International Security

Speaker:  Leyla Tiglay, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

Rumors of an impending atomic experiment in Africa circulated in newspapers as early as 1956, four years before France conducted its first atomic test at the Reggane Testing Center in the Sahara in 1960. The late 1950s saw France's technological preparations, strained transatlantic relations due to complex nuclear alignments in Europe, and an unprecedented wave of anti-nuclear mobilization in decolonizing Africa. Using the French tests as a case study, this research aims to refine scholars and policymakers' understanding of how decolonization intrinsically influenced the formation of the current global nuclear landscape during this pivotal era in nuclear politics. 

Open to Harvard ID Holders Only: Admittance will be on a first come–first served basis. Coffee &Tea Provided.

Speaker: Daniel Sobelman, Research Fellow, International Security Program

Despite the vast military disparity between them, the Hamas-run Gaza Strip has in recent years become a significant factor in Israel's strategic environment. Drawing on a conceptual framework of asymmetrical coercive bargaining, this seminar will discuss different stages in the evolution of the conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip over the past two decades, but especially since Hamas's takeover in 2007.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIrd-mqqTMpH9dP2KfAGgAVLV3Ckzm9dLQv

Speaker: Joshua W. Busby, Professor, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin

Chair:  Dustin Tingley, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Climate Change. Professor of Government, Department of Government, Harvard University.

Joshua Busby will talk about his new book, States and Nature: The Effects of Climate Change on Security (Cambridge: 2022), and explore why climate change leads to negative security outcomes in some places and not others.

SPONSORED BY THE WEATHERHEAD RESEARCH CLUSTER ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Cosponsored by the International Security Program and the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability

Speaker: Nate Grau, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This seminar traces the evolution of France's Cold War counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine from the Second World War to France's 1954 defeat in Indochina. Grau reveals the underappreciated roles of civilian colonial reformers in this process, tracing a network of "Free French" policymakers circulating from Algeria to the French wars in Madagascar (1947–1948) and Indochina (1945–1954). In each of these revolutionary independence struggles, reformist plans to encourage economic growth and develop local state capacity became tools of counterinsurgent repression that only escalated inter-communal cycles of violence.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAud-qurjkpE9LULcdi7fEzEUmflmTOWvYC

Speaker: Joshua A. Schwartz, Grand Strategy, Security, & Statecraft Fellow, International Security Program

A fierce debate in international relations concerns the impact that past actions have on a state's future reputation and ability to deter adversaries. According to Hawkish Reputation Theory, states inevitably harm their reputation for resolve by backing down and enhance it by choosing to stand firm and engage in military conflict. This logic has been used to justify consequential and extremely costly military interventions like the Vietnam War. On the other hand, adherents of Skeptical Reputation Theory posit that a state's past actions—whether backing down or standing firm—do not matter much, if at all, for its future reputation and deterrence efficacy. The speaker advances a new theory of reputation—Dovish Reputation Theory—which challenges both of these existing theories. 

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwpdOiorjorHtIGt-AzN1bBLMAnHmibeCZs

Speaker: Nicole Grajewski, Research Fellow, International Security Program

Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine and embattlement with the West has signified the fundamental divergences in Moscow's approaches to international order. Rather than an aberration, present-day Russian foreign policy has been consistent with the persistent factors in Moscow's international thought. This presentation offers a framework for interpreting Russian foreign policy thinking and Moscow's approaches to the maintenance and transformation of international order.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAtdeqoqzsoG9FhW7bqUJ8vFPuWvEGbHjKB

Speaker: Daniel Sobelman,  Assistant Professor of International Relations, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

In contemporary Middle Eastern politics, the term "resistance" connotes a strong anti-Western, pro-Iranian, geo-political, and ideological orientation. But in addition to representing a quest for a new regional order, "resistance" has come to signify a coherent strategy of asymmetric intra-war deterrence. As a strategic approach, "resistance" has been pursued, among other places, in conflict areas such as Lebanon, the Gaza Strip, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran. This seminar will discuss the regional diffusion of "resistance" as an asymmetric strategy, a fact that has led to multiple attempts to employ it. Drawing on various case studies, the seminar will explain the within- and between-case variation in the different "resistance" actors' ability to constrain and deter their militarily superior adversaries.

Everyone is invited to join us via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUrcO6rrD0sH91wcgu0ZlEQ4u-QmaVuoau0 

Speaker: Barnaby Crowcroft, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

The historical debate over the British empire tends to be preoccupied with its role — whether for good or for ill — in spreading some form of "liberal modernity" throughout its territories. However, this has tended to neglect the much wider British practice of empire through alliance, treaty, and protection-style arrangements, which had little if any connection with liberal reform. This presentation will introduce this "other" British empire, discuss some of its primary locations, institutions, and motivating ideas and reflect upon its possible lessons for international and foreign policy.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcscOGgpj8rHNJuCVOSMvoqXABgfshFxBbn

Speaker: Annette Idler, Director, Global Security Programme, Pembroke College; Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford

50 years after U.S. President Nixon declared the War on Drugs, this "War" has failed to significantly reduce the scale or impact of illicit drug production and trafficking. Yet consensus on the way forward is missing from the international policy debate: some states have introduced national reforms; others continue to champion militarized approaches.  How can the international community tackle the complex causes and consequences that this war is intended to address? 

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcuf-CgqzgsHNcwtJ0Vz3hVVjKJWHqj8UdO 

Speaker: Marino Auffant, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

How did the 1970s Energy Crisis reorder the world? Until 1973, successive U.S. administrations had relied on Venezuela and Canada as the country's main energy partners and had actively restricted oil imports from the Middle East. However, with the promise of Saudi petrodollars inflows, the United States ended these longstanding partnerships and tied its economic fate to that of the Persian Gulf. This shift had long-lasting consequences: Not only did the United States make itself vulnerable to the Arab oil embargo, but this First Oil Shock gave rise to the world's current monetary architecture, entangled the United States geopolitically in the Persian Gulf, and destabilized the Middle East by spawning the Iranian and Iraqi nuclear programs.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYud-2oqjgtGNQql4LL49mfK3w1KHzWmm1b