International Security Program

Speaker: Lindsay Hundley, Research Fellow, International Security Program

This seminar will be online. Please join us remotely via Zoom!  Instructions below.

In recent years, the world has increasingly witnessed international conflict along ideological fault lines. Western policymakers warn that authoritarian countries like Russia and China are seeking to exploit divisions within democratic societies to promote autocratic tendencies, while for decades, authoritarian countries have accused the West of doing the same—of manufacturing domestic uprisings as a way to force liberalism upon them. While history is filled with examples of conflicts along these types of ideological lines, there is little consensus among scholars about whether ideology has any effect on relations between states. This presentation will focus in on British and U.S. reactions to the Haitian Revolution to advance scholars' and policymakers' understanding of the relationship between ideology and international conflict.

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Speaker: Jonah Stuart Brundage, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, International Security Program

Why do certain states, at certain points in time, establish leadership and governance over regional or global systems of states? This seminar contributes to explaining this process of hegemony by emphasizing cases in which it failed to occur despite the presence of the necessary military and economic conditions. In particular, the speaker will present a historical case study of British diplomacy in eighteenth-century Europe, showing that Britain failed to become a regional hegemon at this time despite its unrivalled military and economic capabilities.

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

Speaker: Rachel Esplin Odell, Research Fellow, International Security Program

In the growing peacetime naval competition between the United States and China, the divergence in the two countries' interpretations of maritime law has become a locus of contention. Both states maintain that they prioritize "freedom of navigation" (hangxing ziyou) and have done nothing to obstruct it, and each side insists that its position is firmly grounded in international law. The broader context often missing in discussions of this dynamic is that states' interpretations of key provisions in the international law of the sea related to coastal state jurisdiction vary widely. This seminar will present findings from a new global dataset of state's maritime jurisdictional claims as a window into understanding the range of this variation. The seminar will then present a theory to explain patterns of change and stasis in state's interpretations of the law of the sea over time, accompanied by empirical evidence from field research conducted in four country case studies: the United States, Japan, China, and India.

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

Speaker: Alex Yu-Ting Lin, Research Fellow, International Security Program

When do rising powers become dissatisfied with their status, and how does such dissatisfaction motivate conflict? Conventional wisdom suggests that the rising powers' status grievances are mostly triggered by the actions of the existing great powers. Moving beyond this conventional wisdom, the speaker examines how perceived insubordination from smaller states makes a rising power become insecure about its status, thereby generating the pressure for conflict between the rising power and the existing great powers. Furthermore, the speaker shows that conflicts which arise because of perceived insubordination from smaller states have different escalatory logics than the conventional explanations focusing on status competition between great powers. The talk has broader implications for U.S.-China relations, the return of great power politics, and U.S. grand strategy.

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

Speaker: Kacie Miura, Research Fellow, International Security Program

Why do some local leaders in China respond to foreign provocations by protecting foreign commerce from diplomatic tensions, while others engage in economic retaliation? Understanding this variation is important because whether local leaders are willing to serve as agents of state punishment has implications for China's use of economic coercion. Given China's strong central government, this variation in local leader behavior is surprising, especially during foreign policy crises, when national interests are at stake. To explain local leader participation in economic retaliation, the speaker proposes a theory that draws on the economic incentives and political concerns of local leaders in China. She provides evidence from a recent foreign policy crisis between China and South Korea over the latter's deployment of the THAAD missile defense system.

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

Speaker: Sirianne Dahlum, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, International Security Program

A long-standing debate revolves around business elites and their role in states' war behavior. Some arguments imply that when business elites have a large influence on policymaking, states turn more belligerent, as business elites encourage military expeditions to open up or protect markets. Contrasting perspectives in the liberal tradition, such as "capitalist-peace" arguments, emphasize that business elites have strong economic incentives to avoid war and thus will have a pacifying effect when they hold political power. Comprehensive tests of these arguments are scarce, and those that exist do not account for the degree to which business elites hold sway over policymaking.  Drawing on new global data on the social composition of regime-support coalitions covering more than 200 years from 1789–the present, the speaker presents evidence on the war behavior of regimes supported by business elites. 

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

Speaker: Vanes Ibric, Research Fellow, International Security Program

Why do countries with formal alliances engage in armed hostilities against one another? What motivates states to attack their allies? As evidenced by Italy's betrayal of the Central Powers in World War I or the border conflict between Soviet Union and China in 1969, countries with formal alliances have engaged in wars and militarized disputes. The speaker provides a new theoretical framework that distinguishes between alliances in which one state entered the alliance with a strong predisposition to attack its ally (i.e., premeditated fighting) and alliances in which fighting happens as a result of situational changes following the formation of the alliance (i.e., situational fighting).

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

Speaker: Peter Slezkine, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

By the end of the Second World War, most American policymakers assumed that their country had become inescapably and durably entangled in the affairs of the globe. Half a decade later, they settled on an objective that would determine the direction of their country's international efforts going forward. Throughout the 1950s, as the United States established itself as a permanent player on the global stage, American policymakers pursued the overarching aim of "free world leadership." This seminar will trace the emergence and evolution of the concept of the "free world" in American history, demonstrate its impact on policymakers' understanding of the Cold War and the United States' global role, and investigate the shift to alternative perspectives (including one centered on the "third world") by the end of the 1960s. Finally, the seminar will address how the current U.S. global order has been durably shaped by its original focus on the "free world."

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

Speaker: Audrye Wong, Grand Strategy, Security, & Statecraft Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program

Economic statecraft — the use of economic tools to pursue political goals — is an important foreign policy strategy for many major powers and has been an increasingly important tool for China. The speaker will provide a theoretical framework to explain the effectiveness of economic statecraft, focusing on positive inducements, which have been relatively understudied. She will argue that effectiveness is influenced by the interaction between two variables: (a) the type of inducement strategy; and (b) the level of public accountability in the target country. 

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

Speaker: Hyun-Binn Cho, Postdoctoral  Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

During international crises, states often take costly actions to signal resolve. Such coercive actions, however, can put greater political and psychological pressure on the opponent to counter-escalate. When costly signals are more "provocative," do they make unwanted crisis escalation more likely, or do they make the signal-sender look tough and help induce the opponent to back down? Indeed, why do states sometimes appear to deliberately engage in provocative actions to demonstrate resolve? This seminar addresses these puzzles using game-theoretic analysis and two case studies of crises involving China and the United States.

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