While Russia poses one of the biggest foreign policy challenges facing the U.S., an opportunity for rapprochement may exist with the incoming administration, several Stanford scholars said Wednesday.

The panel event, “Russia Looking Back and Looking Ahead,” featured Russia experts William J. Perry, Michael McFaul, Siegfried Hecker, and David Holloway from Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute. The discussion came at a time when American-Russian relations are arguably at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. On top of this, the Central Intelligence Agency recently concluded that Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential election. Against this backdrop, the Stanford scholars examined both the past and the future of the U.S.-Russia relationship. (Click here to watch a video of the event.)

Amy Zegart, CISAC co-director, said in opening remarks that there is “no more timely moment to be looking at the state of U.S.-Russia affairs than today.”

Perry, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and director of the Preventive Defense Project at CISAC, said that he hopes Russia does not fall prey to its worst tendencies, the way the Weimar Republic of Germany succumbed to Nazism. Perry pointed out, however, that some bright spots in Russian cooperation have occurred.

“You could never have predicted that was going to work,” he said, referring to the post-Cold War cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in reducing and safeguarding the latter’s nuclear stockpile. There was also collaboration on solving the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s.

“The greatest disappointment is that we let all this slip away,” said Perry, citing the NATO expansion as one trigger effect. “Our greatest challenge is trying to avoid a war with Russia. We’ve gotten to a point where that is a real possibility.”

The Russians, Perry noted, realize they’re outgunned by the U.S. in conventional weapons, so they have made it known they may use tactical nuclear weapons in the event of a war with America.

Perry urges re-engaging with Russia on nuclear issues. The best approach, he said, may be to separate out some problems that may be too difficult so the focus is on nuclear cooperation. Still, he acknowledges he is "profoundly pessimistic,” but what is at stake is the survival of human civilization, so these two countries must find a way to work together. 

Protests and people

McFaul, the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute, recently penned a column urging a bipartisan examination of Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

McFaul explained the Obama Administration’s efforts to engage with Putin’s Russia. He served in the administration during that period that some refer to as an attempted “reset” of Washington’s relationship with Moscow. Some cooperation definitely occurred – the successful raid on Osama Bin Laden would not have happened without Russia’s collaboration, among other examples, he added. “It was an amazing achievement."

Why did the reset end? “It ended because protesting people got in the way of our policy,” he said, noting mass protests in Russia and in Middle Eastern countries that were allies of Putin’s regime.

“We were not imposing our values on the government when I was in office,” said McFaul about his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Russian from 2012 to 2014.

On Trump, McFaul expressed cautious optimism, but described him as exhibiting “mixed-up ends and means,” and Trump seems to suggest everyone “should just get along.” Putin, on the other hand, has very clear strategic priorities, McFaul said. 

“There’s a history of interference,” he said about Russia’s forays into elections here and abroad.

In addition, many issues have connections – such as the Iran nuclear deal and the Russian relationship – that are so complex that the new administration needs to truly understand the broader context, he said.

Prior nuclear agreements - such as Nunn-Lugar – were viewed in Moscow as American intelligence efforts, McFaul said. This reflects Russia’s wariness to talk about nuke issues.

‘A country coming apart’

Hecker, a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI, recently wrote an article about how the recent U.S. election may have opened a window of opportunity on U.S. Russia nuclear cooperation. The idea for the panel originated from the publication of Hecker’s recent book, Doomed to Cooperate.

Hecker recalled his career as the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where they were faced with helping strengthen the U.S. against Soviet nuclear capabilities, to the years of transition after the Cold War when he led U.S. efforts over a 20-year period to work with Russian scientists on safeguarding loose nukes.

“'They were Russia’s inheritance from Hell,'” he said, quoting a passage in a book by moderator David E. Hoffman, a contributing editor to The Washington Post and Russian expert as well.

The scientists in Russia, however, were heroically motivated to collaborate with American scientists like Hecker in protecting their country from a nuclear catastrophe. “It was like looking in a mirror,” Hecker said about their talents and conscientiousness.

Such scientific collaboration and support from both countries’ governments is a template for future relationships, he said. Unfortunately, that type of cooperation is “being held hostage” by political differences in both countries, said Hecker, who has visited Russia 52 times in 25 years.

“There is no reason we should be enemies,” he said.

Hecker suggests not “demonizing” the Russian people and avoiding imposing American values on those people. Staying out of internal affairs in Russia is critical, too, he said.

‘Not the Soviet Union’

Holloway, a senior fellow at CISAC and FSI, has analyzed the steps taken to shrink the world's nuclear stockpile.

“Russia’s not what people hoped it would become 25 years ago, but still something remains. This is still not the Soviet Union,” said Holloway, pointing out some limited freedoms exist in contemporary Russian society compared to the country’s Stalinist past.

“The failure to integrate Russia into the international system” has created a serious problem, he said. “We’ve had a real downward spiral” since the Obama administration’s attempted reset. “There is a debate about who is to blame,” but that is a complicated debate.

“What is to be done?” asked Holloway. This is the question to ask and answer in order to ascertain ways to improve the relationship. The liberal world order, created by the U.S. in the wake of WWII, may be coming to an end, he said. China and Russia feel they have not been accommodated by such a U.S.-led world order, such as in trade deals and military alliances.

Like Putin, who uses unpredictable tactics in world affairs, Trump, too, seems made from the same template.

“This is not good to have two unpredictable leaders facing each other” with many nuclear weapons at their commands, said Holloway, who recently visited Russia and observed many reactions there about the 2016 election outcome.

Follow CISAC at @StanfordCISAC and www.facebook.com/StanfordCISAC.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Amy Zegart, co-director of CISAC, wrote the following op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle:

Donald Trump’s stunning win has made many wonder: Just how dangerous could a Trump foreign policy be? There are plenty of reasons to be afraid, very afraid.

Stanford students are applying lean start-up techniques to some of the world’s most difficult foreign policy issues.

The fall 2016 quarter class, Hacking for Diplomacy: Tackling Foreign Policy Challenges with the Lean Launchpad, is a first-of-its-kind course for studying statecraft, created as a reflection of the best that Stanford and Silicon Valley offers in the way of pioneering paradigms. Hacking for Diplomacy is co-taught by Joe Felter, a senior researcher at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). It is based on the Lean LaunchPad methodology, created by course designer Steve Blank, a Stanford lecturer and entrepreneur.

The teaching team also includes Jeremy Weinstein, a political science professor at the Freeman Spogli Institute; Zvika Krieger, the U.S. Department of State's Representative to Silicon Valley; and Steve Weinstein, the CEO of MovieLabs.

'Breaking free'

The class is based on cultivating ideas and imagination, breaking free of the traditional “business plan” approach to rolling out new products and solutions. In the case of diplomacy, the lean start-up method is fast and flexible above all. It has three key principles based on concepts such as "mission model canvas," "beneficiary development," and "agile engineering,” according to Felter, also a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

“The first principle is accepting that any proposed solution to a problem whether in the commercial world or public sector is initially just a set of untested hypotheses – at best informed guesses – as to what may solve the needs of a customer or beneficiary,” said Felter.

Regarding beneficiary development, he said, experiential learning is central.

“There are no answers to complex challenges ‘inside the building,’ if you will, and students must ‘get out of the building’ to find out –in as intimate detail as possible – the various pains and gains experienced by the various beneficiaries, stakeholders and end users that must be addressed to find viable and deployable solutions to their problems,” Felter said.

The last principle, “agile development,” is based on the view that proposed solutions are generated and constantly updated through a collecting of data and feedback. This in turn, Felter explained, is rapidly tested and new solutions are designed based this iterative process.

Overall, he noted, the core idea is that entrepreneurs are everywhere, and that lean startup principles favor experimentation over elaborate planning, offering a faster way to get a desired product or solution to market.

Real-world instruction

In the class, student teams analyze real-world foreign policy challenges. They then use lean startup principles to find new approaches to seemingly intractable or very complex problems that have bedeviled the foreign policy world. The teams actually work with mentors and officials in the U.S. State Department and other civilian agencies and private companies.

Each week, the teams present their findings (“product”) to a panel of faculty and mentors, who will critique their solutions. The outcomes will range, as they vary from problem to problem. Examples include human rights, food security, refuges and labor recruitment, and mosquito disease threats, among others.

On Oct. 10, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited the class. “Brilliant minds are applying technology to world’s toughest problems. Their perspective will inform,” Kerry tweeted after the class.

Kerry’s State Department gave the students seven challenges to address – human trafficking, avoiding space collisions, tracking nuclear devices, and countering violent extremism. The students will explore and analyze these issues through the rest of the quarter.

One student, Kaya Tilev, later asked Kerry what the students should be striving for to make their “solutions” a reality for national policymakers.

Kerry said, “Well, you’re doing it. You’re in it. You’re in the program. And I have absolute confidence if you come up with a viable solution it is going to be implemented, adopted, and institutionalized.”

Zvika Krieger, the state department official, told the students that Kerry was impressed with them and the class.

“He (Kerry) brought up our class in all of his meetings that day, including at a lunch with the CEOs/founders of Google, Airbnb, and Lyft; in a podcast interview with Wired magazine, and in remarks at the Internet Association's conference,” Krieger wrote in an email to them.

Global flashpoints are proliferating around the globe – the Syrian War, conflict and civil wars across the Middle East and in parts of Africa; the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction by states and non-state groups; the most significant flow of refugees since World War II; North Korea nuclear testing; Russian adventurism on its borders; China’s forays into the South China Sea; and a changing climate.

In other words, there is no shortage of thorny problems for young minds to solve as they embark on their careers.

‘Hungry to apply their energy’

Jeremy Weinstein, the political science professor, described the students as “hungry to apply their energy and talents to real-world problems, and to use hands-on experiences as a way of accelerating their learning.”

The class taps into that motivation by bringing together data scientists, engineers, and social scientist, he noted. In the end, the idea is for students to learn how to “innovate inside government.”

Weinstein is optimistic that this class – and a stronger connection between the State Department and Stanford’s technical and policy expertise – can drive more innovation inside government.

“Technology can play a critical role in addressing many of today’s foreign policy challenges, and this class is one new way for senior U.S. officials to tap into the passion, creativity and talent of Silicon Valley,” he said.

Hacking for defense

Last year, Felter and Blank also led a Hacking for Defense class based on the same lean start-up principles. Hacking for Diplomacy is co-listed as both an International Policy Studies and a Management Science and Engineering course – it counts for international relations and political science majors as well.

Blank, a consulting associate professor in engineering, told the Stanford News Service in a recent story that he seeks to cultivate in students a passion for giving back to society and their world.

“We’re going to create a network of entrepreneurial students who understand the diplomatic, policy and national security problems facing the country and get them engaged in partnership with islands of innovation in the Department of State,” said Blank, who also wrote about the new hacking for Diplomacy course in the Huffington Post.

“Teams must take these products out to the real world and ask potential users for feedback,” he noted.

CISAC nuclear scientist Siegfried S. Hecker earlier this year released a book, Doomed to Cooperate, about how American and Russian scientists joined forces to avert some of the greatest post-Cold War nuclear dangers. Physics Today and Arms Control Today recently ran reviews on the work. Below is a Nov. 1 article that Hecker wrote on this subject for Russia Matters:

By Siegfried S. Hecker

The consequences of state collapse anywhere in the world can be devastating and destabilizing for neighboring and even distant countries.

The complexity of each situation demands a tailored response, according to Stanford scholars embarking on a new American Academy Arts & Sciences project to identify the best policy responses to failing states embroiled in civil wars.

A failed state is that whose political or economic system has become so weak that the government is no longer in control. Such instability has already threatened or affected Syria, Libya, Yemen and other polities.

The project, Civil Wars, Violence and International Responses, is led by Stanford’s Karl Eikenberry and Stephen Krasner. Eikenberry is a faculty affiliate at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. Krasner is a faculty member in the political science department and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Relations and Hoover Institution.

Other Stanford scholars involved include Francis Fukuyama and Steve Stedman of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law; CISAC's Martha Crenshaw, political scientist James Fearon; Paul Wise of the Center for Health Policy and the Center for Health Policy and the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research; and Michele Barry, the senior associate dean for global health at the medical school.

The effort will culminate in a two-volume issue in AAAS’s journal Dædalus. On Nov. 2-4, the academy will hold an authors’ workshop in Cambridge, Mass., to discuss journal content.

Different approaches

In an interview, Eikenberry said the problematic U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan make it clear that different approaches must be used for different countries.

“The robust counterinsurgency campaign that the U.S. employed for periods of time in both Afghanistan and Iraq was premised on the viability of the standard development model that aims to put countries on the path to economic well-being and consolidated democracy,” he said.

However, such an approach assumes that decision makers in those states have the same objectives as the intervening states, which typically seek to improve the lives of people in those countries, said Eikenbery. Prior to serving as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2009 until 2011, Eikenberry had a 35-year career in the U.S. Army, retiring in 2009 with the rank of lieutenant general.

As Krasner points out, when intervention occurs, the hope is that improvements in one area – such as the quality of elections, rule of law, economic growth, or military recognition of civilian authority – would lead to improvements in other areas, according to Eikenberry.

But opposition and a constrained sense of “limited opportunities” can arise to thwart a well-meaning intervention, Eikenberry said.

He added, “Information asymmetries and the absence of mutually compatible interests between national and external elites, make it impossible to put target countries on a rapid path to prosperity and consolidated democracy. External actors must have much more modest goals.”

Syrian consequences

As for the case of Syria, Eikenberry noted that such civil wars can actually become more lethal and dangerous to global order than inter-state conflicts.

These types of conflicts like that in Syria tend to escalate into high levels of violence because of the costs that the losing parties believe they will incur, he said.

“This in turn leads to state fragmentation and the possibility of transnational groups with international ambitions getting involved,” he said. “Civil wars can result in an enormous number of civilian casualties, which generates large scale refugee flows” and puts huge pressure on neighboring states.

Eikenberry said Syria is being “internationalized by entangling regional and great powers in proxy wars,” which is exacerbating that conflict beyond Syria and throughout the greater Middle East. As for the immediate, direct threat to the U.S., that debate still continues, he added. 

On that note, one project goal is to assess risks to other countries that may emanate from civil wars and protracted intrastate violence like that in Syria, Eikenberry said. He and his colleagues will examine the effects of  international terrorism, massive displacements of people, proxy wars that escalate to interstate warfare, criminal organizations that displace governments, and pandemics. 

Policy implications

Eikenberry is hopeful the project influences policy and practice toward countries experiencing civil war and violence.

“Facilitating dialogue among a variety of constituencies with knowledge on the dynamics and impact of civil wars that might not normally or directly interact, including government and military officials, human rights organizations, academic and scholarly experts, and the media, will be one outcome of the project,” he said.

The idea is to allow “new ideas to emerge” regarding how to handle such states, as well as methods of applying such findings, he said.

“Exploring ways to create stability and more lasting peace, taking into consideration voices from academic and practical fields, should prove valuable to the policy community,” Eikenberry said.

Following publication of the volumes, the project will convene international workshops aimed at developing better regional perspectives. Such outreach activities will provide the feedback for the publication of another AAAS paper aimed at informing U.S. and international policy and research on the subject. A series of roundtable discussions in Washington is also planned.

CISAC's William J. Perry created a free, public 10-week course for people to learn more about the looming dangers of nuclear catastrophe. His new MOOC, developed with the support of Stanford’s Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, offers a chance to take that message to a much larger audience.

Living at the Nuclear Brink: Yesterday and Today is an online course (a "MOOC") taught by former Defense Secretary William J. Perry and a team of international experts. 

“I believe that the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe is greater today than it was during the cold war,” said Perry, who recently wrote a New York Times op-ed on why America should dismantle its ICBM missile systems.

Because the continued risk of nuclear catastrophe isn’t widely recognized, Perry believes, “our nuclear policies don’t reflect the danger. So I’ve set off on a mission to educate people on how serious the problem is. Only then can we develop the policies that are appropriate for the danger we face.” 

The course offers participants the chance to ask questions and participate in discussions via an online forum, which Perry and his fellow experts will address during weekly video chats. Each week, Perry will be joined in conversation by top thinkers, including CISAC's Martha Crenshaw, David Holloway and Siegfried Hecker, Scott D. Sagan, and Philip Taubman. George Shultz, the former secretary of state, will also participate. Outside experts include Ploughshares Fund president Joseph Cirincione, nuclear negotiator James Goodby, former Russian Deputy Minister of Defense Andre Kokoshin, and Joseph Martz of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Learn more about "Living at the Nuclear Brink" in this story or watch a video. Register for the course here. It is now open for enrollment and begins Oct. 4.  

The CISAC lecture series, "Security Matters," surveyed the most pressing security issues facing the world today. Topics include cybersecurity, nuclear proliferation, insurgency and intervention, terrorism, biosecurity, lessons learned from the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis – as well as the future of U.S. leadership in the world.

The lectures come almost entirely from the 2014 winter term of International Security (PS114S), co-taught by intelligence expert and CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart and terrorism authority Martha Crenshaw co-taught the Security Matters class in 2015. (Zegart recently co-wrote a journal paper on why the U.S. might adjust its national security approach in light of a changing international order.)

“This series is the first in what we hope will be a continuing experiment of new modes and methods to enhance our education mission,” said Zegart. “We have two goals in mind: The first is to expand CISAC's reach in educating the world about international security issues. The second is to innovate inside our Stanford classrooms.”

Martin Hellman is not your average cryptography pioneer.

Hellman, who is known for his invention of public key cryptography (along with Whitfield Duffie and Ralph Merkle), has a life’s journey to share in story form, one that weaves together the most complex global flashpoints of our age with the deeply personal of any age. He and his wife’s new book, A New Map for Relationships: Creating True Love at Home and Peace on the Planet, spans far and wide, covering nuclear risks in North Korea, Iran, and America’s Middle Eastern wars.

But that is not all. He and his wife Dorothie Hellman open up about their marital struggles to show how they eventually reached a point of harmony and true love for each other. As Martin Hellman sees it, conflict in the international and interpersonal arenas has much in common.

“You can’t separate nuclear war from conventional war and conventional war from personal war,” he said in an interview. Hellman is a professor emeritus of electrical engineering and faculty affiliate at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.  

Just as he and Dorothie (self-acknowledged polar opposites) often butted heads during the first 10 or 15 years of marriage, nations too navigate dangerously outmoded “maps” to protect their national security and interests. Yet these “maps” are soon outdated, whether on the global stage or in the home. Hellman said, however, that differences of opinion, which revolve around fights to prove who is “right,” could instead be transformed into opportunities to learn from one another – and to expand peace in the world.

“You have to believe in the seemingly impossible gifts of unconditional love and greater peace in the world, and then dedicate yourself to discovering how to achieve them,” he said.

Cultivating inner, outer peace

He said that society only truly changes based on individual changes, so he calls for action in how people live their everyday lives. When countries fail to respect each other – and ignore the influence of history on those countries – then conflict is more likely, and it is similar to a person disrespecting another.

“You will see an immediate payoff as your relationships flower,” he wrote in the book. “The small impact that each of us can have on changing the world does not feel concrete enough to most people, but seeing progress in your personal relationships is very concrete.”

That dedication to unconditional love, he said, is the way that individuals can become models for what is needed globally.

And the time is now, he suggests, for such change if our living generations are to leave a more peaceful world for those who follow us. From Afghanistan to Cuba, Russia, Iraq to North Korea and beyond, the countries of the world need a journey of healing and reconciliation, as he writes in the book.

Today, the stakes could not be higher, Hellman noted. Long-running strategies like nuclear deterrence are risky and illogical – over time, given probability theory and the chances of mistake or malice, they won’t work.

“The United States thinks it’s a superpower, but how can we be when Russia or China could destroy us in less than a hour?” he said. “How is that being a superpower?”

As William J. Perry, the former U.S. Secretary of Defense and Stanford professor emeritus at CISAC, said on behalf of the Hellmans’ book, “The struggle for interpersonal dominance can lead to the end of a marriage, but the struggle for geopolitical dominance can lead to the end of civilization.”

The international order is unraveling, according to a Stanford scholar. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has generally served as the top leader in this world order. But now the power equation is shifting, and the U.S. may see more countries challenging global rules and norms.

Three key factors threaten the distribution of power and authority among nations, said political scientist Amy Zegart, co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. But, she said, America can take a “pragmatic” approach to protecting its national interests.

The rise of China, more dangerous non-state actors than ever before and the weakening of international institutions are converging to create greater global instability, Zegart said.

Zegart co-wrote a journal article with Stanford political scientist Stephen Krasner about the benefits of a “pragmatic engagement” approach for the U.S. They also co-chaired a Hoover Institution working group on foreign policy and grand strategy to examine these issues.

If China continues to grow economically at its current rate, it will displace the U.S. as the country with the most material resources in the world, a position the latter has held for more than a century, Zegart said. Such a scenario comes with risks.

“It would mark the first time a great power would be a developing nation,” she said. “This has profound implications for the international order.”

For example, will China become a responsible stakeholder within the existing rules of the global order, Zegart said, or will it challenge that order?

“The record so far is decidedly mixed,” she said, noting that even if China wants to uphold the international economic and political order, it’s not clear that it can, based on its domestic political situation.

Challenges to power

On terrorism, technology has given weak states, non-state actors and even lone individuals the ability to wage cyberattacks, biological attacks and – potentially – nuclear attacks, according to Zegart.

“In this world, uncertainty abounds,” she said. In such an environment, people and even nations tend to retreat and not engage outside their spheres. “That’s part of the reason why in a recent survey, more than half of all Americans said they felt less safe today than they did on 9/11.”

Finally, international institutions such as the United Nations Security Council, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union are “misaligned with power realities,” as Zegart describes it.

“Institutions freeze into place the power relationships that exist at the time of their creation. They struggle to adapt to change. We see this at the domestic level, too. The U.S. government is built around a 1947 national security architecture that has a hard time adapting to 21st-century challenges, from cyberthreats to homeland security,” she said.

In the short term, Zegart said, the world is likely to see more contests for influence and more actors challenging what the United States will do. When the U.S. is not the guarantor of this order, the dynamic invites boundary testing.

“We see this with Iran’s missile testing, even after the Iran deal. We see it with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and hacking into the Democratic National Committee’s computers. We see it with China’s aggressive maneuvers in the South China Sea. We see it with North Korea’s escalation in the frequency of its nuclear and missile tests,” Zegart said.

Boundary testing is not healthy for international relations – it raises the odds of crisis escalation. “Meanwhile, leaders are so busy managing the crisis du jour that seeing emerging dangers becomes much more difficult,” Zegart said.

To address the challenges, U.S. national security policymakers should “return to the basics and ask what our objectives are in a more chaotic world and what strategies we think will best achieve them, and then deploy resources to meet those objectives,” Zegart said.

Guiding principles

The working group that she and Krasner co-chaired advocated three guiding principles for U.S. national security strategy.

“First, we have to be unapologetic about the pursuit of American economic and security interests, and more tempered in the pursuit of our ideals. We have always as a nation stood for universal freedoms but we have pursued those freedoms abroad in different ways, to different degrees, in different times as the external environment demanded and internal capabilities allowed,” she said.

Zegart said the U.S. should lead by democratic example, not democratic imposition.

“The most fruitful path toward spreading democracy is not toppling dictators without a clear path to a successor regime. It comes from bolstering civil society for internal transitions to democracy and demonstrating the benefits of democracy here at home,” she said.

Second, the U.S. can reform the international order by bolstering alliances and regional organizations, Zegart said. This includes Europe and the Asia Pacific region, and international institutions like the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

“We are advocating pragmatic international engagement, not isolationism,” she said.

Third, Zegart suggests that America can develop flexible unilateral capabilities that can be deployed against a wide array of increasing threats.

“The world is uncertain and our resources are limited. Smarter spending starts with developing more agile military capabilities and more robust non-military levers to advance our vital interests. We need Pentagon acquisition reform, moving from exorbitant, niche weapons systems like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and investing in low-cost unmanned systems and cyber capabilities,” she said.

Zegart noted that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is working hard to reform the way the Pentagon does business, but he faces resistance from entrenched interests.

As for the domestic and political impacts of a less stable world, Zegart said it is difficult to foresee all the consequences.

But she pointed to some disturbing indicators: growing chaos across the Middle East, rising nationalism in the U.S. and Europe, rising tensions in the Asia-Pacific region and domestic politics in many countries.

“I worry about rising political violence, erosion of trust in many institutions, not just political ones, and the backsliding of democracy, both in the United States and abroad,” she said.

Contact

Amy Zegart, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-4202, zegart@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu