International Security

Speaker: Matthew Borawski, Research Fellow, International Security Program

The U.S. defense industrial base proved ill-equipped to adequately surge ammunition production for Ukraine's fight against Russia, with the Department of Defense reporting it will take nearly three years to replenish the two million 155mm artillery rounds provided to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the United States assumes increased conventional risk to its own warfighting capabilities. How did U.S. munitions manufacturing erode, was it avoidable, and what is needed to reach sufficient capacity in the future? The answer to these questions should inform the larger, more critical question: How can the United States ensure a munitions shortage does not occur if U.S. military forces are committed to large scale combat operations in the future? Answering the research question could help the United States maintain its conventional superiority in a future conflict and minimize readiness impacts when providing lethal assistance to our Allies and Partners, including Ukraine and Taiwan. These effects would also improve our integrated deterrence strategy since robust production capacity remains a deterrent. Instead, the United States appears to be in a continuous spin-up/ramp-down cycle for ammunition production, which creates the cyclical crisis and preparedness paradox.

Invitation Only. Coffee &Tea Provided.

Speaker: Sanne Verschuren, Assistant Professor of International Security, The Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University

Despite nearly seventy years of research and development in the United States, missile defense continues to face high, if not insurmountable, technological challenges, is financially burdensome, and has resulted in negative outcomes for strategic stability. Hence, the speaker asks: What explains the continued and widespread support for missile defense among U.S. policymakers? Contrary to arguments about American cultural features, public appeal, and organizational politics, she examines two conditions that can explain the persistence of missile defense: technological malleability and patterns of ignorance.

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

Speaker: David Kearn, Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

The book project seeks to explain the divergence of views of within the strategic community after the signing of the SALT I Accords and the subsequent shift in U.S. strategic nuclear policy away from "assured destruction" to "nuclear warfighting" throughout the 1970s and culminating in the Reagan administrations "prevailing strategy."

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

Speaker: Colleen Larkin, Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

President Jimmy Carter entered office committed to reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. foreign policy. He espoused the logic of mutually assured destruction and hoped for major arms control progress. Yet by the end of his presidency, he had embraced a competitive nuclear posture and accelerated the arms race. What explains this shift in Carter’s strategy? 

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

Speaker: Zachary Burdette, Research Fellow, International Security Program

Growing tensions with China have raised concerns about how the United States should manage the security implications of the U.S.-China trade relationship. The Trump administration repeatedly floated the idea of "decoupling" the two economies, and the Biden administration has instead called for "de-risking" the relationship. But what exactly decoupling and de-risking mean — and what constitutes the broader range of strategic options available — remains unclear.

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

Speaker: M. Patrick Hulme, Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program

In the context of the war powers, it is widely believed that the United States has a little constrained "imperial presidency". Congress avoids going "on the record" on matters of war and peace, and American presidents de facto have virtually unlimited discretion over use of military force decisions. Overlooked, however, is that with great power comes great responsibility. American combat deaths in less-than-successful military ventures expose presidents to political costs more easily levied on an executive that acts absent sufficient political cover from lawmakers. Taking account of these Loss Responsibility Costs, this seminar shows that the United States actually has an executive substantially constrained by Congress.

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

Speaker: Sean M. Lynn-Jones, Associate. International Security Program

How do articles in scholarly journals influence national security policy? What purposes do policy-relevant articles serve? Why should scholars in the social sciences write and publish policy-relevant articles on problems in national and international security? The experience of International Security offers lessons for how scholarly articles influence national security policy. International Security has published a higher proportion of policy-relevant articles than any other scholarly journal of international relations and foreign policy.

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

Speaker: Jeffrey A. Friedman, Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth College; 2023–2024: Visiting Professor of Government, Harvard University

This seminar will be based on Dr. Friedman's forthcoming book, The Commander-in-Chief Test: Public Opinion and the Politics of Image-Making in U.S. Foreign Policy (Cornell, 2023). The book explains how leaders can use foreign policy issues to shape their personal images. It argues, in particular, that presidents and presidential candidates can use hawkish foreign policies to craft valuable impressions of leadership strength. This dynamic can give leaders incentives to take foreign policy positions that are more hawkish than what voters actually want. 

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

Speaker: Michael Falcone, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This presentation will examine how today's model of superpowers as science-powers stemmed from highly contingent historical processes — a whole paradigm of global competition that emerged from a specific set of transatlantic personal networks and rivalries in the 1940s. It will also explore how the United States built its high-tech identity by siphoning other countries' intellectual property and state-science models, much as it charges China with doing today. Finally, it will deconstruct what scholars and policymakers alike really refer to when use the fuzzy concepts of nations being "ahead" or "behind" their technological rivals.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMpdOisqT4iGNB1X9jxHKY-xh-B5Vc-QmgP

Note New Date

Speaker: Katrina Ponti, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

As the United States emerged as an independent state after the Revolution, it faced the world with a State Department staffed by five clerks and initially led by an absentee Thomas Jefferson. How did the nation secure its place in global affairs with such a small bureaucracy? What was the diplomacy of a democracy supposed to look like?

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJErdeyrqzsuHd0PyAHYv3lQQoGGLh7Lm4P-