Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Almost Everything You Wanted to Know About the B2 Bomber But Were Afraid to Ask

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Representing the United States Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel John Vitacca is a national defense fellow for 2009-2010 at CISAC. 

John holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Marketing from Texas A&M University, a Master of Business Administration degree in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Master of Arts degree in Military Operational Art and Science from Air Command and Staff College, Air University, Alabama.  He is a command pilot with over 3,400 flight hours in the B-2 and B-52, qualified as both an instructor and evaluator pilot.  Prior to coming to CISAC, John served in various assignments including a tour at the Pentagon as the Chief of the Global Persistent Attack Branch and the B-2/Next Generation Bomber subject matter expert.   Most recently, he was the Commander of the 393d Bomb Squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base, one of only two operational B-2 stealth bomber squadrons in the USAF.  His research at CISAC will focus on nuclear weapons policy issues.

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Representing the United States Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel John Vitacca is a national defense fellow for 2009-2010 at CISAC. 

John holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Marketing from Texas A&M University, a Master of Business Administration degree in Management from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Master of Arts degree in Military Operational Art and Science from Air Command and Staff College, Air University, Alabama.  He is a command pilot with over 3,400 flight hours in the B-2 and B-52, qualified as both an instructor and evaluator pilot.  Prior to coming to CISAC, John served in various assignments including a tour at the Pentagon as the Chief of the Global Persistent Attack Branch and the B-2/Next Generation Bomber subject matter expert.   Most recently, he was the Commander of the 393d Bomb Squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base, one of only two operational B-2 stealth bomber squadrons in the USAF.  His research at CISAC focused on nuclear weapons policy issues.

Colonel (Select) John Vitacca CISAC Visiting Scholar Speaker
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Homeland Security under the Obama Administration: A New Emphasis on National Resilience

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Dr. Stephen Flynn served as a senior policy advisor on homeland security during the Obama campaign and during the presidential transition. Since May 2009, he has been supporting the Department of Homeland Security in drafting of the first Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) that will be presented to Congress by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in Jan 2010. In addition, he has been assisting the newly created National Security Council Directorate for Resilience Policy on integrating the concept of resilience into presidential guidance on national preparedness. He will discuss how the homeland security mission is being recalibrated by the Obama Administration to place greater emphasis on building national capacity to withstand, quickly recover from, and adapt to man-made and natural disasters.

About the speaker:

In December 2009, Dr. Stephen Flynn becomes the fifth President of the Center for National Policy (www.cnponline.org), founded in 1981.  Prior to being selected to lead CNP, he spent a decade as a senior fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Following the election of President Barack Obama, he served as the lead policy advisor on homeland security for the presidential transition team.  He is a member of the bipartisan National Security Preparedness Group, co-chaired by former 9/11 commissioners, Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton.

Dr. Flynn is the author of the critically acclaimed The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation (Random House, 2007), and the national bestseller, America the Vulnerable (HarperCollins 2004).  He is a Consulting Professor at the Center of International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School's Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania.  Since 9/11 he has provided testimony on twenty-two occasions on Capitol Hill.  Dr. Flynn is also a member of the Marine Board of the National Research Council. Prior to September 11, 2001, he served as an expert advisor to U.S. Commission on National Security (Hart-Rudman Commission), and following the 9/11 attacks he was the principle advisor to the bipartisan Congressional Port Security Caucus, and advised the Bush Administration on maritime and homeland security issues. 

He is a frequent media commentator and has appeared on Meet the Press, 60 Minutes, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The Today Show, the Charlie Rose Show, CNN and on National Public Radio.  Four of his articles have been published in the prestigious journal, Foreign Affairs.  Excerpts of his books have been featured in Time, as the cover story for U.S. News & World Report, and as the subject of two CNN documentaries.

A 1982 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Dr. Flynn served in the Coast Guard on active duty for 20 years, including two tours as commanding officer at sea, received several professional awards including the Legion of Merit, and retired at the rank of Commander.  As a Coast Guard officer, he served in the White House Military Office during the George H.W. Bush administration and as a director for Global Issues on the National Security Council staff during the Clinton administration. 

Dr. Flynn received the M.A.L.D. and Ph.D. degrees in International Politics from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in 1990 and 1991.  He was a Guest Scholar in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution from 1991-92, and in 1993-94 he was an Annenberg Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.   He has been a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations since 1999.

Dr. Flynn is the principal for Stephen E. Flynn Associates LLC, where he provides independent advisory services on improving enterprise resiliency and critical infrastructure protection, and transportation and maritime security.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1960, Dr. Flynn lives in Connecticut with his wife JoAnn and their daughter Christina.

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Stephen E. Flynn Speaker
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Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe to be nominated US ambassador to UN Human Rights Council

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Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe is to be nominated U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the White House announced Nov. 9

Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, an affiliated scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), is expected to be nominated as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the White House reported Nov. 9.

Donahoe must appear in a hearing before a Senate subcommittee before the Senate votes on the nomination, a process that could take several weeks. If confirmed, Donahoe would be responsible for advancing U.S. policies on the council to ensure protection of universally agreed human rights standards.

"I'm really pleased that President Obama has chosen Eileen Donahoe to be the ambassador to the Human Rights Council in Geneva," CISAC Co-Director Scott Sagan said. "Her scholarly research and work has focused on the ethical and legal dilemmas involving the political uses of military force in human intervention. I can't think of anyone more qualified to help reinvigorate the Human Rights Council to meet the challenges it must face today."

Donahoe, 50, was a CISAC visiting scholar in 2006-07 after earning a doctorate in ethics from the University of California's Graduate Theological Union. Her dissertation, "Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Moral Imperative Versus the Rule of Law," addressed the sometimes conflicting ethical and legal justifications for humanitarian military intervention, as well as the basis for authorization of the use of force by the UN Security Council. Her research has also focused on U.N. reform and the international rule of law.

Donahoe has worked with various human rights organizations, including The Lawyer's Committee for Human Rights, where she did research on the connection between U.S. foreign policy and human rights, and Amnesty International's Ginetta Sagan Fund, where she did strategy work related to human rights concerns of women and children.

Donahoe, a resident of Portola Valley, chaired the National Women for Obama Finance Committee during Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Previously, Donahoe was a litigation associate at Fenwick & West in Palo Alto, where she served technology clients in intellectual property and commercial disputes. Prior to that, she was a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School and a law clerk to the Hon. William H. Orrick in San Francisco.

In addition to her doctorate, Donahoe earned a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College, a master's in theology from Harvard, and both a law degree and master's in East Asian Studies from Stanford University.

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Preventing Genocide: Practical Steps Toward Early Detection and Effective Action

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David Hamburg is president emeritus at Carnegie Corporation of New York, where he served as the Corporation's eleventh president from 1982 to 1997. Under his leadership the work of the Corporation focused on education and healthy development of children and youth, human resources in developing countries and international security issues. He established a number of task forces on education and preventing conflict which produced seminal research and policy analysis and which will continue to influence the work in these fields in the future.

A medical doctor, Hamburg had a long history of leadership in the research, medical and psychiatric fields before his transition from a trustee of Carnegie to its president. He was chief, adult psychiatry branch, National Institutes of Health, from 1958 to 1961; professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University from 1961 to 1972; Reed-Hodgson Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University from 1972 to 1976; president of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, 1975-1980; and director of the division of health policy research and education and John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy at Harvard University, 1980-1983. He served as president and then chairman of the board (1984-1986) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Hamburg was a member of the United States Defense Policy Board with Secretary of Defense William Perry and cochair with former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. He is a member of President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and a visiting professor at Harvard Medical School's department of social medicine. He was the founder of the Carnegie Commission on Science, Technology and Government.

Hamburg received both his A.B. and M.D. degrees from Indiana University. He has received numerous honorary degrees during his career as well as the American Psychiatric Association's Distinguished Service Award in 1991, the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in 1996, the International Peace Academy's 25th Anniversary Special Award in 1996, the Achievement in Children and Public Policy Award from the Society for Research in Child Development in 1997, and the National Academy of Sciences' Public Welfare Medal in 1998.

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David Hamburg President Emeritus, Carnegie Corporation of New York Speaker
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Special IPS-CISAC Seminar - A Realistic Approach to Nuclear Disarmament

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Achilles Zaluar is Minister-Counselor of Political Affairs at the Brazilian Embassy to the United States in Washington, D.C. From 2008-09 Zaluar served as Minister-Counselor of Multilateral and International Security Affairs at the Brazilian Embassy to the United States. Zaluar has previously held positions as Deputy Head of the Division for United Nations Affairs (DNU), 2003-06, and assistant at the Theory of International Relations Chair of the Rio Branco Institute, 2002-03. From 1997-98 Zaluar served as a member of the team that drafted the position papers and presidential message for Brazil’s accession to the NPT. Zaluar has held posts at the Brazilian Embassy to the U.S, Washington, 2006-present; Brazilian Mission to the United Nations, New York, 1995-98; and the Brazilian Embassy to Paraguay, Asuncion, 1998-2001. In 1993 Zaluar served as secretary of the interagency group that drafted Brazil’s export control law. From 1991 to 1994, he worked on non-proliferation and export control, including Brazil’s relations with the MTCR and NSG control regimes, and US-Brazil issues. Zaluar received a Bachelor in Mathematics at Rio Catholic University in 1985, graduated in Diplomacy from the Rio Branco Institute, Brazil’s diplomatic academy, in 1991, and received a Master in Public Administration (MPA/MC) at the Harvard Kennedy School, in 2002.

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Achilles Zaluar Minister-Counselor, Political Affairs, Brazilian Embassy to the United States, Washington Speaker
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Scott D. Sagan named Caroline S.G. Munro Professor

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CISAC Co-Director Scott D. Sagan has been named The Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professor in Political Science. A member of Stanford's faculty since 1987, Sagan's research focuses on nuclear security and the emerging terrorist threat; nuclear proliferation, particularly in South Asia; ethics and international relations; and accidents in complex organizations. Before coming to Stanford, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the Director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989), The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993) and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (W.W. Norton, 2002). He is co-editor with Peter R. Lavoy and James L. Wirtz of Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000) and the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009). His most recent publications include "The Case for No First Use" in Survival (June 2009) and "Good Faith and Nuclear Disarmament Negotiations" in George Perkovich and James A. Acton's (eds.) Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (Carnegie Endowment, 2009).

Sagan received Stanford's Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching in 1996, and the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1998. As part of CISAC's mission of training the next generation of security specialists, he established Stanford's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies. He earned a bachelor's degree with high honors in government from Oberlin College and holds a doctorate in political science from Harvard University.

The Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professorship in Political Science

The Caroline S.G. Munro Chair was established by the Board of Trustees in 1981 in recognition of Mrs. Munro's farsighted commitment to strengthening scholarship and teaching at Stanford.

A series of gifts during her lifetime and a bequest endowing the William Bennett Munro Memorial Fund in 1973 in honor of her late husband--a professor of history and government at Harvard and the California Institute of Technology--were sufficient to support the William Bennett Munro Professorship in Political Science; the William Bennett Munro Memorial Lectures; and the Caroline S.G. Munro Memorial Professorship.

Caroline Sanford Gorton and William Bennett Munro were married in 1913. They had one child, William Bennett Munro, Jr., who graduated from Stanford in 1937. Their granddaughter, Jane Bruce Munro, was a member of the Class of 1968.

In accordance with Mrs. Munro's preferences, the professorship may be awarded in either political science or history.

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Weighing the Case For a Convention to Limit Cyberwarfare

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The United States must take steps to protect its critical national infrastructure against serious cyberattack. One step might be to negotiate a multilateral convention to limit such attacks by states, which are the most likely source of an attack at the level of greatest concern. Although verification of compliance would be difficult, the convention in and of itself might be worthwhile for its norm-setting value, to be a restraining factor in the offensive decisions of other states, and as a necessary step in obtaining fuller international cooperation in controlling the general cyberthreat.

On the other hand, the U.S. military believes that cyberattack in its own hands may be an important addition to its war-making capacity. It may be unwilling to limit that capacity, particularly as the understanding of cyberwarfare potential is still being formed.

Balancing these conflicting objectives will require a full debate and executive decision. This process will have to be carried out by a special high-level government group because of the sensitive and fragile nature of certain aspects of the information involved.

One model of a convention that could serve as a starting point would commit the parties to no-first-use of cyberattack directed at elements of another party's critical infrastructure if the disruption from that attack was intended to be widespread, long-lasting, or severe. One reason for these thresholds is to differentiate continuing, manageable lower-level attacks from those that constitute a serious violation by a state-party. All the terms in this commitment could be defined in an Understanding Annex, as in the ENMOD Convention, and would be the subject of negotiation. The convention would also preclude assistance to others in conducting prohibited attacks.

Because the cyberthreat is evolving rapidly and is difficult to define, any proposed solution is very unlikely to address the problem effectively for the long term or perhaps even the medium term. On the other hand, it may be important to constrain this form of warfare in the relatively early stages of its development. The type of limited convention described in this article strikes an appropriate balance by establishing some important initial parameters that could serve as the basis for more comprehensive agreements in the future.

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Using intelligence to shape the future

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Anticipating Opportunities: Using Intelligence to Shape the Future
"We spend $45 billion annually to reduce uncertainty, to help us combat threats to our nation, our people, and our security," said Payne Distinguished Lecturer Thomas Fingar in his third Payne lecture on October 21, devoted to anticipating the future -- "not for purposes of prediction but for purposes of shaping it."  Noting that strategic intelligence treats the future neither as "inevitable or immutable," Fingar employed real-life examples from his career in national intelligence (most recently as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and chairman of the National Intelligence Council) to explore concrete ways intelligence can be used to move developments in a more favorable direction.

Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World examined the trends which will "drive, shape and constrain" individuals, governments, and nations around the world. Among prominent trends, he cited globalization, which will provide unprecedented prosperity but greater inequality; the rise of the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China; the rise of new powers such as Indonesia, Turkey, and Iran; and the coming demographic boom, which will add 1.2 billion people to the world, with less than 3 percent of that occurring in the West.

The Geopolitical Implications of Climate Change.  Instructed by the Congress to provide an assessment of the impact of global climate change, given controversy about the imminence of the threat and man's role in it, the NIC studied which regions and countries would be most dramatically affected by climate change, with a focus on water, food production, and changes in weather patterns. The results remain classified, because of the potential impact on vulnerable countries. 

The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. This estimate, attacked from both the right and the left, concluded with a moderate to high degree of confidence that Iran had not obtained sufficient fissile material from external sources (to make a bomb) and that its fastest route to produce a nuclear weapon would be through domestic production of enriched uranium. The NIE also judged that Iran had halted the weaponization portions of its nuclear program in 2003, but had retained the option to pursue a weapon and whether to do so was a "political decision" which could be made at any time.

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