Mershon Center Speaker Series: Recent Episodes
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
This conference is part of a series of national events examining the all-volunteer force and democracy in America. In April 2016, the Center for the Study of the U.S. Military at the University of Kansas in collaboration with the AVF Forum hosted the first symposium on the AVF. Military experts, scholars and former defense department personnel debated and discussed the key questions associated with the AVF. A second forum was held at the College of William and Mary in April 2017.
This conference is part of a series of national events examining the all-volunteer force and democracy in America. In April 2016, the Center for the Study of the U.S. Military at the University of Kansas in collaboration with the AVF Forum hosted the first symposium on the AVF. Military experts, scholars and former defense department personnel debated and discussed the key questions associated with the AVF. A second forum was held at the College of William and Mary in April 2017.
President Dwight Eisenhower developed a grand strategy for waging the Cold War that can best be described as “strategic patience.” Emphasizing military strength and diplomatic restraint, Eisenhower skillfully steered the nation through a number of dangerous Cold War crises.
During the 1960s and 1970s, a wide range of environmental activists began searching for new ways to understand and measure development. They believed that the pursuit of economic growth as a policy goal and the reliance on quantitative measurements such as Gross National Product (GNP) ignored the broader social and ecological impacts of this process.
Scientists have long thought that the bizarre and fantastic world of non-locality, indeterminacy, and wave/particle duality that physicists discovered in the early 20th century was confined, for all practical purposes, to the sub-atomic level. At the macroscopic, human level it’s been assumed that our familiar classical, Newtonian physics still rules, a belief duly reflected in the fundamental and almost entirely unquestioned categories of social scientific thought today: classical logic, classical probability theory, classical decision and game theory, and so on, rather than their axiomatically completely different quantum counterparts.
Scientists have long thought that the bizarre and fantastic world of non-locality, indeterminacy, and wave/particle duality that physicists discovered in the early 20th century was confined, for all practical purposes, to the sub-atomic level. At the macroscopic, human level it’s been assumed that our familiar classical, Newtonian physics still rules, a belief duly reflected in the fundamental and almost entirely unquestioned categories of social scientific thought today: classical logic, classical probability theory, classical decision and game theory, and so on, rather than their axiomatically completely different quantum counterparts.
Max Boot is a historian, best-selling author, and foreign-policy analyst who has been called one of the “world’s leading authorities on armed conflict” by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a national-security columnist for the Washington Post.
Considering the importance of East Asia and the seriousness of the emerging challenges in the area, it is imperative that scholars evaluate the administration’s initial steps and make recommendations for the future. Accordingly, this workshop will offer a one-year retrospective on US-East Asian relations, with presentations by a number of scholars who focus on the region and a subsequent question and answer session.
Sean Kay will present his new book which uses interviews with more than 60 American and international rock and roll performers, songwriters, producers, managers, and non-profit activists to show how rock and roll has been a platform of power advancing progress.
This conference is part of a series of national events examining the all-volunteer force and democracy in America. In April 2016, the Center for the Study of the U.S. Military at the University of Kansas in collaboration with the AVF Forum hosted the first symposium on the AVF. Military experts, scholars and former defense department personnel debated and discussed the key questions associated with the AVF. A second forum was held at the College of William and Mary in April 2017.
This conference is part of a series of national events examining the all-volunteer force and democracy in America. In April 2016, the Center for the Study of the U.S. Military at the University of Kansas in collaboration with the AVF Forum hosted the first symposium on the AVF. Military experts, scholars and former defense department personnel debated and discussed the key questions associated with the AVF. A second forum was held at the College of William and Mary in April 2017.
Scientists have long thought that the bizarre and fantastic world of non-locality, indeterminacy, and wave/particle duality that physicists discovered in the early 20th century was confined, for all practical purposes, to the sub-atomic level. At the macroscopic, human level it’s been assumed that our familiar classical, Newtonian physics still rules, a belief duly reflected in the fundamental and almost entirely unquestioned categories of social scientific thought today: classical logic, classical probability theory, classical decision and game theory, and so on, rather than their axiomatically completely different quantum counterparts.
Although "post-truth" became Oxford Dictionary's word of the year only in 2016, the concept is endemic to the history of Western thought, albeit typically existing in an underground and somewhat disreputable state. From the ancient Sophists to the "constructivist" turn across many disciplines in the 20th century, post-truth has always been with us, however much we wish to deny its presence. This talk, drawn from Fuller's new book on "post-truth," explains and -- to a large extent -- justifies the value of the post-truth condition, notwithstanding the political aberrations nowadays associated with it, not least Brexit and Trump.
From 1979 to 1989, Soviets occupied Afghanistan to prevent its client state form collapsing. Currently Russia is treating Syria as a client state in some similar ways. Afghanistan remains a struggling democracy, often falling into "failed state" category since that time. The Syrian state-perhaps even worse-is currently almost nonexistent in terms of functional centralized institutions.
What are the conditions under which public supports military intervention abroad? The research on use of force abroad has extensively focused on public opinion formation in United States. The underlying assumption was that in democratic regimes, leaders care about public opinion when making foreign policy decisions. This body of research explored factors such as public perception of foreign policy objectives or context of the use of force, individual predispositions with respect to isolationism vs. internationalism, threat and power perception, and the utility of use of force.
Scientists have long thought that the bizarre and fantastic world of non-locality, indeterminacy, and wave/particle duality that physicists discovered in the early 20th century was confined, for all practical purposes, to the sub-atomic level. At the macroscopic, human level it’s been assumed that our familiar classical, Newtonian physics still rules, a belief duly reflected in the fundamental and almost entirely unquestioned categories of social scientific thought today: classical logic, classical probability theory, classical decision and game theory, and so on, rather than their axiomatically completely different quantum counterparts.
While the modern literature on environmental security dates back to the late 1980s, the study of climate change and security began in the mid 2000s. After nearly fifteen years of study, what do we know about the links between climate change and security? Answering this question requires a conceptual understanding of what we mean by security, dis-aggregating the many processes affected by climate change, and the causal pathways between climate and security outcomes.
Scientists have long thought that the bizarre and fantastic world of non-locality, indeterminacy, and wave/particle duality that physicists discovered in the early 20th century was confined, for all practical purposes, to the sub-atomic level. At the macroscopic, human level it’s been assumed that our familiar classical, Newtonian physics still rules, a belief duly reflected in the fundamental and almost entirely unquestioned categories of social scientific thought today: classical logic, classical probability theory, classical decision and game theory, and so on, rather than their axiomatically completely different quantum counterparts.
The Mershon Center invites you to a lecture and discussion in honor of John Carlarne, his contributions to both the study and practice of peace making, and his contributions to the Peace Studies program at the Mershon Center and in central Ohio. We will listen to John’s TEDxOhioStateUniversity talk on his experiences in in the war in Bosnia and their implications for peace building and reconstruction. Then we will discuss John’s work and its impact on the central Ohio community.
Election observers are an important component of transatlantic democracy promotion efforts. Prior research has sought to understand the rise of election observers and their consequences for outcomes such as fraud, protest, and violence. These studies are important, but they overlook a significant individual-level dynamic that observers themselves care about: the effect that election observers have on local attitudes about elections. How does election observer identity affect the local credibility of elections? Are American and European observers regarded as legitimate by local audiences, or are local observers more effective? We argue that the activities of election observers can enhance the local credibility of elections, but only when locals perceive observers as being both capable of detecting fraud and unbiased in that pursuit. Importantly, not all observer groups are seen as equally capable and unbiased. Evidence from a large-scale, nationally-representative experiment in Tunisia supports the argument. A key finding is that observers from the Arab League — an organization criticized internationally for low-quality election observation—enhanced credibility the most as they were the observers perceived locally as both relatively capable and unbiased.
"The 2016 U.S. presidential election was marked by sharp contrasts between the major party candidates on domestic policies, as well as both presidential nominees seeking to create clear distinctions from President Obama’s foreign policies. The election also featured a marked departure from the normal way that questions of race and nationality were addressed, at the same time that populist movements in several European liberal democracies were stoking suspicion of foreign trade and immigration. The topics raised by the 2016 election are crucial for the academic understanding of elections. Did the marked foreign policy differences between the candidates affect vote choice? What role did racial and religious identity play in forging U.S. political coalitions? How important was a generalized resentment of governing elites that was amplified by social media? What about gender and domestic issues such as Obamacare? This conference brings together political science and communication scholars to consider these several forces that affected the election and its unpredicted outcome."
Every day the news is littered with stories about the implications of profound demographic shifts faced by the world's states and regions. From the end of China's one-child policy, to concern about an aging Europe and a quickly urbanizing Africa, our understanding of the broader dynamics at play is woefully underdeveloped. Academics seem reluctant to pursue a demographic line of inquiry for fear of not having a direct, causal story to tell. Policymakers, working under short time frames, often fail to appreciate the longer-term consequences of natural shifts or state-driven demographic engineering until it is too late. What remains is a series of conjectures driven by ideology, emotion and ignorance. Toft's research on the political dimensions of demographic dynamics in key states during critical historical periods aims to facilitate a better understanding of demographic politics — one that is both theoretically informed and policy relevant.
The study of “teen-combatants” is a growing subfield in the history of children at war, the history of war violence in general, and World War I in particular. Too young to be legally enlisted as conscripts in 1914-1918, teen combatants also felt that they were too old to remain on the home front. This lecture will explore the cross-European phenomenon of “teen-combatants” both as a rite of passage into male adulthood and as a transgression of wartime norms.
The judicial bodies of the World Trade Organization (WTO) operate virtually free from direct government influence. Yet they are also politically savvy and at times conform their rulings to the preferences of member states. Drawing from new data on government support for the WTO’s dispute settlement system, this talk demonstrates that dispute panels tend to signal less deference to governments' regulatory choices — asserting international authority over a vast range of policy areas — only when they enjoy relatively greater support among the membership as a whole. Panels are not purely political actors, however, in that the legal constraints of appellate case law moderate the influence of political pressures on dispute outcomes. In this way, panels seek to maximize support among their legal and their political audiences simultaneously, thereby balancing greater legalism and predictability within the trade regime against continued flexibility for governments.
"The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan convinced many policymakers and scholars that the United States should pull back in international affairs and that restraint should guide grand strategy. Paul D. Miller offers a tough-minded critique of this trending body of thought, arguing that U.S. security in fact depends on active, sustained support of the international liberal order. Miller blends academic rigor with his experiences as former director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the National Security Council to offer conservative internationalist prescriptions for U.S. grand strategy. Dismissing claims of overextended U.S. resources and perceived safety, Miller argues that nuclear autocracies, armed non-state actors, failed states, and the transnational jihadist movement still pose immense threats to American security and the international system. His analysis offers policy options for balancing against the nuclear autocracies, championing liberalism to maintain the balance of power in its favor, targeting militant non-state actors, investing in governance in weak and failed states, and strengthening homeland security. As Miller shows, these necessary steps will fortify the international liberal order that forms the outer perimeter of American security ― and aid U.S. efforts to craft a more just peace among nations. "
Arms are useful not only for deterrence or taking territory, but also because they influence the resolution of a set of disputed issues. It is shown that states can cooperate on the issues by limiting military competition, but only as far as a “war constraint” allows. Factors determining the tightness of the war constraint imply hypotheses about the international determinants of military effort and thus the costs of anarchy. The strategic logic differs from standard security dilemma arguments, in which the costs of anarchy are associated with conflict between status quo states that are uncertain about others’ territorial revisionism. Here, inefficiency arises because arming to deter lowers a state’s value for living with the status quo, which creates a security externality and a feedback loop. The model both synthesizes and revises a diverse range of theoretical arguments about the determinants of interstate cooperation and conflict.
"The 2016 U.S. presidential election was marked by sharp contrasts between the major party candidates on domestic policies, as well as both presidential nominees seeking to create clear distinctions from President Obama’s foreign policies. The election also featured a marked departure from the normal way that questions of race and nationality were addressed, at the same time that populist movements in several European liberal democracies were stoking suspicion of foreign trade and immigration. The topics raised by the 2016 election are crucial for the academic understanding of elections. Did the marked foreign policy differences between the candidates affect vote choice? What role did racial and religious identity play in forging U.S. political coalitions? How important was a generalized resentment of governing elites that was amplified by social media? What about gender and domestic issues such as Obamacare? This conference brings together political science and communication scholars to consider these several forces that affected the election and its unpredicted outcome."
"The 2016 U.S. presidential election was marked by sharp contrasts between the major party candidates on domestic policies, as well as both presidential nominees seeking to create clear distinctions from President Obama’s foreign policies. The election also featured a marked departure from the normal way that questions of race and nationality were addressed, at the same time that populist movements in several European liberal democracies were stoking suspicion of foreign trade and immigration. The topics raised by the 2016 election are crucial for the academic understanding of elections. Did the marked foreign policy differences between the candidates affect vote choice? What role did racial and religious identity play in forging U.S. political coalitions? How important was a generalized resentment of governing elites that was amplified by social media? What about gender and domestic issues such as Obamacare? This conference brings together political science and communication scholars to consider these several forces that affected the election and its unpredicted outcome."
"The 2016 U.S. presidential election was marked by sharp contrasts between the major party candidates on domestic policies, as well as both presidential nominees seeking to create clear distinctions from President Obama’s foreign policies. The election also featured a marked departure from the normal way that questions of race and nationality were addressed, at the same time that populist movements in several European liberal democracies were stoking suspicion of foreign trade and immigration. The topics raised by the 2016 election are crucial for the academic understanding of elections. Did the marked foreign policy differences between the candidates affect vote choice? What role did racial and religious identity play in forging U.S. political coalitions? How important was a generalized resentment of governing elites that was amplified by social media? What about gender and domestic issues such as Obamacare? This conference brings together political science and communication scholars to consider these several forces that affected the election and its unpredicted outcome."
Sean Kay will present his new book which uses interviews with more than 60 American and international rock and roll performers, songwriters, producers, managers, and non-profit activists to show how rock and roll has been a platform of power advancing progress. The talk will focus on how this popular music form has also become an ethic which has helped to advance freedom, equality, human rights, and peace via education and activism. This talk will feature the impact that artists have had on war and peace issues, highlighting interviews with artists like David Crosby and Graham Nash, Country Joe McDonald, and Serj Tankian among others. The event will also include live music.
Many Western analysts have been reticent to use the term civil war to describe conflict in Ukraine. The obvious harm is that the term reproduces Russian disinformatziya designed to distract from the violation of Article II of the UN Charter in the Crimean Peninsula. There are two non-obvious advantages to conceptualizing Ukraine as a civil war. First, the language draws attention to a range of bargains that might be acceptable to the great powers, facilitating the emergence of a shared language useful for diplomacy. Second, comparative examination of the processes of civil war settlement in Eurasia draws attention to reasons why indigenous Ukrainian social actors might find it in their interests to escalate the conflict as a strategy to draw Western assistance. France is ideally positioned to take the lead in conflict resolution.
In the last three months of 1918 the Western Allies finally defeated the Central Powers. Over the years, historians have been divided over the reasons for the Allied victory. In this lecture, Gary Sheffield argues that a combination of factors brought about the defeat of Germany and its allies. These include seapower; the greater resilience of the Allied home fronts; and the economic strengths and manpower of the British and French empires; the support of the United States, even before it formally became a belligerent; and, not least, the formidable military achievements of the armies of the British Empire.
The public’s ability to form attitudes and opinions that may guide decisions to use military force is among the most important duties of citizens of democratic nations. Yet most voters have virtually no direct exposure to warfare. This is especially true in the United States because of our geographic isolation, our physical security, and our reliance on an increasingly narrow cross-section of the public for military service. Consequently, Americans -- and most citizens of democracies -- receive essentially all of their information about war through the lens of the national media. Media norms and practices about the coverage of war have changed dramatically over the past century, ranging from the “yellow journalism” of the turn of the 20th century, through the “golden age” of television journalism of towering figures like Walter Cronkite, to the splintered and partisan media environment of the internet. In this conference we will explore the evolution of these media norms and practices as well as their impact on how the public thinks and feels about war. The conference will bring scholars from the fields of history, communications, geography, and political science together with journalists to talk about the coverage of warfare and its impact on the public.
The public’s ability to form attitudes and opinions that may guide decisions to use military force is among the most important duties of citizens of democratic nations. Yet most voters have virtually no direct exposure to warfare. This is especially true in the United States because of our geographic isolation, our physical security, and our reliance on an increasingly narrow cross-section of the public for military service. Consequently, Americans -- and most citizens of democracies -- receive essentially all of their information about war through the lens of the national media. Media norms and practices about the coverage of war have changed dramatically over the past century, ranging from the “yellow journalism” of the turn of the 20th century, through the “golden age” of television journalism of towering figures like Walter Cronkite, to the splintered and partisan media environment of the internet. In this conference we will explore the evolution of these media norms and practices as well as their impact on how the public thinks and feels about war. The conference will bring scholars from the fields of history, communications, geography, and political science together with journalists to talk about the coverage of warfare and its impact on the public.
For the past decade, the world has been in a modest but persistent recession of freedom and democracy. As more democracies in recent years have slipped back onto an authoritarian path--including Turkey, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Nicaragua--analysts have debated whether we might be a risk of a "reverse wave" of democratic breakdowns. But with the rise of right-wing, nativist, populist movements and candidates in Europe and the United States, a bigger concern has emerged: That liberal democracy (and perhaps democracy altogether) may be threatened in the core of the democratic system. This lecture will review the trends in freedom and democracy over the last decade and then explain why liberal democracy is now in danger in the one place where it was presumed to be stable: The West.
Democratic rule is maintained so long as all relevant actors in the political system comply with the institutional rules of the game – democratic institutions must be self-enforcing. We examine the role of transparency in supporting a democratic equilibrium. Transparency improves the functioning of elections: In transparent polities, elections more effectively resolve adverse selection problems between the public and their rulers. Transparency increases popular satisfaction with democracy and inhibits challenges to the democratic order. We provide a game-theoretic model, test these claims, and find they enjoy empirical support. Transparency is associated with a reduction in both the probability of democratic collapse and of the irregular removal of democratic leaders. Transparency stabilizes democratic rule.
The “Report from Iron Mountain,” was published in 1967 as an alleged leaked study by an unnamed U.S. government task force regarding the “possibility and desirability of peace” with the Soviet Union. Though a complete fabrication, the study as well as the public debate it generated marked a turning point in the public discourse on peace in the United States. This talk takes the report as a point of departure for an exploration of the interconnections between public peace advocacy and the politics of peace during the 1960s and early 1970s. It is part of a larger study of the national and transnational engagement with peace as an ideal as well as a practical political manifestation, from the level of grassroots activism to the highest echelons of power; and from the cultural-religious realm to the realm of international diplomacy.
International humanitarian law on prisoners of war and other issues has grown extensively over the last century and a half. I lay out a general argument about how the law can aid warring parties in limiting violence during wartime. The patterns of compliance and violations during the World Wars illustrate both the strengths and limitations of law to protect prisoners. During the First World War, all parties wanted to follow the war but disagreed about what it required. As a result, conduct deteriorated during the war. In the Second World War, some parties wanted to follow the law while others rejected it, resulting in great differences in conduct across theaters. Practical issues also limited the ability of the parties to control abuses of prisoners of war.
Produced by soldiers and veterans, the materials through which we seek to understand war carry war’s antagonisms; they are shaped by fighting, by specific battles, by old debts and lost arguments between commanders, invoiced in the lives of their soldiers. In a way, military historiography is too close to its own subject matter. Clarity demands an exacting reflexivity, of a kind evident in the life and work of Louis Allen, a Japanese-speaking British military intelligence officer who participated in the Burma campaign and wrote its standard account, Burma: The Longest War 1941-45. Between the first and second editions of that book, Allen became embroiled in historiographical disagreement with veterans of the Battle of Sangshak. He helps guide us through some of the ways in which history is a continuation of war by other means.
In both developed and developing states, challenges to the liberal order are converging on a single main competitor, populist nationalism, which is a response to the tension between two central elements of liberal modernity: free markets and mass participation in politics. When popular self-determination is expressed through the nation-state, mass public grievances against the “creative destruction” caused by free markets in goods, capital, and labor often take the form of populist nationalism.
Regimes deal with armed groups in remarkably diverse ways: in some contexts they wage total wars of annihilation, in others they cut live-and-let-live deals, and in yet others they closely ally with non-state actors. Varying topographies of armed order emerge and evolve across time and space. This project introduces an “armed politics” framework that can integrate the study of state building, civil war, and electoral violence into a unified analytical approach. It conceptualizes and measures different armed orders – limited cooperation, alliance, containment, and total war – and the pathways through which these orders end, in collapse or incorporation. The project then offers a new theory of how states evaluate armed groups, arguing that ideological perception and instrumental incentives combine to assign groups to six different political roles. These roles, ranging from mortal enemies to business partners to undesirable, determine the strategies that governments pursue and the orders they seek to construct. Political ideas about state and nation are central to political conflict. Comparative evidence from South and Southeast Asia illustrates how regimes perceive armed groups and the armed orders that emerge.
How are defense cooperation and economic cooperation related? Research into this important question has focused primarily on trade and militarized conflict or, more relevantly, trade and military alliances. Yet, these approaches suffer from apples to oranges'' comparisons. Militarized conflict and defense pacts are both intergovernmental phenomena, monopolized by public actors, while trade is largely the realm of private economic actors. Furthermore, existing research is limited to bilateral relations, ignoring the more complex ways in which economics and defense influence one another. This paper introduces two broad innovations. First, we shift attention from trade and conflict to defense cooperation agreements (DCAs) and bilateral loans. Importantly, both DCAs and loans reflect deliberate governmental policies, which facilitates direct comparisons between the two. Second, we conceptualize DCAs and loans ascoevolving multiplex networks.'' We model not only the simultaneous bilateral relationship between DCAs and loans, but also more complex higher-order influences, where ties to third parties affect governments' willingness to sign defense agreements with, or make loans to, one another. Our analysis reveals that (1) defense and economic cooperation mutually increase the other, (2) countries that are highly active creditors in the loan network make for unattractive defense partners, (3) countries that borrow from the same creditors are more likely to cooperate in defense, and (4) governments tend to make loans to the same debtors as their defense partners. In light of significant changes in the international landscape, such as the rise of China and India as new creditors, this study refines our understanding of how governments wield the dual tools of defense and financial policy.
This talk considers the case of the 1975 UN International Women’s Year Conference in Mexico City to discuss the ways that 1970s feminism and the explosion of women’s organizing around the world reoriented global policies around a host of issues ranging from population and food security to labor policies and environmental accords. These debates were refracted through 1970s geopolitics — détente, decolonization, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Sino-Soviet split — but also created vehicles through with feminist movements and women’s organizations shaped international policies and practices.
Where and when do we find the origins of today’s planetary crisis? In this lecture, Moore argues that rise of capitalism in the centuries after 1450 marked an environment-making revolution greater than any since the dawn of agriculture. Arguing that capitalism develops not only through economic process but by cultural and territorial conquests, Moore shows how the modern world was forged in a peculiar – and destructive – relation of work and energy. In this account, the work of human and extra-human natures is foregrounded, implicating the creation of “Nature” and “Humanity” – including the powerfully racialized and gendered expulsions of humans from “Humanity.” At its core, capitalism works through a strategy of Cheap Nature: one premised on the de-valuation of ‘women, nature, and colonies.’ The limits of this strategy are increasingly revealed in the ongoing exhaustion – and growing opposition to – of Cheap Nature in the early 21st century.
King believed that racial injustice and economic injustice have always been linked in America. Tommie Shelby takes up the race-class nexus by considering King’s analysis of ghetto poverty. Like Jim Crow segregation, ghetto conditions are a threat to dignity. But they are also incompatible with economic fairness and non-exploitative labor relations. Shelby discusses King’s practical proposals for ending poverty in the United States and considers four principles of economic justice (each found in King’s writings) that might justify these recommended remedies. He also takes up the question of what kind of egalitarian King was and whether he is best described as a socialist.
In this talk, Hurd introduces the central argument of her book, Beyond Religious Freedom. The book is a study of state-sponsored global efforts to promote religious freedom, religious engagement and the rights of religious minorities. It asks: What difference do these projects make for the well-being of the people whose lives they seek to shape, reform and redeem? Hurd develops a new vocabulary that distinguishes between "expert religion," "governed religion"” and "lived religion." Exploring the blurred boundaries and dizzying power dynamics between these fields, she draws attention to the distance between constructs of religious governance — such as religious freedom, religious outreach and interfaith dialogue — authorized by experts, states and other authorities, and the lived realities of the individuals and communities they aspire to govern. Beyond Religious Freedom challenges the assumption that the legalization of freedom of religion, engagement with faith communities, and protections for religious minorities are the keys to emancipating society from persecution and discrimination. Instead, these efforts generate social tensions by transforming religious difference into a matter of law. This leads to a politics defined by religious difference, favors forms of religion authorized by those in power, and excludes other ways of being and belonging.
Colin F. Camerer is the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Finance and Economics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., where he teaches cognitive psychology and economics. Camerer earned a bachelor's degree in quantitative studies from Johns Hopkins in 1977, and an MBA in finance (1979) and Ph.D. in decision theory (1981, at age 22) from University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Before coming to Caltech in 1994, Camerer worked at the Kellogg, Wharton, and University of Chicago business schools. He studies both behavioral and experimental economics.
How do American Jews envision their role in the world? Are they tribal — a people whose obligations extend solely to their own? Or are they prophetic — a light unto nations, working to repair the world? The Star and the Stripes is an original, provocative interpretation of the effects of these worldviews on the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews since the 19th century. Michael Barnett argues that it all begins with the political identity of American Jews. As Jews, they are committed to their people’s survival. As Americans, they identify with, and believe their survival depends on, the American principles of liberalism, religious freedom, and pluralism. This identity and search for inclusion form a political theology of prophetic Judaism that emphasizes the historic mission of Jews to help create a world of peace and justice. The political theology of prophetic Judaism accounts for two enduring features of the foreign policy beliefs of American Jews. They exhibit a cosmopolitan sensibility, advocating on behalf of human rights, humanitarianism, and international law and organizations. They also are suspicious of nationalism — including their own. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that American Jews are natural-born Jewish nationalists, Barnett charts a long history of ambivalence; this ambivalence connects their early rejection of Zionism with the current debate regarding their attachment to Israel. And, Barnett contends, this growing ambivalence also explains the rising popularity of humanitarian and social justice movements among American Jews. Rooted in the understanding of how history shapes a political community’s sense of the world, The Star and the Stripes is a bold reading of the past, present, and possible future foreign policies of American Jews.
After the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the Kura-Araks Basin became an international river basin with respect to the South Caucasus states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. Despite differences among these countries, they depend greatly on the Kura-Araks Basin. They proposed to jointly monitor basin's surface water quality and obtained funding to do so from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Science for Peace Programme. Thus, the South Caucasus River Monitoring Project was born in late 2002 and formally ended in December 2009. The project was a model of collaboration and cooperation in a region where such traits have at times been in short supply. Not only were valuable data collected, but collegial professional relationships also were forged among the participants. In the long run, this latter aspect will likely prove to be the most important product, not just for the South Caucasus, but for others as well. Campana will recount his experience as project director for the South Caucasus River Monitoring Project and conclude with some reflections – hydrologic and otherwise - on his January 2015 trip to Iran’s Zayandehrud River Basin.
Why do politicians in some democracies redistribute more than in others? I examine this question in the context of particularistic economic policies, which selectively assist small groups of citizens at the expense of many. Government-funded subsidies, for example, help people employed in the subsidized industry but do so at the expense of taxpayers. While the political motivations behind such policies are well understood, the cross-national variation is not. Why do elected leaders enact generous particularistic economic policies in some democracies but not others? Industrial subsidies, for example, vary significantly across democracies, despite international restrictions on their use in both WTO and the EU agreements. Professor Rickard argues that electoral institutions and economic geography work together to explain industrial subsidies are more generous in some countries than others. Electoral institutions generate incentives for politicians and parties to pursue certain (re-) election strategies. Geography determines which policies best accomplish the institutionally-generated electoral tactics. Sometimes particularistic economic policies are the most efficient option to aid (re-) election. In these cases, international economic agreements do little to curb subsidy spending.
For over a quarter century, there have been dire and continued predictions that East Asia is experiencing an arms race, that the regional security dilemma is intensifying, and that dangerous instability driven by China is just around the corner. Yet in reality, over the past twenty-five years, the proportion of the economy devoted to defense spending in East Asia has steadily declined. Is East Asia actually more peaceful than the conventional wisdom might suggest? If so, why? I argue that there is little evidence that East Asian states are engaged in an arms race, that few states are sending costly signals about their resolve to suffer the costs of war, that there is indeed almost no evidence that states in the region are preparing for war, and that the region is more peaceful, stable, and prosperous now than at anytime in the past century. If the region is more stable than popularly believed, then the U.S. pivot to East Asia should remain focused on diplomatic and economic initiatives and not get sidetracked with military issues.
Chinese foreign policy in 2016 reveals sharp contradictions between Beijing’s aspirations for a heightened role in global governance and repeated evidence of maladroit, alienating behavior toward states along its periphery. China’s frequent invocations of “win win” cooperation contrast sharply with highly reactive and needlessly alienating behavior toward immediate neighbors in Northeast and Southeast Asia, frequently attributing its actions to a malign American “hidden hand.” Without reflecting upon and addressing these unforced errors, China could stimulate longer-term damage to its regional interests, reinforcing the desire among many neighboring states for a reaffirmation and enhancement of the US security role. China is not wholly responsible for heightened political and military tensions along its periphery. But its inability to learn from its mistakes or reflect on some of the potential consequences highlight shortcomings in Chinese policy making that the leadership has thus far been unwilling to address. However, by examining some of the setbacks in Chinese diplomacy and the factors that explain them, the possibilities for more creative foreign policy can also be discerned. The pressing question is whether China will prove able to rectify its policy missteps that will prove detrimental to its longer term interests and to the prospects for peace and security along its periphery.
After near forty years of economic, technological and military modernization and increased Chinese defense spending, the rise of Chinese military capabilities has reached a critical stage for the U.S.-China power transition and the prospects for continued East Asia stability. The narrowing gap between U.S. and Chinese capabilities has elicited fundamental changes in U.S. regional strategy and the near-term trajectory in defense spending and relative capabilities suggests the likelihood of heightened security tension associated with great power transition dynamics. In addition, as the U.S.-China power transition evolves, the distinct geopolitical characteristics of the East Asian theater will have implications for the prospects for war and peace, These developing strategic trends have the potential to interact with destabilizing domestic political trends in both China and the United States, thus exacerbating great power conflict.
On January 16, 2016, China officially opened the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) for business, representing what might be a seismic shift in economic power from the United States to China and the culmination of what had been a diplomatic disaster for the United States. The AIIB creates a challenge to the U.S. dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), two venerable international financial institutions created at the end of the Second World War.
The World Bank lends money to developing countries to promote infrastructure and economic development, but these loans come with conditions called the Washington Consensus. The United States uses the Washington Consensus to promote its policies throughout the developing world. These policies are designed to promote the use of private markets, protect the environment, protect human and workers’ rights, and foster non-corruption in government, among other values. While the United States dominates both the World Bank and IMF, the United States also limits China to a minor role in these institutions, even though China has the world’s second largest economy.
Efforts to increase China’s role in the IMF were blocked by the United States, which has also excluded China from the negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a vast free trade agreement covering most of Asia. Faced with this shoddy treatment by the United States, China created the AIIB as an alternative bank in which China will play a dominant role in international lending to developing countries.
The AIIB represents not only a rival to the World Bank and IMF but a challenge to the way the United States has conducted international trade for the past seventy years. Unlike the United States, which imposes a set of western style policies as a condition for receiving loans from the World Bank, China believes in a doctrine of non-interference with the internal affairs of other countries. China’s doctrine of non-interference is a direct challenge to the United States’ doctrine of conditionality.
China’s stance led the United States to argue that the AIIB would place few restrictions on its loans and would not tie its loans to responsible policies concerning the environment, workers’ rights, and corruption. Not only did the United States refuse to join the AIIB, the United States also attempted to dissuade its closest allies from joining. Despite U.S. entreaties, all of the United States’ closest allies (except Japan) jointed the AIIB, even Britain, causing a political embarrassment for the United States.
The battle over the AIIB represents a challenge by China to the leading role of the United States in writing the rules for international trade. Loans by the AIIB will likely have fewer conditions and will promote the policies of the Chinese Communist Party. While the United States has been the underwriter of the world financial system for at least the past seven decades, the rise of the AIIB, could be the first indication that China will succeed in its quest to displace the United States as the final arbiter of the rules of international trade in the twenty first century.
How do states pursue nuclear weapons? The literature on nuclear proliferation has focused on the question of why states might pursue nuclear weapons, while more recent work examines how efficiently states achieve their nuclear ambitions. Yet the question of how states think about pursuing nuclear weapons, or their strategies of proliferation, has been ignored.
This paper explores the strategies of proliferation available to states — hedging, sprinting, sheltered pursuit, and hiding — and develops a theory for which strategies are likely to be chosen at a given time by a given state. I present evidence and codings on the universe of nuclear pursuers suggesting that disaggregating nuclear acquisition strategies is analytically useful.
Although a definitive test of the theory is beyond the scope of this paper, I provide evidence from the Indian case that establishes the plausibility of the theory. I conclude with implications for nonproliferation objectives and policies, suggesting why different strategies of proliferation matters to international security.
During the first half of the Cold War, the superpowers endeavored mightily to “win hearts and minds” abroad through what came to be called public diplomacy. Many of the target audiences were on the Cold War front-lines in Europe. However, other, larger ones resided in areas outside Europe then in the throes of decolonization.
Among the latter, for all the blood and drama of war, intervention, crisis, and revolution, the vast majority experienced the Cold War as public diplomacy; as, essentially, a media war for their allegiance rather than as a violent war for their lives. In these areas, superpower public diplomacy encountered a set of challenges around the issues of race, empire, poverty, and decolonization– all of which were in volatile flux, as they intersected with the dynamics of the Cold War, and with anti-imperialist currents long coursing.
The challenge to U.S. public diplomacy was acute. At a time when the image of the United States abroad was inseparable from Jim Crow and from Washington’s European-imperial alliances, the cresting of these issues put U.S. outreach unavoidably on the defensive.
Yet the greater consequence of these Cold War campaigns was not for U.S. foreign policy, but rather for postwar international history– when the non-European world responded to this media war by joining it. Newly independent voices in India, Egypt, Ghana, and elsewhere launched public-diplomacy campaigns of their own, making for a crowded field by the 1960s. In addition to offering a roundabout validation of the strategic importance of public diplomacy, this proliferation of voices articulated a different vision of the postwar world.
Reappropriating the geopolitical and intellectual space left between the poles of the superpower conflict, this global conversation formulated what Vijay Prashad calls the Third World project, around a nucleus of nonalignment, post-imperial economic development, and anti-colonial racial solidarity. The global-South response to the injection of the Cold War into their environs thereby helped to coalesce the “Third World” as a transnational imagined community on the postwar global landscape.
Although the United States had global trading interests before World War II, American foreign policy was largely provincial before 1937 – driven by protectionist and particularist impulses. President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Quarantine speech” in response to fascist threats marked the beginning of sea change in American thinking about global engagement and international security. The change emerged most immediately in the rise of security studies as an academic discipline and an influence on strategic planning. This presentation will trace that transformation and assess its implications for the next 70 years of American global engagement in the Cold War and post-Cold War worlds. The presentation will close with a discussion of how security studies as a discipline might influence the next generation of American thinkers, citizens, students, and policy-makers.
Will our warmer future also be more violent? In this lecture, Dagomar Degroot of Georgetown University surveys the cooler past to find some answers. First, he explains what we know about the "Little Ice Age," a climatic regime that lasted from 1450 to 1850, and was cooled by volcanic eruptions and low solar activity. Then, he argues that the weather of the Little Ice Age helped cause and decide wars within and between different societies. Finally, he shows why some societies were more vulnerable to the destabilizing influence of climate change than others, and offers lessons for the coming century.
Over the past 20 years, social scientists have displayed growing interest in the political economy of financial reform. Virtually all of these studies have focused on explaining policy changes resulting in the liberalization of the financial sector without addressing the extent to which the adopted financial reforms have actually been implemented.
In this presentation, I will assess the factors contributing to both de jure financial reform and the implementation of such liberalization. We find that de jure reform tends to be conducted by poorer countries and participants in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Standby Arrangement and its Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF).
We also find that the political economy of de jure reforms that are not implemented differs substantially from the political economy of de facto reforms that are implemented. Implementation is inhibited by economic crises, a democratic regime type, an advanced industrial economy, a large financial sector, and participation in the IMF’s PRGF. Implementation is promoted by economic recessions and involvement in an IMF Standby Arrangement. Our findings therefore confirm the importance of societal interests, political institutions, domestic economic conditions, and international institutions, each of which has been linked to financial reform in prior research. But these results break new ground by revealing important differences in how these factors influence policy reforms and the implementation of such reforms.
The symposium will address the complex issues related to extremist jihadi groups in the Middle East. The panelists will introduce the topic by providing detailed background information on these groups as well as the on area itself. They will then provide an up-to-date analysis on the current situation in these regions. It will conclude with a discussion of the implications for U.S. foreign policy followed by a Question and Answer session.
Turkey is going through an election storm. Since March 2014 the country is set to go for a fourth election in November 1, 2015. The parliamentary election in June 2015 resulted in a 10 percentage point loss for the ruling conservative pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-AKP), necessitating a minority or coalition government for the first time since 1999. Coalition negotiations failed, and the first popularly elected president of the country called for a "repeat" election.
Climate change poses major challenges to local communities throughout the world as to how best to adapt and innovate. This panel draws on a team of experts that have done community-level climate adaptation research in multiple ecological settings in North America, Latin America and Southeast Asia to identify methods that can work in terms of successful adaptation. Drawing on the community capitals framework for talking about community organization, the panel will address how natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial and built capital are affected by climate change and how different groups can mobilize these different resources to proactively respond. This includes looking at gender, income, age and other social differences in terms of both vulnerabilities and the resources needed for change and adaptation. The panel will discuss how different groups can respond collectively as a community to increase their overall repertoire of adaptions and become more resilient to various water security challenges.
Chinese government censorship of social media constitutes the largest selective suppression of human communication in recorded history. In three ways, we show, paradoxically, that this large system also leaves large footprints that reveal a great deal about itself and the intentions of the government. First is an observational study where we download all social media posts before the Chinese government can read and censor those they deem objectionable, and then detect from a network of computers all over the world which are censored.
Second, we conduct a large scale randomized experiment by creating accounts on numerous social media sites spread throughout the country, submitting different randomly assigned types of social media texts, and then detecting which types are censored. And finally, we supplement the current approach of conducting uncertain (and potentially unsafe) confidential interviews with insiders via participant observation by setting up our own social media site in China, contracting with Chinese firms to install the same censoring technologies as existing sites, and -- with direct access to their software, documentation, and even customer service help desk support -- reverse engineering how it all works.
What explains surges in migration? Dominant theories emphasize conditions of violence or poverty in sending countries. However, these factors alone are unable to explain sudden migration waves. Sharp spikes in migration, like the current refugee crisis in Europe or last summer’s flow of Central American children across the U.S. border, contrast with often long-standing problems of violence and poverty. Moreover, migrants from nonviolent regions are attracted to join these flows when violence spikes elsewhere.
This project seeks to advance our understanding of migration by explaining the onset of waves, as well as the informational or social dynamics that magnify and perpetuate a migration wave once it emerges, through a new survey of Syrian refugees and other migrants in Jordan, Turkey, and Greece.
The recent North Korean nuclear test has added a new element of tension to an already complex security landscape in Asia. South Korea, Japan, and the United States are already pushing for tough new sanctions against Pyongyang, and the South has resumed propaganda broadcasts targeting the North across the Demilitarized Zone -- a step that last summer almost led to clashes between the two Koreas.
China, meanwhile is under intense pressure from Washington to toughen its approach to Pyongyang, although China is as fearful of provoking instability in the North as it is of Kim Jong Un's moves to enhance his nuclear arsenal, and the differences over how to handle the North are exacerbating already serious tensions between Beijing and Washington.
For his part, Kim Jong Un shows no sign of moderating his behavior. And with the North Korean ruling party planning a rare congress in May -- the first one in 36 years -- where Kim will be looking to highlight his "achievements" to a domestic and international audience, the stage appears to be set for a winter and spring of growing tension and heightened danger of confrontation on the Korean peninsula. This talk will examine the current and future issues that threaten to further destabilize this critical region.
While scholars and policy makers alike have paid much attention to the implications of the rise of China, less attention has been paid to what past cases of rising great powers might lead us to expect in the case of China. Drawing from past cases of rising powers, including the rise of Bismarck's Germany and the United States, Edelstein presents an argument that explains both how Sino-American relations have gotten where they are today and how they are likely to evolve in the future.
In particular, the argument emphasizes the role that uncertainty about long-term Chinese intentions has played in fostering, not undermining, cooperation between the United States and China and how it is the resolution of that uncertainty, not developments in Chinese capabilities, that is likely to be crucial to the future of Sino-American relations.
For several decades, social science scholars have called for an issue-based approach to world politics. The central element of an issue-based approach is that policy makers are concerned with achieving their goals over specific issues, rather than simply pursuing power or security. Issues are what states choose to fight over or the subjects of diplomatic disagreements. Issues can involve competing views over the disposition of concrete or tangible stakes, such as control over a particular territory, maritime resources, the removal of a leader, or the implementation or termination of a specific policy (e.g., trade or immigration).
Issues may also involve competing views on intangible stakes, such as influence, prestige, or ideological, or philosophical questions (e.g. the treatment of an ethnic group in a neighboring country). The key insight from the issue approach is that states utilize different foreign policy strategies depending on the characteristics of the issues at stake and the salience of the contested issues.
In this talk, I describe the issue approach to world politics, describe how it differs from other major theories of interstate conflict, present new data on contentious issues from the Issue Correlates of War Project, and then explain how the issue approach confirms some conventional ideas about interstate conflict, but also identifies a series of counter-intuitive results that existing theories cannot fully explain.
Following the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in early 2014, the crisis in Ukraine persists as fighting between the army and pro-Russian separatist rebels continues. The European Union and United States have responded by announcing new sanctions against Russia and negotiating a ceasefire, which was violated just five days after its inception. The outcome of the conflict remains to be seen, though the issues at hand, including economic trade and arms control difficulties, are reminiscent of former conflicts between Russia and the West. This calls to question, should this recent collapse in relations be considered "a New Cold War"?
Paul Thomas Chamberlin is associate professor of history at the University of Kentucky. His first book, The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War World, was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. He is currently working on a history of the Cold War in the Third World under contract with HarperCollins. He earned his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University and has held fellowships at Yale University and Williams College.
"Richard Zeckhauser is the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. He pioneered the field of policy analysis and currently addresses an array of policy areas where uncertainty plays a major role.
"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free," reads the inscription in the lobby of CIA headquarters in Langley. But how does one produce truth, what constitutes knowing, and who, exactly, is Ye? These questions preoccupied early theorists of "central intelligence," an idea that gave rise to an agency. This talk examines the mid-century modernist ambition for a streamlined, rationalized flow of information that would remove the guesswork from foreign policy. The CIA is often seen as culminating an espionage tradition going back to Nathan Hale, but its intellectual origins have a closer kinship to Esperanto, IR theory, University Microfilms International, and other utopian schemes for comprehending a complex and violent world.
Murray provides a brief discussion about the Iran-Iraq War in which nearly 1 million Arabs, Kurds, and Iranians perished. The talk examines the course and consequences of the most costly war in the past 35 years.
Armed violence continues to present an urgent problem, as is seen notably in several ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. But research indicates that economic and political factors trump climatic ones in generating violence, and this is where countermeasures to violence should be focused. With regard to the social effects of climate change, other problems are probably more important than war. The main concern is simply uncertainty.
Mitchell examines the relationship between interstate river conflicts and intrastate violence such as riots, strikes, demonstrations, and civil wars in the Western Hemisphere, Western Europe, and the Middle East. Interstate disagreements over cross-border river basins increase the potential for intrastate conflict by creating unequal access to water resources, displacing populations due to damming and diversion projects, and increasing demands for freshwater as population growth occurs. Mitchell finds that states that experience more interstate conflicts over shared river basins are at a higher risk for multiple forms of intrastate conflict, raising the risk of internal conflict by as much as 800 percent. Water quantity issues tend to be the strongest factor increasing domestic conflict, while navigational, water quality, and irrigation issues have little influence on civil conflict. Armed conflicts and civil wars are more likely to occur in situations of ethnic dominance when countries also contest water issues with their riparian neighbors.
Mark Lawrence is associate professor of history and distinguished scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. His talk focuses on U.S. foreign policy during the Vietnam War and how the Vietnam War itself can be used as an analogy for later U.S. foreign policy initiatives in the developing world.
How can one understand a country's recognition, or lack thereof, of new borders drawn as a result of war? During the past two decades, scholars have critically examined the political role of space and territory and advanced our understanding of borders with dynamic concepts based on identities and discourses. The literature, however, remains divided. While some works on states' territorial conceptions suggest the primacy of international norms, others stress dynamics that are endemic to the domestic arena.
This event serves as an exploration of non-violent approaches to resolving international conflict. Panelists and guests will discuss the sources of military conflict and explore non-violent strategies designed to promote peace.
The climate change debate is often characterized by worst-case thinking, cost neglect, probability neglect, and avoidance of the notion of acceptable risk. Much of the climate change debate has focused on costly measures to reduce CO2 emissions. Climate adaptation, such as reducing vulnerability of infrastructure to extreme weather events, is much less costly, more effective in the short-term, and in many cases a sound investment even if climate projections turn out to be inaccurate. Mark Stewart, a visiting fellow at Mershon, and professor of civil engineering at University of Newcastle in Australia, is applying risk and cost-benefit considerations to climate adaptation strategies, and determining whether they are cost-effective or not.
Ravi Komarraju is Emeritus Fellow in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Andhra University in India. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. Komarraju's research focuses on Sino-Indian foreign policy, as well as domestic Indian policies. Ravi Komarraju will deliver a small guest lecture at the Mershon Center focusing on the recent election in India and its possible effects on Indian domestic and foreign policy.
In contrast to prevalent theories of "terrorism," Maney will present a contention-oriented approach to understanding political violence against civilians. To illustrate and to support this approach, the speaker will present findings from quantitative analyses of a multi-source database of civilian deaths taking place in Northern Ireland between 1966 and 2006. The talk will conclude with a discussion of the study’s implications for scholars and conflict transformation practitioners.
This presentation focuses upon the contribution of African colonies to the Free French war effort of General Charles de Gaulle. Jennings contends that in its early years, between 1940 and 1942, the heart of Free France was not located in London, as standard accounts would have us believe, but rather in what was then known as French Equatorial Africa and French Cameroon. Britain did not provide the movement with the majority of its soldiers, raw materials, national territory, nor even its legitimacy and sovereignty. Territorially, Free France spanned from the Libyan border down to the Congo River, and to the scattered tiny French territories of the South Pacific and India. In 1943, the vast federation of French West Africa rallied what was then being called "Fighting France." The latter now harnessed an immense territory ranging from the Mediterranean to the Congo. The harnessing was often coercive, and much of the continent saw a marked increase in forced labor and coerced recruitment under Free French rule.
Although the Tet Offensive represented a major turning point in the Vietnam War, much of North Vietnam’s decision making surrounding the offensive remains unclear. Based on recently declassified materials from Vietnam, this paper reveals how North Vietnamese domestic politics and foreign relations influenced Hanoi’s strategy deliberation for the 1968 offensive.
After September 11, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation greatly increased its efforts at, and changed its approach to, counter-terrorism. This talk explores the abrupt rise and continuing persistence of official fears of terrorism. Important in this is the effect of the "threat matrix" that coordinates and drives the quest to follow up 5000 almost entirely fruitless "threats" each day, a process some in the FBI call "ghost-chasing." In the process, an estimate is made about how many terrorist acts would have had to have been committed in the United States but for the intelligence and policing efforts of the Bureau to justify its counter-terrorism expenditures. Included is an examination of a set of case studies of all the apparent Islamist extremist plots since 9/11 to inflict damage in the United States. Also explored: the potential efficacy of policing efforts using simple, if forceful, warnings to putative terrorists rather implanting informants among them.
The contemporary CIA more closely resembles Hollywood's fictional portrayal than the institution envisioned by the Truman administration and Congress in 1947. During the initial Cold War years, a confluence of bureaucratic politics, individual initiatives, and strategic preferences rapidly and radically transformed the CIA's identity from an agency established to collect and analyze intelligence to one preoccupied with covert and paramilitary operations. This legacy of distorted purpose continues to plague the CIA today. With the onset of the Global War on Terror it has evolved into what journalists describe as a "Killing Machine." This talk by Richard H. Immerman traces this history and argues that the intelligence challenges of the 21st century demand that the CIA recommit itself to the "original intent" of its designers by rededicating itself to its core mission of analysis.
The Student Peace Awards were initiated in 2013 by the Peace Studies Society student organization at The Ohio State University as a means of recognizing significant contributions by students to peace and justice. The 2014 Student Peace Awards will be part of a half-day long celebratory conference that will include workshops on compassionate communication, peace through service, and a panel discussion on bridging the gap between theory and practice in the nonviolent defense of human rights.
Like the U.S.-Japan relationship, China’s Gordian knot with its only Northeast Asian ally, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, remains fundamentally stable even as it sits on the cusp of irreversible change. This presentation will investigate Beijing and Pyongyang’s mutual feelings of suppressed anger and ongoing dependency, beginning with a gloss on new documents from the PRC Foreign Ministry Archive focusing on overseas Chinese in North Korea and the peculiar regard of the Kim family (and the Korean Workers' Party) toward the Chinese Communist Party, allowing for a baseline of continuity in how we regard the relationship.
Aaron Friedberg examines the factors that appear to be impelling the United States and China towards a deepening geopolitical rivalry and the strategies that the two nations have devised for dealing with one another. He closes with a discussion of the most recent developments in Sino-American relations and an assessment of what may lie ahead.
In Fixing the Facts, Joshua Rovner explores the complex interaction between intelligence and policy and shines a spotlight on the problem of politicization. Major episodes in the history of American foreign policy have been closely tied to the manipulation of intelligence estimates. Rovner describes how the Johnson administration dealt with the intelligence community during the Vietnam War; how President Nixon and President Ford politicized estimates on the Soviet Union; and how pressure from the George W. Bush administration contributed to flawed intelligence on Iraq. He also compares the U.S. case with the British experience between 1998 and 2003, and demonstrates that high-profile government inquiries in both countries were fundamentally wrong about what happened before the war.
China's rapid development and Sino-American relations have a direct impact on the lives of just about everyone in the United States. CHINA Town Hall: Local Connections, National Reflections, is a national day of programming designed to provide Americans across the United States and beyond the opportunity to discuss these issues with leading experts. The seventh annual CHINA Town Hall will be held on October 28, 2013, at 7 p.m. EDT. The National Committee is pleased to present this program, which will feature a live webcast with Madeleine Albright, the 64th United States secretary of state, followed by local presentations from onsite China specialists addressing topics of particular interest to the community. Each program is co-sponsored by the National Committee and a local organization(s). CHINA Town Hall is generously underwritten by the Starr Foundation.
Douglas MacLean is a professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research and teaching are primarily in ethics, and much of it focuses on philosophical issues in public policy.When philosophers think about morality, they often take for granted that pain and suffering are intrinsically bad. That happiness and pleasure are good, that pain and suffering are bad, constitute starting points for much thinking and theorizing about morality. Immanuel Kant famously questioned the intrinsic or unconditional goodness of happiness, but the badness of pain and suffering has an even stronger claim to be an axiom of moral philosophy and ethical theories. The assumption is that unless they are necessary means to greater happiness or good, pain and suffering should be avoided and minimized. I will examine and challenge this common assumption. I will try to convince you that pain and suffering are woven into human life in ways that we cannot imagine eliminating without making our lives and much of what we value unrecognizable. If I can convince you of that, then I may also be able to convince you that thinking about morality should not begin with assumptions about what is intrinsically good or bad; rather, it should begin by exploring the ways that moral values are connected and never lose touch with our history and our practices, where both suffering and happiness have important roles to play.
This workshop presents the findings of the Comparative National Elections Project. This is the Mershon Center’s longest-running research project, now including over 40 countries in 5 continents. Introduction (Pedro Magalhaes) Global Patterns of Political Intermediation (Paul Beck) Support for Democracy (Richard Gunther and Paul Beck)
The History of CNEP(Richard Hamilton, Paul Beck and Richard Gunther) Intermediation and Electoral Turnout (Pedro Magalhães) Sociopolitical Values and Partisan Conflict (Alejandro Moreno) The Determinants of the Vote (Richard Gunther) Conclusions (Alejandro Moreno)
Pauline Jones-Luong is professor of political science and director of the Islamic studies program at University of Michigan. She is currently working on three large research projects: 1) the internationalization strategies of emerging country national oil companies (NOCs); 2) the social and political impact of the "Islamic revival" in Central Asia; and 3) the institutionalization of secularism as a form of political extremism in predominantly Muslim countries. Contrary to existing explanations that emphasize structural and economic changes at the international level, she argues that an NOC's capacity to internationalize is constrained by domestic politics; more specifically, the legacy of its mode of emergence, the timing of convergence between the government and NOC management regarding the merits of internationalization, and the sequencing of sectoral reforms vis-à-vis convergence.
Chair/Discussant: Corrine McConnaughy (Ohio State) "Political Rumors in the Time of Obama" Adam Berinsky (Massachusetts Institute of Technology" "Obama's War? Casualties in Afghanistan and the President's Bid for Reelection" Christopher Gelpi and Kristine Kay (Ohio State)
Chair/Discussant: Paul Beck (Ohio State) "Racial Attitude Effects on Presidential Voting by Whites, 2008-2012" Herb Weisberg (Ohio State) "Changing Levels of Racial Prejudice and Changing Impacts of Attitudes toward Blacks on Approval of Barack Obama's Job Performance and on Voting Intentions, 2008-2012" Josh Pasek (Univ. of Michigan); coauthors: Tobias Stark (Stanford), Jon Krosnick (Stanford), and Trevor Tompson (National Opinion Research Center) "Obama's Presidency, Racial Attitudes, and the 2012 Election" Michael Tesler (Brown Univ.)
"How Mormonism Affected Mitt; How Mitt Affected Mormonism" - David Campbell (Notre Dame); coauthors: John Green (Univ. of Akron) and J. Quin Monson (Brigham Young Univ.) "Racial Identity and the 2012 Presidential Election" Vincent Hutchings and Hakeem Jefferson (Univ. of Michigan) "Earning and Learning the Latino Vote in 2008 to 2012: How the Obama Campaign Tried, Refined, Learned, and Made Big Steps in Cross-Racial Mobilization to Latinos" Matt Barret0 (Univ. of Washington) and Loren Collingwood (Univ. of CA-Riverside)
Chair/Discussant: Herb Asher (Ohio State Univ.) "Placing 2012 in Context: The Nature and Sources of Polarization in Presidential Elections" William Jacoby (Michigan State) "Obama and the Nationalization of Electoral Politics in 2012" Gary Jacobson (Univ. of California - San Diego)
Anarchy is not an Ordering Principle, Anarchy Has No Effects: Rethinking the Elements of International Structures
Why the Korean War was the Most Important and Enduring Cold War Conflict: Contemporary Lessons
Entangled Bodies of Learning: Gender, Islam, and Secularism in the Modern Turkish Republic
Making Human Rights 'Sexy': Amnesty International's Campaign against Torture, 1968-1975
Everyday Modernity, Urban Space and Citizenship: Public Beaches in Early Republican Istanbul
Equitable Water Allocation, Eco-Cultural Restoration, and Social Justice in the Tigris-Euphrates Watershed
Sink the Sinks?! Public and Private Regulation of Carbon Sinks in the Climate Change Regime
April 18, 2012 Making States Sensible: Ritual, Symbols, and Feeling in Diplomatic Practice
Somalia at Crossroads:Foreign Intervention, Humanitarian Crisis,and Aspirations for Statehood
"Ontological Security and Locating Danger in Peace-Building: The Case of Northern Ireland"
Lesley Ferris, Mary Tarantino, Juliette Pattinson, Jenny Morgan, William Childs, Kate Vigurs, and Rita Kramer
Dan Gray, "Theatrical Scenographers and the War Effort" Matt Lewis, "3D Modeling, Mapping and Altering Spaces" Beth Kattelman, "Creating Illusion in the War Effort"
Janet Parrott, Video Interviews with MRD Foot (former SOE Historian), Noreen Riols (F-Section agent), and Tania Szabo (daughter of F-Section agent Violette Szabo)
Student Panel of Actors/ACCAD animators; Dramaturg, Assistant Director, "Performing History: Testimony, Memoir, Documentary, and Evidence"
Rita Kramer, "Stumbling Into History: Reflections on the Search for Historical Identity"
Lesley Ferris, Mary Tarantino, Vita Berenzina-Blackburn and Jeanine Thompson, Members of the creative team discuss devised work and verbatim
"Debating Islam around 1900 and 2010: Colonies in Africa, Muslims in Imperial Berlin, German Orientalists and Missionaries"
"Being Face-to-Face But Not Seeing Eye-to-Eye: Divergent Goals During Intergroup Interactions"
"Marketization, Social Protection, Emancipation: Toward a Neo-Polayian Conception of Capitalist Crisis"