Abstract: What do emerging powers want from the international order? Are their intentions generally benign or potentially harmful to global order? What capabilities do emerging powers use to influence the international order and how? This book, Aspirational Power, examines these questions through the lens of Brazil’s historical and contemporary experience as an emerging power. Brazil has long aspired to grandeza (greatness) and to emerge to take its place among the major powers that influence and shape the international order. By history and by design, Brazil emphasizes soft power in its pursuit of a more democratic international order based on sovereign equality among nations. This book examines the domestic sources of Brazil’s international influence and how it attempts to use its particular set of capabilities to influence global order. It demonstrates how the weakness of Brazil’s domestic institutions and periodic internal crises repeatedly undermine its pursuit of major power status. The book concludes by examining how Brazil might take better advantage of existing opportunities in the international order to enhance its influence and how deepening ties to democratic emerging powers such as India and South Africa might better advance its global interests.

About the Speaker: Harold Trinkunas joins the Center as the successor to Lynn Eden in the concomitant role of Senior Research Scholar and Associate Director for Research. Harold comes to CISAC from the Brookings Institution, where he was the Charles W. Robinson Chair and Senior Fellow as well as Director of the Latin America Initiative. Previously, he served as Chair of the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he was also an Associate Professor. One of the nation's leading Latin America specialists, Harold's work has examined civil-military relations, ungoverned spaces, terrorist financing, emerging power dynamics, and global governance. His newest book, Aspirational Power: Brazil's Long Road to Global Influence, co-authored with David Mares of UCSD, was published this summer by Brookings Institution Press.

Harold brings to the Associate Director for Research role extensive experience in academic administration, program development, mentoring, teaching, and policy analysis. His leadership will continue to advance the Center's mission of training the next generation of international security specialists; developing original policy-relevant scholarship; and extending our outreach to global policymakers to improve the peace and security of our world.

Born and raised in Venezuela, Harold earned his doctorate in political science from Stanford University in 1999 and has been a predoctoral fellow and later a visiting professor at CISAC. 

Abstract: Critical infrastructure systems including manufacturing facilities, ports, transportation systems, communications networks, and energy and water distribution systems often consist of many interacting components linked in complex ways. This can lead to unforeseen interactions among components that may not be expected or intended by the designers and operators of the system. These interactions constitute linkages within a system of which designers are generally unaware, and that therefore constitute a security vulnerability. In this talk, I will present and discuss a formal approach for identifying and analyzing the existence and severity of security vulnerabilities resulting from these previously unknown linkages (so-called implicit interactions) in critical infrastructure systems. The presence of these implicit interactions in a system can indicate unforeseen flaws that, if not mitigated, could be exploited by an attacker. This can have severe consequences in terms of the safety, security, and reliability of the system. Therefore, this notion of implicit interactions must be carefully managed in order to have systems that operate as intended, and that are resistant to cyber-attacks and failures. 

Abstract: This talk examines ideologies of knowledge and expertise in the global governance of nuclear technology through an ethnographic study of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Department of Safeguards. It considers how changes in the way that the IAEA carries out international nuclear safeguards have become the subject of increasing controversy in the last 15 years. This controversy provides fertile ground for understanding the role of knowledge and the functioning of bureaucracy in international governance. I will show that the critiques addressed against the new safeguards system reveal not only political alignments and struggles for power, but also uncover global and regional assumptions about how a technical bureaucracy is supposed to produce knowledge. In closing, I will propose how nuclear safeguards might be adapted to a changing security environment without threatening the IAEA's expert authority or politically discriminating against states.

About the Speaker: Anna M. Weichselbraun is a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago in August 2016. Anna's dissertation, based on 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork and multi-archival research, investigates how nuclear safeguards inspectors, bureaucrats, and diplomats at the IAEA negotiate the international and institutional boundaries of politics and technology in their working lives. She asks how organizational products such as bureaucratic procedures, technical inspection reports, policy papers, and official diplomatic statements contribute to the logical ordering of technocratic expertise within the IAEA. She is especially interested in how individuals at international organizations communicate across different epistemic paradigms, and how particular types of knowledge become recognized as authoritative and legitimate. In addition to revising her dissertation into a book manuscript, she is also conducting preliminary research on networks of nonproliferation experts and their spheres of influence.

Abstract: In international politics, the division between allies and adversaries appears quite clear. For example, it is conventional wisdom that North Korea is China’s ally and South Korea is the United States’ ally. In proliferation literature, the main catalyst for nuclear proliferation is threats from adversaries, while an ally’s nuclear umbrella mitigates the threat and willingness to proliferate. However, in reality the division between a credible ally and threatening foe is less clear-cut. Contrary to conventional wisdom, security threats alone do not trigger the decision of an ally to develop its indigenous nuclear weapons program. In other words, security could be a necessary condition for wanting the nuclear bomb, but it is not a sufficient condition for starting an indigenous program. Rather, the sense of abandonment or clashes of national interests between two friendly states triggers a state to pursue an indigenous weapons program. Using newly available declassified documents to conduct process tracing, and comparing the decision-making in the cases of China and South Korea, I show that Chinese and South Korean nuclear weapons programs were triggered not by their foes, the U.S and North Korea, respectively, but by their friends, the Soviet Union and the U.S. 

About the Speaker: Jooeun Kim is a MacArthur Nuclear Security Predoctoral fellow at CISAC for 2016-17. She is completing her PhD in international relations at Georgetown University’s Department of Government. She studies credibility, alliance management, and nuclear proliferation within military alliances.

Her dissertation examines the credibility of a patron ally as the source of a protégé ally’s nuclear decisions, through analyzing allies’ behaviors during international crises.

She completed an MA in Government at Georgetown University, an MA in International Affairs at George Washington University, and a BA in Political Science at Waseda University, Japan. She speaks Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.

Outside of her dissertation writing, she is a certified yoga instructor and enjoys sculling on the Potomac River. 

Abstract: This presentation is adapted from two book chapters.  The first one published in 2007 is “Transforming U.S. Intelligence: The Digital Dimension” and the second chapter published in 2009 is “Vaults, Mirrors and Masks: Rediscovering US Counterintelligence - Counterintelligence Too Narrowly Practiced.”  Additionally, material from recent DSB and NSB studies is included:  “Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat” and “A Review of U.S. Navy Cyber Defense Capabilities”.  Communications technologies have transformed the way information is created, stored, processed, viewed, and transmitted. But the same technologies have provided our adversaries with the tools for attacking and exploiting our infrastructure and military systems. The U.S. has long operated under the assumption that our critical systems would be secure if we applied current Information Assurance (IA) practices. The reality is that a sophisticated offense easily outmatches the capability of a defensive organization to protect its critical Information Technology (IT) systems.  This briefing attempts to convey the rationale behind this assertion. The presentation represents my views and is specifically not intended to represent the views of any organization with which I’m affiliated.

About the Speaker: Mr. Gosler is a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.  He is engaged in various DOD and Intelligence Community advisory boards such as the Defense Science Board.

His previous experience includes a 33 year career (1979-2013) at Sandia National Laboratories. His early contributions included red-teaming both cryptographic and nuclear weapon systems.  In 1989, he served as Sandia’s first Visiting Scientist to NSA.  In 1993, he established and directed the Vulnerability Assessments Program. From 1996-2001, he was on a Special Leave of Absence from Sandia.  After returning to Sandia, he became Sandia’s sixth lab Fellow.

In 1996, he entered the Senior Intelligence Service at CIA as the Director of the Clandestine Information Technology Office.  This office integrated targeting, analysis, technology development, and technical/human operations.

Additionally, he served as a Naval Reserve Officer from 1975-2003. 

His awards include: Lockheed Martin’s NOVA award, National Intelligence Medal of Achievement, DONOVAN award, Intelligence Medal of Merit, Director of Central Intelligence Director’s award, and the Legion of Merit.

Mr. Gosler earned a BS degree in Physics/Mathematics and a MS degree in Mathematics.

Abstract: This paper develops a theoretical approach to norm resistance and defiance in international affairs. Conventional models of norm dynamics (e.g. Finnemore and Sikkink’s “norm life-cycle”, Keck and Sikkink’s “boomerang model”; Risse, Ropp and Sikkink’s “spiral model”) focus mainly on diffusion and compliance, failing to account for resistance to global norms. I argue that transnational advocacy and pressure can backfire, resulting in further violations, the promotion of counter-norms, and repression of civil society. Drawing from social psychology, sociology, and criminology, the paper presents an alternative model of norm socialization, whereby attempts to “shame” states provoke defiance, or the increase in incidence or commitment to a particular norm offending behavior by a shamed regime, caused by a proud, shameless reaction against the shaming agent. Defiance unfolds through domestic and international logics that incentivize elites to violate international norms for political gain. In the long term, defiance can attach oppositional norms to collective identity, transforming domestic and international normative orders. I apply the theoretical framework to an empirical case study of the sexuality rights norm and its contestation by Uganda, Nigeria, and Russia.

About the speaker: Rochelle Terman is a political scientist (Ph.D., University of California Berkeley, 2016) studying international norms and identity using computational and mixed methods. Her dissertation / book project examines the backlash and unintended consequences of international “naming and shaming” campaigns, especially around women’s rights in the Muslim World. Previous work on the tension between Islamophobia and feminism was recently published in Theory, Culture & Society. She teaches computational social science in a variety of capacities.