About the Event: NATO is entering today the 4th phase of its history and must adapt to changes in today’s security environment in order to remain relevant. NATO’s ability to adapt will ultimately redefine NATO’s place in the world.  General Mercier will discuss challenges facing NATO faces such as maintaining the unity between members in the Alliance, addressing potential crises in Eastern Europe, reopening dialogue with Russia, and addressing instability on NATO-member borders.

About the Speaker: General Denis Mercier is the North Atlantic Council as Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. Prior to this assignment, he served as the French Air Force Chief of Staff from 2012-2015.

He graduated with a Master’s of Science from the French Air Force Academy in 1981, qualifying as a fighter pilot in 1983. He has more than 3000 flying hours including 182 hours in combat missions. Gen. Mercier commanded the 1/12 "Cambrésis" Fighter Squadron, a founding unit of the NATO Tiger association. He participated in numerous other NATO exercises and operations, including Operation Deny Flight over Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994, "Strong Resolve” in 1998, and Operation Allied Force in Kosovo.

From 1999 to 2002, Gen. Mercier was deputy head of the combined joint task force deputy branch at Regional Headquarters where he contributed to the development of the Combined Joint Task Force concept. He was a member of the combined analysis team for exercise "Allied Effort '01" and an evaluator of the CJTF HQ for Exercise "Strong Resolve '02". He also acted as liaison officer for the Commander Striking Fleet Atlantic stationed in Norfolk, VA.

He later served as the commander of Reims Air force base, integrating Mirage F1CR squadrons with ISAF in Afghanistan. From 2004 to 2008 he served as the head of the plans division at the French Air Force headquarters and was nominated as a flag officer in 2007. He then commanded the French Air Force Academy in Salon-de-Provence. As senior military advisor for the Minister of Defence from 2010-2012, Gen. Mercier prepared and participated in all NATO ministerial meetings, summits in Lisbon and Chicago, and was special advisor to Operation Unified Protector over Libya.

Among other awards, Gen. Mercier has been awarded the rank of Grand Officier of the French Legion of Honor and, among other distinctions, an officer of the National Order of Merit.

Abstract: The formal constitutional character of the presidential office – that is, the method of electing the president, and the powers both granted and denied to the president -- was defined by the men who drafted the Constitution in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 and has, for all practical purposes, remained largely unchanged ever since.

The presidency’s place in American political culture, however, is another matter, because in the 230 years since the Constitution was framed, that culture has evolved -- in many ways dramatically -- along with the society and the economy it reflects.

The tension between the static constitutional character of the presidency and the dynamic political culture, society, and economy in which it is embedded – and especially the technologies, even more especially the communication technologies that have emerged over the last century -- will be the main focus of this paper.

About the Speaker: David M. Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus, at Stanford University. 

His teaching has included courses in the history of the twentieth-century United States, American political and social thought, American foreign policy, national security strategies, American literature, and the comparative development of democracy in Europe and America.

Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American Studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history, and for its attention to the concept of the American national character. His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history.  Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980) used the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system, economy, and culture in the early twentieth century. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (1999) recounts the history of the American people in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II. With Thomas A. Bailey and Lizabeth Cohen, Kennedy is also the co-author of a textbook in American history, The American Pageant, now in its sixteenth edition. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and other publications and media outlets.

Birth Control in America was honored with the John Gilmary Shea Prize in 1970 and the Bancroft Prize in 1971. Over Here was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 198. Freedom From Fear won the Pulitzer and Francis Parkman Prizes, in 2000.

Professor Kennedy has been a visiting professor at the University of Florence, Italy, and has lectured on American history in Italy, Germany, Turkey, Scandinavia, Canada, Britain, Australia, Russia, and Ireland. He has served as chair of the Stanford History Department, and as director of Stanford's Program in International Relations, as well as Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences. He founded Stanford’s Bill Lane Center for the American West, was its Director from 2003-2013, and remains a member of its Advisory Council. In 1995-96, he was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the American Philosophical Society. From 2002 to 2011 he served on the Board of the Pulitzer Prizes (chair, 2010-2011) joined  the Board of the New York Historical Society in 2008, and in 2013 became a Trustee of the California Academy of Sciences. Since 2000, he has served as the Editor of the Oxford History of the United States. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in 2015 appointed Kennedy to the Advisory Council for the Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail, which will run from Glacier National Park in Montana to the Pacific shore in Washington State. 

Abstract: Space debris are leftovers from human activities in space. Earth orbit gets increasingly congested by a rising number of active spacecraft and debris, resulting in an increased risk of collision. Collisions with debris can destroy entire spacecraft, resulting in economic loss or worse. The additional debris increases the risk of further collision. There are several dilemmas: If we want to further our venture into space beyond what is possible today, a vastly increased number of rocket launches are necessary. That could negatively impact the debris environment and make further space endeavors more challenging. Proposed active debris removal methods could lessen that problem. However, such methods have dual-use implications, because a capability to remove large pieces of debris from orbit also implies a capability to remove active spacecraft. Hence, building up a debris removal capability could be seen as a threat to other nations' satellites. This talk will give an overview about origins of debris, projections of the future debris environment, and debris mitigation methods and their security implications. A special focus will be on a less invasive debris mitigation method based on ground-based lasers and research to assess its efficiency using long-term debris projections.

About the Speaker: Jan Stupl is an affiliate and a former postdoctoral fellow at CISAC.  He is currently a Research Scientist with SGT, a government contractor, and works in the Mission Design Division at NASA Ames Research Center (Mountain View, CA). In the Mission Design Division, Jan conducts research on novel methods for laser communication and space debris mitigation and supports concept development for space missions.

Before his current position, Jan was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University until 2011, investigating technical and policy implications of high power lasers for missile defense and as anti-satellite weapons (ASAT), as well as the proliferation of ballistic missiles. The research on laser ASATs focuses on damage mechanisms, the potential sources and countries of origin of laser ASATs and ways to curb their international proliferation. Before coming to CISAC, Jan was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH) at the University of Hamburg, Germany. His PhD dissertation was a physics-based analysis of future of High Energy Lasers and their application for missile defense and focused on the Airborne Laser missile defense system. This work was jointly supervised by the IFSH, the Institute of Laser and System Technologies at Hamburg University of Technology and the physics department of Hamburg University, where he earned his PhD in 2008. His interest in security policy and international politics was fuelled by an internship at the United Nations in New York in 2003.

Abstract: How easily and quickly can states rise in the military domain? Do industrial espionage and in particular cyber-espionage facilitate and accelerate this process? In other words, are there empirical and theoretical reasons to believe that other states can easily imitate U.S. advanced weapon systems and thus erode American military- technological superiority? Drawing from the literature in economic history, economics, management and sociology, we maintain that the dramatic increase in the complexity of military technology that has taken place over the past 150 years has led to a change in the system of production, which in turn has made the imitation and the replication of the performance of military technology more difficult - despite globalization and advances in communications. As a result, developing advanced weapon systems has become significantly more challenging. We test our theory on a set of crucial case studies addressing possible cofounders. The available evidence supports our account. Our findings reassure about the threat of cyber-espionage, the role of globalization in armaments production and rise of China for American military-technological superiority. 

About the Speaker: Dr. Andrea Gilli is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He holds a PhD in Social and Political Science from the European University Institute (EUI) in Fiesole, and in 2015 he was awarded the European Defence Agency and Egmont Institute’s bi-annual prize for the best dissertation on European defense, security and strategy. Andrea’s research focuses on change in military technology and its implications for international security. At CISAC, he is working on the consequences of the robotics revolutions for American military primacy. In the past, Andrea provided consulting services to both private and public organizations, and worked or was associated with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Preparatory Commission for the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization, the NATO Defense College, the Royal United Services Institute, the Center for Transatlantic Relations at SAIS-Johns Hopkins University, the European Union Institute for Security Studies, the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies at the Columbia University in New York and the Center for Security Studies at Metropolitan University Prague. Andrea has published articles on suicide terrorism, the diffusion of drone warfare and defense policy more in general in Security Studies, The RUSI Journal, and Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, among others.

Abstract: Russia’s adaptation to the changing character of war has been an object of an ongoing discussion among security experts. Contemporary warfare is being profoundly altered by an increasingly wired world, disruptive technologies, the role of information and social interactions; it aims to impact the state’s entire capacity by exerting political, economic and cultural influence rather than by annihilating the adversary. As put by the Russian General Staff, the 21st century wars are not even declared and nonmilitary tools play an increasing role in achieving objectives of war. Russia’s swift annexation of Crimea, as well as a widespread use of disinformation, cyber attacks, electronic warfare, economic levers, and a spectrum of other means merging military, nonmilitary, asymmetrical and indirect approaches have supposedly manifested a new doctrinal and operational era in the Russian strategy, called ‘hybrid war,’ ‘new generation warfare,’ ‘non-linear war,’ or even ‘ambiguous war,’ among other terms. However, the assessments of Russian strategy lack conceptual clarity and have been accompanied by conflicting narratives, one portraying Russia as a master of strategy that has outmaneuvered the United States in key international security issues, the other claiming that strategic thinking is foreign to the current Russian authorities. This study identifies misconceptions about Russia’s contemporary military strategy, disentangles its theoretical foundations, and examines key patterns in the Russian adaptation to the challenges of modern-day and future conflict.

About the Speaker: Dr. Katarzyna Zysk is an associate professor at the Norwegian Defence University College – the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies in Oslo, a position she has held since 2007. In the academic year 2016–2017, she is on a sabbatical leave and serves as a visiting scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University, and subsequently as a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford. She is also a member of the Hoover Institution’s Arctic Security Initiative and was a research fellow (resident and non-resident) at the US Naval War College – Center for Naval Warfare Studies, where she also cooperated closely with the War Gaming Department. In 2016, she served as an acting dean of the Norwegian Defence University College. Dr. Zysk has an academic background in international relations and international history. Following her PhD thesis on NATO enlargement (2006), her research and publications have focused on various aspects of security and strategic studies, in particular on Russia’s security and defense policies, including military change and modernization of the Russian armed forces, strategic culture, political philosophy, Arctic geopolitics, as well as uses of seapower and maritime security. Currently, she is writing a book about Russia’s military strategy. 

Abstract: Since their conception in the 1950s, thorium reactors have been promoted as a promising technology for nuclear energy generation, though they have not yet been successfully commercialized. Proponents of thorium reactors argue that they are safer, produce less waste, and are proliferation-resistant, compared with uranium-fueled light water reactors used around the world today. The central question guiding this research concerns the final claim. Is the thorium fuel cycle inherently more resistant to nuclear weapons proliferation than the traditional uranium fuel cycle?

Advocates argue that the thorium fuel cycle is less vulnerable to proliferation of nuclear weapons technology because little or no plutonium is produced. Additionally, fissile U-233 is claimed to be “self-protected” by U-232, which is produced with U-233 and decays through Tl-208, emitting highly energetic gamma radiation. But the amount of U-232 generated depends on reactor operation. Furthermore, the U-232 content can be further decreased by conducting chemical separations at the back-end of the fuel cycle.

This presentation will discuss the proliferation risks of the thorium fuel cycle. The potential for generating large stockpiles of isotopically pure U-233 by conducting protactinium separations at the back end of the fuel cycle is examined as a new proliferation pathway that current IAEA safeguards may not be prepared to address.

About the Speaker: Eva C. Uribe is a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC for the 2016-2017 academic year. Her research involves identifying proliferation pathways in the thorium fuel cycle and assessing the potential impact and implications of U-233 stockpile generation on the international nonproliferation regime. Eva received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2016. Her dissertation research focused on structural analysis of organically-modified porous silica surfaces for the extraction of uranium from aqueous solutions using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In 2011 Eva received a B.S. from Yale University with a double major in Chemistry and Political Science. She served as a Next Generation Safeguards Initiative intern with the Nonproliferation Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2008 and 2009.