Panel discussion with Stanford international affairs experts on escalating U.S.-Iran tensions.

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About this Event: U.S.-Iran tensions are at a new high following the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani. Both sides continue to exchange threats of violence, and the implications for Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the fight against ISIS, and the U.S. presence in Iraq are expected to be profound. Join us for a panel discussion with Lisa Blaydes, Colin Kahl, Brett McGurk and Abbas Milani, moderated by Michael McFaul, on how recent developments may reshape the geopolitical landscape in one of the most volatile regions of the world.

This event is co-sponsored with Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Middle East Initiative at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Speaker's Biographies:

Lisa Blaydes is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She is the author of Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2011). Her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, International Studies Quarterly, International Organization, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Middle East Journal, and World Politics. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD) from the University of California, Los Angeles and International Relations (BA, MA) from Johns Hopkins University.

Colin Kahl is co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the inaugural Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a Professor, by courtesy, in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. He is also a Strategic Consultant to the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.

From October 2014 to January 2017, he was Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President. In that position, he served as a senior advisor to President Obama and Vice President Biden on all matters related to U.S. foreign policy and national security affairs, and represented the Office of the Vice President as a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee. From February 2009 to December 2011, Dr. Kahl was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East at the Pentagon. In this capacity, he served as the senior policy advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, and six other countries in the Levant and Persian Gulf region. In June 2011, he was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service by Secretary Robert Gates. 

From 2007 to 2017 (when not serving in the U.S. government), Dr. Kahl was an assistant and associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. From 2007 to 2009 and 2012 to 2014, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a nonpartisan Washington, DC-based think tank. From 2000 to 2007, he was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. In 2005-2006, Dr. Kahl took leave from the University of Minnesota to serve as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he worked on issues related to counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and responses to failed states. In 1997-1998, he was a National Security Fellow at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.

Current research projects include a book analyzing American grand strategy in the Middle East in the post-9/11 era. A second research project focuses on the implications of emerging technologies on strategic stability.

He has published numerous articles on international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, the Los Angeles Times, Middle East Policy, the National Interest, the New Republic, the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post, and the Washington Quarterly, as well as several reports for CNAS.

His previous research analyzed the causes and consequences of violent civil and ethnic conflict in developing countries, focusing particular attention on the demographic and natural resource dimensions of these conflicts. His book on the subject, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World, was published by Princeton University Press in 2006, and related articles and chapters have appeared in International Security, the Journal of International Affairs, and various edited volumes.

Dr. Kahl received his B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan (1993) and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University (2000).

Brett McGurk is the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Center for Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

McGurk’s research interests center on national security strategy, diplomacy, and decision-making in wartime.  He is particularly interested in the lessons learned over the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump regarding the importance of process in informing presidential decisions and the alignment of ends and means in national security doctrine and strategy.  At Stanford, he will be working on a book project incorporating these themes and teaching a graduate level seminar on presidential decision-making beginning in the fall of 2019.  He is also a frequent commentator on national security events in leading publications and as an NBC News Senior Foreign Affairs Analyst. 

Before coming to Stanford, McGurk served as Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS at the U.S. Department of State, helping to build and then lead the coalition of seventy-five countries and four international organizations in the global campaign against the ISIS terrorist network.  McGurk was also responsible for coordinating all aspects of U.S. policy in the campaign against ISIS in Iraq, Syria, and globally.

McGurk previously served in senior positions in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, including as Special Assistant to President Bush and Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan, and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran and Special Presidential Envoy for the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State under Obama.

McGurk has led some of the most sensitive diplomatic missions in the Middle East over the last decade. His most recent assignment established one of the largest coalitions in history to prosecute the counter-ISIS campaign. He was a frequent visitor to the battlefields in both Iraq and Syria to help integrate military and civilian components of the war plan. He also led talks with Russia over the Syria conflict under both the Trump and Obama administrations, initiated back-channel diplomacy to reopen ties between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and facilitated the formation of the last two Iraqi governments following contested elections in 2014 and 2018.

In 2015 and 2016, McGurk led fourteen months of secret negotiations with Iran to secure the release of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezain, U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, and Pastor Saad Abadini, as well as three other American citizens.

During his time at the State Department, McGurk received multiple awards, including the Distinguished Honor Award and the Distinguished Service Award, the highest department awards for exceptional service in Washington and overseas assignments.

McGurk is also a nonresident senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

McGurk received his JD from Columbia University and his BA from the University of Connecticut Honors Program.  He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Denis Jacobs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit, and Judge Gerard E. Lynch on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Abbas Milani is the Hamid & Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a Professor (by courtesy) in the Stanford Global Studies Division. He is also one of the founding co-directors of the Iran Democracy Project and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His expertise include U.S.-Iran relations as well as Iranian cultural, political, and security issues. Until 1986, he taught at Tehran University’s Faculty of Law and Political Science, where he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the university’s Center for International Relations. After moving to the United States, he was for fourteen years the Chair of the Political Science Department at the Notre Dame de Namur University. For eight years, he was a visiting Research Fellow in University of California, Berkeley’s Middle East Center.

Professor Milani came to Stanford ten years ago, when he became the founding director of the Iranian Studies Program. He also worked with two colleagues to launch the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. He has published more than twenty books and two hundred articles and book reviews in scholarly magazines, journals, and newspapers. His latest book is a collection he co-edited with Larry Diamond, Politics & Culture in Contemporary Iran: Challenging the Status Quo  (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2015).

Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Director and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He was also the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University from June to August of 2015. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. He is also an analyst for NBC News and a contributing columnist to The Washington Post. McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller,  “From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia.”  Earlier books include Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective  (eds. with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. His current research interests include American foreign policy, great power relations between China, Russia, and the United States, and the relationship between democracy and development. 

Prof. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/2J1usUsxZVw

About this Event: Israel’s relations with the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, and particularly Saudi Arabia, have been improving for many years. Saudi King Faysal famously handed out copies of the anti-Semitic Czarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to his visitors, but today the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, often make positive statements about Israel and the Jewish people. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu paid an official visit to Oman in October 2018. Unofficial meetings are reportedlyheld often with Saudi leaders. A synagogue now operates openly in Dubai, and EXPO 2020 Dubai will feature a full-blown Israeli pavilion. Qatar will likely let Israelis attend the FIFA World Cup in 2022. The Gulf countries are interested in access to Israeli technology for civil and military use. Never full-fledged supporters of the Palestinians, particularly after the Palestinian leadership supported Saddam Husayn in the Gulf War, Gulf leaders see an opportunity to cooperate with Israel against their common enemy –Iran. With doubts about US commitments to the region getting even stronger, the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf will look to increased cooperation with Israel, as well as Russia and China.

Speaker's Biography: Prof. Joshua Teitelbaum is a Visiting Scholar at CISAC. He is a leading historian and expert on the modern Middle East. Teitelbaum teaches modern Middle Eastern history in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies and is Senior Research Associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA), at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. For many years he was a Visiting Fellow and Contributor to the Herbert and Jane Dwight Working Group on Islamism and the International Order at the Hoover Institution, a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, and Visiting Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, all at Stanford. He has also held visiting positions at Cornell University, the University of Washington, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. His latest book is Saudi Arabia and the New Strategic Landscape (Stanford: Hoover Press), and his latest article is "Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Longue Durée Struggle for Islam's Holiest Places,” in The Historical Journal.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/i-Oaa0yiSjA

About this Event: In the last 50 years, the United States and Soviet Union/Russia have pursued arms control negotiations and signed numerous treaties in an effort to restrain and reduce the number and capabilities of their nuclear weapons. However, the recent collapse of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the possible expiration of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in 2021 may signal the end to treaty-based limits. This raises questions about the future form and content of bilateral nuclear arms control. While near-term questions focus on whether the United States and Russia can salvage the benefits of these two treaties and, possibly, expand them to include more types of weapons and additional countries, longer-term questions are less specific. Does the past bilateral arms control process represent more than just an effort to negotiate legally binding treaties that limit or reduce nuclear weapons? Can the United States and Russia pursue agreements and cooperate in reducing weapons if they cannot conclude the process by signing formal agreements? Can they maintain stability, exhibit restraint, and reduce the risk of war if the era of arms control treaties has ended? Can this new era of arms control expand to address concerns about new types of weapons and the risks posed by a greater number of countries?

Speaker's Biography: Amy F. Woolf is a Specialist in Nuclear Weapons Policy in the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division of the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress.  She provides Congress with information and expert analysis on issues related to U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and arms control. She has authored many studies on these issues and has spoken often, outside Capitol Hill, about Congressional views on arms control and U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Ms. Woolf received a Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a BA in Political Science from Stanford University.

Seminar Recording: ​https://youtu.be/vwmgYCTUJ3o

About this Event: Scholars and practitioners have long argued that compliance with international rules often requires building institutions or other mechanisms to ease access to information about possible violations. This book introduces a different information problem -- disclosure dilemmas -- that requires equipping IOs with secrecy. States and firms often possess private information that sheds detailed light on the compliance of others with international rules. Yet fears of revealing intelligence sources or helping commercial rivals can deter them from disclosing it. Building a “confidentiality system” in an international organization can allow the institution to receive and protect such sensitive details, enabling disclosure without wider dissemination. This, in turn, elicits the sharing of unique and sensitive information which fills evidentiary gaps and makes cooperation more effective. For example, targeted intelligence disclosures to the IAEA can fill in gaps about hidden nuclear weapons programs. Similarly, targeted disclosures of internal firm documentation to the WTO can clarify whether trade barriers have caused damage to foreign firms. The book offers a unified, multi-method approach to understanding international cooperation and how institutions work, spanning economic and security domains from nuclear proliferation to trade to human rights. In addition to practical lessons about how to improve compliance with international rules, the book recasts the role of institutions in International Relations and identifies a source of tension between cooperation and normative goals like global governance transparency.

Speaker's Biography: Austin Carson is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His first book, Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics (Princeton UP 2018), argues that secrecy helps great powers meddle in conflicts while keeping war limited. It was recently award the Lepgold Book Prize for best book in 2018. A second book with Allison Carnegie, Secrets in Global Governance: Disclosure Dilemmas and the Challenge of International Cooperation (Cambridge UP forthcoming), shows how secrecy allows international organizations to use sensitive information to assess compliance. His research has appeared in International Organization, American Journal of Political Science, and Security Studies.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/HFZJj01vC3U

Abstract: By most accounts, the most important political space in the world's largest country is the four inches between Vladimir Putin’s ears. In a new book, Graeme Robertson and Sam Greene challenge the idea that Putin has shaped Russia in his own image, arguing instead that it his power flows from a particular relationship he has developed with his citizens -- and that his citizens have developed with one another. The result is a view of Russian politics as something much more fluid and fragile than we generally understand, a shifting landscape in which Putin's power -- and that of whoever succeeds him -- is continually negotiated and renegotiated between the Kremlin and the public, even in the confines of an increasingly authoritarian state. In this discussion, Greene and Robertson explore the social and political imperatives, challenges and dilemmas Putin and Russia face as he rounds out his fourth term and wonders about a fifth.

Speakers' Biography:

Sam Greene is reader in Russian politics and Director of the Russia Institute at King's College London. His research focuses on the relationships between citizens and the state in Russia, and in societies experiencing social, economic and political transformation more broadly. His first book, Moscow in Movement: Power and Opposition in Putin's Russia, was published by Stanford University Press in 2014. More recently, he is co-author with Graeme Robertson of Putin v the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia, published by Yale University Press in 2019. He also serves as Associate Fellow in the Russian and Eurasian Programme of the International Institute for Security Studies and a Visiting Professor at the UK Defence Academy.

Graeme Robertson is a Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Director of the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies. His work focuses on political protest and regime support in authoritarian regimes.

Graeme’s new book (with Samuel A. Greene) is Putin v. The People, published by Yale University Press in June 2019. The book presents a fresh new look at the social bases of support for and opposition to authoritarian rule in Russia. Graeme is also the author of Revolution and Reform in Ukraine, published by PONARS Eurasia (with Silviya Nitsova and Grigore Pop-Eleches) and The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia, published by Cambridge University Press. He has published articles in many academic journals including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics and the British Journal of Political Science, as well as contributing regularly to the media on Russia and Ukraine. Graeme currently serves as the Associate Editor for Comparative Politics for the American Journal of Political Science.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/5c8Un2Y9-sw

Abstract: Over the last fifteen years, the Russian government has invested significantly in improving Russia’s education and health care systems and in reversing the health and demographic catastrophes of the 1990s. This discussion will assess the extent to which those investments have paid off and the continued challenges Putin faces in aligning Russia’s human capital resources with his political, economic, and foreign policy ambitions. It will also examine the ways that health and social policy have been used as political tools – not always successfully – by the Putin regime.

Speaker Biography: Judy Twigg is a professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University; senior associate (non-resident) with the Center for Strategic and International Studies; consultant for the evaluation units of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank; and adjunct professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Twigg’s work focuses on issues of health, human capital, and health systems reform in Eurasia, as well as evaluations of human development and public sector management assistance projects globally. She has been a consultant for John Snow, Inc., UNICEF, USAID, the Eurasia Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. Twigg was a 2005 recipient of the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. She holds a B.S. in physics from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.A. in political science and Soviet studies from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Ph.D. in political science and security studies from MIT.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/q5g6fuAVG2w

About this Event: For over a decade, Russian officials have a championed a model of economic growth that draws inspiration from East Asian developmental states. The state’s role in economic decision making has been accentuated, setting in motion ambitious industrial and stimulus policies, import substitution, and as international sanctions have mounted, fierce protectionism. This memo explains how this shift in doctrine has contributed to economic stagnation and falling consumer welfare. Weak institutions have enabled a bureaucratic system that privileges loyalty over merit and consequently unproductive, corruption-riddled spending. Politically motivated concerns about keeping wealth and power concentrated among a small group of elites threaten to generate widespread discontent over economic exclusion. 

This event is co-sponsored with the European Security Initiative

Speaker's Biography: David Szakonyi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, an Academy Scholar at Harvard University, and a Research Fellow at Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. His research looks at political economy and corruption, with projects underway in Russia and the United States. His book Politics for Profit: Business, Elections, and Policymaking in Russia is forthcoming at Cambridge University Press, with other work published in the American Political Science Review, World Politics, and Journal of Politics, as well as popular publications such as Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, and Newsweek. He received his PhD in political science from Columbia University and his BA from the University of Virginia