Bio: Dr. Arvind Gupta recently retired as India's Deputy National Security Advisor. In his capacity as Deputy NSA, he also headed India's National Security Council Secretariat from 2014 until 2017. Previously, he was the Director General of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), a thinktank funded by India's Ministry of Defence. Dr. Gupta joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1979 and served at India's diplomatic missions in Moscow, London and Ankara. At the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, he dealt with Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, Russia, Kashmir, and the Central Asian affairs. He is an honorary professor in the Department of Defence and National Security Studies, Panjab University. He has an MSc in Physics from the University of Delhi and a Ph.D. in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is currently the Director of Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a Delhi-based independent, non-partisan think tank focussing on foreign policy, defense and security-related issues from an Indian perspective. His most recent book How India Manages its National Security was published by Penguin Random House in 2018.

Book Overview: In this authoritative and comprehensive survey of the challenges a changing global security environment poses to India, former deputy national security advisor Arvind Gupta outlines the important aspects of the country's security apparatus and how they interface to confront internal and external conflicts. We have today a turbulent Middle East to the west; a rising and assertive China to the north; Pakistan in the grip of the military and the militants across our border and an increasingly militarizing Indian Ocean region surrounding us. Additionally, climate change, cyber security and the vulnerability of our space assets are major areas of concern. Anything that weakens a nation weakens its security, which makes the issues of food, water, health, economics and governance critically significant. Arvind Gupta draws on his long experience in these areas to argue that instead of tactical remedies, a strategic, coherent, institutional approach is needed to deal with these challenges. Strengthening the National Security Council, for instance, could be one way forward.

How India Manages Its National Security explains with great clarity and thoroughness the concept and operation of India's national security apparatus. This book will be of great interest to practitioners, analysts and laymen alike and offer an important voice in the discussion on how national security challenges should be resolved in the decades to come.

Abstract: State interventions against drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) sometimes work to improve security, but often exacerbate violence. To understand why, this paper offers a theory about different social order dynamics among five types of criminal regimes – Insurgent, Bandit, Symbiotic, Predatory, and Anarchic. These differ according to whether criminal groups confront or collude with state actors; predate or cooperate with the community; and hold a monopoly or contest territory with rival DTOs. Police interventions in these criminal orders pose different challenges and are associated with markedly different local security outcomes. Evidence for the theory is provided by the use a multi-method research design combining quasiexperimental statistical analyses, extensive qualitative research and a large N survey in the context of Rio de Janeiro’s “Pacifying Police Units” (UPPs), which sought to reclaim control of the slums from organized criminal groups.

Bio: Beatriz Magaloni is a Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. She is also an affiliated faculty at the Stanford Center on Global Poverty and Development.

Her research focuses on the political economy of development. Beatriz’s work falls into four themes:  the study of authoritarian regimes; distributive politics; “traditional” forms of governance and how these compare to “modern” democratic institutions; and drug-trafficking violence and citizen security. Much of my research has been on Latin America.  

Beatriz is the founding director of the Poverty, Violence + Governance Lab, a place for action–oriented research that establishes partnerships with government agencies, police departments, and civil society organizations to conduct research that aims to generate knowledge as to what works and doesn’t to control violence, improve the functioning and accountability of security institutions, restrain human rights abuses, and increase opportunities for at-risk youth. The Lab engages researchers and students — undergraduates, M.A. and Ph.D. candidates — from the fields of political science, education, economics, international policy studies, and engineering.

She is the author of Voting for Autocracy (2006, Cambridge University Press –winner of the Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award for the best book written in the previous two years on parties and elections and the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section). Beatriz is also the author of The Political Logic of Poverty Relief: Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico(2016, Cambridge University Press, co-authored with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estévez).

Beatriz’s articles have appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Latin American Research Review, International Journal of Educational Development, Latin American Politics and Society, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Journal of Theoretical Politics, and Política y Gobierno.

Beatriz received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University. She also holds a Law Degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). 

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Abstract: Gen. Yadlin will present the national security challenges facing the State of Israel in the near future and beyond.

After a presentation of the balance of challenges and threats to Israel, Israel's relations with the US and Russia, the two leading superpowers in the Middle East, Gen. Yadlin will examine the four volatile fronts that Israel faces in the coming year: Gaza, Iran's consolidation in Syria and Lebanon, the risk of another round of conflict with Hezbollah, and the Iranian nuclear threat.  With a view to the coming decade, Gen. Yadlin will also present the INSS Plan: a Political-Security Framework for the Israeli-Palestinian Arena.

Speaker Bio: Major General (ret.) Amos Yadlin has been the Director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), Israel's leading strategic Think Tank, since November 2011.    

Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yadlin was designated Minister of Defense of the Zionist Union Party in the March 2015 elections.

Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yadlin served for over 40 years in the Israel Defense Forces, nine of which as a member of the IDF General Staff. From 2006-2010, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yadlin served as the IDF’s chief of Defense Intelligence. From 2004-2006, he served as the IDF attaché to the United States. In February 2002, he earned the rank of major general and was named commander of the IDF Military Colleges and the National Defense College.

Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yadlin, a former deputy commander of the Israel Air Force, has commanded two fighter squadrons and two airbases. He has also served as Head of IAF Planning Department (1990-1993). He accumulated about 5,000 flight hours and flew more than 250 combat missions behind enemy lines. He participated in the Yom Kippur War (1973), Operation Peace for Galilee (1982) and Operation Tamuz – the destruction of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq (1981).

Yadlin holds a B.A. in economics and business administration from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (1985). He also holds a Master's degree in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1994).

Abstract: On March 11, 2011, an enormous earthquake triggered a 50-foot tsunami, inundating the six-unit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northeastern Japan. The flood caused damage to the plant’s electrical systems far beyond what the plant’s owner or government regulators had ever anticipated. Ultimately, three reactors suffered core melt accidents and released substantial quantities of radioactive materials into the environment. After the accident, Japan and many other countries sought to identify the root causes of Fukushima and take steps to reduce the risk of future accidents. In the U.S., a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) task force identified multiple deficiencies in its regulations and made twelve recommendations to strengthen safety requirements. However, due in part to nuclear industry lobbying, the NRC rejected most of the task force recommendations and adopted only weakened versions of the remaining ones. Today, as Fukushima becomes a distant memory, the NRC is implementing a “transformation” initiative that could actually weaken critical safety requirements. This talk will discuss the lessons of the accident for nuclear safety, and the extent to which the NRC’s post-Fukushima actions adequately address them.

Speaker Bio: Edwin Lyman is the Acting Director of the Nuclear Safety Project and Senior Scientist of the Global Security Program. His research focuses on nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and nuclear power safety and security. Dr. Lyman is a co-author of  Fukushima: The Story of a Nuclear Disaster (New Press, 2014). In 2018, Dr. Lyman was awarded the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award from the American Physical Society.

Before joining UCS, Dr. Lyman was president of the Nuclear Control Institute. From 1992 to 1995, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Studies. He earned a PhD in physics from Cornell University in 1992.

Jake Shapiro Bio: Jacob N. Shapiro is Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and co-directs the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. His research focuses on political violence, economic development in conflict zones, and security policy. He is the author of The Terrorist’s Dilemma: Managing Violent Covert Organizations. His research has been published in Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, American Journal of Political Science, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Perspectives on Politics, Political Analysis, Public Opinion Quarterly, Security Studies, World Politics, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Military Operations Research, Terrorism and Political Violence, and a number of edited volumes. Shapiro is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an Associate Editor of World Politics, a Faculty Fellow of the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS), a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), and served in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserve. Ph.D. Political Science, M.A. Economics, Stanford University. B.A. Political Science, University of Michigan.

Eli Berman Bio: Eli Berman is chair and professor of economics at UC San Diego, research director for international security studies at the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, faculty member at the UCSD school of Global Policy and Strategy, member of the Empirical Studies of Conflict research project, and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His book Radical, Religious and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism was published in 2009 by the MIT Press. Berman received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. His latest publications are “The Empiricists’ Insurgency” (with Aila Matanock), and "Modest, Secure and Employed: Successful Development in Conflict Zones," (with Joseph Felter, Jacob Shapiro and Erin Troland). Grants supporting his research have come from the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the National Science Foundation. His research interests include economic development and conflict, the economics of religion, labor economics, technological change, and economic demography.

Abstract: The way wars are fought has changed starkly over the past sixty years. International military campaigns used to play out between large armies at central fronts. Today's conflicts find major powers facing rebel insurgencies that deploy elusive methods, from improvised explosives to terrorist attacks. Small Wars, Big Data presents a transformative understanding of these contemporary confrontations and how they should be fought. The authors show that a revolution in the study of conflict--enabled by vast data, rich qualitative evidence, and modern methods—yields new insights into terrorism, civil wars, and foreign interventions. Modern warfare is not about struggles over territory but over people; civilians—and the information they might choose to provide—can turn the tide at critical junctures.The authors draw practical lessons from the past two decades of conflict in locations ranging from Latin America and the Middle East to Central and Southeast Asia. Building an information-centric understanding of insurgencies, the authors examine the relationships between rebels, the government, and civilians. This approach serves as a springboard for exploring other aspects of modern conflict, including the suppression of rebel activity, the role of mobile communications networks, the links between aid and violence, and why conventional military methods might provide short-term success but undermine lasting peace. Ultimately the authorsshow how the stronger side can almost always win the villages, but why that does not guarantee winning the war.

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Abstract: In 1992, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power and Americans were confident that a new era of peace and prosperity was at hand. Twenty-five years later, those hopes have been dashed. Relations with Russia and China have soured, the European Union is wobbling, democracy is in retreat, and the United States is stuck in costly and pointless wars.

The root of this dismal record is the foreign policy elite’s stubborn commitment to a strategy of “liberal hegemony.” Since the end of the Cold War, Republicans and Democrats alike have tried to use U.S. power to spread democracy, and other liberal values around the world. This strategy was doomed to fail, but its proponents elite were never held accountable and kept repeating the same mistakes. 

Donald Trump won the presidency promising to end these misguided policies, but his erratic style of governing and flawed grasp of world politics have made a bad situation worse. The best alternative is a return to a strategy of “offshore balancing,” eschewing regime change, nation-building, and other forms of global social engineering.  This long-overdue shift will require creating a foreign policy elite with a more realistic view of American power. 

Speaker Bio: Stephen M. Walt is Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a contributing editor at Foreign Policy, co-editor of the Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in May 200.  He received the ISA’s Distinguished Senior Scholar award in 2014.  His writings include The Origins of Alliances (1987) Revolution and War (1996), Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy, and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (co-authored with John J. Mearsheimer, 2007).  His latest book is The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (2018).

Abstract: The purpose and force of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty hinges on a legal distinction between "nuclear weapons states" and "non-nuclear weapons states." But rather than being a self-evident distinction based entirely on material differences, the distinction is constructed and negotiated—not just by the conventionally powerful but by disempowered states. This article argues that the NPT is a discursive resource for states that the treaty does not legitimate. The NPT’s power comes from the legal categories it institutionalizes and perpetuates. In order to understand the origins and effects of dividing the terrain of nuclear politics into nuclear and non-nuclear states, I analyze the meeting documents of the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC) which negotiated the treaty from 1962-1969. I find that the “non-nuclear” states used the designation as an identity that set them apart from nuclear states. Using these categories like identities is not without political consequence—for example, India’s unique diplomatic approach toward the NPT shapes both the discourses it advances and policies it pursues.  In contrast to existing approaches that examine the distinction primarily through material terms, this article turns to state practice to reveal how being nuclear or non-nuclear is used as a legitimating tool in nuclear politics. The article also shows that, while most approaches to international law presume that the law either constrains state power or has no effect on it, the case of the nuclear/non-nuclear distinction illustrates that international law does matter, but perhaps not in the way assumed by IR realists or institutionalists.

Speaker Bio: Sidra Hamidi is a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. She completed her PhD in Political Science from Northwestern University in 2018. Her research explores the role of identity and discourse in contemporary and historical nuclear politics. Specifically, she studies the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear states in technical, legal, and normative contexts. She locates the politics of this distinction in the diplomatic practices of Israel, India, and Iran. She completed her MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago. Her commentary has appeared in The Washington Post, Duck of Minerva, and E-IR. She is also interested in international relations theory and political science conceptualization and methodology.

Abstract: Australia is dealing with nuclear waste disposal issues on two separate fronts.  In 2015, South Australia began to consider expanding their role in the nuclear fuel cycle as a way to leverage their nuclear expertise, based on their extensive uranium mining.  A Royal Commission proposed consideration of the development of a deep geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste from international sources (since Australia has none).  In 2016 Premier Jay Weatherill decided against an international repository after a community-based consultation process also opposed it.  At the same time, the Commonwealth of Australia has revived its search for a low-level radioactive waste disposal site and a storage facility for intermediate-level waste. Again, South Australia is in play, with three sites volunteering their land for further consideration.  As a result, a siting process is ongoing in Kimba and Barndioota, South Australia, with sides both strongly for and adamantly against development of a low-level waste facility in their community.  Both nuclear waste situations have informed and affected the other, but it’s not clear that South Australia is ready to host nuclear waste any time soon in the near future.

Speaker Bio: Allison M. Macfarlane is Professor of Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University and Director of the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at the University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. She recently served as Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission from July, 2012 until December, 2014. As Chairman, Dr. Macfarlane had ultimate responsibility for the safety of all U.S. commercial nuclear reactors, for the regulation of medical radiation and nuclear waste in the U.S., and for representing the U.S. in negotiations with international nuclear regulators. She was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate. She was the agency’s 15th Chairman, its 3rd woman chair, and the only person with a background in geology to serve on the Commission.

Dr. Macfarlane holds a doctorate in geology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor's of science degree in geology from the University of Rochester. During her academic career, she held fellowships at Radcliffe College, MIT, Stanford, and Harvard Universities. She has been on the faculty at Georgia Tech in Earth Science and International Affairs and at George Mason University in Environmental Science and Policy.

From 2010 to 2012 she served on the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, created by the Obama Administration to make recommendations about a national strategy for dealing with the nation's high-level nuclear waste. She has served on National Academy of Sciences panels on nuclear energy and nuclear weapons issues. Dr. Macfarlane has also chaired the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the folks who set the “doomsday clock.”

Her research has focused on environmental policy and international security issues associated with nuclear energy. Her expertise is in nuclear waste disposal, nuclear energy, regulatory issues, and science and technology policy. As Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, she pushed for a more open dialogue with the public, for greater engagement with international nuclear regulators and, following the Fukushima accident, for stricter safety protocols at U.S. nuclear reactors. She also advocated for a more family-friendly workplace.  She has spoken on a wide range of topics, from women and science to nuclear policy and regulatory politics.

In 2006, MIT Press published a book she co-edited, Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation's High-Level Nuclear Waste, which explored technical issues at the proposed waste disposal facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Dr. Macfarlane has published extensively in academia and her work has appeared in Science, Nature, American Scientist, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and Environment Magazine.

Abstract: What are the effects of international intervention on the rule of law after civil war? Rule of law requires not only that state authorities abide by legal limits on their power, but also that citizens rely on state laws and institutions to adjudicate disputes. Using an original survey and list experiment in Liberia, I show that exposure to the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) increased citizens’ reliance on state over non-state authorities to resolve the most serious incidents of crime and violence, and increased non-state authorities’ reliance on legal over illegal mechanisms of dispute resolution. I use multiple identification strategies to support a causal interpretation of these results, including an instrumental variables strategy that leverages plausibly exogenous variation in the distribution of UNMIL personnel induced by the killing of seven peacekeepers in neighboring Cote d’Ivoire. My results are still detectable two years later, even in communities that report no further exposure to peacekeepers. I also find that exposure to UNMIL did not mitigate and may in fact have exacerbated citizens’ perceptions of state corruption and bias in the short term, but that these apparently adverse effects dissipated over time. I conclude by discussing implications of these complex but overall beneficial effects

Speaker Bio: Rob Blair is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs at Brown University. His research focuses on international intervention and the consolidation of state authority after civil war, with an emphasis on rule of law and security institutions. He has conducted fieldwork on these and related topics in Colombia, Liberia, Uganda, and Côte d'Ivoire. He has also worked in various capacities for the the UN Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions, the Political Instability Task Force, Freedom House, and the Small Arms Survey. He holds a B.A. from Brown, an M.Sc in Conflict Studies from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and a Ph.D in political science from Yale University. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review and other venues.

Abstract: Why are some rebel groups able to seamlessly transition into political parties on the heels of war while others revert to violence or die trying? Drawing on insights from organizational sociology, I argue that the answer lies in the previously unacknowledged diversity of rebel organizational structures during war. I identify three wartime domains that I call "proto-party" structures: shadow governance, political messaging, and social service wings. I demonstrate that these structures---by mirroring the key components of political party organizations---provide insurgencies with two decisive advantages when attempting to transition into a party: (1) relevant experience that translates into the political arena, and (2) an easier path to transition by repurposing existing structures rather than building a party from scratch. I test this theory using a combination of statistical analysis on a novel dataset and process tracing the FMLN's transformation in El Salvador. 

Speaker Bio: Sherry Zaks is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017. Next year, she’ll be joining the faculty of the University of Southern California as an Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics. Sherry’s book project and current substantive work examine the conditions under which rebel groups transition into political parties in the aftermath of civil war. Drawing on theoretical tools from organizational sociology, she models rebel-to-party transformation as a process of organizational resilience and adaptation. The dissertation on which the book project is based was recently awarded the prize for best dissertation in peace science by the United States Institute of Peace. Sherry also works on political methodology with a focus on refining tools for qualitative inference and developing rigorous standards for dataset construction and evaluation. Her work has appeared in Comparative Politics and Political Analysis.