Stanford University

Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations

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Abstract: Rising powers often seek to reshape the world order, triggering confrontations with those who seek to defend the status quo. In recent years, as international institutions have grown in prevalence and influence, they have increasingly become central arenas for international contestation. In this seminar, Phillip Lipscy will describe the main findings from his book, which examines how international institutions evolve as countries seek to renegotiate the international order. He offers a new theory of institutional change and explains why some institutions change flexibly while others successfully resist or fall to the wayside. The book uses a wealth of empirical evidence - quantitative and qualitative - to evaluate the theory from international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Union, League of Nations, United Nations, the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, and Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. The book will be of particular interest to scholars interested in the historical and contemporary diplomacy of the United States, Japan, and China.

Speaker bio: Phillip Y. Lipscy is the Thomas Rohlen Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. His fields of research include international and comparative political economy, international security, and the politics of East Asia, particularly Japan.

Lipscy’s book from Cambridge University Press, Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations, examines how countries seek greater international influence by reforming or creating international organizations. His research addresses a wide range of substantive topics such as international cooperation, the politics of energy, the politics of financial crises, the use of secrecy in international policy making, and the effect of domestic politics on trade. He has also published extensively on Japanese politics and foreign policy.

Lipscy obtained his PhD in political science at Harvard University. He received his MA in international policy studies and BA in economics and political science at Stanford University. Lipscy has been affiliated with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo, the Institute for Global and International Studies at George Washington University, the RAND Corporation, and the Institute for International Policy Studies.

For additional information such as C.V., publications, and working papers, please visit Phillip Lipscy's homepage.

Phillip Lipscy Thomas Rohlen Fellow Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
Seminars

Regional Powers and Nuclear Force Development: Explaining India’s Nuclear Submarine Program

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Abstract: This research investigates why and how regional nuclear powers come to develop specific kind of nuclear delivery systems, especially a submarine-based ballistic missile (SSBN) force. In the second nuclear age, as new nuclear states develop sophisticated delivery systems including SSBNs, understanding the logic and process of their nuclear force development is essential for both regional and international security. The origins and development process of India’s nuclear submarine program suggests that nuclear force development is a historically contingent process. This data-driven research, based on newly declassified archival documents from the Indian archives and extensive oral history interviews, refutes teleological narratives that either argue for technological determinism or the need for projecting nuclear deterrence as the primary causal variables. By situating India’s nuclear submarine program in the organizational routines of its nuclear scientific bureaucracy, bureaucratic politics of its military-scientific complex and the military socialization of the Indian Navy, this research explains India’s most secretive military-scientific programs. This comprehensive empirical research, currently based on a single case study, also addresses an important theoretical question in the field of international security studies: why states develop specific kinds of weapon systems, including those for nuclear weapons delivery?  

Speaker bio: Prior to joining CISAC as a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, Yogesh Joshi was an Associate Fellow in the Strategic Studies Program at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. He recently received his PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University specializing in Indian foreign and security policy. 

At CISAC, Yogesh is finishing a book manuscript on the history of India's nuclear submarine program. His research traces the origins, process and development of India's nuclear submarine program using multi-archival sources and extensive oral history interviews. Yogesh’s data-driven research posits that India’s nuclear submarine program was riddled with shifting motivations, ambivalent rationales and halting progress. Rather than being driven by a single coherent strategic plan, India stumbled upon a submarine-based nuclear deterrent. By situating the nuclear submarine program in India’s Cold War security policy, its nuclear policy, its naval strategy in the Indian Ocean, the bureaucratic politics of its military-scientific complex and its quest for technological prestige, this research is an attempt to understand path-dependency in one of India’s most secretive military-scientific programs. It not only has implications for explaining India's nuclear program and policy but also provides an avenue to explain the process of decision-making behind state's pursuance of specific kinds of nuclear delivery systems. This research is supported by the MacArthur foundation. 

He has held fellowships at George Washington University, King’s College London and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC. His research has appeared or is under review in Asian Security, International History Review, International Affairs, Survival, US Naval War College Review, Comparative Strategy, Harvard Asia Quarterly, India Review, Asia Policy, Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs, War on the Rocks, World Politics Review and The Diplomat. He has co-authored two books: The US ‘Pivot’ and Indian Foreign Policy: Asia's Emerging Balance of Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and India in Nuclear Asia: Regional Forces, Perceptions and Policies (Orient Blackswan (South Asia), forthcoming 2018; also forthcoming in fall 2018 by Georgetown University Press for the rest of the world). A short introduction on India’s Nuclear Policy was recently commissioned by Oxford University Press and has been accepted for publication in 2018. A monograph titled 'India’s Evolving Nuclear Force and Implications for U.S. Strategy in the Asia-Pacific' was published by the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College in 2016. 

Yogesh Joshi

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Dr. Yogesh Joshi is the Indian Community Endowed Chair at the School of Politics, Security and International Affairs and Director of the India Center at the University of Central Florida. His research focuses on military technological diffusion among rising powers, conventional military and nuclear strategy, and alliance politics, with an empirical focus on India, South Asia, and the Indo-Pacific. 

Before joining UCF, Dr Joshi led the National Security and Foreign Policy program at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. He also taught at Yale-NUS College. He was a MacArthur and Stanton Nuclear Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University. He is also an alumnus of the Summer Workshop on the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy, Columbia University, International Nuclear History Boot Camp, Woodrow Wilson Center, and Strategic Forces Boot Camp, Dartmouth University.  He has a Doctorate in International Politics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Dr Joshi is co-author of three books: India and Nuclear Asia: Forces Doctrines and Dangers (Georgetown University Press, 2018), Asia’s Emerging Balance of Power: The US ‘Pivot’ and Indian Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and India’s Nuclear Policy: A Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2018). His research has been published or is under review in International Security, Cold War History, Security Studies, The Washington Quarterly, Survival, Asian Security, India Review, US Naval War College Review, International Affairs, Contemporary Strategy, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Asia Policy, International History Review and Harvard Asia Quarterly. 

 

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Yogesh Joshi Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow CISAC
Seminars

Bargaining in Baghdad: Iraqi signaling between the wars (1991-2003)

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Abstract: This paper explores Iraqi signaling after the 1991 Gulf War. The conventional wisdom argues that Iraq sent mixed signals to the outside world due to Saddam’s desire to balance deterrence and compliance with Security Council resolutions. Drawing on Iraqi primary sources, I explore how Iraqi officials debated their options, crafted signals, and how they interpreted the reception of these signals in the outside world. I argue that Iraqi regime was more rational, but also more dysfunctional, than previous work suggests.
  
Speaker bio: Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo. She has previously been a Junior Faculty Fellow at CISAC, Stanford University, and a pre- and post-doctoral fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard University. She received her doctoral degree from London School of Economics in 2009, which received the Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize from BISA in 2010. She recently published Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya failed to build nuclear weapons (Cornell University Press, 2016), which was reviewed in The New York Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, Survival, International Affairs, HDiplo, Babylon, and Internasjonal Politikk. Her work has been published in International Security, The Middle East Journal, the New York Times (online), International Herald Tribune, Monkey Cage and War on the Rocks.

Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer

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Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo. She first joined CISAC as a visiting associate professor and Stanton nuclear security junior faculty fellow in September 2012, and was a Stanford MacArthur Visiting Scholar between 2013-15. Between 2008 and 2010 she was a predoctoral and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Braut-Hegghammer received her PhD, entitled “Nuclear Entrepreneurs: Drivers of Nuclear Proliferation” from the London School of Economics in 2010. She received the British International Studies Association’s Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize that same year for her work.

 

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Associate Professor of Political Science University of Oslo
Seminars

Parallel power play: building nuclear cooperation in Argentina and Brazil

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Abstract: In the fifty years following World War II, Argentina and Brazil constructed advanced nuclear energy programs that far outpaced those of other countries in Latin America. However, their more memorable and lasting contribution to nuclear energy history may well be diplomatic, rather than technical. Beginning in 1974 with an Argentine delegation’s tour of carefully selected Brazilian nuclear facilities, and vice versa, the two countries – under military rule and in a centuries-long competition for regional influence and dominance – began a rapprochement around nuclear energy as gradual as it was unlikely. A watershed presidential summit in 1980 pledged the neighbors to cooperation in specific areas of nuclear energy. It took until 1991, however, for a growing system of informal inspections to coalesce into the world’s only bilateral nuclear safeguards organization, known as ABACC. This talk will focus primarily on the contributions of the scientific and technical communities, and their close work with the two foreign ministries, within this delicate seventeen-year process.

Speaker bio: Chris Dunlap is a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. His research is funded by the MacArthur Foundation. His book project, developed from his dissertation, focuses on the fundamental role of nuclear energy technology and diplomacy in shaping modern Brazil and Argentina and their bilateral relationship. The paths taken to develop nuclear energy in the South American neighbor countries also illustrate the impact that these nations and their key actors, often left out of global energy history, made upon the physical, legal, and diplomatic structures of the Atomic Age. By 1995, both nations had ceased early-stage efforts toward a nuclear explosion, accepted full safeguards and international verification of all fuel cycle activities, and transformed the "imported magic" of nuclear technology into their own. How this happened, and why, is the history at the heart of the parallel power play that defined Brazil and Argentina's engagement with Atomic Age diplomacy and technology.  

Chris received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago in 2017, and also holds a B.A. in history with high distinction, B.S. in biochemistry, and M.A. in history from the University of Virginia.
Christopher Dunlap CISAC Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow
Seminars

NATO's Lessons in Crisis: Institutional Memory in International Organizations

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Abstract: In crisis management operations, strategic errors can cost lives. Some international organizations (IOs) learn from these failures whereas others tend to repeat them. Given that they have high rates of turnover, how is it possible that any IO retains knowledge about the past? The book NATO's Lessons in Crisis introduces an argument for how and why IOs develop institutional memory from their efforts to manage crises. Findings indicate that the design of an IO’s learning infrastructure (e.g. lessons learned offices and databases) can inadvertently disincentivize IO elites from using it to share knowledge about strategic errors. Elites – high-level officials in IOs - perceive reporting to be a risky endeavour. In response, they develop institutional memory by creating and using informal processes, including transnational interpersonal networks, private documentation and conversations during crisis management exercises. The result is an institutional memory that is highly dependent on only a handful of individuals. The book draws on the author’s interviews and a survey experiment with 120 NATO elites across four countries. Cases of NATO crisis management in Afghanistan, Libya and Ukraine further illustrate the development of institutional memory. Findings challenge existing research on organizational learning by suggesting that formal learning processes alone are insufficient for ensuring that learning happens. The book also offers recommendations to policymakers for strengthening the learning capacity of IOs.

 
Speaker bio: Heidi Hardt is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Her research examines effectiveness, knowledge and change in international organizations, particularly in the area of international conflict management. She has expertise in NATO, the EU, UN, international cooperation, crisis management, military operations, organizational learning, organizational culture and gender mainstreaming. Hardt has published the book Time to React: The Efficiency of International Organizations in Crisis Response (Oxford University Press, 2014) and has a second book NATO’s Lessons in Crisis: Institutional Memory in International Organization under contract with Oxford University Press (Forthcoming 2018). Hardt’s research has also been published in journals such as Global Governance, Review of International Organizations, European Security and African Security. She has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the American Political Science Association and NATO Science for Peace and Security. She has also interviewed more than 250 political and military elites. Hardt received her Ph.D. from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva and her MSc in European Studies from the London School of Economics. 

 

Heidi Hardt Assistant Professor of Political Science University of California, Irvine
Seminars

Cyber-Enabled Information Warfare and the End of the Enlightenment

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Abstract: The West has no peer competitors in conventional military power.  But its adversaries are increasingly turning to asymmetric methods for engaging in conflict.  Cyber-enabled information warfare (CEIW) leverages the features of modern information and communications technology to age-old techniques of propaganda, deception, and chaos production to confuse, mislead, and to influence the choices and decisions that the adversary makes—and a recent example of CEIW can be seen in the Russian hacks on the U.S. presidential election in 2016.  CEIW is a hostile activity, or at least an activity that is conducted between two parties whose interests are not well-aligned, but it does not constitute warfare in the sense that international law or domestic institutions construe it.  Nor is it cyber war or cyber conflict as we have come to understand those ideas.  Some approaches to counter CEIW show some promise of having some modest but valuable defensive effect.  If better solutions for countering CEIW waged against free and democratic societies are not forthcoming, societal discourse will no longer be grounded in reason and objective reality—an outcome that can fairly be called the end of the Enlightenment.

Speaker bios: Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University.  His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in and knowledgeable about the use of offensive operations in cyberspace, especially as instruments of national policy.  In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University; and a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. He recently served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.  Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

To read more about Herb Lin's interests, please read "An Evolving Research Agenda in Cyber Policy and Security."

Jackie Kerr is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Her research examines cybersecurity and information security strategy, Internet governance, and the Internet policies of non-democratic regimes.  She was a 2015-2016 Science, Technology, and Public Policy (STPP) Pre-Doctoral Fellow with the Cyber Security Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Visiting Scholar at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and a Cybersecurity Predoctoral Fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation in 2014-2015.  Jackie holds a PhD and MA in Government from Georgetown University, and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and BAS in Mathematics and Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University.  She has held research fellowships in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Qatar, and has previous professional experience as a software engineer.

Herbert Lin

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C236
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

650-497-8600
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Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security, Hoover Institution
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Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University.  His research interests relate broadly to the impact of emerging technologies on national security, especially in the digital domain (cyber, artificial intelligence, information warfare and operations), and has written extensively on the role of offensive operations in cyberspace as instruments of national policy.  In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology.  From 2016 to 2025, he was a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In 2016, he served on President Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity and in  2021 on the Aspen Commission on Information Disorder.  Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986-1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

Avocationally, he is a longtime folk and swing dancer and a lousy magician. Apart from his work on cyberspace and cybersecurity, he is published in cognitive science, science education, biophysics, and arms control and defense policy. He also consults on K-12 math and science education.

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Herbert Lin Senior Research Scholar for Cyber Policy and Security CISAC, Stanford University

Jaclyn A. Kerr

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Jackie Kerr is a Professor in the College of Information and Cyberspace (CIC) at National Defense University (NDU).  She is also a Nonresident Fellow with the Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Program and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies in the School of Foreign Service.  Her work focuses on digital and emerging technologies and their current and future impacts on international politics, national security, and democracy.  She has conducted research and taught on the digital politics of authoritarian regimes, the role of information technologies in civil society and protest mobilization, cyber domain strategy, global Internet governance, the role of artificial intelligence in national security and foreign policy, and on the role of digital technologies in the politics of Russia, China, and Eurasia.  While at NDU, Dr. Kerr previously served as Senior Research Fellow for Defense and Technology Futures at the Center for Strategic Research (2020-2024) and the Center for Emerging Technology and Future Warfare (2024-2025) within the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS).  In 2019-2020, she served as a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Science and Technology Advisor to the Secretary (STAS), where she advised on digital technology policy, particularly as it pertains to human rights, democracy, and national security.  From 2016 to 2019, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she led work on cybersecurity, cyber domain strategy, and information conflict.  Dr. Kerr was previously a Science, Technology, and Public Policy Fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, a Cybersecurity Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and has held research fellowships in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Qatar.  She also has prior professional experience as a software engineer with Comcast and Symantec.  Dr. Kerr holds a PhD and MA in Government from Georgetown University, and an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies and BAS in Mathematics and Slavic Languages and Literatures from Stanford University. 

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Jaclyn A. Kerr Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; CISAC Affiliate
Seminars

Countering nuclear terrorism: Can the United Nations deliver?

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Abstract: It has been more than a decade since the UN Security Council enacted Resolution 1540—the most far-reaching of international instruments to counter Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) terrorism. It requires states to adopt and enforce effective laws to keep WMD materials outside the reach of terrorists. Scholars and policy makers compliment 1540 for making WMD trafficking illegal, for raising awareness of threats and increasing states’ capacity to reduce them. In 2017, one hundred and seventy-six states reported to the UN on domestic measures they took to comply with 1540. These numbers may produce a false sense of confidence in universal implementation of 1540. The threat of WMD terrorism remains potent. Allegations of ISIS using mustard agents against the Kurds, North Korea shipping chemicals to Syria or middlemen trafficking nuclear materials via Moldova suggest that the international response to WMD smuggling has not achieved its desired results. It is, therefore, important to evaluate the UN’s role in preventing WMD terrorism, and explore ways to further strengthen it. Drawing on interviews, fieldwork and observation data, this talk will examine the 1540 regime’s setup and its performance. It will outline policy options to improve the international counter-proliferation and counter-terrorism regime.

Speaker  bio:  Sarah Shirazyan is a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. Her research is funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She received her Doctor of Juridical Sciences Degree from Stanford Law School. Her dissertation empirically analyzes the effectiveness of the UN Security Council Resolution 1540 in preventing terrorists from accessing Weapons of Mass Destruction. Sarah designed Interpol-Stanford policy lab and serves as a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School. For her outstanding research, teaching and community service, Stanford named Ms. Shirazyan as one of the recipients of Gerald J. Lieberman Award.

In addition to her academic experience, Sarah has held multiple posts with leading tech companies and international organizations. Sarah worked at Facebook’s Global Policy Team, where she developed company’s engagement strategies with inter-governmental organizations. Ms. Shirazyan also designed the data protection and privacy curricula for legal professionals at the Council of Europe. Prior to that, Ms. Shirazyan was a Drafting Lawyer for the European Court of Human Rights; worked on nuclear security issues at the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs; and handled international drug cartel investigation cases at the INTERPOL Secretariat. 

Sarah Shirazyan

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Sarah Shirazyan is a leading expert in technology law and policy, misinformation, and responsible AI development. She is a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School, where she teaches a course on combating misinformation online. She also serves as a Director and Head of Meta's GenAI Product Policy work, overseeing the development and implementation of company-wide policies governing the responsible use of generative AI technologies. In this role, Dr. Shirazyan advises product and engineering teams to ensure trust, safety, and ethical innovation across Meta's platforms. Previously, she led the company’s efforts to inform its misinformation and algorithmic ranking policies through engaging with experts across the globe.

Prior to joining tech industry, Dr. Shirazyan held multiple posts with leading international organizations—she was a data protection consultant for the Council of Europe; served as human right lawyer for the European Court of Human Rights; worked on nuclear security issues at the U.N.; and handled international drug cartel investigation cases at INTERPOL.

From 2017-2020, she designed and ran Interpol-Stanford Policy Lab at Stanford Law. From 2017-2018, Dr. Shirazyan was a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. Her research was funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She received her Doctor of Juridical Sciences Degree from Stanford Law School. Her dissertation empirically analyzes the effectiveness of the UN Security Council’s response to WMD terrorism. For her outstanding research, teaching and community service, Stanford named Ms. Shirazyan as one of the recipients of the Gerald J. Lieberman Award.

Her work has been published in Journal for National Security Law and Policy, Lawfare, Just Security, Stanford Journal of Online Trust and Safety, Arms Control Today, and Project on Nuclear Issues by Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

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Sarah Shirazyan CISAC
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Why can’t we all just get along? The causes and uses of civil-military discord

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- This event is offered as a joint sponsorship with the Hoover Institution - 

Registration is at capacity. Thank you for your understanding!

Abstract:  Since the days of Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz, one fundamental question has been whether civilian and soldier are doomed to clash — Huntington thought yes, Janowitz no, but for different reasons. In recent years civil-military tension has been a constant, from the confrontations between Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Generals Gregory Newbold and Eric Shinseki, to the dismissal of General Stanley McChrystal by President Obama. And tension at staff levels have been worse. Professor Cohen will offer thoughts on why civil-military tension is not only inevitable but even, at some level, desirable.

Speaker bio: Eliot Cohen is the Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).  After receiving his BA and PhD degrees from Harvard he taught there and later at the Naval War College, before coming to SAIS in 1990. His books include, most recently, The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force as well as Conquered into Liberty: Two Centuries of Battle Along the Great Warpath that Made the American Way of War and Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime among others. He served in the US Army Reserve, was a director in the Defense Department’s policy planning staff, led the US Air Force’s multivolume study of the first Gulf War and has served in various official advisory positions. In 2007-2009 he was Counselor of the Department of State, serving as Secretary Condoleezza Rice’s senior adviser, focusing chiefly on issues of war and peace, including Iraq and Afghanistan. His public commentary appears in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and on major television networks, and he is a contributing editor at The Atlantic.

Eliot Cohen School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University
Seminars
Directors' Seminar Series

Putin and his generals: Explaining change in Russian nuclear strategy

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Abstract: What are the causes of change in Russian declaratory nuclear strategy? Three cases of Russian declaratory nuclear strategy, the military doctrines from 1993, 2000 and 2010, demonstrate significant variation in the role nuclear weapons play in Russian national security.

Structural theories of international relations explain this variation as a function of the balance of military power. Perceived nuclear or conventional inferiority vis-a-vis potential adversaries certainly inspires Russian behavior, but Russia chooses to balance in different ways than balance of power theory predicts, depending on available resources and capabilities.
 
A more compelling explanation for strategy variation lies in the politics of strategy formulation in Russia. Russian military actors effectively influence nuclear strategy due to both intellectual and institutional dominance. Civilian actors are less unified in their strategy preferences and less institutionally dominant in strategy formulation over time. Despite increased political control over the military, civilian influence on nuclear strategy outcomes does not seem to increase in Russia.
 
These findings have implications for how we understand the Russian security policy-making environment as well as for the content and context of Russian nuclear strategy and posture.
 
Speaker bio: Kristin Ven Bruusgaard is a Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow at CISAC, and a doctoral candidate at King’s College London. Her research focuses on Russian nuclear strategy and deterrence policy in the post-cold war era. Kristin is currently on leave from the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS). She has previously been a senior security policy analyst in the Norwegian Armed Forces, a junior researcher at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI), and an intern at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in Washington, D.C., and at NATO HQ. She holds an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University, and a BA from Warwick University. Her work has been published in Security Dialogue, U.S. Army War College Quarterly Parameters, Survival and War on the Rocks. 

Kristin Ven Bruusgaard

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Dr. Kristin Ven Bruusgaard is Director of the Norwegian Intelligence School. She served as the Deputy Leader of the 2021 Norwegian Government Defense Commission, providing advice on future Norwegian defense policy for the next 10-20 years. Previously she was a Postdoctoral Fellow (Assistant Professor) of Political Science at the University of Oslo, a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow and a Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University, a Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies (IFS), and a senior security policy analyst in the Norwegian Armed Forces.

Her academic research focuses on Soviet and Russian nuclear strategy, nuclear and non-nuclear deterrence, crisis and deterrence dynamics in Europe and the Arctic/High North. She holds a Ph.D. in Defence Studies from King's College London and an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University. She is a certified language officer in the Norwegian Army. Her work has been published in Foreign Affairs, Security Dialogue, Journal of Strategic Studies, Survival, War on the Rocks, Texas National Security Review, Parameters and Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and by Cambridge University Press. She was awarded the 2020 Amos Perlmutter Prize from the Journal of Strategic Studies for her article Russian Nuclear Strategy and Conventional Inferiority. 

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Kristin Ven Bruusgaard CISAC
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Rethinking National Security

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Abstract: In 1945, our homeland was inviolate. Since then, we have invested trillions of dollars to improve our national security, yet we now can be destroyed in under an hour. In mathematics, such an absurd result from otherwise logical reasoning proves that at least one assumption must be in error. This talk therefore examines a number of assumptions that form the foundation of our thinking about national security, starting with the very concept itself: In the nuclear age, is national security separable from global security?

Speaker bio: Martin Hellman is best known for his invention, joint with Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle, of public key cryptography, the technology that enables secure Internet transactions. He has been a key player in the computer privacy debate, won three “outstanding professor” awards from minority student organizations, and pioneered a risk-informed framework for nuclear deterrence. His current work “Rethinking National Security” critically examines the assumptions that form the foundation of our national security. Hellman’s many honors include election to the National Academy of Engineering and receiving (jointly with Diffie) the million dollar ACM Turing Award, the top prize in computer science.

 
 

Martin Hellman

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CISAC Affiliated Faculty Member
Professor (Emeritus) of Electrical Engineering
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Martin E. Hellman is professor emeritus of electrical engineering at Stanford, a recipient (joint with Whit Diffie) of the million dollar ACM Turing Award, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and an inductee of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He became a CISAC affiliated faculty member in October 2012.

Hellman is best known for his invention, with Whitfield Diffie and Ralph Merkle, of public key cryptography. In addition to many other uses, this technology forms the basis for secure transactions and cybersecurity on the Internet. He also has been a long-time contributor to the computer privacy debate, starting with the issue of DES key size in 1975 and continuing with service (1994-96) on the National Research Council's Committee to Study National Cryptographic Policy, whose main recommendations were implemented soon afterward.

Prof. Hellman also has a deep interest in the ethics of technological development. With Prof. Anatoly Gromyko of Moscow, he co-edited Breakthrough: Emerging New Thinking, a book published simultaneously in Russian and English in 1987 during the rapid change in Soviet-American relations (available as a free, 2.6 MB PDF download). In 1986, he and his wife of fifty years published, A New Map for Relationships: Creating True Love at Home & Peace on the Planet, a book that provides a “unified field theory” for successful relationships by illuminating the connections between nuclear war, conventional war, interpersonal war, and war within our own psyches (available as a free, 1.2 MB PDF download).
 
His current research is devoted to bringing a risk-informed framework to nuclear deterrence and critically examining the assumptions that underlie our national security.

Prof. Hellman was at IBM's Watson Research Center from 1968-69 and an assistant professor of EE at MIT from 1969-71. Returning to Stanford in 1971, he served on the regular faculty until becoming Professor Emeritus in 1996. He has authored over seventy technical papers, six US patents and a number of foreign equivalents.

More information on Professor Hellman is available on his EE Department website. His publications, many  of which can be downloaded in PDF, are on the publications page of that site.
Martin Hellman Professor, Electrical Engineering (emeritus) Stanford University
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