CISAC will be canceling all public events and seminars until at least April 5th due to the ongoing developments associated with COVID-19.

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About this Event: In this new Brookings Marshall Paper, Michael O’Hanlon argues that now is the time for Western nations to negotiate a new security architecture for neutral countries in eastern Europe to stabilize the region and reduce the risks of war with Russia. He believes NATO expansion has gone far enough. The core concept of this new security architecture would be one of permanent neutrality. The countries in question collectively make a broken-up arc, from Europe’s far north to its south: Finland and Sweden; Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus; Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan; and finally Cyprus plus Serbia, as well as possibly several other Balkan states. Discussion on the new framework should begin within NATO, followed by deliberation with the neutral countries themselves, and then formal negotiations with Russia.

The new security architecture would require that Russia, like NATO, commit to help uphold the security of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and other states in the region. Russia would have to withdraw its troops from those countries in a verifiable manner; after that, corresponding sanctions on Russia would be lifted. The neutral countries would retain their rights to participate in multilateral security operations on a scale comparable to what has been the case in the past, including even those operations that might be led by NATO. They could think of and describe themselves as Western states (or anything else, for that matter). If the European Union and they so wished in the future, they could join the EU. They would have complete sovereignty and self-determination in every sense of the word. But NATO would decide not to invite them into the alliance as members. Ideally, these nations would endorse and promote this concept themselves as a more practical way to ensure their security than the current situation or any other plausible alternative.

Book Full Text

Speaker's Biography: Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow, and director of research, in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, where he specializes in U.S. defense strategy, the use of military force, and American national security policy. He co-directs the Security and Strategy Team, the Defense Industrial Base working group, and the Africa Security Initiative within the Foreign Policy program, as well. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia, Georgetown, and Syracuse universities, and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. O’Hanlon was also a member of the External Advisory Board at the Central Intelligence Agency from 2011-2012.

This event is co-sponsored with the Project on Russian Power and Purpose in the 21st Century

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone

Livestream: Please click here to join the livestream webinar via Zoom or log-in with webinar ID 982 0374 3158.

About the Event: Do more intensive efforts to deter an adversary produce more peace? NATO and Russia have over the past six years intensified mutual efforts to deter the other, including through employing a broader range of military and non-military tools. While the allure of deterrence as security policy is well established, so are the pitfalls of deterrence, including the security dilemmas they produce. Integrated deterrence strategies that employ not only nuclear, but also conventional and non-conventional tools of statecraft may produce even more severe security dilemmas. And yet, security policy actors craft deterrence strategies without paying much attention to assessing their effect. This talk will examine the current deterrent strategies of Russia and NATO, their effect on the policies of the other, and what deterrence policy, as distinct from defense policy, can and cannot do to enhance security and stability in Europe.

About the Speaker: Dr. Kristin Ven Bruusgaard is a Postdoctoral Fellow (Assistant Professor) in Political Science at the University of Oslo, where she is a part of the Oslo Nuclear Project. Previously, she was a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow and a Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University, a Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS), and a senior security policy analyst in the Norwegian Armed Forces. She holds a Ph.D in Defence Studies from King’s College London and an MA in Security Studies from Georgetown University. Her work appears in Security Dialogue, Survival, War on the Rocks, Texas National Security Review, and in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/i-Oaa0yiSjA

About this Event: In the last 50 years, the United States and Soviet Union/Russia have pursued arms control negotiations and signed numerous treaties in an effort to restrain and reduce the number and capabilities of their nuclear weapons. However, the recent collapse of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and the possible expiration of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in 2021 may signal the end to treaty-based limits. This raises questions about the future form and content of bilateral nuclear arms control. While near-term questions focus on whether the United States and Russia can salvage the benefits of these two treaties and, possibly, expand them to include more types of weapons and additional countries, longer-term questions are less specific. Does the past bilateral arms control process represent more than just an effort to negotiate legally binding treaties that limit or reduce nuclear weapons? Can the United States and Russia pursue agreements and cooperate in reducing weapons if they cannot conclude the process by signing formal agreements? Can they maintain stability, exhibit restraint, and reduce the risk of war if the era of arms control treaties has ended? Can this new era of arms control expand to address concerns about new types of weapons and the risks posed by a greater number of countries?

Speaker's Biography: Amy F. Woolf is a Specialist in Nuclear Weapons Policy in the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division of the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress.  She provides Congress with information and expert analysis on issues related to U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and arms control. She has authored many studies on these issues and has spoken often, outside Capitol Hill, about Congressional views on arms control and U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Ms. Woolf received a Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a BA in Political Science from Stanford University.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/HFZJj01vC3U

Abstract: By most accounts, the most important political space in the world's largest country is the four inches between Vladimir Putin’s ears. In a new book, Graeme Robertson and Sam Greene challenge the idea that Putin has shaped Russia in his own image, arguing instead that it his power flows from a particular relationship he has developed with his citizens -- and that his citizens have developed with one another. The result is a view of Russian politics as something much more fluid and fragile than we generally understand, a shifting landscape in which Putin's power -- and that of whoever succeeds him -- is continually negotiated and renegotiated between the Kremlin and the public, even in the confines of an increasingly authoritarian state. In this discussion, Greene and Robertson explore the social and political imperatives, challenges and dilemmas Putin and Russia face as he rounds out his fourth term and wonders about a fifth.

Speakers' Biography:

Sam Greene is reader in Russian politics and Director of the Russia Institute at King's College London. His research focuses on the relationships between citizens and the state in Russia, and in societies experiencing social, economic and political transformation more broadly. His first book, Moscow in Movement: Power and Opposition in Putin's Russia, was published by Stanford University Press in 2014. More recently, he is co-author with Graeme Robertson of Putin v the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia, published by Yale University Press in 2019. He also serves as Associate Fellow in the Russian and Eurasian Programme of the International Institute for Security Studies and a Visiting Professor at the UK Defence Academy.

Graeme Robertson is a Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Director of the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies. His work focuses on political protest and regime support in authoritarian regimes.

Graeme’s new book (with Samuel A. Greene) is Putin v. The People, published by Yale University Press in June 2019. The book presents a fresh new look at the social bases of support for and opposition to authoritarian rule in Russia. Graeme is also the author of Revolution and Reform in Ukraine, published by PONARS Eurasia (with Silviya Nitsova and Grigore Pop-Eleches) and The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes: Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia, published by Cambridge University Press. He has published articles in many academic journals including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics and the British Journal of Political Science, as well as contributing regularly to the media on Russia and Ukraine. Graeme currently serves as the Associate Editor for Comparative Politics for the American Journal of Political Science.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/5c8Un2Y9-sw

Abstract: Over the last fifteen years, the Russian government has invested significantly in improving Russia’s education and health care systems and in reversing the health and demographic catastrophes of the 1990s. This discussion will assess the extent to which those investments have paid off and the continued challenges Putin faces in aligning Russia’s human capital resources with his political, economic, and foreign policy ambitions. It will also examine the ways that health and social policy have been used as political tools – not always successfully – by the Putin regime.

Speaker Biography: Judy Twigg is a professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth University; senior associate (non-resident) with the Center for Strategic and International Studies; consultant for the evaluation units of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank; and adjunct professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Twigg’s work focuses on issues of health, human capital, and health systems reform in Eurasia, as well as evaluations of human development and public sector management assistance projects globally. She has been a consultant for John Snow, Inc., UNICEF, USAID, the Eurasia Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council. Twigg was a 2005 recipient of the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. She holds a B.S. in physics from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.A. in political science and Soviet studies from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Ph.D. in political science and security studies from MIT.

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/q5g6fuAVG2w

About this Event: For over a decade, Russian officials have a championed a model of economic growth that draws inspiration from East Asian developmental states. The state’s role in economic decision making has been accentuated, setting in motion ambitious industrial and stimulus policies, import substitution, and as international sanctions have mounted, fierce protectionism. This memo explains how this shift in doctrine has contributed to economic stagnation and falling consumer welfare. Weak institutions have enabled a bureaucratic system that privileges loyalty over merit and consequently unproductive, corruption-riddled spending. Politically motivated concerns about keeping wealth and power concentrated among a small group of elites threaten to generate widespread discontent over economic exclusion. 

This event is co-sponsored with the European Security Initiative

Speaker's Biography: David Szakonyi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University, an Academy Scholar at Harvard University, and a Research Fellow at Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. His research looks at political economy and corruption, with projects underway in Russia and the United States. His book Politics for Profit: Business, Elections, and Policymaking in Russia is forthcoming at Cambridge University Press, with other work published in the American Political Science Review, World Politics, and Journal of Politics, as well as popular publications such as Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, and Newsweek. He received his PhD in political science from Columbia University and his BA from the University of Virginia