Speaker:  Ivan Arreguín-Toft, Associate, International Security Program

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is now over a year old, and every day Russian forces are either deliberately or systematically killing or torturing noncombatants. Is this a strategy? A plan to use Russia's available resources to achieve a specific military objective? Might it possibly be an artifact of a long history, since the Russian Civil War (1917–1923), of using armed force bluntly while ignoring the very possibility of "noncombatant" as a relevant category in warfare?

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIuce6spjsrHNNSH7GixtXqAjUbWSLdqHBO

Speaker: Ivan Arreguin-Toft, Senior Research Fellow, Cyber Security Project

In the past two decades, an increasing number of social scientists, military historians, and practitioners have weighed in on an important question relevant to the conduct of war and wartime occupation: what actually happens when a given political actor deliberately or systematically harms noncombatants as a strategy? 

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

What actually happens when a state or other actor systematically targets noncombatants as a strategy in war?

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

Dr. Arreguin-Toft is the author of How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Assymetric Conflict (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming November 2005).

Counter-Terrorism