International Security

Speaker: Ambassador Zamir Akram, Author, The Security Imperative: Pakistan's Nuclear Deterrence & Diplomacy

Ambassador Akram will discuss his new book, which is an in-depth study of the evolution of Pakistan's nuclear program until it became a reality despite all the international pressures against it and the challenges along the way.

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

Speaker: Anatol Klass, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

Throughout the period when the People's Republic of China (PRC) was formally excluded from the United Nations (1949-1971), the India was a constant advocate for unrecognized Chinese government at the international organization, even as relations between the two countries deteriorated in the run-up to and aftermath of the 1962 border war. Based on sources from the PRC's Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives, this presentation explores the nature of PRC-India cooperation over United Nations affairs during the Cold War including the tensions caused by the two nations' competing conceptions of how the decolonizing world should fit into the international system and who should be at the helm. Despite these disagreements, the Cold War UN provided a setting where geopolitical tensions and divergent post-colonial visions could be sublimated into meaningful international cooperation.

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

Speaker: Apekshya Prasai, Gender & Security Predoctoral Fellow, International Security Program

When organizing insurgency, all rebels face gendered choices. Insurgents operate in, recruit from, and depend on communities where half the population is female.  This seminar seeks to describe and explain the differentially gendered approaches insurgents adopt to organizing violence.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwqcemrpjsvG9GQejHVwaRw0GWln_pX8n0g

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: 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: Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia, Council on Foreign Relations

What are rising powers? Do they challenge the international order? Why do some countries, but not others, become rising powers? In Why Nations Rise, Manjari Chatterjee Miller argues that some countries rise not just because they develop the military and economic power to do so, but because they develop particular narratives about how to become a great power in the style of the great power of the great power of the day. She uses historical cases to understand the divergent paths of contemporary China and India.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:  https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcqd-2tpzgoHdZeCSyFAH44oU1oVMx03Xyo 

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

Despite the substantive importance of nuclear weapons to international peace and security, there is significant disagreement among scholars about whether the normative constraints on their use are strong or weak. This seminar presents a theory of in-group bias and tests it using three survey experiments; two in the United States and one in India. Promisingly and in accordance with theoretical expectations, the results show that the public is significantly less likely to approve of a nuclear attack when it is conducted by a non-allied government compared to their own domestic government or that of a close ally.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwuceGrrj4uH93VW_G-E4f9u12dPtpVZBci

Speakers: Laurel Miller, Director, Asia Program, International Crisis Group; William Ruger, Vice-President, Charles Koch Institute

President Biden has announced that U.S. combat forces will leave Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, ending America's longest war. What lies ahead? How will the end of America's military role affect conditions in Afghanistan, and what impact will this have on U.S. interests in the region and beyond?

Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom! Please register before the event:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0sdeqgpj4rGd0EAlEmMUutvJVQWARBB9xw 

Speaker: Aditi Verma, Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral  Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

The design and creation of complex socio-technical systems require the production and use of both tacit and explicit knowledge. This seminar explores the role of tacit knowledge in the transfer and reinvention of complex, dual-use technologies — in this case, pressurized heavy water reactors — and the implications of the generation of this tacit knowledge for technology control.

Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom! Please register before the event:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYucOGgpj4iG9ChfkgqbBwsu3OKLDyJ6Uwh 

Speaker: Jayita Sarkar, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

How do the exports of U.S. power reactors relate to nonproliferation, global capitalism, and U.S. empire? And what does that tell us about the dominance by design of U.S. government and businesses in the decolonized world, where they promised development but delivered debt? This seminar pursues this inquiry through investigating the role of the light water reactor as an instrument of U.S. nonproliferation policy from the mid-1950s until the end of the 1980s.

Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom! Register before the seminar here:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMscOyspz0uHdDEEReU3VaamAmpD7qRPMrO