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.

India’s Cold War push for an Indian Ocean Zone of Peace

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Ryan A. Musto
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In September 1964, at the summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Cairo, Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike proposed that the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) be turned into a Zone of Peace (IOZP).  Specifically, she called for the eradication of military bases from the area and the Ocean’s denuclearization. India, a neighboring littoral state, immediately supported the initiative and became one of its greatest champions through the end of the 1970s. Scholars have claimed that India’s enthusiasm stemmed from its non-aligned foreign policy and enduring commitment to Prime Minister’s Jawaharlal Nehru’s moralpolitik (27-28).  But as Yogesh Joshi argues in his exemplary article, such interpretations miss the mark.

Read the rest at  H-Diplo

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Ryan A. Musto reviews former CISAC Fellow Yogesh Joshi’s work on India’s use of selective alignment with the Great Powers to advance its regional ambitions in the 1960s and 1970s.

Antislavery and the Isolation of Haiti, 1804-1862

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* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/GZwdR1cNPAg

 

About the Event: In recent years, the world has increasingly witnessed international conflict along ideological fault lines. Western policymakers warn that authoritarian countries like Russia and China are seeking to exploit divisions within democratic societies to promote autocratic tendencies, while for decades, authoritarian countries have accused the West of doing the same—of manufacturing domestic uprisings as a way to force liberalism upon them. While history is filled with examples of conflicts along these types of ideological lines, there is little consensus among scholars or policymakers about whether states’ governing ideologies matter for their foreign policy behavior and if they do, why.

This presentation will focus in on British and U.S. reactions to the Haitian Revolution to advance our understanding of the relationship between ideology and international conflict. I show that Britain and the United States both initially isolated Haiti due to fears that the Haitians would promote or otherwise inspire the spread of slave rebellions throughout the Caribbean and U.S. South. However, after outlawing slavery in its colonies, Britain’s foreign policy towards Haiti quickly diverged from that of the United States. Britain formally ended its regime dispute with Haiti, deepened its economic links with the country, and even began cooperation with Haitian leaders to police the Atlantic slave trade. Taken together, the case strongly suggests that British and U.S ideological stance on slavery was a primary source of their disputes with the Haitian regime.

 

 

About the Speaker: Lindsay Hundley holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. Her primary research examines why states fight over the leadership and institutions of other countries, and her book project explores the role of political ideology in shaping both how leaders perceive threats from other states and their willingness to resort to subversion. In other research, Lindsay leverages advances in political methodology to shed new light on enduring questions in international politics, with a particular emphasis on experimental tests of formal models and the use of machine learning techniques to process and analyze political texts. Her work has been published at the Journal of Politics and International Studies Perspectives.

Before joining CISAC, Lindsay was a pre-doctoral research fellow with the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. At Stanford, she was a Gerald J. Lieberman Fellow -- one of the University's highest distinctions awarded to doctoral students for outstanding accomplishments in research, teaching, and academic leadership.

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Lindsay Hundley Postdoctoral Fellow Stanford University
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Escaping the Deadly Embrace: Encirclement at the Origins of World War I

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* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording:  https://youtu.be/RZZT4lXaG1w

 

About the Event: What lies at the origins of major wars?

I argue that major wars are caused by the attempts of great powers to escape their two-front war problem: encirclement. To explain the causal mechanism that links encirclement to major war, I identify an intervening variable: the increase in the invasion ability of the immediate rival. This outcome unfolds in a three-step process: double security dilemma, war initiation, and war contagion.

Encirclement is a geographic variable that occurs in presence of one or two great powers (surrounding great powers) on two different borders of the encircled great power. The two front-war problem triggers a double security dilemma (step 1) for the encircled great power, which has to disperse its army to secure its borders. The surrounding great powers do not always have the operational capability to initiate a two-front war (latent encirclement) but, when they increase their invasion ability (actualized encirclement), the encircled great power attacks (war initiation, step 2). The other great powers intervene due to the rival-based network of alliances for preventing their respective immediate rival from increasing its invasion ability (war contagion, step 3).

I assess my theory in the outbreak of WWI. This article provides ample support to the claim that major wars are caused by a great power that has the limited goal of eliminating its two-front war problem. These findings have important implications for the prospects of major wars, since I anticipate that in the long term China will face the encirclement of India and Russia.

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About the Speaker: Andrea Bartoletti holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. His research interests span on international security and IR theory with a focus on the origins of major wars, polarity and war, U.S. grand strategy in the Indo-Pacific region, and great powers' intervention in civil wars.

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Andrea Bartoletti Postdoctoral Fellow Stanford University
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States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court

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* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olaPuZ0L4fg

 

About the Event: The creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998, hailed in a triumphant language, was to finally usher in an era of accountability for atrocity crimes and an end to impunity of such crimes of concern to the international community. Two decades later, that optimism is waning and even the supporters of the ICC have publicly aired their frustration. Amidst a string of high-profile acquittals of defendants, flawed investigations, dismissed charges, lengthy proceedings, and controversial rulings, it has become clear that the Court has not lived up to its promise. Why is it that the ICC seems able to deliver justice only on behalf of states rather than for victims and communities affected by atrocity crimes? International courts operate in a world made primarily of states, which try to leverage the legal institutions and processes, in pursuit of their political and security interests. Even states that do not wield global power are able to use international courts in pursuit of those interests, while the international justice project reframes its mission as delivering “justice for victims”. Moreover, as calls to “fix” the Court gain ground, the broader question of the imperial and the liberal world order that sustain the international justice project remain at the margin of the deliberations.

Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1108488773?pf_rd_r=KSYYMSPN9JJKSS2GTW0Y&pf_rd_p=a712d25e-094e-4a8b-b495-0be41c4dbcc9

 

About the Speaker: Oumar Ba is an assistant professor of political science at Morehouse College. His primary research agenda focuses on international criminal justice norms and regimes, and the global governance of atrocity crimes. He also studies worldmaking and visions for and alternatives to the current international order, from Global South perspectives. He is the author of States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court (Cambridge University Press, 2020). His publications have appeared in scholarly journals such as Human Rights Quarterly, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, African Studies Review, Journal of Narrative Politics, Africa Today, and African Journal of International Criminal Justice.

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Oumar Ba Assistant Professor of International Relations Morehouse College
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Defense In Depth

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The world is not getting safer, for the United States or for U.S. interests. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the 2017 National Defense Strategy described an international environment of increased global disorder, long-term strategic competition, rapid dispersion of technologies, and eroding U.S. military advantages. Protecting the United States requires a strategy of defense in depth—that is, of identifying and dealing with global problems where they occur rather than waiting for threats to reach American shores.

Read the rest at Foreign Affairs

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Why U.S. Security Depends on Alliances—Now More Than Ever

Indicting Russia's Most Destructive Cyberwar Unit: The Implications of Public Attribution

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Gil Baram
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On October 19, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed charges accusing six Russian military intelligence officers of an aggressive worldwide hacking campaign. 

Read the rest at  Council on Foreign Relations

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Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers speaks during a virtual news conference at the Department of Justice
Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers speaks during a virtual news conference at the Department of Justice.
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There are three main reasons behind publicly attributing these attacks to Russia.

China’s South China Sea Strategy Prioritizes Deterrence Against the US, Says Stanford Expert

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While much of the world has been occupied with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been active in promoting China’s claims in the South China Sea. Is it justified to argue that China is taking advantage of the global pandemic to make military gains?

In a new essay published in the Winter 2020 issue of the China Leadership Monitor, FSI Center Fellow at APARC Oriana Skylar Mastro sheds light on this question. Leveraging Chinese-language sources in addition to her own operational knowledge from over a decade of military experience, Mastro evaluates the PLA activities in the South China Sea over the eight-month period since March 2020. She includes in her analysis PLA statements, military exercises and operations, and deployment of relevant platforms and weapons in the region. Her conclusion is that the PLA has not significantly increased its operational role in the South China Sea but rather its signaling role. “Specifically, the Chinese military seems to be purposefully using, and perhaps even exaggerating, its capabilities and activities to enhance deterrence against the United States,” she argues.

Deployments of Weapons Systems and Military Exercises

After compiling a comprehensive picture of Chinese military activities in the South China Sea that includes both deployments of systems to the Paracels and Spratlys Islands and military exercises in the area, Mastro examines what these activities reveal about the PLA’s role in China’s South China Sea strategy.

PLA deployments in the area suggest it is trying to discourage the United States from countering its attempts to increase control over the South China Sea, she says. “China has been linking its deployments to U.S. activities for signaling purposes […] With new basing on the South China Sea islands and longer-range and more capable aircraft, China now has the option to move these platforms as a way to demonstrate to the United States its capability and resolve.” Over the past eight months, China has also conducted more robust military exercises to prepare for South China Sea contingencies. “But military readiness and preparedness are not the only reasons the PLA conducts exercises, notes Mastro. Instead, she argues that the PLA role has evolved beyond the operational to become a leader in a signaling strategy to bolster Chinese deterrence vis-à-vis the United States.

Chinese Discourse  

One of the strongest indicators that the Chinese military is attempting to leverage its role to signal capability to the United States is how the Chinese official media are capturing the ongoing competition. Having reviewed approximately 80 publications on the South China Sea, Mastro finds that the Chinese media are being used to amplify how capable the PLA has become in conducting complex operations in the South China Sea and to highlight that it is blameless for the current tensions in the region.

Mastro concludes that the PLA has taken a more active role in China’s South China Sea strategy, but not necessarily a more aggressive one. It is the need to enhance deterrence vis-à-vis the United States that has become a priority. “The PLA has become the main vehicle through which China is attempting to convince the United States to moderate its own South China Sea approach.” This sensitivity, and in some cases paranoia, about U.S. strategy, she claims, “suggests we are likely to hear tough talk and ostentatious military activity for some months to come.”

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Beijing’s Line on the South China Sea: “Nothing to See Here”

China’s official denials of growing military capability in the region look a lot like gaslighting.
Beijing’s Line on the South China Sea: “Nothing to See Here”
Oriana Skylar Mastro at a conference
Q&As

Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro Discusses How Her Scholarship and Military Career Impact One Another

An expert on Chinese military and security issues, Mastro also talks about how her learning style informs her teaching style.
Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro Discusses How Her Scholarship and Military Career Impact One Another
NPR's audio streaming logo next to a portrait of Oriana Skylar Mastro.
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Update on Taiwan and China's Troubled Relationship: Oriana Skylar Mastro on NPR

"The current threat is that the CCP is running out of patience, and their military is becoming more and more capable. So for the first time in its history, there's the option of taking Taiwan by force," Mastro tells NPR's Weekend Edition host Scott Simon.
Update on Taiwan and China's Troubled Relationship: Oriana Skylar Mastro on NPR
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Analysis by FSI Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro reveals that the Chinese military has taken a more active role in China’s South China Sea strategy, but not necessarily a more aggressive one.

The PLA’s Evolving Role in China’s South China Sea Strategy

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During the past eight months of the global COVID pandemic, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been active in promoting China’s claims in the South China Sea.  This essay evaluates PLA statements, military exercises and operations, and deployment of relevant platforms and weapons in the South China Sea during this period. I leverage Chinese-language sources in addition to my own operational knowledge from over a decade of military experience to provide greater context for these activities. I argue that the greatest change in the PLA’s role in the South China Sea has not been operational. Instead, the most interesting development has been the fact that the PLA has taken on a more significant signaling role. Specifically, the Chinese military seems to be purposefully using, and perhaps even exaggerating, its capabilities and activities to enhance deterrence against the United States. This may be seen as necessary as the US increases its own efforts to push back on China’s militarization of the South China Sea. In other words, the PLA has taken a more active role in China’s South China Sea strategy, but not necessarily a more aggressive one.

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China Leadership Monitor
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Oriana Skylar Mastro
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Issue 66
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Beijing’s Line on the South China Sea: “Nothing to See Here”

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Oriana Skylar Mastro
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This analysis by Oriana Skylar Mastro originally appeared in The Interpreter, by the Lowy Institute.

China’s strategy in responding to concerns about its intentions in the South China Sea is to claim that none of the activities, statements or behaviours that concern other countries are actually happening.

China claims it has not militarised the South China Sea, but that the United States “is the real pusher of militarisation” in these waters. Its leaders often argue that China is a peace-loving country only interested in defending itself. As the China’s General Wei Fenghe stated at the Shangri-La Dialogue in 2018, “China has never provoked a war or conflict, nor has it ever invaded another country or taken an inch of land from others. In the future, no matter how strong it becomes, China shall never threaten anyone.”

China has similarly brushed off concerns of other claimants, such as Vietnam, about its intensifying military exercises in the South China Sea and largely ignored Australia’s assertion at the United Nations that China’s claims have no legal backing.

So apparently it is all one big misunderstanding.

On 24 November, former Chinese ambassador Fu Ying criticised the United States in a New York Times op-ed for raising multiple issues that in her mind do not exist. Thus, the way to resolve the growing bilateral tensions is for the two countries “to have candid talks to better understand each other’s intentions and cultivate trust”.

So, in the Chinese communist spirit of 实事求是, or “seeking truth from facts”, I have charted the military capabilities China has deployed to the South China Sea, which are displayed with references on the map below. The Paracel Islands and the Spratly Islands are under dispute; Hainan Island is a recognised part of China, but I include it because the military capabilities in situ have implications for Chinese military options in the South China Sea writ large.

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NPR's audio streaming logo next to a portrait of Oriana Skylar Mastro.
Commentary

Update on Taiwan and China's Troubled Relationship: Oriana Skylar Mastro on NPR

"The current threat is that the CCP is running out of patience, and their military is becoming more and more capable. So for the first time in its history, there's the option of taking Taiwan by force," Mastro tells NPR's Weekend Edition host Scott Simon.
Update on Taiwan and China's Troubled Relationship: Oriana Skylar Mastro on NPR
Oriana Skylar Mastro at a conference
Q&As

Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro Discusses How Her Scholarship and Military Career Impact One Another

An expert on Chinese military and security issues, Mastro also talks about how her learning style informs her teaching style.
Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro Discusses How Her Scholarship and Military Career Impact One Another
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Battleships patrolling in the open ocean.
Battleships patrol in the open ocean.
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China’s official denials of growing military capability in the region look a lot like gaslighting.

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