Stanford University

International Development

FSI researchers consider international development from a variety of angles. They analyze ideas such as how public action and good governance are cornerstones of economic prosperity in Mexico and how investments in high school education will improve China’s economy.

They are looking at novel technological interventions to improve rural livelihoods, like the development implications of solar power-generated crop growing in Northern Benin.

FSI academics also assess which political processes yield better access to public services, particularly in developing countries. With a focus on health care, researchers have studied the political incentives to embrace UNICEF’s child survival efforts and how a well-run anti-alcohol policy in Russia affected mortality rates.

FSI’s work on international development also includes training the next generation of leaders through pre- and post-doctoral fellowships as well as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program.

Joseph Felter to join CISAC as senior research scholar

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The Center for International Security and Cooperation is delighted to welcome Dr. Joseph Felter as a Senior Research Scholar. At CISAC, Joe will build and lead a research program on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, working closely with CISAC scholars and others from around Stanford. He will also serve as a west coast representative of the Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC) Project, a nationwide multi-university undertaking. Joe begins at CISAC on September 1st.

Felter is a colonel in the U.S. Army and a career Army Special Forces officer with distinguished service in a variety of special operations assignments. As a military attaché to the Philippines he helped develop the country’s counterterrorist capabilities and advance the peace process between the Philippine government and a major Islamic separatist group. He has conducted foreign internal defense and security assistance missions across East and Southeast Asia and has participated in operational deployments to Panama, Iraq, and twice to Afghanistan. 

Felter formerly led the International Security and Assistance Force, Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team (CAAT) in Afghanistan reporting directly to Gen. David Petraeus and advising him on counterinsurgency strategy. Joe also directed the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point from 2005-2008, and has taught at West Point and the School of International & Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. He is also a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Felter has published many scholarly articles on the topic of counterinsurgency and has focused on the study of how to combat the root causes of terrorism. Some highlights include: "Can Hearts and Minds be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq," with Eli Berman and Jacob N. Shapiro. Journal of Political Economy (forthcoming); "Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines," with Eli Berman, Michael Callen, and Jacob N. Shapiro. Journal of Conflict Resolution (forthcoming); "Iranian Influence in Iraq: Politics and 'Other Means,'" with Brian Fishman. Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, N.Y., October 2008; and "Recruitment for Rebellion and Terrorism in the Philippines," in James Forest ed. The Making of a Terrorist: Recruitment, Training and Root Causes (Praeger International, 2006).

Joe holds a BS from West Point, an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a PhD in Political Science from Stanford.

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What books do CISAC researchers recommend?

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Incoming Stanford freshmen will be reading three books on ethics and war this summer recommended by Scott D. Sagan. Here they are, along with other suggestions from CISAC researchers for summer reading on international affairs, technology, and security.

Jason R. Armagost Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State, by Garry Wills

Edward Blandford Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World, by Jill Jonnes

Martha Crenshaw In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, by Erik Larson

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin

Lynn Eden Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, by Richard J. Evans

Katherine D. Marvel Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty,
by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Scott D. Sagan Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, by S.C. Gwynne

“Three Books” Freshmen Reading

Selected by Scott Sagan, to "help our students evaluate when war is justified, how to fight justly the wars that do occur, and how best to manage the aftermath of war."

March, by Geraldine Brooks. A novel of the U.S. Civil War

The Violence of Peace: America's Wars in the Age of Obama, by Stephen Carter. An analysis of the current wars through the lens of just war theory

One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer, by Nathaniel Fick. A young officer's memoir of Afghanistan and Iraq

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From the Manhattan Project to the Cloud: Arms Control in the Information Age

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Sixty-six years ago, a small group of scientists, policy makers and military leaders embarked upon a highly secretive project to build a nuclear bomb. It would change the world forever. Today, the tightly-controlled knowledge and technologies of the Manhattan Project have given way to the open culture of the internet and the Information Age.

The revolution in technology and information dissemination that has transpired since the dawn of the nuclear age has had far-reaching effects on the entire national security apparatus. It has presented dangers, but also opportunities. In the arms control arena, new communication tools allow treaties to be negotiated with greater speed, and computing models help sustain nuclear stockpiles without testing. Verification techniques and technologies are developing in new and innovative directions. However, the traditional tools of arms control policy are limited in how they apply to cyber-weapons and warfare; new ones will be needed.

Identifying the challenges associated with the Information Age, as well as solutions and opportunities, will drive the arms control agenda for the next century.

 

Drell Lecture Recording: NA

 

Drell Lecture Transcript: NA

 

Speaker's Biography: Rose Gottemoeller was sworn in as the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, on April 6, 2009. She was the chief negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation. Since 2000, she had been with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She most recently was a senior associate in the Carnegie Russia & Eurasia Program in Washington, D.C., where she worked on U.S.–Russian relations and nuclear security and stability. She also served as the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center from January 2006 – December 2008.

Formerly Deputy Undersecretary of Energy for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation and before that, Assistant Secretary for Nonproliferation and National Security, also at the Department of Energy, she was responsible for all nonproliferation cooperation with Russia and the Newly Independent States. She first joined the Department of Energy in November 1997 as director of the Office of Nonproliferation and National Security.

Prior to her work at the Department of Energy, Ms. Gottemoeller served for 3 years as Deputy Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. From 1993 to 1994, she served on the National Security Council in the White House as director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Affairs, with responsibility for denuclearization in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. Previously, she was a social scientist at RAND and a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. She has taught on Soviet military policy and Russian security at Georgetown University.

Ms. Gottemoeller received a B.S. from Georgetown University and a M.A. from George Washington University. She is fluent in Russian.

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Rose Gottemoeller Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance Speaker
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Powering America: Does Nuclear Have a Future?

CISAC's Tom Isaacs participated in a discussion on nuclear energy in America for the World Affairs Council Northern California. 

Event Description:

The 8.9 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 set in motion one of the largest nuclear disasters in almost three decades. It also renewed the debate over the future of nuclear energy in the US and abroad. With 104 nuclear power plants across the country, generating about 20 percent of America's energy, there is no doubt that we are currently dependent on nuclear energy, yet the debate over this highly contentious technology is far from resolved. The three panelists will discuss what this disaster means for the future of US energy. How will the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant shape future energy policies and public opinion, and are there existing renewable technologies capable of fulfilling the world’s energy needs? Will nuclear energy be the fuel of the 21st century, or a relic of the past?

Listen to the talk by clicking the link below. 

V. John White Executive Director Speaker Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies
Per F. Peterson Chair Speaker Department of Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley

Thomas Isaacs

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Tom is Co-Principal Investigator for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Developing Spent Fuel Strategies (DSFS) project coordinating international cooperation on issues at the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle with emphasis on spent fuel management and disposal in Pacific Rim countries. Participants include senior nuclear officials from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Canada, and the United States.

Tom advises national nuclear waste programs on facility siting, communications, stakeholder engagement, and public trust and confidence. He has worked with the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) for 15 years.

Tom was recently named as the Chair of the recently formed Experts Team to support Southern California Edison  at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Previously Tom was a Consulting Professor at CISAC, lead advisor to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, Member of the National Academy of Sciences Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, Director of Planning at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and long time senior executive at the Department of Energy where he led the siting of Yucca Mountain as the nation’s candidate site for a geologic repository.

He has degrees in Engineering, Applied Physics, and Chemical Engineering from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

 

Thomas Isaacs Consulting Professor Speaker CISAC
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Congratulations to the Class of 2011 CISAC Honors students

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Congratulations to the 10 members of the Class of 2011 CISAC Honors Program in International Security Studies. The students were honored at a June 10 ceremony for their successful participation in the interdisciplinary program and for their contributions to the field of international security research.

The Stanford seniors join 114 others who have graduated from the program since its inception in 2000. This year's program was co-directed by Coit D. Blacker and Martha Crenshaw, with assistance from teaching assistant Michael Sulmeyer.

In alphabetical order, the students, their majors, and their thesis titles are:

Devin Banerjee

Management Science and Engineering

India's Red Stain: Explaining the Indian Government's Ineffective Response to the Maoist-Naxalite Insurgency Since 1967.

Peter Davis

International Relations

The Non-Aligned Movement: A Struggle for Global Relevance

Anand Habib

Biology

The Demise and Rise of Governance in Health Systems: A Path Forward

RJ Halperin

Political Science

The U.S. and the Origins of the Pakistani Nuclear Weapons Program: National Interests, Proliferation Pessimism, and Executive-Legislative Politics

Akhil Iyer

International Relations, Minor in Arabic

The Establishment of the U.S. Africa Command: Form, Function, and the Process of Agency Formation

Astasia Myers

Political Science and International Relations, Minor in Economics

IAEA Enforcement of Nuclear Nonproliferation Violators: Are Some Animals More Equal than Others?

Jimmy Ruck

History

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? Evolving Civil Military-Relations in China

Varun Sivaram

Engineering Physics and International Relations

Sunny Side Up: Characterizing the U.S. Military's Approach to Solar Energy Policy

* Recipient of the William J. Perry Award

Jaclyn Tandler

International Relations

Let Them Eat Yellow Cake: Understanding the History of France's Sensitive Nuclear Export Policy

*Recipient of the Firestone Medal

Shine Zaw-Aung

International Relations, Minor in Energy Engineering

The Third Horseman: On Famines and Governments

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Kate Marvel and Michael May: What is the future of nuclear energy?

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“Anticipating the future is difficult in any situation, but assessing the prospects for nuclear power in the next fifty years presents especially complex challenges," write Katherine D. Marvel and Michael M. May in a new paper published by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

"The public perception of nuclear power has changed and continues to change. Once viewed as a miracle of modern technology, nuclear power came to be perceived by many as a potential catastrophe; now it is viewed as a potential, albeit potentially still dangerous, source of green power. Conventional wisdom in the 1960s held that nuclear power could dominate the electricity sectors of developed countries, while less than twenty years later, many predicted the complete demise of the U.S. nuclear industry following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Yet neither attitude fully forecast the situation today: a nuclear industry that is not dominant, but is far from dead. Indeed, the history of long-range planning for nuclear power serves as a caution for anyone wishing to make predictions about the state of the industry over the next half-century.

Nonetheless, it is critical to assess its role in the future energy mix: decisions taken now will impact the energy sector for many years. This assessment requires both a review of past planning strategies and a new approach that considers alternate scenarios hat may differ radically from business as usual. While a number of studies have explored the future of nuclear power under various circumstances, the purpose of this paper is to consider gamechanging events for nuclear energy.”

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“Spytainment”: The Real Influence of Fake Spies

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An excerpt from "Spytainment: The Real Influence of Fake Spies" (pp. 599-600):

For avid fans of the now-departed television show 24, a visit to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters will be disappointing. The visitors’ center looks nothing like the ultra high-tech rooms of CTU, Jack Bauer’s fictitious counterterrorist agency.

Instead, the entry to America’s best-known intelligence outfit has more of a shabby, post office feel. There are soda vending machines and an old pay phone against the back wall, with customer service–like teller windows in front. Once cleared by security, visitors can walk ten minutes down a winding road or take a rambling shuttle bus to the old Headquarters building. The lobby has no retina scans or fancy fingerprint devices, just a few turnstiles and a kind, elderly security guard who takes cell phones and hands out claim checks. Even the suite of executive offices where the CIA director sits seems strangely ordinary. The only clue that this is not a typical government building is the desks. They are all bare. Not a visible paper in sight. Documents are either locked away or burned at the end of each day.

Most people know deep down that real spying is different than what is portrayed on television and in the movies. But how different? And how much does it matter?

Today, the facts and fiction of the spy business are blurring, with important consequences for intelligence policy. In the past two decades, the Spytainment industry has skyrocketed. Government over-classification has continued to keep vital and timely public information about U.S. intelligence agencies out of the public domain. And Political Science professors have been busy researching and teaching about seemingly everything except intelligence. The results are serious. As the nonpartisan, expert Intelligence Science Board concluded in a 2006 report, spy-themed entertainment has become adult education. American citizens are steeped in misperceptions about what intelligence agencies actually do, and misplaced expectations about how well they can do it. Perhaps even more disturbing, evidence suggests that policymakers—from cadets at West Point to senators on the Intelligence Committee to Supreme Court Justices—are referencing fake spies to formulate and implement real intelligence policies.

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International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
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Amy Zegart
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Game Changers for Nuclear Energy

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From Game Changers for Nuclear Energy, p. 1
 
Anticipating the future is difficult in any situation, but assessing the prospects for nuclear power in the next fifty years presents especially complex challenges. The public perception of nuclear power has changed and continues to change. Once viewed as a miracle of modern technology, nuclear power came to be perceived by many as a potential catastrophe; now it is viewed as a potential, albeit potentially still dangerous, source of green power. Conventional wisdom in the 1960s held that nuclear power could dominate the electricity sectors of developed countries, while less than twenty years later, many predicted the complete demise of the U.S. nuclear industry following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Yet neither attitude fully forecast the situation today: a nuclear industry that is not dominant, but is far from dead. Indeed, the history of long-range planning for nuclear power serves as a caution for anyone wishing to make predictions about the state of the industry over the next half-century. Nonetheless, it is critical to assess its role in the future energy mix: decisions taken now will impact the energy sector for many years. This assessment requires both a review of past planning strategies and a new approach that considers alternate scenarios that may differ radically from business as usual.
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The American Academy of Arts & Sciences
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Michael M. May
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CISAC announces its 2011-2012 Undergraduate Honors Students

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The Center for International Security and Cooperation is pleased to announce the selection of 13 rising seniors for participation in its Undergraduate Honors Program in International Security Studies. 

The program provides an opportunity for eligible students focusing on international security subjects in any field to earn an honors certificate.

Students selected intern with a security-related organization, attend the program's honors college in Washington, D.C. in September, participate in a year-long core seminar on international security research, and produce an honors thesis with policy implications.

 

Joshua Alvarez

International Relations, Minor in Economics

Identity and Security: Turkey's Grand Strategy in the Middle East

 

Keshia Bonner

International Relations, Minor in Economics

United States Policy Towards Hamas and Hezbollah as State Actors

 

Stephen Craig

Political Science

Security Issues and Domestic Constraints on European Integration

 

Noura Elfarra

Political Science

How does Regime Change and Revolution Affect the Secret Police?

 

Alison Epstein

International Relations

British and American Intelligence Cooperation: the Iraq Inquiry and the New Face of the Special Relationship

 

Peter Hong

Political Science

Recalibrating and Resolving Deficiencies in Multinational Nuclear Fuel Cycle Initiatives

 

Mohammad Islam

Electrical Engineering, Minor in International Relations

Domestic Terrorism Prevention Strategies in the US and UK

 

Suraya Omar

Materials Science and Engineering

North Korea's Ambitions for a Light Water Reactor

 

Clay Ramel

Science, Technology & Society – Energy Engineering Concentration

National Security Dimensions of Developing an Energy Secure United States 

 

Nick Rosellini

International Relations, Minor in Economics & Modern Languages

The NATO Strategic Concept: Evolution of a Nuclear Posture 1957-2010

 

Ram Sachs

Earth Systems, Minor in Modern Languages

Environmental Dimensions of Security - Yemen and Violent Extremism

 

Jeffrey Sweet

Materials Science and Engineering

The Effect of Public Perceptions of Diseases such as HIV, H1N1, SARS, and Anthrax on the Effectiveness of Controlling Epidemics

 

Reagan Thompson

International Relations, Minor in Chinese

The Chinese Influence in Africa: Case Studies of Ghana and Angola


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