This event is offered as a joint sponsorship with the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

About the Topic: Sarah Chayes's book, "Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security," presents an explosive argument: many of today's major world crises -- the ISIS takeover of much of Iraq and Syria, the robust Afghan and Nigerian insurgencies, the Arab Spring and Ukrainian revolutions and their aftermaths -- have their roots in systemic corruption. If this is the case, then the policy priority of addressing corruption must be raised. Rather than a marginal concern to be passed off to development agencies or specialized bureaus, anti-corruption must pervade the conduct of foreign policy. Thieves of State is a riveting book; Chayes will provide a few short readings and reflections on its implications before engaging a conversation with the public. 

About the Speaker: A senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Sarah Chayes served as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2010 and 2011. She is an expert on kleptocracy and anti-corruption, civil-military relations, and South Asia policy. Chayes joined the Pentagon after 8 years living and working in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and advising the command of the international forces in Afghanistan. Since leaving government, she has been conducting in-depth research on the security implications of acute corruption in such contexts as the insurgencies in Iraq, Syria, South and Central Asia, and Nigeria, and the revolutions of the Arab Spring and Ukraine. Her work has been dubbed "revolutionary" and "a paradigm shift" by senior professionals in foreign and security policy.

More information on the author and on the book can be found here: http://www.thievesofstate.com/. A basic statement of the argument can be found in this June 6 Carnegie paper, "Corruption: The Unrecognized Threat to International Security." For Sarah's thoughts on the implications for the intelligence community, please read "Corruption: The Priority Intelligence Requirements" in this September 9, 2014 Carnegie publication.

Abstract: What happens to armed organizations after they sign peace accords? Why do they remilitarize or demilitarize? This project provides an explanation for this variation in post-war trajectories based on the geography of recruitment – whether the armed groups recruited locally or non-locally. The theory’s mechanisms center on social networks, principal-agent problems, and information asymmetries. I link these factors to changes in the distribution of power and the likelihood of successful bargaining, resumed violence or consolidated peace. The empirics draw on the comparative laboratory of contemporary Colombia where 37 armed organizations signed peace accords with the government and then diverged in their post-war trajectories: half remilitarized, half demilitarized. Drawing on data from eleven surveys collected over the course of ten years, I analyze how ex-combatants were networked in geographical space over time. I then examine the implications of cohesive or eroded networks on remilitarization using organization-level data derived from intelligence agencies and municipality-level data on 29,000 violent events over the course of 46 years of war. The project then turns to process tracing in various regions of Colombia, employing over 300 in-depth interviews to illustrate the validity of the causal process. The empirics provide strong support for the theory and cast doubt on explanations centered on the political economy of violence and correlates of civil war. The project has important implications for future research on civil wars, intrastate peace processes, and state formation and outlines a series of recommendations for policy.

About the Speaker: Sarah Daly is Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Notre Dame. Her research interests include civil wars and peace-building, international security, and ethnic politics with a regional focus on Latin America. Her book manuscript, under contract with Cambridge University Press, explores the post-war trajectories of armed organizations. Her other research seeks to explain sub-national variation in insurgency onset, organized crime and state-building, recidivism of ex-combatants during war to peace transitions, state strategies towards ethnic minorities in the former Soviet Union, and the role of emotions in transitional justice regimes. Her research has been published in the Journal of Peace Research, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Conflict, Security & Development, and in several edited volumes. Sarah has conducted field research in Colombia, Ecuador, Chile and Brazil, is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has spent time at the World Bank, Organization of American States, and Peace Research Institute of Oslo. She has also served as a fellow in the Political Science Department and at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, at the Saltzman Institute of War & Peace Studies at Columbia University, and at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. Her research has been funded by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, Smith Richardson Foundation, Fulbright Program, United States Institute of Peace, MIT Center for International Studies, and MIT Entrepreneurship Center.

Abstract: In contemporary political science, many believe that normative restrictions on armed conflict are an outgrowth of Western culture and the Judeo-Christian just war tradition.  Drawing on historical evidence that shows that political actors in Ancient China and the early Islamic empire endorsed civilian protection rules, I claim that such norms are more common than most IR theorists suppose.  For IR theory, this raises an important puzzle: how can we explain why similar normative ideas emerged in human societies that are otherwise very different?  Building on research in cognitive science, social psychology, and social neuroscience, I argue that most people have natural cognitive and emotional predispositions that bias the emergence and transmission of cultural norms that protect non-combatants.  More specifically, capacities for perspective-taking and empathy shape how people interpret the limits of their moral commitments, and when these capacities are engaged, intuitional heuristics affect how they judge the morality of killing in war.  What is more, I claim that three key contextual variables modulate the connection between innate moral intuitions and the development of civilian protection norms: (1) societal interdependence; (2) the dispersion of power in ways that increase the agency of potential non-combatants; and (3) the creation of norms in argumentative contexts that require more impartial moral reasoning.  I argue that rationalist and constructivist theories of norm emergence will be able to better articulate the cross-cultural timing of emergence, the durability, and historical trajectory of the norms of war by incorporating this naturalistic theory of moral cognition.

About the Speaker: David Traven joined CISAC as a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow in July 2014. He received his PhD. in Political Science at Ohio State University in 2013. From January 2013 to June 2014 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kenyon College. His research examines the evolution of the law and ethics of war in international relations, and he is particularly interested in understanding how moral cognition and emotion shape the creation of norms that protect the victims of armed conflict, especially civilians. Dr. Traven is currently working on a book manuscript that examines how moral intuitions influence the creation and the effectiveness of the norms of war across cultures.

Abstract: Why and how do elite arrangements vary across authoritarian regimes? Why do some arrangements persist, while others are dissolved through coup d’état, failed coup attempts, and extensive purges? Existing political science explanations of authoritarian stability broadly emphasize three factors: individual members’ attributes, material payoffs, and formal institutions. Yet historians and country experts emphasize the centrality of social and informal ties between actors. I argue that, to understand the variation in the source and extent of coalitional breakdown, scholars must situate the holders of political and military office in their organizational and social context. Authoritarian coalitions differ in systematic ways in their members’ patterns of organizational and social relationships; these different relational configurations have distinct implications for coalitional trajectories. This paper employs original archival and interview evidence to trace the emergence and evolution of authoritarian networks in Iraq and Syria. It demonstrates that the extent of overlap between organizational and social networks explains the type of elite breakdown (and its breadth) over time. 

About the Speaker: Julia Choucair-Vizoso is a joint predoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) for 2014-2015. She is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Yale University.

Choucair-Vizoso studies coalitional politics and elite networks in nondemocratic settings. Her dissertation examines how elites organize to enforce authoritarian rule, and how and why these organizational structures evolve. Drawing on network theory and analysis, her study examines ruling coalitions in Iraq and Syria.

Her research has been supported by fellowships from the United States Institute of Peace and Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. She holds a B.S. in International Politics and an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and was an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

This event is sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy. 

Abstract: Despite similar starting points, Iraq and Libya’s nuclear weapons program turned out very different. Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was interrupted on the cusp of success in early 1991, while Libya’s program was barely operational when it was dismantled in late 2003. Why?

To answer this question I explore both programs from the perspectives of scientists and decision-makers in each country. I bring new evidence to light from archives in several countries, the private papers of key participants, and interviews with scientists and decision-makers. This evidence shows that both programs drifted from their mission, both regimes attempted to get their project back on track, but only Iraq succeeded. One of the main reasons, I argue, is that the Iraqi state was better equipped to intervene in the nuclear weapons program. 

About the Speaker: Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer is a junior faculty fellow at CISAC. She joined CISAC as a visiting associate professor and Stanton nuclear security junior faculty fellow in September 2012. Between 2008 and 2010 she was a predoctoral and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Braut-Hegghammer is an assistant professor and head of the Nuclear Studies Program at Norwegian Defense University College. She 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.

Abstract: Senior policy makers often talk as though cyber conflict poses the same kind of existential threat as does nuclear conflict.  Sober analysis reveals the silliness of this claim, but nonetheless, an understanding of nuclear conflict can help to structure thinking about cyber conflict.  Specifically, I will present some preliminary work on the proposition that nuclear and cyber conflict are similar in that the same questions arise in each, but that the answers to these questions are for the most part entirely different.  I hope that feedback from this seminar will help me to refine this work if I’m on the right track (or abandon it if I’m not).

About the Speaker: Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security 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 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.  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.

Abstract: Although anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity are recognized, human impacts on animal life are an under-appreciated form of global environmental change. For example, among terrestrial vertebrates, 322 species have
 become extinct since 1500, and populations of the remaining species show 25% average decline in abundance. Invertebrate patterns are equally dire: 
monitored populations show close to 50% mean abundance decline. Such animal declines
will cascade onto ecosystem functioning and human well-being, including risks to human health. I will discuss how defaunation is both a pervasive component of the current anthropogenic erosion of Earth’s biological diversity and also a major driver of global ecological change of significance for society.

About the Speaker: Rodolfo Dirzo earned his M.Sc. and his Ph.D. from the University of Wales, UK, and he is currently a professor of biology at Stanford, and Director of Stanford’s Center for Latin American Studies. His research on the ecology of plant and animals in tropical ecosystems examines the significance of biodiversity loss in terms of ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services to society. He is member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He is committed to education at all levels, including elementary and high schools from underserved communities in the Bay Area.