About the Event: Debates on cohesion in the world’s most powerful alliance have largely overlooked NATO’s complex constellation of internal politics - instead overly focusing on US influence. While the US undoubtedly retains it outsized role in NATO, security scholarship offers few clues as to how or why Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine has affected NATO cohesion. Policymakers and pundits were quick to predict a long-lasting “NATO revival”, however, the aftermath has been a mixed bag: achievements (e.g. Swedish accession, augmented force posture) and setbacks (e.g. EU-NATO coordination on Ukraine, Russia-PRC responses, etc.). In this study, I argue that observed variation in NATO cohesion can best be explained by policymakers’ repeated use of internal, sticky narratives about other Allies’, which limit the number of issue areas on which formal agreements can occur. Even when Allies’ interests align, such pre-determined labeling of some Allies as spoilers and others as champions on specific issues constrains Allies’ outreach to one another. To test this narrative-focused argument, I conduct a discourse analysis of high-level, formally-agreed NATO documents (e.g. Strategic Concept, Communiqués and other NATO Summit “deliverables”), which are the products of months of intense negotiations, and leaders’ public statements immediately preceding and following the invasion. I also draw on interview evidence from several officials who were part of negotiations during this period. The study advances security scholarship by offering a new argument for why NATO cohesion has changed in the ways that it has, offers an explanation for observed disunity and updates negotiations literatures to stress the power of outgoing knowledge on coalition politics. The study’s empirical evidence also reveals that policymakers’ national narratives can both increase or decrease cohesion, depending on these narratives – even when the narratives themselves mischaracterize Allies’ actual bargaining space. The research advances existing security studies that find that individuals – and not just states – can play critical roles in alliance decision-making.

About the Speaker: Prof. Heidi Hardt is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. As a 2021-2022 Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs TIRS fellow, she served the State Department (NATO Desk), a senator and congresswoman. She has authored articles, chapters and two books: NATO’s Lessons in Crisis: Institutional Memory in International Organization (Oxford, 2018) and Time to React: The Efficiency of International Organizations in Crisis Response (Oxford, 2014). Hardt examines transatlantic and European security, NATO, multilateral military operations, climate security, organizational change, learning, gender and elite decision-making. The NSF, Fulbright, NATO and Carnegie have funded her research.

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About the Event: When and why do terrorist groups attack outside their local conflict ecosystems? In the last decade, the number of terrorist groups carrying out violence across international borders has increased. Many explanations of transnational terrorism focus on state-level factors that make some countries more attractive bases or targets for transnational attacks than others. However, state-centric explanations fail to consider the organizational characteristics of the groups carrying out this violence. Transnational terrorism demands significant resources, strength, and coordination as well as intent. At what point in a group’s campaign is it motivated and capable of carrying out attacks abroad? Why are some groups more likely to transition to transnational violence? In this paper, we study the conditions under which terrorist groups move from conducting attacks in their home country to carrying out violence across state borders. We employ data from the Mapping Militants Project to analyze which organizational traits are associated with this choice. Our findings emphasize the importance of group-level attributes in understanding broader patterns of terrorism and consider the implications for counterterrorism policies.

About the Speakers: 

Martha Crenshaw is a senior fellow emerita at the FSI Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and a professor of political science by courtesy, emerita, at Stanford University. She taught in the Department of Government at Wesleyan University from 1974 to 2007. She has published extensively on the subject of terrorism. In 2011, Routledge published Explaining Terrorism, a collection of her previously published work. A book co-authored with Gary LaFree titled Countering Terrorism was published by the Brookings Institution Press in 2017. She is the founder and a Principal Investigator on the Mapping Militants Project, which traces the evolution of violent militant or extremist organizations across several different conflict theatres.

Kaitlyn Robinson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Rice University. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University in 2022, and she was an America in the World Consortium Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University from 2022-2023. Her research seeks to explain how violent non-state actors organize, build relationships with foreign states, and carry out violence in armed conflict. In this work, she draws on original datasets, fieldwork interviews, and archival materials. She is a Principal Investigator on the Mapping Militants Project, which traces the evolution of violent militant or extremist organizations across several different conflict theatres.

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About the Event: The Missiles on Our Land investigates the human and environmental risks associated with the U.S. Air Force plans to replace its current fleet of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and maintain it well into the 2080s. It is the result of a two-year collaboration led by the Princeton University’s Program on Science & Global Security together with Nuclear Princeton, a group of Japanese and Native American researchers, and Columbia University’s School of Journalism, and published in partnership with Scientific American. This project combines state-of-the-art simulations of the consequences of nuclear war with ethnography and journalism, including narrative storytelling, podcasting, photography and cinematography to shed light on the consequences of the most significant nuclear weapon build-up since the end of the Cold War. This project aims to provide information that everyone in the United States and especially the communities living closest to the missile fields need to know so that they can understand and be part of the discussion as to the full extent of the risks associated with deploying new missiles for the next 60 years or more.

About the Speaker: Sébastien Philippe is a Research Scholar with Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security, part of the School of Public and International Affairs where he holds a continuous appointment. His research includes nuclear non-proliferation, arms control, disarmament, and justice issues. He is the co-author of Toxique (French University Press, 2021), an investigation into the radiological and environmental impact of French nuclear tests in the Pacific, which was a Finalist for the 2021 Albert Londres Prize (the French equivalent of the Pulitzer) and won a 2022 Sigma Award for best data journalism in the world, among other accolades. Philippe received his PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton, was a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and has served as a nuclear weapon system safety engineer in France's Ministry of Armed Forces.

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About the Event: The future of technology is unknown. In some cases, however, the military accepts exceptional expectations about future technology. What technology hype is accepted? And why does the military accept some exceptional expectations but dismiss similar hype about other kinds of emerging technology? Paradoxically, despite discourse about “revolution” and “disruption,” I argue that the hype audiences accept depends on their established identities and interests. They choose to embrace technology hype so long as the imagined change is familiar. Unfamiliar change is rejected. To test my argument, I posit that the U.S. military’s established identities and interests favor offense over defense, and kinetic over non-kinetic capabilities. I then compare the military’s response to discourse about the Cyber Revolution versus the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). The latter was familiar; the former was not. I find that the armed services were more willing to act on hype about the RMA. The military’s conservative bias is well documented in scholarship about bureaucratic politics and technological innovation. What makes the contrast between the RMA and Cyber Revolution so remarkable is how persistent that bias can be—even when the military thinks about revolutionary change and the future of war.

About the Speaker: Frank L. Smith III is a Professor and Director of the Cyber & Innovation Policy Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. His interdisciplinary research and teaching examine how ideas about technology—especially bad ideas—influence national security and international relations. His current research examines international cooperation on military science, cyber wargames, and the impact of technology hype. Previous scholarship includes his book, American Biodefense, as well as articles published in Security Studies, Social Studies of Science, Security Dialogue, Health Security, Asian Security, and The Lancet. His policy work includes helping draft the 2023 National Defense Science and Technology Strategy. He has a PhD in political science and a BS in biological chemistry, both from the University of Chicago. 

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About the Event: In the last few years, a number of analysts have warned that we may be on the brink of a more proliferated world, as the security environment deteriorates, concerns about U.S. reliability as a protector are on the rise, hostility between the great powers grows, and the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) seems to be under increasing stress. These fears were supercharged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which appeared to demonstrate that nuclear weapons can facilitate conquest and that giving them up—as Ukraine did in the early 1990s—exposes states to terrible predation. How worried should we be about the nuclear club expanding in the coming decade? Drawing on lessons from nuclear history, I argue that while proliferation risks are growing, they are significantly more manageable than many analysts suggest. And while the odds of proliferation are increasing in both East Asia and the Middle East, we should be significantly more concerned about the latter.

About the Speaker: Nicholas L. Miller is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. Miller’s research focuses primarily on the causes and consequences of nuclear weapons proliferation. His book, Stopping the Bomb: The Sources and Effectiveness of U.S. Nonproliferation Policy, was published by Cornell University Press in 2018. His work has also been published in a wide variety of scholarly journals, including the American Political Science Review, International Organization, and International Security, as well popular outlets like Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and War on the Rocks. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT.

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About the Event: Nuclear deterrence assumes that state leaders are able to assess the costs, benefits, and consequences of any decision to use nuclear weapons.  Similarly, U.S. nuclear policy presupposes that, in a crisis, the president will rationally assess how to respond to the threat of an incoming nuclear attack.  Using a virtual reality simulation, we conducted an experiment and two controlled observations of decision making in a nuclear crisis.  The results call into question the degree to which any U.S. president is likely to conform to the basic expectations of rational decision making when confronted with an incoming nuclear strike.

About the Speaker: Sharon K. Weiner is an Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University as well as a Visiting Researcher for the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Sharon's research, teaching, and policy engagement are at the intersection of organizational politics and U.S. national security. Her current work focuses on the theory, practice, and social construction of deterrence, the politics of U.S. nuclear weapon modernization programs, and larger issues of civil-military relations. Her most recent book, Managing the Military: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Civil-Military Relations (Columbia University Press, 2022) analyzes the power of the JCS chairman to help or hinder the president's ability to implement their defense policy preferences.  She also collaborates with Moritz Kutt (Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg) on The Nuclear Biscuit (thenuclearbiscuit.org), a virtual reality experience involving a nuclear crisis. The project analyses how people make high stakes national security decisions under conditions of uncertainty.  She is currently on leave from American University and is a Senior Resident Fellow at the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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About the Event: During the Second World War, U.S. and British military figures feared that Nazi Germany was pursuing a program to produce weapons that dispersed radiological material without a nuclear detonation. Although mistaken in their assessment, both countries in the postwar period launched their own radiological weapons (RW) programs, as did the Soviet Union. Death Dust explores the largely unknown history of the rise and demise of RW—sometimes portrayed as a “poor man’s nuclear weapon”—through a series of comparative case studies across the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, Egypt, and Iraq.  The authors draw on newly available archival material and interview data to illuminate the drivers of and impediments to radiological weapons innovation.  They also examine how new, dire circumstances, such as the war in Ukraine, might encourage other states to pursue RW and analyze the impact of the spread of such weapons on nuclear deterrence and the nonproliferation regime. They conclude by offering practical steps to reduce the likelihood of a resurgence of interest in and pursuit of radiological weapons by state actors.

About the Speakers: 

Sarah Bidgood is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow in the MIT Security Studies Program. Prior to this, she served as Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. Her work focuses on U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Russian arms control, risk reduction, and nonproliferation cooperation, as well as the nonproliferation regime more broadly. Her research and analysis have been published in journals such as International Security, the Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, and The Nonproliferation Review, as well as outlets including Foreign Policy, Arms Control Today, War on the Rocks, and The National Interest. Sarah is a coauthor of the forthcoming book, Death Dust: The Rise, Decline, and Future of Radiological Weapons Programs, which will be published by Stanford University Press in December 2023. She is also the coeditor of Once and Future Partners: The United States, Russia, and Nuclear Non-proliferation (London, UK: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2018). Sarah received her BA in Russian from Wellesley College. She holds an MA in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and an MA with distinction in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies from the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She is a PhD candidate in Defense Studies at King’s College London, where her dissertation focuses on the relationship between Cold War nuclear crises and arms control.

Hanna Notte is the director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) and a senior associate (non-resident) with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Notte holds a doctorate and MPhil in international relations from Oxford University. Her expertise is on Russian foreign policy, the Middle East, and arms control and nonproliferation. Her writings have appeared in the Nonproliferation Review, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and War on the Rocks, among others.

William Potter is Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar Professor of Nonproliferation Studies and Founding Director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at MIIS.  He is the author, co-author, or editor of over 20 books. Dr. Potter has served on committees of the US National Academy of Sciences and is a past member of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. He has participated as a delegate at every NPT Review Conference and Preparatory Committee meeting since 1995. He is the recipient of the 2021 Therese Delpech Memorial Award.

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About the Event: The global energy transition will trigger more competition among great powers—the United States, China, and Russia. Global efforts to transition to low-carbon fuels to meet climate goals have prompted the realization that China is the Saudi Arabia of low-carbon energy manufacturing and exports. The only area of commercial low-carbon energy that China is not yet leading is nuclear reactor and fuel exports, an area in which Russia, the other U.S. adversary, continues to dominate despite its actions in Ukraine. While there has been increased global collaboration and coordination on low-carbon energy and emissions targets, major energy consumers, including the United States, are facing growing competition over resources, such as critical minerals needed for low-carbon technologies, and a race to manufacture and innovate new forms of low-carbon technologies. The United States is currently at a disadvantage, as it is dependent on imports for critical minerals, renewable technologies, and nuclear fuel. The energy transition has the potential to reorder energy suppliers and import dependencies, and countries leading the race to supply the transition will reap the economic and geopolitical benefits traditionally afforded to dominant fossil fuel suppliers. China’s new role as a dominate supplier of the energy transition bodes well for its broader foreign policy initiatives, such as the Belt and Road Initiative and Global Energy Interconnection. Hence, it’s important to examine the energy transition in the context of great power competition to better understand how the world’s changing energy landscape could potentially affect U.S. national, economic, and energy security absent prudent planning. You can find the publication here: https://cgsr.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/CGSR-Livermore-Paper-12-EnergyTransition-2023.0831.pdf.

About the Speaker: Asmeret Asghedom is the associate deputy director of the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Prior to joining CGSR, she worked at various positions in the U.S. federal government for over 10 years, focusing on global energy security issues. From June 2018 to January 2022, she was the director of the Energy Security Division in the Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, managing the production, briefing, and coordination of energy and climate security intelligence products that were briefed to the U.S. president and cabinet officials. From January 2017 to May 2018, she was a production chief and an intelligence analyst in the Energy Security Division, writing finished intelligence products and briefing senior officials, including the secretary of energy, on global energy issues with the potential to impact U.S. national security. From June 2016 to December 2016, she was a policy advisor at the Treasury Department’s Office of International Affairs, focusing on economic policy in the Middle East and North Africa. From November 2011 to May 2016, she was an economist at the U.S. Energy Information Administration, forecasting the production, demand, and price of global crude oil, tracking major supply disruptions, and analyzing geopolitical events affecting global oil and natural gas markets. She holds a BA in political science from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), a BA in journalism and media studies from UNLV, and an MA in international economic development from American University in Washington DC.

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About the Event: New digital technologies are profoundly changing human thought, including in the interpretation and application of international law. In this seminar, I employ both critical and behavioural approaches to international law to reflect on the technological revolution in international law, developing a cognitive-behavioural critique of contemporary law of armed conflict. Through an interdisciplinary and empirical exploration, I demonstrate that despite their differences – methodologically, theoretically, and ideologically – both critical and cognitive-behavioural approaches to international law share a commitment to complexity: a reading of knowledge production as a situated exercise, affected by geography, positioning, and motivations.

About the Speaker: Shiri Krebs is a Professor of Law at Deakin University and Law and Policy Co-Lead at the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC). In 2023-2024 she is a Visiting Professor at Stanford University and a Senior Humboldt Fellow at Hamburg University. She is an affiliate scholar at Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and serves as the elected Chair of the international Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict. Her current funded projects include an ARC DECRA Fellowship studying the regulation of predictive technologies for preventive counterterrorism, at the intersection of law, science, and technology. 

Prof Krebs’ research on international fact-finding, biases in counterterrorism decision-making, and human-machine interaction in drone warfare, has influenced decision-making processes through invitations to brief high-level decision-makers, including at the United Nations (CTED, Office of the Secretary-General), the United States Department of Defence, and the Australian Defence Force. Her recent research awards include the ‘Researcher of the Year’ Award (Australian Women in Law Awards, 2022), the David Caron Prize (American Society of International Law, 2021), the Australian Legal Research Awards (finalist, Article/Chapter (ECR), 2022), and the Vice-Chancellor’s Researcher Award for Career Excellence (Deakin, 2022). 

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About the Event: How does possession of nuclear weapons affect decisionmaker psychology? Extensive research documents the causes of proliferation, but we know far less about the psychological consequences of this proliferation. Drawing on advances in psychological research on power, this paper expects that possession of nuclear weapons increases support for preventive war. In contrast to conventional security and prestige arguments, the feeling of power activates a curious combination of fear and overconfidence -- the hallmark features of preventive war thinking. The paper examines this expectation through internal documents in the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations. The findings shed new light on the effects of nuclear weapons on foreign policy in general, as well as the sources of preventive war thinking in particular.

About the Speaker: Caleb Pomeroy is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. He researches the psychology of power in international relations, notably the effects of relative state power on human thought and behavior. His work is published or forthcoming at International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, and Security Studies, among other outlets. He holds a PhD in International Relations from The Ohio State University, an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford, an MSc in Security Studies from University College London, and a BA in Economics from Boston College.

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