Michele Barry, the senior associate dean for global health at the medical school.

The effort will culminate in a two-volume issue in AAAS’s journal Dædalus. On Nov. 2-4, the academy will hold an authors’ workshop in Cambridge, Mass., to discuss journal content.

Different approaches

In an interview, Eikenberry said the problematic U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan make it clear that different approaches must be used for different countries.

“The robust counterinsurgency campaign that the U.S. employed for periods of time in both Afghanistan and Iraq was premised on the viability of the standard development model that aims to put countries on the path to economic well-being and consolidated democracy,” he said.

However, such an approach assumes that decision makers in those states have the same objectives as the intervening states, which typically seek to improve the lives of people in those countries, said Eikenbery. Prior to serving as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 until 2011, Eikenberry had a 35-year career in the U.S. Army, retiring in 2009 with the rank of lieutenant general.

As Krasner points out, when intervention occurs, the hope is that improvements in one area – such as the quality of elections, rule of law, economic growth, or military recognition of civilian authority – would lead to improvements in other areas, according to Eikenberry.

But opposition and a constrained sense of “limited opportunities” can arise to thwart a well-meaning intervention, Eikenberry said.

He added, “Information asymmetries and the absence of mutually compatible interests between national and external elites, make it impossible to put target countries on a rapid path to prosperity and consolidated democracy. External actors must have much more modest goals.”

Syrian consequences

As for the case of Syria, Eikenberry noted that such civil wars can actually become more lethal and dangerous to global order than inter-state conflicts.

These types of conflicts like that in Syria tend to escalate into high levels of violence because of the costs that the losing parties believe they will incur, he said.

“This in turn leads to state fragmentation and the possibility of transnational groups with international ambitions getting involved,” he said. “Civil wars can result in an enormous number of civilian casualties, which generates large scale refugee flows” and puts huge pressure on neighboring states.

Eikenberry said Syria is being “internationalized by entangling regional and great powers in proxy wars,” which is exacerbating that conflict beyond Syria and throughout the greater Middle East. As for the immediate, direct threat to the U.S., that debate still continues, he added. 

On that note, one project goal is to assess risks to other countries that may emanate from civil wars and protracted intrastate violence like that in Syria, Eikenberry said. He and his colleagues will examine the effects of  international terrorism, massive displacements of people, proxy wars that escalate to interstate warfare, criminal organizations that displace governments, and pandemics. 

Policy implications

Eikenberry is hopeful the project influences policy and practice toward countries experiencing civil war and violence.

“Facilitating dialogue among a variety of constituencies with knowledge on the dynamics and impact of civil wars that might not normally or directly interact, including government and military officials, human rights organizations, academic and scholarly experts, and the media, will be one outcome of the project,” he said.

The idea is to allow “new ideas to emerge” regarding how to handle such states, as well as methods of applying such findings, he said.

“Exploring ways to create stability and more lasting peace, taking into consideration voices from academic and practical fields, should prove valuable to the policy community,” Eikenberry said.

Following publication of the volumes, the project will convene international workshops aimed at developing better regional perspectives. Such outreach activities will provide the feedback for the publication of another AAAS paper aimed at informing U.S. and international policy and research on the subject. A series of roundtable discussions in Washington is also planned.

CISAC's William J. Perry created a free, public 10-week course for people to learn more about the looming dangers of nuclear catastrophe. His new MOOC, developed with the support of Stanford’s Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, offers a chance to take that message to a much larger audience.

Living at the Nuclear Brink: Yesterday and Today is an online course (a "MOOC") taught by former Defense Secretary William J. Perry and a team of international experts. 

“I believe that the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe is greater today than it was during the cold war,” said Perry, who recently wrote a New York Times op-ed on why America should dismantle its ICBM missile systems.

Because the continued risk of nuclear catastrophe isn’t widely recognized, Perry believes, “our nuclear policies don’t reflect the danger. So I’ve set off on a mission to educate people on how serious the problem is. Only then can we develop the policies that are appropriate for the danger we face.” 

The course offers participants the chance to ask questions and participate in discussions via an online forum, which Perry and his fellow experts will address during weekly video chats. Each week, Perry will be joined in conversation by top thinkers, including CISAC's Martha Crenshaw, David Holloway and Siegfried Hecker, Scott D. Sagan, and Philip Taubman. George Shultz, the former secretary of state, will also participate. Outside experts include Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione, nuclear negotiator James Goodby, former Russian Deputy Minister of Defense Andre Kokoshin, and Joseph Martz of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Learn more about "Living at the Nuclear Brink" in this story or watch a video. Register for the course here. It is now open for enrollment and begins Oct. 4.