Abstract: The conventional wisdom about current space dynamics paints a picture of a rising China, a resurgent Russia, and a drifting United States. It also argues that international governance mechanisms in space are failing and not worth U.S. efforts to repair. Thus, it suggests that nationalist and protectionist responses are the best policy directions for the United States. This presentation posits that both arguments are wrong. First, it makes the case that as 21st century space power shifts toward the commercial sector, the United States is well suited to compete with its rivals through innovation, international engagement, and network-building in space. Such efforts are more likely to succeed under emerging conditions in space than traditional, state-led efforts. Second, it argues that the possible breakdown of international space governance mechanisms poses a serious threat to American interests and will require the attention of both the U.S. government and the expanding commercial space sector.  

About the Speaker: James Clay Moltz holds a joint appointment as a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs (NSA) and in the Space Systems Academic Group at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, California. He also serves as the NSA Department’s Associate Chairman for Research and directs the DTRA-funded Project on Advanced Systems and Concepts for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction, based at NPS. He is the author of the recent books Crowded Orbits: Conflict and Cooperation in Space (Columbia University Press, 2014), Asia’s Space Race: National Motivations, Regional Rivalries, and International Risks (Columbia University Press, 2012), and The Politics of Space Security: Strategic Restraint and the Pursuit of National Interests (Stanford University Press, 2008 and 2011 editions). Prof. Moltz holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.A. and B.A. (with Distinction) from Stanford University. He has served as an advisor to the NASA-Ames Research Center and to the U.S. Department of Energy and has provided expert testimony on space issues before the U.S. Congress. His commentary on space topics has appeared in such periodicals as Aviation Week and Space Technology, Nature, and the New York Times.  At NPS, his honors include the 2015 Carl E. and Jesse W. Menneken Award for Excellence in Scientific Research and Sustained Contribution to the Navy and the Defense Department and the 2010 Richard W. Hamming Award for Interdisciplinary Achievement. 

Abstract: Various regions of the world struggle to properly manage their freshwater resources in a sustainable manner. Even a greater number of regions are vulnerable to supply disruptions that can last for a year or more.  This talk will provide a global overview of water supply vulnerability with respect to demand, endowment, institutions, and infrastructure.  Examples of regional hydroeconomic models to evaluate potential management policies will be discussed with a focus on our approach to the challenges of coupling human-natural systems.  

About the Speaker: Steven Gorelick is the Cyrus F. Tolman Professor in the School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment. At Stanford since 1988, he directs the Global Freshwater Initiative, which employs an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing water-supply vulnerability in developing nations. Past and current projects include those in Mexico, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Jordan. Much of his work involves development of hydrologic-economic models to evaluate the likely effectiveness of policy instruments such as taxes, quotas, and regulations. Projects also have evaluated the viability of an agricultural water rental market and alternatives to enhance food security. He has over 140 publications in 22 different science and engineering journals (including Science, Nature, and PNAS), and three commercialized patents. His 2010 book, Oil Panic and the Global Crisis, debated the notion of imminent global oil depletion. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and he has received Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships. 

About the Speaker: Dr. Frank Foley is Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. Dr Foley’s research focuses on counterterrorism, human rights, intelligence and police agencies, particularly in Britain, France and the United States. He is the author of Countering Terrorism in Britain and France: Institutions, Norms and the Shadow of the Past (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He has published articles in Security Studies, the Review of International Studies, and the European Journal of Criminal Research and Policy. Dr Foley holds a PhD in Political Science from the European University Institute in Florence. He has been the Zukerman post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and recipient of a “Terrorism Research Award” from the US National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). Dr Foley has briefed governments and security practitioners on his research findings, including British and French counterterrorist officials and Department of Defense staff at the Pentagon in Washington DC. He comments for a variety of national and international media, including BBC News, France 24 and Voice of America.

Abstract: In fragile states, regimes must cultivate military forces strong enough to ward off external threats, but loyal enough to resist launching a coup. This requires that leader distinguish the loyal from the untrustworthy, a particularly challenging exercise in post-conflict settings with weak institutions. In this study, I explore how Congolese soldiers operating in North Kivu, the largest operational theater in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the epicenter of one of the most violent conflicts in Africa, solve this crucial task. I argue that leaders use non-payment as a form of trial and tribulation that reveals commitment by driving non-loyal soldiers to defect and loyal soldiers to weather challenging times. Non-payments creates a dual-pronged screening process because unpaid soldiers engage in unit-managed extortion and violence against civilians, which is used to both test and generate loyalty. To detail and assess this argument, I couple thick description based on 100 open-ended qualitative interviews with a fine-grained quantitative analysis of 350 members of the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This analysis provides a novel explanation for how leaders overcome classic screening dilemmas in ways that ultimately drives violence against civilians. 

His work has been supported by the United States Institute for Peace, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and Texas A&M Center for Conflict and Development, among others. Grant is a 2015-2016 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow and Resident Fellow at the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation.

Abstract: How do leaders win power struggles in Leninist regimes? The political science literature emphasizes the importance of institutions in such polities: institutionalization allegedly provides a mechanism for distributing patronage, prevents the military and secret police from playing a special role, and strictly delineates the group that selects the leadership. This project instead argues that the defining feature of one-party states is the lack of institutionalization. Power struggles are therefore determined by prestige and sociological ties, politicized militaries and secret police, and the manipulation of multiple decision-making bodies. I test the relative explanatory value of these two competing sets of hypotheses by examining the power struggles fought by Nikita Khrushchev, Deng Xiaoping, and Kim Ilsung. The historic failure to institutionalize leadership selection had a tragic legacy: its absence is crucial for understanding the origins of stagnation, the tragedy at Tiananmen Square in 1989, and the Kim family multi-generational personality cult. 

About the Speaker: Joseph Torigian is a Ph.D. student at MIT interested in Chinese, Russian, and North Korean elite politics and qualitative methods. His current research uses archival material to investigate how war affects political authority in authoritarian regimes. Before coming to MIT, Joseph worked at the Council on Foreign Relations and studied China's policies towards Central Asia as a Fulbright Scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai. He has conducted dissertation research at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and as a visiting scholar at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University. He received his BA in Political Science at the University of Michigan and speaks Chinese and Russian.

Abstract: Cybersecurity depends heavily on civilian cyber defense, which is decentralized, private, and voluntary. Although the structure of this field stands to have a profound impact on national and international security, its history is rarely subject to critical or comparative analysis. Why is civilian cyber defense organized this way? There are at least three plausible explanations for the origins and evolution of cyber defense as an organizational field: technology, bureaucracy, and ideology. I examine the influence of each factor during the formative years of the Internet in the United States. From the beginning, malware was described in terms of infectious disease (viruses and worms), so I use public health to provide comparative context for cyber defense. I find that technological determinism explains far less about the genesis of this field than often assumed. Bureaucratic politics are also insufficient. Therefore, I argue that the American ideology of anti-statism is necessary to explain civilian cyber defense, and this family of ideas has important implications for security cooperation at home and abroad.

About the Speaker: Frank Smith is a Senior Lecturer with the Centre for International Security Studies and the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. His teaching and research examine the relationship between technology and international security. His book, American Biodefense, explains why the U.S. military struggled to defend itself and the country against biological warfare and bioterrorism. His current research examines cyber security cooperation; he is also analyzing the potential impact of quantum computing on international relations. Previously, Smith was a visiting scholar with the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs, a research fellow with the Griffith Asia Institute, and a pre-doctoral fellow with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He has a Ph.D. in political science and a B.S. in biological chemistry, both from the University of Chicago. 

Abstract: The nuclear negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran moved the International Atomic Energy Agency to the center of public attention. Based on multi-archival research and oral history interviews, this talk will look into the early history of the IAEA’s nuclear inspectorate. The foundations of today’s safeguards system were laid in the mid-1950s, when a group of twelve nations negotiated the Statute of the IAEA. In the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union abandoned its formerly critical stance on nuclear safeguards. Following the entry-into-force of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) comprehensive safeguards were introduced. The control of diversion was at the heart of the IAEA’s early safeguards system, while it neglected other aspects of the proliferation problem, such as the distribution of dual-use technology and related knowledge, or the development of clandestine nuclear programs. It was not lack of knowledge or imagination, but the complex technical, political, and legal background that was the reason for this limitation.

About the Speaker: Elisabeth Roehrlich is a senior researcher and project director at the University of Vienna’s Department of Contemporary History, and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. She received her PhD. in History from the University of Tuebingen, Germany, and held fellowships at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C., and Monash South Africa. Her research focuses on the history of international relations and the evolution of the global nuclear order. She is the author of a prize-winning book about the former Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky (Kreisky’s Außenpolitik, Vienna University Press, 2009), and her work on the IAEA has been published or is forthcoming in journals such the IAEA Bulletin and the Journal of Cold War Studies. Roehrlich has been awarded funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and the Austrian Central Bank to support her research on the IAEA.