Stanford University

Military

Saeid Golkar

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Saeid Golkar is an Iranian political scientist who finished his Ph.D. at the Department of Political Science at Tehran University in June 2008, with a dissertation entitled "Power and Resistance, State and University in Post Revolutionary Iran". He is currently in residence at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. From 2004 to 2009, he was a lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at Azad University, in Iran, where he taught undergraduate courses on the political sociology of Iran and sociology of war and military forces. His research interests encompass politics of authoritarian regime, political sociology of Iran, political violence and democracy promotion in the Middle East. Recent publications include articles in the Journal of Middle East quarterly, Middle East brief.

Yuhwan Koh

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E317
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 213-2061 (650) 723-6530
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2010-2011 Visiting Scholar
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Yuhwan Koh is a professor of North Korean Studies and director of the Institute of North Korea, Dongguk University, Seoul, Korea. He is also a policy advisor for the Ministry of Unification,  and an active member of the Presidential Committee on Social Cohesion, Korea. His research interest is in North Korean issues, particularly in the institutionalization of the Military-First system, political changes and succession.  He received B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Political Science from Dongguk University.

Film: "Fog of War"

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The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara is a 2003 film about the life and times of former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. The film, directed by Errol Morris, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature (2003) and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature (2003).

Using archival footage, United States Cabinet conversation recordings, and an interview of the eighty-five-year-old Robert McNamara, The Fog of War depicts McNamara's life, from his birth during the First World War remembering the time American troops returned from Europe, to working as a WWII Whiz Kid military officer, to being the Ford Motor Company's president, to his being employed as Secretary of Defense and the Cuban Missile Crisis, to managing the American Vietnam War, as defense secretary for presidents Kennedy and Johnson — emphasizing the war's brutality under their regimes, and how he was hired as secretary of defense, despite limited military experience.

According to Morris, hearing McNamara raise all of these ethical issues and questions about a war which most of us see as morally unambiguous is very, very powerful. What Morris especially liked about the film was that it proved it was possible to make a movie about events – events that are removed from us by 40, 50, 60 years but which are very much about today. Many of the issues that McNamara is talking about in the movie are relevant to what's going on right now, and there's this surreal sense that nothing has changed.

» Watch the trailer.

Faculty talk back led by Scott Sagan (Co-Director of Center for International Security and Cooperation / Political Science, Stanford)

Annenberg Auditorium, 435 Lasuen Mall
Stanford University

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)

Who Should Fight? The Ethics of the Draft

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  • Should citizens be required to serve their country by fighting for it?
  • Do we think differently about the decision to go to war when only a small number of citizens will fight it?
  • Do volunteer armies and draft armies fight differently in combat?

This panel discussion focuses on the draft versus the volunteer army in the U.S. Our distinguished panelists examine "who should fight" in a democracy, focusing on the ethical dimension of a state's system of military service.

Panelists are:

David Kennedy (History, Emeritus, Stanford). Kennedy's scholarly focus is on the integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. A prolific historian, he won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in History for Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, which recounts the history of the United States in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II, and was a 1981 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in History for Over Here: The First World War and American Society, which uses the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system.

Eliot Cohen (Strategic Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies). Cohen's work focuses on diplomacy, international relations, irregular warfare, military history, military power and strategy, as well as strategic and security issues. He has served as Counselor of the U.S. Department of State, a member of the Policy Planning Staff of the Secretary of Defense, and a member of the Defense Policy Board. He also directed the U.S. Air Force's Gulf War Air Power Survey.

Jean Bethke Elshtain (Social and Political Ethics, Divinity School, The University of Chicago). Regularly named as one of America's foremost public intellectuals, Elshtain writes frequently for journals of civic opinion and lectures widely in the United States and abroad on themes of democracy, ethical dilemmas, religion and politics, and international relations. Elshtain has authored many books including Women and War; Democracy on Trial (a New York Times' notable book for 1995); and Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (named one of the best nonfiction books of 2003 by Publishers Weekly.

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Oak Lounge

David Kennedy History, Emeritus Speaker Stanford
Eliot Cohen Strategic Studies Speaker Johns Hopkins
Jean Bethke Elshtain Social and Political Ethics Speaker University of Chicago Divinity School

Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
0
The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

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Stanford Ethics & War Series (2010-2011)

Internet Voting: An Idea Whose Time Has NOT Come

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Like many states around the country, the District of Columbia Board of Elections decided to allow military and civilians living abroad to vote (i.e. return voted ballots) over the Internet this November. However, unlike other Internet voting enthusiasts, the Board planned to conduct a pilot test prior to the actual election ­ after which they intended to allow overseas voters to return their voted ballots over the Internet. The test began around the end of September; by early October we learned that a team from the Univ. of Michigan, led by Prof. Alex Halderman, had succeeded in breaking into the test system. The first sign of the break-in was the playing of the Michigan fight song, which began 15 seconds after the voter viewed the vote confirmation page. Further very serious revelations quickly followed, including that the Michigan team could rig every cast vote.

In addition to reviewing the remarkable outcome of the DC Internet pilot, we will discuss ways in which Internet voting differs from e-commerce, analyze the threats to Internet voting, review key studies and reports, describe several elections and pilots held over the Internet, and reflect on the future of Internet voting.

Barbara Simons, an expert on electronic voting, is on the Board of Advisors of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. She was a member of the National Workshop on Internet Voting that was convened at the request of President Clinton and produced a report on Internet Voting in 2001. She also participated on the Security Peer Review Group for the US Department of Defense's Internet voting project (SERVE) and co-authored the report that led to the cancellation of SERVE because of security concerns. Simons co-chaired the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) study of statewide databases of registered voters. She recently co-authored the League of Women Voters report on election auditing. Simons and Doug Jones are co-authoring a book on voting machines.

Simons was President of ACM, the nation's oldest and largest educational and scientific society for computing professionals.

Wallenberg Theater

Barbara Simons Former President Speaker Association for Computing Machinery
Seminars
Liberation Technology Seminar Series

How Should We Think About China?

Michael Armacost recently gave a talk, examining the “rise” of China, at a gathering of international affairs experts. “How should we think of China,” asked Armacost, saying, “Some portray Beijing as a looming military threat; some regard it as our most promising global partner; some expect it to compete fiercely with us for global economic leadership.” Armacost looked at China’s military, trade, economics, and education in relation to the United States and shared thoughts for preparing the United States to become more competitive for the future.

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Michael H. Armacost Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow Speaker
Lectures

U.S. Nuclear and Extended Deterrance: Considerations and Challenges

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Nuclear deterrence has been a central element of American security policy since the Cold War began. The deterrence concept is straight-forward: persuade a potential adversary that the risks and costs of his proposed action far outweigh any gains that he might hope to achieve. To make deterrence credible, the United States built up powerful strategic, theater and tactical nuclear forces that could threaten any potential aggressor with the catastrophic risks and costs of a nuclear retaliatory strike against his homeland.

During the Cold War, the primary focus of this deterrent was the Soviet Union. The Soviets built their own nuclear force targeting the United States, producing a situation of mutual deterrence, often referred to as “mutual assured destruction” or MAD. Many argue that MAD worked and kept the United States and Soviet Union from an all-out war—despite the intense political, economic and ideological competition between the two—as the horrific prospect of nuclear conflict gave both strong incentives to avoid conflict. Others note that it was too often a close thing: crises, such as those over Cuba and Berlin, brought the two countries perilously close to nuclear war.

As the United States developed a post-war alliance system, the question of extended deterrence—the ability of U.S. military forces, particularly nuclear forces, to deter attack on U.S. allies and thereby reassure them—received greater attention. Extending deterrence in a credible way proved a more complicated proposition than deterring direct attack. It was entirely credible to threaten the Soviet Union with the use of nuclear weapons in response to a Soviet attack on the United States. But how could the United States make credible the threat to use nuclear weapons against the Soviet homeland in response to a Soviet attack on U.S. allies in Europe? Or, as it was often put, how could an American president credibly persuade his Soviet counterpart that he was prepared to risk Chicago for Hamburg?

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Trends in the Strategic Triangle: U.S.-China-Taiwan Relations in the Coming Decade

The symposium will bring together scholars and current and former government officials from Taiwan, China, and US to take stock of cross-strait relations over the past decade. It will also assess the future development of cross-strait interactions from different angles including economic, political, and security perspectives.

Friday, May 28, 2010

8:00 am to 8:30 am

Registration & Reception
Continental Breakfast

8:30 am to 8:40 am

Introduction Larry Diamond, Director of CDDRL; Senior Fellow of Hoover Institution and FSI, Stanford University

8:40 am to 10:15 am

Session I: What Can We Learn from History: Looking Back on the Evolution of U.S.-China-Taiwan Relations

Chair: Hung-mao Tien, President of the Institute for National Policy Research, Taiwan

Speakers:

  • Steve Goldstein, Sophia Smith Professor of Government, Smith College, and Associate, Asia Center, Harvard University
  • Tom Christensen, Professor of Politics and International Affairs and Director of the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, Princeton University

  • Richard Bush, Director, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, and Senior Fellow, the Brookings Institute

10:15 am to 10:30 am

Break

10:30 am to 12:00 pm

Session II: Cross-Strait Economic and Social Ties: Current Trends, and What Will They Look Like in 2025

Chair: Yun-han Chu, Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica; Professor of Political Science, National Taiwan University

Speakers:

  • Cheng-shu Kao, Professor of Sociology, Tung-hai University, Taiwan
  • Charles Kao, Founder and Chairman, Commonwealth Publishing Group, Taiwan

Noon to 1:30 pm

Luncheon Address and Discussion—“Assessing the First Two Years of the Ma Ying-jeou Presidency: A Conversation with Dr. Su Chi,” former secretary-general of the National Security Council, Republic of China (Taiwan)

 

1:45 pm to 3:15 pm

Session III: The Changing Military Balance: Current Trends and Future Prospects

Chair: Larry Diamond, Director, CDDRL

Speakers:

  • Admiral (Ret.) Eric McVadon, Director, Asia-Pacific Studies, Institute of Foreign Policy Analysis, Cambridge MA, and Washington DC
  • Chong-Pin Lin, Professor of Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies, Tamkang University; Former Deputy Minister of Defense of ROC
  • Litai Xue, Research Associate, APARC, Stanford University

3:15 pm to 3:30 pm

Break

3:30 pm to 5:00 pm

Session IV: What kind of (Super) Power will China be in 2025? Political Scenarios and Implications for China’s Foreign Policy and Taiwan Policy

Chair: Tom Fingar, the Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow and Payne Distinguished Lecturer in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

Speakers:

  • Mike Lampton, Dean of Faculty, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and Professor of Chinese Studies, Johns Hopkins University
  • Suisheng Zhao, Professor and Executive Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver

 

Saturday, May 29, 2010

8:30 am to 9:00 am

Continental Breakfast

9:00 am to 10:40 am

Session V: How will Taiwan (Re)Define Itself Politically, Economically and Internationally by 2025

Chair: Jean Oi, William Haas Professor in Chinese Politics, and Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University

Speakers:

  • Yun-han Chu, Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of Political Science, Academia Sinica; Professor of Political Science, National Taiwan University; President of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange
  • Shelley Rigger, Brown Associate Professor of East Sian Politics, and coordinator of Asian Studies, Davidson College
  • Daniel Da-nien Liu, Research Fellow, Chung-hua Institution for Economic Research, Taiwan

  • Richard Bush, Director, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, and Senior Fellow, the Brookings Institute

10:40 am to 11:00 am

Break

11:00 am to 12:40 pm

Session VI: How will the U.S. Relate to China’s Rising Power and Taiwan’s Rising Vulnerability

Chair: Larry Diamond, Director, CDDRL

Speakers:

  • Tom Fingar, the Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow and Payne Distinguished Lecturer in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University
  • Su Chi, former secretary-general of the National Security Council, Republic of China (Taiwan)

12:40 pm to 1:45 pm

Lunch

1:45 pm to 3:15 pm

Roundtable Conclusion
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