Abstract: In fragile states, regimes must cultivate military forces strong enough to ward off external threats, but loyal enough to resist launching a coup. This requires that leader distinguish the loyal from the untrustworthy, a particularly challenging exercise in post-conflict settings with weak institutions. In this study, I explore how Congolese soldiers operating in North Kivu, the largest operational theater in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the epicenter of one of the most violent conflicts in Africa, solve this crucial task. I argue that leaders use non-payment as a form of trial and tribulation that reveals commitment by driving non-loyal soldiers to defect and loyal soldiers to weather challenging times. Non-payments creates a dual-pronged screening process because unpaid soldiers engage in unit-managed extortion and violence against civilians, which is used to both test and generate loyalty. To detail and assess this argument, I couple thick description based on 100 open-ended qualitative interviews with a fine-grained quantitative analysis of 350 members of the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This analysis provides a novel explanation for how leaders overcome classic screening dilemmas in ways that ultimately drives violence against civilians. 

His work has been supported by the United States Institute for Peace, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and Texas A&M Center for Conflict and Development, among others. Grant is a 2015-2016 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellow and Resident Fellow at the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation.

Abstract: Iran under Shah Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi undertook one of the most ambitious nuclear programs of any non-nuclear weapon state in the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the 1970s. Despite the Shah’s Cold War alliance with the United States, the emerging global nonproliferation order became a zone of contestation in U.S.-Iran relations. This paper is a condensed version of chapter two of this dissertation, covering U.S.-Iran nuclear cooperation agreements under the Nixon and Ford administrations, which explores the Shah's struggle to obtain Western nuclear technology, the ultimately unsuccessful U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations, and the United States' efforts to use these negotiations to redefine the Nonproliferation Treaty. 

About the Speaker: Farzan Sabet is Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and holds a Swiss National Science Foundation Doctoral Mobility Fellowship for the 2015-2016 academic year. He is a doctoral candidate in international history at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, researching the Iranian nuclear program under Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi and its evolving relationship with the global nonproliferation regime during the 1970s. His dissertation is based on multi-archival research in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Canada and combines diplomatic history with nonproliferation studies. He is affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP)

Abstract: Numerous polls show that U.S. public approval of Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has declined significantly since 1945. Scholars and pundits have suggested that this is a sign of the emergence of a “nuclear taboo.”  Such polls, however, do not force respondents to contemplate the tradeoff the U.S. government believed it faced in 1945: choosing between the use of nuclear weapons and a ground invasion of Japan to end the Pacific War. This paper reports on survey experiments recreating that kind of a tradeoff in a hypothetical war with Iran. In order to avoid a ground assault on Tehran that was predicted to kill 20,000 American soldiers, 60% of the U.S. public approved of an atomic attack on an Iranian city that would kill 100,000 civilians and 60% approved of an atomic attack that would kill 2,000,000 civilians. Sixty-seven percent preferred a conventional bombing attack that was estimated to kill 100,000 Iranian civilians. Moreover, the prospect of killing more noncombatants appeared to trigger beliefs in retribution and complicity, as a way of justifying the decisions. Our findings suggest that U.S. public support for the principle of noncombatant immunity is shallow. 

About the Speaker: Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as Project Chair for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Initiative on New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology, and War and as Senior Advisor for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Global Nuclear Future Initiative. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University. From 1984 to 1985, he served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Sagan has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

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 Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000) with Peter R. Lavoy and James L. Wirtz; the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009); and co-editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus, On the Global Nuclear Future (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010), with Steven E. Miller. Sagan’s recent publications include “A Call for Global Nuclear Disarmament” in Nature (July 2012); “Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons” with Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino in the American Political Science Review (February 2013); and, with Matthew Bunn, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences occasional paper, “A Worst Practices Guide to Insider Threats: Lessons from Past Mistakes” (2014).

Sagan was the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015 and the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award in 2013. 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. 

Abstract: From the Trent Affair of 1861, to Yasser Arafat’s speech at the United Nations in 1974, to Syrian opposition lobbying today, acts of insurgent diplomacy have defined some of the most memorable and important events in international politics. International diplomacy is a ubiquitous feature of insurgent politics because it is intrinsically linked to how groups pursue third-party political and military support. However, although war-time diplomacy is central to insurgent politics, scholars still cannot explain the substantial and puzzling variation in insurgent diplomatic strategies over time. The fact is that rebel groups can choose to engage with different types of actors, solicit different types of assistance, and have a diverse set of political-military objectives motivating their diplomatic strategies abroad. This article examines the varying grand strategies of insurgent diplomacy, and more specifically, when and why rebel groups focus their diplomatic attention on certain international actors over others. This framework is then applied to the international diplomacy of the Iraqi Kurdish liberation movement from 1958 to 1990.

About the Speaker: Morgan L. Kaplan is a CISAC Predoctoral Fellow for 2015-2016. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Kaplan’s dissertation examines the strategic use of international diplomacy by insurgent groups to solicit help from third-party actors. The primary empirical focus of his research is on the Iraqi Kurdish and Palestinian national movements from the 1960s to 1990s. In addition to his work on insurgent diplomacy, he also studies the politics of intra-insurgent competition and cooperation in multi-party civil wars.

His research has been supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Project on Middle East Political Science, and the Nicholson Center for British Studies, among others. He has conducted field work in Iraqi Kurdistan, Israel/Palestine, Jordan, and the United Kingdom. He holds a B.A. in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago. 

Abstract: Why do states acquire nuclear weapons? Existing theories of nuclear proliferation fail to account for the impact of bargaining on the process---i.e., credible agreements exist in which rival states make sufficient concessions to convince the potential rising state not to proliferate. I show the existence of that range of settlements and the robustness of the inefficiency puzzle and then provide two main explanations as to why states proliferate anyway. First, if the would-be proliferator expects to lose the ability to construct nuclear weapons in the future, the states face a commitment problem: the rival state would like to promise to continue providing concessions into the future but will renege once proliferation is no longer an option. And second, if the proliferator's rival faces some sort of uncertainty---whether regarding the potential proliferator's ability to go nuclear or regarding its previous proliferation activity---the optimal offer can entail positive probability of nuclear investment. However, the nonproliferation regime's mission to increase the cost of building often leads to Pareto improvement. Put differently, rising states sometimes benefit directly by making their nuclear options more costly.

About the Speaker: William Spaniel received a PhD in international relations, formal theory, and quantitative methodology from the University of Rochester in 2015. His research investigates the credibility of nuclear agreements in the absence of verifiable compliance. As a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC for 2015-2016, he is working on the potentially perverse effects of nuclear safeguards. His publications have appeared in International Studies Quarterly, International Interactions, and The Journal of Theoretical Politics.

Abstract: How do leaders win power struggles in Leninist regimes? The political science literature emphasizes the importance of institutions in such polities: institutionalization allegedly provides a mechanism for distributing patronage, prevents the military and secret police from playing a special role, and strictly delineates the group that selects the leadership. This project instead argues that the defining feature of one-party states is the lack of institutionalization. Power struggles are therefore determined by prestige and sociological ties, politicized militaries and secret police, and the manipulation of multiple decision-making bodies. I test the relative explanatory value of these two competing sets of hypotheses by examining the power struggles fought by Nikita Khrushchev, Deng Xiaoping, and Kim Ilsung. The historic failure to institutionalize leadership selection had a tragic legacy: its absence is crucial for understanding the origins of stagnation, the tragedy at Tiananmen Square in 1989, and the Kim family multi-generational personality cult. 

About the Speaker: Joseph Torigian is a Ph.D. student at MIT interested in Chinese, Russian, and North Korean elite politics and qualitative methods. His current research uses archival material to investigate how war affects political authority in authoritarian regimes. Before coming to MIT, Joseph worked at the Council on Foreign Relations and studied China's policies towards Central Asia as a Fulbright Scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai. He has conducted dissertation research at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and as a visiting scholar at the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at George Washington University. He received his BA in Political Science at the University of Michigan and speaks Chinese and Russian.

Abstract: The 1995 launch of a sounding rocket from Andoya in Norway allegedly misinterpreted as an attack in Russia and the so-called "Cuban Missile Crisis" in 1962 have one thing in common: they have both been referred to as "the closest we came to nuclear war." The 1962 crisis has mostly been studied from an American perspective due to the availability of documentary evidence and of the Kennedy tapes, until the 1990s when Cuba and the Soviet Union were given a voice, with the rest of the world still largely absent from the understanding of the event. The 1995 close call has been controversial and is remembered in conflicting ways: an alarmist and an untroubled one.

About the Speaker: Benoît Pelopidas is a CISAC affiliate and lecturer in International Relations at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS), University of Bristol. He was a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC for the 2011-2012 academic year.

He received his Ph. D. in political science from Sciences Po (Paris) and the University of Geneva in 2010 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in 2010-2011. Since 2005, he has been teaching international relations at Sciences Po (Paris), the University of Geneva and the Monterey Institute of International Studies (Graduate School of International Policy and Management).

In 2010, he won the "outstanding student essay prize" from the Doreen and Jim McElvany Nonproliferation Essay Competition and in 2011, he was awarded the "Best Graduate Paper 2010" from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association. Also in 2011, he won the SNIS Award 2010 for the Best Thesis in International Studies from the Swiss Network for International Studies. A book based on his dissertation is forthcoming in French by Sciences Po University Press.

He published When Empire Meets Nationalism: Power Politics in the US and Russia (with Didier Chaudet and Florent Parmentier; Ashgate, 2009) as well as articles in The Nonproliferation Review, the European Journal of Social Sciences, the Swiss Political Science Review, and the French Yearbook of International Relations. His research focuses on epistemic communities in international security, renunciation of nuclear weapons as a historical possibility, the uses of nuclear history and memory and French nuclear policies.

Abstract: In November 1954, French Algeria erupted in violence.  Confronted with a growing nationalist revolution, French authorities turned to not only to repression, but to a radical program of social reform aimed at capturing Algerian Muslims’ hearts and minds.  Why, beginning in the 1950s, did the French Army come to see its task not only as conventional combat, but also social engineering?  Historians often focus on the violence employed by the French Army during the war, but in so doing, they have missed both the full scope and the novelty of the French state’s strategy of “Pacification.”  Drawing on archival research and oral interviews, I show that French commanders did not simply seek to preserve colonial rule, but to radically remake Algerian society along French lines.  French civil and military leaders sought to discover an alternative model of decolonization –one capable of immunizing Algeria against subversive Cold War threats and guaranteeing its future as part of France.  In the process, they transformed the norms of modern warfare, and laid the foundations of the postcolonial relationships between Europe and the Muslim world.

About the Speaker: Terrence Peterson is a Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC for 2015-2016, where he is working on the development of French and international counterinsurgency theories during the period of decolonization.  He earned a PhD in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015.  Entitled “Counterinsurgent Bodies: Social Welfare and Psychological Warfare in French Algeria, 1956-1962,” his dissertation examines the French Army’s efforts to counter a nationalist revolution by combining population development projects and mass psychology techniques to ‘modernize’ Algerian Muslims and remake them in the image of Frenchmen.  Fulbright grantee to France for the year of 2012-2013, his current research focuses on the intersections between the Cold War, decolonization conflicts, and the development of counterinsurgency doctrines.  In addition to several articles under way, his article “The ‘Jewish Question’ and the ‘Italian Peril’: Vichy, Italy, and the Jews of Tunisia, 1940-1942” appeared in the Journal of Contemporary History in April 2015.

Please join us for a seminar on the assessment of student learning in higher education. We will hear from internationally renowned experts in the field of higher education assessment and present preliminary results from a pathbreaking new study comparing university learning between the U.S., Russia and China.

Lydia Liu

Director of Research, Higher Education
Educational Testing Service

Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia

Professor of Business Education
Johannes Gutenberg University

Prashant Loyalka

Center Fellow (FSI)

Assistant Professor, Teaching (FSE)

Stanford University

** Note room changed to CISAC Central**

Abstract:

We live at a time of the greatest progress amongst the global poor in human history. Never before have so many people in so many developing countries made so much progress in reducing poverty, improving health, increasing incomes, expanding health, reducing conflict, and encouraging democracy. The Great Surge tells the story of this unprecedented progress over the last two decades, why it happened, and what it may portend for the future.

“A brilliant new book” ~ Francis Fukuyama

“A stunning, wise, and deeply hopeful book that anyone concerned about global human development must read.”~ Larry Diamond

“Powerful, lucid, and revelatory” ~ George Soros

“A terrific book” ~ Nicholas Kristof

“With his typical care and detail, Steven Radelet describes humanity’s greatest hits over the last twenty years—never have we lived in a time when so many are doing so well” ~ Bono

Speaker Bio:

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