Report Published by Students Participating in The Europe Center's Undergraduate Internship Program

Each summer, The Europe Center sponsors Stanford undergraduate students to complete internships with partner organizations in Europe. For summer 2016, TEC and the European Security Initiative sponsored two internships with the International Centre for Defence and Security (ICDS), a think-tank in Tallinn, Estonia, devoted to developing cutting-edge knowledge and analysis of international security and defense issues. During their time at ICDS, Caitlyn Littlepage and Sarah Manney worked on a project examining the implications of the U.S. presidential election for Transatlantic security relations. Based on this research, Caitlyn and Sarah wrote a policy analysis paper that was subsequently published by ICDS.

Executive Summary
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, a maximalist both in political background and campaign rhetoric, is likely to maintain the status quo of U.S. NATO assistance and possibly increase allied presence along NATO’s eastern flank to deter Russian aggression. Surrounded by a team of hawkish foreign policy advisors and partnered with a traditionally pro-NATO Congress, the former Secretary of State should face few obstacles to advancing deterrence and responding decisively in the event of a crisis. In contrast, Republican nominee Donald Trump vacillates between two dangerous extremes: hair-trigger impulsivity and sycophantic flattery of Vladimir Putin. The former is an unfortunate personality quirk with the potential to spark international incidents without warning while the latter is actively encouraged by Trump’s entourage. The candidate and his core team of advisors share deep economic and personal interests in Russia and appear to prioritize the country over established U.S. allies. While Clinton presents NATO’s borders as inviolable, Trump indicates that anything is negotiable, putting the onus on NATO members to prove their worth rather than on Russia to justify its actions. The Kremlin appears to have received the message. When discussing the candidates, the Russian media primarily praises Trump and derides Clinton for their respective security policies likely because Trump’s enables Putin to more easily carry out his aggressive foreign policy objectives while they believe Clinton’s are more likely to tie their hands. For NATO members along the eastern border with Russia, a future with President Clinton is the preferable option. However, as the race is yet to be decided both these states and NATO as an entity must plan for the expected security implications of President Trump.

The full report is available for download on the ICDS website.

For more information about The Europe Center's Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe, please visit our website.

Featured Faculty Research: Anna Grzymala-Busse

We would like to introduce you to some of The Europe Center’s faculty affiliates and the projects on which they are working. Our featured faculty member this month is Anna Grzymala-Busse, who is a Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Anna earned her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 2000 and joined the faculty at Stanford University this year. In her research, Anna is interested in political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics. Her most recent book, Nations under God: How Churches Use Moral Authority to Influence Policy, Anna examines the conditions under which churches are able to exert influence on public policy. Using the cases of Ireland and Italy, Poland and Croatia, and the United States and Canada, she demonstrates that neither religiosity nor public demand for church influence in the state nor any of several alternative factors can explain why the church exerts strong influence on public policy in Ireland, Poland, and the United States, but not in Italy, Croatia, and Canada. Rather, she finds that churches are able to influence policy when they have direct institutional access. Gaining institutional access, however, requires that national and religious identities are intertwined such that the church is identified with the national interest. Such fusion between national and religious identities occurred where the church came to the defense of the nation, as the Catholic Church did in both Ireland and Poland. Anna won the 2016 Best Book Award for the European Politics and Society Section of the American Political Science Association for Nations under God. Anna is currently working on a project entitled “The Dictator's Curse? Authoritarian Party Collapse and the Nation State,” for which she received a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.

Grzymala-Busse, Anna. 2015. Nations under God: How Churches Use Moral Authority to Influence Policy. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.

Featured Graduate Student Research: Lindsay Der

We would like to introduce you to some of the graduate students that we support and the projects on which they are working. Our featured graduate student this month is Lindsay Der (Anthropology). Lindsay earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology (Archaeology track) at Stanford University in summer 2016. She is currently working as a Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia and is a Researcher with the Çatalhöyük Research Project.

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For more information about The Europe Center's Graduate Student Grant program, please visit our website.

Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer, a former CISAC Stanton nuclear junior faculty fellow and Stanford MacArthur Visiting Scholar, wrote a Washington Post op-ed about why some dictators are more likely to get nuclear weapons. Below are the opening paragraphs:

Many dictators have sought nuclear weapons; some succeeded, some came close, others failed spectacularly. A careful examination of two such regimes illuminates why. Today, many dictatorships are becoming personalist, in which leaders dominate decision-making at the expense of formal state institutions. According to recent research, personalist dictators are more likely to pursue nuclear weapons and are less likely to get them, but they can become increasingly dangerous and unrestrained if they succeed.

In my recent book, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya failed to build nuclear weapons, I revisit the unsuccessful attempts in those two countries. Libya failed badly at its nuclear-weapons program, whereas Iraq came dangerously close to a major breakthrough when its program was interrupted by the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire.

Using documents and interviews with scientists, doctors, journalists, academics, military officers and ex-officials, I reconstruct the history of both countries’ nuclear programs. The stories that emerge challenge key assumptions in the conventional wisdom about these projects and regimes. At the same time, this account brings important differences between the two cases to light.

Personalist leaders weaken their states to concentrate power in their own hands, but they do so in different ways. Saddam Hussein fragmented Iraq’s state apparatus, whereas Moammar Gaddafi dismantled Libya’s state institutions. Such strategies weaken states in distinct ways, which affect their capacity to build nuclear weapons. Gaddafi’s efforts to create a “stateless state” were particularly damaging. Personalist dictators use different strategies to manage their nuclear programs. But they share some common challenges, as weak state institutions make micromanagement very costly and oversight difficult. Read more.

Braut-Hegghammer is now an associate professor of political science at the University of Oslo.

CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama participated the screening of the Children of Men, the 2006 film adaptation of PD James’ dystopian novel, at the event organized by the Future Tense - “My Favorite Movie” series, in which thought leaders host screenings and discussions on their favorite movies with science and technology themes. Children of Men is set in the year 2027, 18 years after the last child was born, due to worldwide infertility. In the video at the top of this post, filmed Sept. 21, Fukuyama expanded on the thoughts he shared at the screening. Watch here. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Different approaches

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

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

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

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

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

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

Syrian consequences

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

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

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

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

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

Policy implications

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

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

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

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

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