Adam is an economist at UC Berkeley who studies consumer behavior in health insurance, retirement saving, and other social insurance programs. His research focuses on generating policy insights that improve economic security and welfare. 

About the event: For years, development agencies have expanded, perceived as complements to national security with support for their autonomous administration. Today, however, issues of humanitarian aid and development are seen as increasingly linked to concerns about national security and politics, while aid skepticism is growing. The fruits of this shift were made all too clear when, in July 2025, the United States under the second Donald Trump administration merged its Agency for International Development (USAID) into its Department of State, echoing a similar move unfolding in other western donor countries. The merger in the U.S. solidified a global trend following similar mergers in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Norway, Denmark and New Zealand. Indeed, around the world over the past thirty years, many of the world’s wealthiest countries have merged their aid and diplomacy agencies.  Although mergers are trending, are they helping countries advance their security goals? While the U.S. merger is still unfolding with many of its results yet-to-be seen, other global merger experiences offer stories that collectively indicate lessons to be learned about the rising trend to merge development and diplomacy. This presentation presents research from a review of the twenty-year history of global affairs mergers, drawing on interviews with leaders, civil servants, and activists from around the world. Considering rising Chinese development investments, ongoing fallout from COVID-19, crises in Syria, Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, climate change, and other global challenges, can development and diplomacy truly be integrated, or do these fields require distinction for their effective delivery? How might the U.S. consider the evidence from other aid-diplomacy mergers to inform its efforts to reform global affairs administration to address connected security and development challenges? This research explores the effects of recent mergers of aid and foreign policy agencies in the context of evolving global challenges and discusses the implications for foreign policy agendas moving forward.

About the speaker: Rachel A. George, PhD is a Lecturer in International Relations at Stanford University. She is also a Research Project Lead with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a Research Fellow at Georgetown’s Institute for Women, Peace, and Security. Previously, she served as Lecturing Fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and Visiting Assistant Professor at Duke Kunshan University. She was also Director for Education Content at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London.

Her work focuses on foreign policy, democracy, Middle East politics, international law, women, peace, and security, AI and other emerging technologies, and the connections between development and international security. Her research has been published in a range of outlets, including in Foreign Policy, Just Security, The Washington Quarterly, World Politics Review, The National Interest, CFR.org, Human Rights Review, and as chapters in The Arab Gulf States and the West: Perception and Misperception, Opportunities and Perils, and The Routledge History of Human Rights. She has also served as a contributor for BBC News, CNN and Arise America TV News. She has worked on projects with the UN Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate, Transparency International, The World Bank, Global Affairs Canada, Swedish International Development Agency, UN Development Program, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Packard Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among others.

She holds a BA in Politics from Princeton University, an MA in Middle East Studies from Harvard University, and PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: The Untold Story of China’s Nuclear Weapon Development and Testing offers the most comprehensive account of China’s nuclear weapons development from 1955 to 1996. Hui Zhang examines the purpose and technical specifics of each nuclear test and provides new details about China’s pursuit of warhead miniaturization. Based on a number of new Chinese-language sources that have not previously been analyzed, this book reveals that China has the ability to produce smaller, lighter warheads than some have suggested, as well as more options for missiles that could carry a larger number of warheads.

The book also provides a new framework for understanding China’s efforts to modernize its nuclear arsenal and offers clues about the future of China’s nuclear program. As the international community watches China’s rapid nuclear expansion with concern—and, in particular, as the United States considers whether it will be confronting two peer nuclear-armed adversaries (Russia and China) in the future—this book is a significant contribution to the policy debate over a potential new three-way nuclear arms race.

About the speaker: Hui Zhang is a Senior Research Associate at the Project on Managing the Atom in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Hui Zhang is leading a research initiative on China's nuclear policies for the Project on Managing the Atom in the Kennedy School of Government. His research includes verification techniques of nuclear arms control, the control of fissile material, nuclear terrorism, China's nuclear policy, nuclear safeguards and non-proliferation, and policy of nuclear fuel cycle and reprocessing.

Before coming to the Kennedy School in September 1999, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Princeton University from 1997-1999. Hui Zhang received his Ph.D. in nuclear physics in Beijing in 1996.

Dr. Zhang is the author of several technical reports and book chapters, and dozens of articles in academic journals and the print media including Science and Global Security, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of Atomic Scientist, Disarmament Diplomacy, Disarmament Forum, the Nonproliferation Review, The Washington Quarterly, Journal of Nuclear Materials Management, INESAP, and China Security. Dr. Zhang gives many oral presentations and talks in international conferences and organizations.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: At the end of the Cold War, donors sought to bolster environmental programs and exchanges to build confidence and trust among scientists and NGOs and to support civil society activity in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In the years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the United States and European Union channeled financial resources to civil society organizations to empower local civil society actors, which were seen as essential for consolidating democracy in many Eastern European countries and with integration into the European Union. This project revisits efforts during the Cold War and its aftermath to assess the political and environmental impact of linking scientific and environmental efforts to political cooperation and democracy building. In doing so, the project examines the political and environmental impact of these programs along with what lessons can be drawn for current efforts to leverage the environment and natural resources as a tool for peacebuilding.

About the speaker: Erika Weinthal is John O. Blackburn Distinguished Professor of Environmental Policy at Duke University. She is Chair of the Environmental Social Systems Division in the Nicholas School of the Environment and a member of the Bass Society of Fellows. She was a prior Chair of Duke’s Academic Council. Weinthal is the President of the Environmental Peacebuilding Association and an associate editor of its journal, Environment and Security. In 2017, she received the Women Peacebuilders for Water Award under the auspices of “Fondazione Milano per Expo 2015.”  Her most recent book is The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics (2023).

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: Communal disputes over local issues such as land use, cattle herding, and access to scarce resources are a leading cause of conflict across the world. In the coming decades, climate change, forced migration, and violent extremism will exacerbate such disputes in places that are ill equipped to handle them. Local Peace, International Builders examines the conditions under which international interventions mitigate communal violence. The book argues that civilian perceptions of impartiality, driven primarily by the legacies of colonialism, shape interveners’ ability to manage local disputes. Drawing on georeferenced data on the deployment of over 100,000 UN peacekeepers to fragile settings in the twenty-first century as well as a multimethod study of intervention in Mali – where widespread violence is managed by the international community – this book highlights a critical pathway through which interventions can maintain order in the international system.

About the speaker: William G. Nomikos is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara where he directs the Data-driven Analysis of Peace Project (DAPP) lab. His research looks at how domestic political considerations shape the conduct of international interventions in fragile settings. His first book, Local Peace, International Builders: How the UN Builds Peace from the Bottom Up, examines the conditions under which international actors successfully bring order, peace, and stability to fragile settings. His follow up work on this subject examines what peacekeepers can do to mitigate climate change-induced social conflict in weakly institutionalized settings.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: For almost four decades, the United States has tried to stop North Korea’s attempts to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Based on more than 300 interviews with officials in Washington, Seoul and Beijing, as well as his own encounters with North Korean government officials over two decades, Joel Wit’s new book, Flashpoint: The Inside Story of How America Failed to Disarm North Korea, tells the up until now untold story of how six American presidents failed to stop Pyongyang. The book uncovers the policy debates, diplomatic gambits, military planning and covert operations that shaped the struggle to halt North Korea’s Manhattan project. He points to Barack Obama and Donald Trump as the two presidents most responsible for that failure. As a result, North Korea’s nuclear armed missiles can now threaten American cities.

About the speaker: Joel S. Wit is a Distinguished Fellow at the Henry L. Stimson Center and former director of the 38North program.  As a State Department official, he helped negotiate the 1994 U.S.-DPRK Agreed Framework and was in charge of its implementation until he left government in 2002.  He held countless talks with North Korean officials over the next 15 years. Wit served as a Senior Fellow at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins from 2017-2018 and at the Henry L. Stimson Center until 2022. He is a co-author (with Robert Gallucci and Daniel Poneman) of Going Critical: The First North Korea Nuclear Crisis.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

About the event: A fundamental premise of the nuclear revolution theory (TNR) is the claim of assured destruction—the ability of a state to retaliate with a nuclear second-strike that leads to the destruction of the adversary’s sociopolitical-economic-industrial infrastructure, denying it the ability to survive as a viable modern nation-state. However, as we enter an era of renewed strategic great power competition, emerging technological advances have reanimated questions about the continued relevance of TNR. Can a state employing emerging technologies significantly undermine the assured destruction capabilities of its adversary? Using insights and techniques from Self-Organized Criticality theory, Dr. Sankaran analytically reexamines and models the requirements for assured destruction. He demonstrates that the networked structure of critical infrastructures continues to make advanced industrial states extremely vulnerable to assured destruction—at a fraction of Cold War arsenal requirements. Dr. Sankaran argues that advanced industrial nation-states remain vulnerable to assured destruction retaliatory strikes.

About the speaker: Jaganath “Jay” is an associate professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin and a non-resident fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. He works on problems at the intersection of international security and science & technology. Dr. Sankaran spent the first four years of his career as a defense scientist with the Indian Missile R&D establishment. Dr. Sankaran’s work in weapons design and development led to his interests in missile defenses, space weapons, nuclear weapons, military net assessment, and arms control.

The current focus of his research is the growing strategic and military competition between the major powers. In particular, Dr. Sankaran studies the impact of emerging technological advances on international politics, warfare, and nuclear weapons doctrine. His recent publications examine the impact of five technologies—small satellites, hypersonic weapons, machine learning, cyber weapons, and quantum sensing—on nuclear operations, strategic nuclear stability, and international security. His other recent publications have explored a multitude of national security issues, including the lessons for air power emerging from the Russia-Ukraine War, the politics behind the India-China border crises, and the influence of missile defenses on great power nuclear deterrence.

Dr. Sankaran has held fellowships at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, and the RAND Corporation. He has held visiting positions at the Congressional Budget Office’s National Security Division, the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS) at the U.S. Air University, Tsinghua University, and the National Institute for Defense Studies (Tokyo). Dr. Sankaran has served on study groups of the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) and the American Physical Society (APS) Panel on Public Affairs examining missile defenses and strategic stability. Dr. Sankaran’s first book, “Bombing to Provoke: Rockets, Missiles, and Drones as Instruments of Fear and Coercion,” was published by Oxford University Press. He has published in International Security, Contemporary Security Policy, Journal of Strategic Studies, Journal of East Asian Studies, Asian Security, Strategic Studies Quarterly, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, and other outlets. The RAND Corporation and the Stimson Center have also published his research.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

No filming or recording without express permission from speaker.

What are the patterns of Japan’s foreign policy behavior toward Taiwan in the post-Cold War era? It is generally taken for granted that the origin of Japan’s foreign policy to Taiwan has been derived from a unitary strategic calculation related to East Asian international politics and its maritime security in the Asia-Pacific region. This conventional interpretation is insufficient. In this seminar, by reviewing three case studies in 2006, 2019 and 2021 through the theoretical lens of neoclassical realism and empirical investigation based on primary and secondary Japanese-language sources, the speaker suggests that Japan’s Taiwan policy has been shaped by the combination of three factors: the degree of systemic clarity at the international level, the Japanese prime minister’s political survival and bureaucratic prudence over the Taiwan issue at the domestic level. Since 2021, Japan has adopted a subtle approach to Taiwan, driven more by a defensive and precautionary response to the heightened sense of crisis across the Taiwan Strait.

Speaker:

Mong Cheung is Professor of School of International Liberal Studies (SILS) at Waseda University, Japan. He received his PhD degree in international relations from Waseda University and M.Phil degree in political science from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). He is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University (2025). His research interests include contemporary Sino-Japanese relations, Japan’s foreign and security policy, foreign-domestic linkage in Chinese and Japanese foreign policy, misperception and reconciliation in China-Japan relations, and comparative strategic culture. He is the author of Political Survival and Yasukuni in Japan`s Relations with China (London: Routledge, 2017, Paperback, 2018). He has published widely in peer-reviewed international journals such as The Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs, East Asia Forum, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Contemporary East Asian Studies. He serves as a peer reviewer for several international academic journals such as International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Journal of Contemporary China, Journal of Contemporary East Asian Studies. He is also a columnist for the "Japan Outlook" section of Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper.

Moderator:

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Deputy Director of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, where he is also Director of the Japan Program. Tsutsui’s research interests lie in political/comparative sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights, and Japanese society. His most recent publication, Human Rights and the State: The Power of Ideas and the Realities of International Politics (Iwanami Shinsho, 2022), was awarded the 2022 Ishibashi Tanzan Award and the 44th Suntory Prize for Arts and Sciences.