This event is co-sponsored with The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Seminar Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vHBvzWHcpw&feature=youtu.be

Abstract: The world’s largest organization is also one of its most mysterious. The Department of Defense (DOD) employs more men and women than Amazon, McDonald’s, FedEx, Target, and General Electric combined. Yet most Americans know little about it beyond its $700 billion budget and iconic five-sided headquarters. Now, the leader who knows the Pentagon best pulls back the curtain on an institution that many regard with a mix of awe and suspicion, revealing not just what it does but why, and why it matters. Former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter will offer an insider’s account of how America’s military works—and how it should work. It is also a timely reassessment of U.S. foreign policy and national security strategies in a rapidly changing world, and a timeless reflection on the leadership qualities essential to not only run but also reform a dauntingly complex organization. 

Speaker's Biography:

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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/8JDHuY0HMCM

Abstract: The motivation to develop nuclear energy waned in the latter part of the twentieth century. Technologies such as very-high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and fast-neutron liquid-metal reactors had been pursued for the purpose of recycling used nuclear fuel from water-cooled reactors, or for the purpose of supplying high-temperature process heat to the chemical industry or for hydrogen production. While both worthwhile causes, one could argue that the important missing element of all of these advanced nuclear reactor technologies was a business case: how were nuclear power plants to be profitable? With the more widely recognized need for decarbonizing energy production, the new driver for developing nuclear energy became cost. Can nuclear power be economically competitive with natural gas and coal, in order to provide an economic driver for the displacement of fossil fuel? This became the new motivation for nuclear energy development in the twenty-first century, and over the last decade the unthinkable happened: a growing and striving ecosystem of nuclear energy start-up companies. Many of these start-up companies pursue the development of liquid-fuel molten salt reactors, fueled by thorium or uranium fuel. Other start-up companies develop solid-fuel reactors cooled by salt, or even fusion reactors cooled by salt. The common feature of nuclear reactors that utilize molten salt is the operation at high-temperature and atmospheric pressure. The high temperature leads to doubled power efficiencies, compared to conventional water-cooled reactors. The atmospheric pressure leads to a safety case that is arguably easier to demonstrate, and hence that would enable a faster commercialization time.  On the other hand, there remain many technical risks and time-line uncertainties for the development of salt nuclear technologies. There remain also questions of policy, licensing, and compatibility with local industry and local culture, necessary elements for the global development of such nuclear reactors. This talk will explore some of the challenges faced by the global deployment of molten-salt and salt-cooled reactors, and some of the challenges faced by nuclear start-up companies in order to change the innovation cycle for nuclear energy technology from thirty years to a much shorter time frame.

Speaker's Biography:

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CISAC will be canceling all public events and seminars until at least April 5th due to the ongoing developments associated with COVID-19.

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About this Event: Somatic (i.e. non-heritable) genome editing is already in clinical trials for the treatment of diseases ranging from certain cancers to sickle cell anemia.  But public fascination has largely focused on germline editing, especially with the startling late 2018 announcement that human embryos had been edited and then used for a pregnancy resulting in two live-born girls.  This talk will highlight key scientific and political responses since that announcement, and offer insights into ongoing debates and ongoing work by international commissions looking at whether there are any conditions under which such experiments could be done responsibly in the future.

About the Speaker:

R. Alta Charo, J.D., is a 2019-2020 Berggruen Fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin.  She was co-chair of the National Academies’ 2017 report on human genome editing, and a member of the organizing committee for the 2019 international summit on genome editing in Hong Kong.  At present, she serves on the  World Health Organization committee developing global governance standards for genome editing, and on the steering committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research effort to revise and expand ethical guidelines for research and development of both heritable and non-heritable human genome editing.

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Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

Abstract: The West’s sanctions regime on Russia is unprecedented. Russia is the largest economy ever to be subject to major sanctions. And for the first time, the West is now the major constraint on Russia’s participation in the global economy. This experience is driving adaptation and innovation in both Russian public policy and Western sanctions practice.

What do Russian sanctions reveal about both Russia and sanctions? What count as good and bad tests of sanctions’ efficacy? What implications do sanctions hold for Russia’s domestic evolution and its relationship with the West?

Speaker's Biography:

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Nigel taught at Oxford University before joining the British Foreign Office, where his roles included Ambassador to Belarus. From 2010-14 he was Vice President, Policy and Corporate Affairs for BG Group in Asia.

He is the author of Tectonic Politics: Global Political Risk in an Age of Transformation (Brookings Institution, 2019). He received his B.A. and M.Phil. from Oxford and his Ph.D. from Harvard.

Abstract: In 2013, the Obama Administration’s “Nuclear Employment Strategy” guidance announced that all war plans and operations would be “consistent with the fundamental principles of the Law of Armed Conflict” (LOAC). The Trump Administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review repeated this commitment. The literature on nuclear strategy and deterrence in political science however, has either ignored these legal requirements or misunderstood them. The legal literature on nuclear weapons, however, has largely ignored the technical revolution regarding improved accuracy and lower-yield nuclear weapons and the different strategic contexts in which the U.S. might contemplate nuclear use. This paper analyzes how proper application of the Law of Armed Conflict should constrain U.S. nuclear doctrine and war planning and how knowledge of strategic considerations is fundamental to proper legal analysis. We argue that the principle of proportionality can permit “counter-force” targeting— most clearly when such attacks can prevent or significantly reduce the expected damage to U.S. and allied populations with lower foreign collateral damage. We also argue that the legal requirement to take “feasible precautions” to protect non-combatants means the U.S. must use conventional weapons or the lowest yield nuclear weapons possible in any counterforce attack. Finally, we contend that the prohibition against deliberate targeting of civilians has gained the status of customary international law and that the U.S. government should therefore reverse its traditional position and reject the doctrine of “belligerent reprisal” against foreign civilians. This prohibition means that it is illegal for the United States, contrary to what is implied in the 2018 NPR and explicitly maintained by prominent U.S. Air Force lawyers, to either intentionally target civilians in reprisal to a strike against U.S. or allied civilians, or launch attacks against legitimate military targets if the intent to is cause incidental civilian harm.

Speaker's Biography:

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Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Learning from a Disaster: Improving Nuclear Safety and Security after Fukushima (Stanford University Press, 2016) with Edward D. Blandford and co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Armed and Dangerous: When Dictators Get the Bomb” in Foreign Affairs (November/December 2018); “Not Just a War Theory: American Public Opinion on Ethics in Combat” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Studies Quarterly (Fall 2018); The Korean Missile Crisis” in Foreign Affairs (November/December 2017); “Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran: What Americans Really Think About Using Nuclear Weapons and Killing Noncombatants” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Summer 2017); and “Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons” with Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino in the American Political Science Review (February 2013).

In 2018, Sagan received the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.

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Senior Lecturer Weiner is director of the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law and co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2003, Weiner served as legal counselor to the U.S. Embassy in The Hague and attorney adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. He was a law clerk to Judge John Steadman of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

*Due to space constraints, space is limited. If you have RSVP'd for this event and can no longer attend, please notify Emilie Silva (emilieds@stanford.edu).

Agenda

8:30 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.      Light pastries 

9:00 a.m. - 9:15 a.m.        Introductions

9:15 a.m. - 10:45 a.m.       The Historical Evolution of the Iraqi State

Moderator: David Patel, Brandeis University Crown Center

Panelists: Lisa Blaydes, Stanford University; Michael Brill, Princeton University; Alissa Walter, Seattle Pacific University

10:45 a.m.  - 11:00 a.m.     Break

11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.     Iraqi Politics and the State

Video recording: https://youtu.be/LyXS3nbeJqM

Moderator: Marc Lynch, George Washington University

Panelists: Maria Fantappie, International Crisis Group; Samuel Helfont, Naval Postgraduate School; David Patel, Brandeis University Crown Center

Speaker Biographies

Lisa Blaydes is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.  She is the author of Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011).  Professor Blaydes received the 2009 Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in the field of comparative politics from the American Political Science Association for this project.  Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. During the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 academic years, Professor Blaydes was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.  She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.

Michael Brill a doctoral student in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, where he focuses his research on modern Iraq, investigating the Sunni Islamist opposition to the Baʿth regime and the history of Iraq’s Salafi movement. 

He previously obtained his MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and BA at Westfield State University. He previously obtained his MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and BA in History and Political Science at Westfield State University. He received two summer Critical Language Scholarships (CLS), studying Arabic in Muscat, Oman and Amman, Jordan, followed by a full-year fellowship in the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) program in Amman, Jordan.

Maria Fantappie is Senior Adviser at the International Crisis Group. Maria first joined Crisis Group in 2012.  In 2018, she was seconded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the EU mission in Iraq where she advised the Office of the National Security Advisor (ONSA) on the implementation of the security sector reform program with special focus on Iraq’s national security legislation.

Before joining Crisis Group, Maria was a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and associate researcher at the Institut français du Proche-Orient (IFPO). She has taught at American University of Iraq in Suleimani and Sciences Po Paris. Maria completed her PhD at King’s College London, Department of War Studies, and earned an MA and MPhil with distinction from Sciences Po Paris, Department of Middle Eastern Studies.

Samuel Helfont is an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Policy in the Naval War College program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is also an Affiliate Scholar in the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. His research focuses on international history and politics in the Middle East, especially Iraq and the Iraq Wars. He is the author of Compulsion in Religion: Saddam Hussein, Islam, and the Roots of Insurgencies in Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2018). His work has been published by Foreign Affairs, The International History Review, The Middle East Journal, Orbis, The New Republic, The American Interest, War on the Rocks,  and the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University among several other outlets.

Helfont holds a PhD and MA in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. Prior to moving to Monterey, he completed a three year post-doctoral lectureship at the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Haverford College, and was the recipient of US Scholar Research Support Fellowship from the Hoover Library and Archives at Stanford University. He is a veteran of the Iraq War.

Colin H. Kahl is co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the inaugural Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a Professor, by courtesy, in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. He is also a Strategic Consultant to the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

From October 2014 to January 2017, he was Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President. In that position, he served as a senior advisor to President Obama and Vice President Biden on all matters related to U.S. foreign policy and national security affairs, and represented the Office of the Vice President as a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee. From February 2009 to December 2011, Dr. Kahl was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East at the Pentagon. In this capacity, he served as the senior policy advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, and six other countries in the Levant and Persian Gulf region. In June 2011, he was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service by Secretary Robert Gates.

From 2007 to 2017 (when not serving in the U.S. government), Dr. Kahl was an assistant and associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. From 2007 to 2009 and 2012 to 2014, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a nonpartisan Washington, DC-based think tank. From 2000 to 2007, he was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. In 2005-2006, Dr. Kahl took leave from the University of Minnesota to serve as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he worked on issues related to counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and responses to failed states. In 1997-1998, he was a National Security Fellow at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.

Current research projects include a book analyzing American grand strategy in the Middle East in the post-9/11 era. A second research project focuses on the implications of emerging technologies on strategic stability.

He has published numerous articles on international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, the Los Angeles Times, Middle East Policy, the National Interest, the New Republic, the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post, and the Washington Quarterly, as well as several reports for CNAS.

His previous research analyzed the causes and consequences of violent civil and ethnic conflict in developing countries, focusing particular attention on the demographic and natural resource dimensions of these conflicts. His book on the subject, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World, was published by Princeton University Press in 2006, and related articles and chapters have appeared in International Security, the Journal of International Affairs, and various edited volumes.

Dr. Kahl received his B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan (1993) and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University (2000).

Marc Lynch is a professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University and director of the Project on Middle East Political Science. He served as the director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at GW from 2009-2015. Lynch is also a nonresident senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a contributing editor at The Monkey Cage blog for the Washington Post. He is the co-director of the Blogs and Bullets project at the United States Institute of Peace. In 2016, he was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow.

He is the author of The New Arab Wars: Anarchy and Uprising in the Middle East, (2016), The Arab Uprising: The Unfinished Revolutions of the New Middle East (2012), Voices of the New Arab Public: Al Jazeera, Iraq, and Middle East Politics Today (2006), and State Interests and Public Spheres: The International Politics of Jordan’s Identity (1999) and edited The Arab Uprisings Explained: The New Contentious Politics of the Middle East, (2014).

Lynch blogged as Abu Aardvark for seven years before joining Foreign Policy as a blogger and columnist. In 2010 Lynch, launched the Middle East Channel on Foreign Policy, which he edited until March 2014. He can now be found online at The Monkey Cage.

Brett McGurk is the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Center for Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

McGurk’s research interests center on national security strategy, diplomacy, and decision-making in wartime.  He is particularly interested in the lessons learned over the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump regarding the importance of process in informing presidential decisions and the alignment of ends and means in national security doctrine and strategy.  At Stanford, he will be working on a book project incorporating these themes and teaching a graduate level seminar on presidential decision-making beginning in the fall of 2019.  He is also a frequent commentator on national security events in leading publications and as an NBC News Senior Foreign Affairs Analyst.

Before coming to Stanford, McGurk served as Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS at the U.S. Department of State, helping to build and then lead the coalition of seventy-five countries and four international organizations in the global campaign against the ISIS terrorist network.  McGurk was also responsible for coordinating all aspects of U.S. policy in the campaign against ISIS in Iraq, Syria, and globally.

McGurk previously served in senior positions in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, including as Special Assistant to President Bush and Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan, and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran and Special Presidential Envoy for the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State under Obama.

McGurk has led some of the most sensitive diplomatic missions in the Middle East over the last decade. His most recent assignment established one of the largest coalitions in history to prosecute the counter-ISIS campaign. He was a frequent visitor to the battlefields in both Iraq and Syria to help integrate military and civilian components of the war plan. He also led talks with Russia over the Syria conflict under both the Trump and Obama administrations, initiated back-channel diplomacy to reopen ties between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and facilitated the formation of the last two Iraqi governments following contested elections in 2014 and 2018.

In 2015 and 2016, McGurk led fourteen months of secret negotiations with Iran to secure the release of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezain, U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, and Pastor Saad Abadini, as well as three other American citizens.

During his time at the State Department, McGurk received multiple awards, including the Distinguished Honor Award and the Distinguished Service Award, the highest department awards for exceptional service in Washington and overseas assignments.

McGurk is also a nonresident senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

McGurk received his JD from Columbia University and his BA from the University of Connecticut Honors Program.  He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Denis Jacobs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit, and Judge Gerard E. Lynch on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

David Siddhartha Patel is the Associate Director for Research at the Brandeis University Crown Center for Middle East Studies. Patel’s research focuses on religious authority, social order, and identity in the contemporary Arab world. He conducted independent field research in Iraq on the role of mosques and clerical networks in generating order after state collapse, and his book, Order Out of Chaos: Islam, Information, and Social Order in Iraq, is being prepared for publication by Cornell University Press. Patel has also recently written about the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood; ISIS in Iraq; and dead states in the Middle East. He teaches courses on Middle Eastern politics, research design, and GIS and spatial aspects of politics. Before joining the Crown Center, Patel was an assistant professor of government at Cornell University. Patel received his BA from Duke University in economics and political science and his PhD from Stanford University in political science. He studied Arabic in Lebanon, Yemen, Morocco, and Jordan.

Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

Abstract: This study brings together social identity theory and the literature on ontological security in international relations to highlight the role of leadership processes for group formation and authoritarian legitimation. Together, these theories allow for exploring the conditions that increase the potency of identity-based politics and the specific ways political entrepreneurs can mobilize this political tool. Ontological insecurity, as I argue and show, is a condition that political entrepreneurs use and manipulate to gain political support and legitimate their rule. I illustrate this argument by looking into ‘late Putinism’ as an example of collective identity-driven politics. This study relies on an original nationwide survey experiment conducted in November 2017 in Russia to demonstrate the extent of the Russian society’s vulnerability and receptivity to insecure identity narratives. The data also allows us to start a discussion on the potential factors responsible for societal differentiation on this issue.

Speaker's Biography:

Gulnaz Sharafutdinova

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/qpUNQ9BgpPg

About this Event: There is growing alarm over how drugs empower terrorists, insurgents, militias, and gangs. But by looking back not just years and decades but centuries, Peter Andreas reveals that the drugs-conflict nexus is actually an old story, and that powerful states have been its biggest beneficiaries. In his new book, Killer High, Andreas shows how six psychoactive drugs-ranging from old to relatively new, mild to potent, licit to illicit, natural to synthetic-have proven to be particularly important war ingredients. This sweeping history tells the story of war from antiquity to the modern age through the lens of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, opium, amphetamines, and cocaine. Beer and wine drenched ancient and medieval battlefields, and the distilling revolution lubricated the conquest and ethnic cleansing of the New World. Tobacco became globalized through soldiering, with soldiers hooked on smoking and governments hooked on taxing it. Caffeine and opium fueled imperial expansion and warfare. The commercialization of amphetamines in the twentieth century energized soldiers to fight harder, longer, and faster, while cocaine stimulated an increasingly militarized drug war that produced casualty numbers surpassing most civil wars. As Andreas demonstrates, armed conflict has become progressively more drugged with the introduction, mass production, and global spread of mind-altering substances. As a result, we cannot understand the history of war without including drugs, and we similarly cannot understand the history of drugs without including war. From ancient brews and battles to meth and modern warfare, drugs and war have grown up together and become addicted to each other.

Speaker's Biography: 

Peter Andreas is the John Hay Professor of International Studies at Brown University, where he holds a joint appointment between the Department of Political Science and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Andreas has published ten books, including Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America. He has also written for publications such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Harper's, The Nation, The New Republic, Slate, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

Abstract: Despite a lull after the fall of the Soviet Union, grassroots activism in Russia is on the rise. The protests for free elections that swept across Russia in the summer of 2019 may have captured international headlines, but many other Russian grassroots groups have been actively organizing over the last decade. What types of civic movements exist in today’s Russia? What are the risks that civic activists face? How do they interact with the state or state-protected interest groups? Finally, what role could grassroots groups play in democratizing Russia? Russian activist Evgeniya Chirikova will shed light on these questions through her personal experience as an environmental activist and as a coordinator of Activatica.org, an online news platform covering grassroots activism across Russia.

Speaker's Biography:

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