(Open to all)

About the Event: The year 2022 has begun with Russian military forces massed near Ukraine's borders while Moscow makes demands for security guarantees from NATO and the United States.  Managing the steps to deter a Kremlin decision to attack Ukraine and the accompanying diplomacy pose an early foreign policy challenge for the new German government, which just took office in December.  Amb Rolf Nikel, Vice President of the German Council on Foreign Relations and a long-time German diplomat, will discuss how the crisis is viewed from Berlin and what steps the West should be taking in response.

About the Speaker: Amb Rolf Nikel is Vice President of the German Council on Foreign Relations.  In 2021, he also was Chairman of the German Expert Commission on the Place of Remembrance and Encounter with Poland, a memorial that will commemorate the suffering of the Polish people during World War II.  Previously, Amb Nikel served forty years in the German diplomatic service, including assignments as Ambassador to Poland (2014-20), Federal Commissioner for Arms Control and Disarmament (2011-14), Deputy Foreign and Security Policy Advisor to Chancellor Angela Merkel (2005-11) and head of the Political Department of the Embassy in Washington, DC (2002-05).  He also served at the German embassies in Paris, Nairobi and Moscow. 

About the Event: The Russian military has deployed and sustained major forces on or near Ukraine’s border, raising significant concerns in Washington and other NATO capitals that the Kremlin may be planning a new assault on its western neighbor.  Meanwhile, Moscow has demanded security guarantees for Russia and indicated that it otherwise will take unspecified “military-technical” measures.  Michael Kofman, Research Program Director in the Russia Studies Program at CNA, will discuss the Russian build-up, the military options it gives the Kremlin, and how a Russia-Ukraine conflict might play out.

About the Speaker: Michael Kofman serves as Research Program Director in the Russia Studies Program at CNA and as a Fellow at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC.  His research focuses on the Russia and the former Soviet Union, specializing in Russian armed forces, military thought, capabilities, and strategy. Previously, he served as a Program Manager and subject matter expert at National Defense University, advising senior military and government officials on issues in Russia and Eurasia.  Mr. Kofman is also a Senior Editor at War on the Rocks, where he regularly authors articles on strategy, the Russian military, Russian decision-making, and related foreign policy issues.  He runs a personal blog on the Russian armed forces at https://russianmilitaryanalysis.wordpress.com/.

Mr. Kofman has published numerous articles on the Russian armed forces, security issues in Russia/Eurasia, and analyses for the US government.  He holds an MA in International Security from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

About the Event: As large Russian military formations threaten Ukraine, the Kremlin demanded security guarantees and publicized draft U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia agreements encapsulating its desired provisions.  With discussions with Russian officials set for mid-January, are these draft agreements intended for rejection in order to provide another pretext for Russian military action against Ukraine, or do they represent an opening bid in a negotiation that might ultimately address Western, Russian and Ukrainian security concerns?  Jim Goldgeier, Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Rose Gottemoeller, Steven C. Házy Lecturer at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, will discuss the Russian draft agreements, whether they offer a basis for serious negotiation, and how the United States and NATO should respond. 

About the Speaker: James Goldgeier is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service at American University, where he served as Dean from 2011-17.  Previously, he was a professor at Cornell University and George Washington University.  He has held appointments or fellowships at the Library of Congress, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Transatlantic Academy at the German Marshall Fund, the Hoover Institution, and at the State Department and on the National Security Council Staff.  He is a senior adviser for the Bridging the Gap initiative and is co-editor of the Bridging the Gap book series at Oxford University Press.  He has authored or co-authored four books, and he currently serves as the chair of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee.

Rose Gottemoeller is the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before joining Stanford Gottemoeller was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, where she helped to drive forward NATO’s adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism.  Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. While Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in 2009 and 2010, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation.

About the Event: In this talk, Professor Shirin Sinnar will unpack the historical roots and contemporary implications of framing racist political violence as “hate crimes” or “terrorism.”  She will explain how the “hate crimes” and “terrorism” frames took hold in our politics, law, and culture, and how they supply two starkly different ways of conceptualizing and responding to white supremacist violence.  She argues that the current move to reframe white supremacist violence as terrorism comes with grave risks, and that ultimately, neither frame is consistent with aspirations for racial justice.  The response to white supremacist violence should begin with a critical reexamination of both frames.  This talk is based on Professor Sinnar’s forthcoming article in the California Law Review.

This event is part of the year-long initiative on “Ethics & Political Violence” jointly organized by the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. This event is hosted by CISAC and is co-sponsored by McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society.

About the Speaker: Shirin Sinnar joined the Stanford Law faculty in 2012. Her scholarship focuses on the legal treatment of political violence, the procedural dimensions of civil rights litigation, and the role of institutions in protecting individual rights and democratic values in the national security context.  In 2017, she was the co-recipient of the inaugural Mike Lewis Prize for National Security Law Scholarship for her article, The Lost Story of Iqbal.  In March 2021, she testified on anti-Asian hate violence before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. Prior to her appointment at Stanford, Sinnar worked as a civil rights attorney for the Asian Law Caucus and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and as a law clerk to the Honorable Warren Ferguson of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

About the Event: This event is a book talk based on my forthcoming book, Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare. Below is a brief summary of the book.

When Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram were first introduced to the public, their mission was simple: they were designed to help people become more connected to each other. Social media became a thriving digital space by giving its users the freedom to share whatever they wanted with their friends and followers. Unfortunately, these same digital tools are also easy to manipulate. As exemplified by Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, authoritarian states can exploit social media to interfere with democratic governance in open societies. 

Tyrants on Twitter is the first detailed analysis of how Chinese and Russian agents weaponize Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to subvert the liberal international order. In addition to examining the 2016 U.S. election, David L. Sloss explores Russia's use of foreign influence operations to threaten democracies in Europe, as well as China's use of social media and other digital tools to meddle in Western democracies and buttress autocratic rulers around the world. 

Sloss calls for cooperation among democratic governments to create a new transnational system for regulating social media to protect Western democracies from information warfare. Drawing on his professional experience as an arms control negotiator, he outlines a novel system of transnational governance that Western democracies can enforce by harmonizing their domestic regulations. And drawing on his academic expertise in constitutional law, he explains why that system—if implemented by legislation in the United States—would be constitutionally defensible, despite likely First Amendment objections. This book is essential reading in a time when disinformation campaigns threaten to undermine democracy.

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About the Speaker: David L. Sloss is the John A. and Elizabeth H. Sutro Professor of Law at Santa Clara University. He is the author of The Death of Treaty Supremacy: An Invisible Constitutional Change (Oxford Univ. Press, 2016) and Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare (Stanford Univ. Press, forthcoming 2022). He is the co-editor of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011) and sole editor of The Role of Domestic Courts in Treaty Enforcement: A Comparative Study (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009). He has also published several dozen book chapters and law review articles. His book on the death of treaty supremacy and his edited volume on international law in the U.S. Supreme Court both won prestigious book awards from the American Society of International Law. Professor Sloss is a member of the American Law Institute and a Counsellor to the American Society of International Law. His scholarship is informed by extensive government experience. Before entering academia, he spent nine years in the federal government, where he worked on U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations and nuclear proliferation issues.

(Open to all)

About the Event: Cyber operations have been traditionally considered covert actions, with incentives for both attacker and victim to remain silent and conceal the attack. Attribution is often a technically complex process that requires extensive work on the part of intelligence agencies. Although their work usually takes place ‘behind the scenes’, recent cases show intelligence agencies are playing an increasingly visible role in the public attribution processes.

With cyberattacks and intrusions becoming an integral component of both warfare and diplomacy, attribution – and its mechanisms and consequences – also play a growing role. Governments are increasingly required to balance expectations, credibility and transparency of high-stake attribution processes with the need to minimize exposure of their intelligence agencies and technological capabilities.

Combining original data on intelligence agencies’ involvement in public attribution cases and an analysis of the SolarWinds hack and the DNC intrusion as an illustrative case-studies, this research offers a broader understanding of the emerging changes in the role of intelligence agencies in the cyber domain, including its more public components. The implications of this research will serve scholars working on the intersection between cyber operations, intelligence and decision-making, and will also serve practitioners and decision-makers facing the need to decide how to respond after an offensive cyber operation took place.

About the Speaker: Dr. Gil Baram is a cybersecurity post-doctoral fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She received her Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University’s School of Political Science, Government and International Relations, and was the recipient of the Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship. Her postdoctoral research at CISAC focuses on national decision-making during cyber conflict.

Previously, Dr. Baram has held fellow positions with the Centre of Excellence for National Security at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and served as the Head of cyber and space research team at the Israeli think tank Yuval Ne'eman workshop for Science, Technology and Security.