Stanford University

Ties that Bind: Strategic Stability in the U.S.–China Relationship

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Abstract

Conviction is widespread and increasing in both the United States and China—as well as many other countries—that the U.S.–China relationship is becoming less stable and more dangerous. We do not agree. Relations between Beijing and Washington in 2013 are more extensive, more varied, more interdependent, and more important to one another as well as to the global system than at any time in the past. But suspicion and mutual distrust persist and may have intensified. Yet, despite dramatic changes in the international system and the need to manage fleeting as well as persistent problems, the United States and China have maintained strategic stability for four decades. The relationship is less fragile and volatile than many assert, with strategic stability the result of multiple factors that reinforce one another and limit the deleterious effects of developments threatening specific “pillars” that undergird the relationship. Complacency and failure to address misperceptions and mistrust, however, will have unfortunate consequences for both sides.

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Journal Publisher
The Washington Quarterly
Authors
Thomas Fingar
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CDDRL-CISAC Special Seminar: The Logic of Violence in Drug Wars: Cartel-State Conflict in Mexico, Brazil and Colombia

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Abstract:

Why have militarized crackdowns on drug cartels had wildly divergent outcomes, sometimes exacerbating cartel-state conflict, as in Mexico and, for decades, in Brazil, but sometimes reducing violence, as with Rio de Janeiro's new 'Pacification' (UPP) strategy?  CDDRL-CISAC Post Doctoral Fellow Benjamin Lessing will distinguish key logics of violence, focusing on violent corruption--cartels' use of coercive force in the negotiation of bribes. Through this channel, crackdowns can lead to increased fighting unless the intensity of state repression is made conditional on cartels' use of violence--a key difference between Mexico and Brazil.

Speaker Bio:

Benjamin Lessing is a recent Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a joint postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center on International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and will join the Political Science faculty at University of Chicago as assistant professor in 2013.

Lessing studies 'criminal conflict'—organized armed violence involving non-state actors who, unlike revolutionary insurgents, are not trying to topple the state. His doctoral dissertation examines armed conflict between drug trafficking organizations and the state in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. Additionally, he has studied prison gangs’ pernicious effect on state authority, and the effect of paramilitary groups’ territorial control on electoral outcomes. 

Prior to his graduate work, he conducted field research on the licit and illicit small arms trade in Latin America and the Caribbean for international organizations like Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the Small Arms Survey, as well as Viva Rio, Brazil’s largest NGO, and was a Fulbright Student Grantee in Argentina and Uruguay.

 

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Benjamin Lessing Post-doctoral Fellow Speaker CDDRL and CISAC

Beatriz Magaloni

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Professor of Political Science
beatriz_magaloni_2024.jpg MA, PhD

Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

Director, Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab
Co-director, Democracy Action Lab
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Beatriz Magaloni Associate Professor of Political Science Commentator Stanford
Seminars

How to Engage Iran: Abe Sofaer in conversation with Allen Weiner on Diplomacy and the Iranian Nuclear Crisis

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About the Speakers: Abraham Sofaer was appointed the first George P. Shultz Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution in 1994. Sofaer's work focuses on the power over war within the US government and on issues related to international law, terrorism, diplomacy, and national security. His most recent books are The Best Defense?: Legitimacy and Preventive Force and Taking On Iran: Strength, Diplomacy and the Iranian Threat. From 1985 to 1990, he served as a legal adviser to the US Department of State. He received the Distinguished Service Award in 1989, the highest state department award given to a non–civil servant.

Allen Weiner is senior lecturer in law and co-director of the Stanford Program in International Law at Stanford Law School. He is also the co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. For more than a decade, he practiced international law in the U.S. Department of State, serving as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser and as legal counselor at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. Weiner is the author of "The Torture Memos and Accountability" in the American Society of International Law Insight and co-author of International Law. Other publications include "Law, Just War, and the International Fight Against Terrorism: Is It War?" in Intervention, Terrorism, and Torture: Contemporary Challenges to Just War Theory.

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Abraham Sofaer George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy and National Security Affairs, Hoover Institution, Stanford Speaker

Allen S. Weiner

Stanford Law School
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Neukom Faculty Office Building, Room N238
Stanford, CA 94305-8610

(650) 724-5892 (650) 725-2592
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Senior Lecturer in Law
Director, Stanford Program in International Law
Co-Director, Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation
CISAC Core Faculty Member
Europe Center Affiliated Faculty
rsd25_073_0376a.jpg JD

Allen S. Weiner is senior lecturer in law and director of the Stanford Program in International Law at Stanford Law School. He is also the co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. He is an international legal scholar with expertise in such wide-ranging fields as international and national security law, the law of war, international conflict resolution, and international criminal law (including transitional justice). His scholarship focuses on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and situations of widespread humanitarian atrocities. He also explores the relationship between international and domestic law in the context of asymmetric armed conflicts between the United States and nonstate groups and the response to terrorism. In the realm of international conflict resolution, his highly multidisciplinary work analyzes the barriers to resolving violent political conflicts, with a particular focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Weiner’s scholarship is deeply informed by experience; for more than a decade he practiced international law in the U.S. Department of State, serving as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser and as legal counselor at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. In those capacities, he advised government policy-makers, negotiated international agreements, and represented the United States in litigation before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Court of Justice. He teaches courses in public international law, international conflict resolution, and international security matters at Stanford Law School.

Weiner is the author of "Constitutions as Peace Treaties: A Cautionary Tale for the Arab Spring” in the Stanford Law Review Online (2011) and co-author (with Barry E. Carter) of International Law (6th ed. 2011). Other publications include “The Torture Memos and Accountability" in the American Society of International Law Insight (2009), "Law, Just War, and the International Fight Against Terrorism: Is It War?", in Intervention, Terrorism, and Torture: Contemporary Challenges to Just War Theory (Steven P. Lee, ed.) (2007), ”Enhancing Implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540: Report of the Center on International Security and Cooperation” (with Chaim Braun, Michael May & Roger Speed) (September 2007), and "The Use of Force and Contemporary Security Threats: Old Medicine for New Ills?", Stanford Law Review (2006).

Weiner has worked on several Supreme Court amicus briefs concerning national security and international law issues, including cases brought involving "war on terror" detainees.  He has also submitted petitions before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on behalf of Vietnamese social and political activists detained by their governing for the exercise of free speech rights.

Weiner earned a BA from Harvard College and a JD from Stanford Law School.

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Allen Weiner Senior Lecturer in Law; Co-Director, Stanford Program in International Law; Co-Director, Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation; CDDRL and CISAC Affiliated Faculty Member; Europe Center Research Affiliate Host
Seminars

India's Energy [In]Security and Growing Competition from China

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There is considerable optimism that India will continue to grow economically, address the crippling poverty that the majority of the population still faces and become a great nation. Dr. Gupta will first analyze India's energy security by examining the different energy sectors and evaluate to what extent it can meet its energy needs. Dr. Gupta will then analyze the economic, geographical and technology advantage that China holds over India and what India must do to address these challenges.

Dr. Rajan Gupta is a theoretical physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a Laboratory fellow. He currently serves as Program Manager of the High Energy Physics Program an LANL and previously served as Group Leader of Elementary Particles and Field Theory. He obtained his Masters in Physics from Delhi University, India, and earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from The California Institute of Technology in 1982. The main thrust of his research is to understand the fundamental theories of elementary particle interactions. Dr. Gupta has also worked extensively on a project related to the mapping of global energy systems. He has published over 125 research papers and is a fellow of the American Physical Society. During 2007 he served as the chair of the LANL energy council, helped create a strategic plan for LANL's investment in energy R&D and advocated for energy security to be made a part of the core LANL mission.

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Rajan Gupta Speaker Los Alamos National Laboratory
Seminars

War and Democratic Constraint: Parties, the Press, and Public Influence on Decisions of War and Peace

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About the Topic: Media outlets in multi-party electoral systems tend to report on a wider range of policy issues and present more competing policy frames than media in two-party systems. This suggests we should observe more challenges to governments’ preferred framing of foreign policy in multi-party democracies. Citizens in multi-party democracies are better equipped to hold their leaders accountable, relative to their counterparts in two-party democracies. This, in turn, ought to result in greater caution when leaders consider the prospect of employing military force abroad. By analyzing the news coverage of interventions in Iraq and Libya, as well as public support for war and joining multinational coalitions that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, Baum proposes a mechanism through which leaders can be constrained in decisions concerning war and peace. 

 

About the Speaker: Matthew Baum is the Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communication and professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His research focuses on delineating the effects of mass media and public opinion on international conflict and cooperation and on American foreign policy, as well as on the role of the mass media and public opinion in contemporary American politics. He has published in over a dozen leading scholarly journals, including American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and International Organization. He is also author of Soft News Goes to War: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy in the New Media Age and co-authored, War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of Public Views of War. Baum received his PhD in political science at the University of California, San Diego in 2000.

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Matthew Baum Marvin Kalb Professor of Global Communication; Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Speaker
Seminars

Climate and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis

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Summary

Climate change can reasonably be expected to increase the frequency and intensity of a variety of potentially disruptive environmental events-slowly at first, but then more quickly. It is prudent to expect to be surprised by the way in which these events may cascade, or have far-reaching effects. Over the coming decade, some climate-related events will produce consequences that exceed the capacity of affected societies or global systems to manage; these may have global security implications. Although focused on events outside the United States, Climate and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis recommends a range of research and policy actions to create a whole-of-government approach to increasing understanding of complex and contingent connections between climate and security, and to inform choices about adapting to and reducing vulnerability to climate change.

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Policy Briefs
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The National Academies Press
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Thomas Fingar
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Governing Security: The Hidden Origins of American Security Agencies

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Description from Stanford University Press:

The impact of public law depends on how politicians secure control of public organizations, and how these organizations in turn are used to define national security. Governing Security explores this dynamic by investigating the surprising history of two major federal agencies that touch the lives of Americans every day: the Roosevelt-era Federal Security Agency (which became today's Department of Health and Human Services) and the more recently created Department of Homeland Security.

Through the stories of both organizations, Cuéllar offers a compelling account of crucial developments affecting the basic architecture of our nation. He shows how Americans end up choosing security goals not through an elaborate technical process, but in lively and overlapping settings involving conflict over agency autonomy, presidential power, and priorities for domestic and international risk regulation. Ultimately, as Cuéllar shows, the ongoing fights about the scope of national security reshape the very structure of government, particularly during—or in anticipation of—a national crisis.

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Co-director Cuéllar named to endowed professorship at Stanford Law

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CISAC Co-director Siegfried Hecker has called on colleagues and friends to congratulate his co-director, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar on being named to an endowed professorship at Stanford Law School. Cuéllar is now the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law, named for the late Stanford constitutional law professor. Hecker issued the following statement:

"A member of the Stanford faculty since 2001, Tino became my co-director at CISAC in September 2011. He is also a faculty affiliate of CDDRL and a senior fellow at FSI. The endowed professorship is a tribute to his extensive work in both the law and international security and cooperation. Tino has done much to take CISAC forward as a center that focuses not only on nuclear nonproliferation, arms control and counterterrorism, but one that also tackles cyber and biosecurity, as well as migration and transnational flows.

"His teaching and research focus on administrative law, executive power and how organizations implement critical regulatory, public safety, migration and international security responsibilities in a changing world.

"Tino has a new book coming out next month: “Governing Security: The Hidden Origins of American Security Agencies” (Stanford University Press). The book explores the history and impact of the Roosevelt-era Federal Security Agency (today the Department of Health and Human Services) and the Department of Homeland Security established after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"Tino has served in the Obama and Clinton administrations, most recently as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy in 2009-2010. In July 2010, President Obama appointed Tino to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent agency charged with recommending improvements to federal regulatory programs.

"The Stanley Morrison professorship was established in 1996 by Joan and Henry Wheeler to honor Morrison, who was a beloved professor at Stanford Law School for three decades, specializing in criminal, constitutional, tax and international law."

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