International Security

Speaker:  Lt. Col. Patrick Kolesiak, Research Fellow, International Security Program

This seminar will be online. Please join us remotely via Zoom!  Click here to join.

As America pursues a negotiated peace deal with the Taliban and Afghan government, it is critical to return to analyze how a war that was supposed to last mere months turned into "America's Longest War." The failure of U.S. policy in Afghanistan was catastrophic misalignment between a rapidly emerging strategy in Afghanistan and the triad of "ends, ways, and means." This talk seeks to specifically explore how a divergence between a "Washington Way of War" and a "U.S. Military Way of Battle" led to failed assumptions, mismatched objectives, and missed opportunities. The speaker will explore six key mistakes made during the waning days of combat operations and the movement into post-conflict stability operations.

This seminar will be online. Please join us remotely via Zoom!  Click here to join.

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.

Please join us via Zoom! Click here to join.

A Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) seminar with Rebecca Davis Gibbons, postdoctoral research fellow with MTA and the International Security Program.

This seminar will be held online via Zoom: https://harvard.zoom.us/j/423799092

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: Peter Andreas, John Hay Professor of International Studies, Brown University; Author, Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs

There is growing alarm over how drugs empower terrorists, insurgents, militias, and gangs. But by looking back not just years and decades but centuries, Peter Andreas reveals that the drugs-conflict nexus is actually an old story, and that powerful states have been its biggest beneficiaries.

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

Emily Whalen, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This presentation examines a period of direct U.S. participation in Lebanon's war, the eighteen months during which U.S. Marines were deployed in Beirut as part of a Multinational Peacekeeping Force (MNF).  Existing scholarship on the MNF intervention in Lebanon tends to focus on the infamous barracks bombing of October 1983, overlooking how the securitization and militarization of U.S. policy in Lebanon changed both the Lebanese state and the U.S. foreign policy process. Juxtaposing discussions in Washington with events on the ground in Beirut during the months preceding the barracks bombing, this presentation uses the intervention in Lebanon to cast light on the relationship between intentions and outcomes in U.S. foreign policy.

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

A Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) seminar with Hyun-Binn Cho, postdoctoral research fellow with MTA and the International Security Program.

Speaker: Thomas Cavanna, Visiting Assistant Professor, Center for Strategic Studies, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University

Is the United States losing Europe to China? What could that mean from a grand strategic perspective? Those questions may appear far-fetched given the huge influence that America has exerted over Europe since 1945, the benefits that it has provided to its allies, and the latter's recent push back against Beijing and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Yet the China challenge is real and emerges in a time of major uncertainty over Washington's intentions and capabilities.

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

Speaker: Shinsuke Sugiyama, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to the United States of America

Moderator: Christina L. Davis, Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations; Professor of Government; Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University

Drawing on his distinguished service as Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs (Japan's highest diplomatic position), Director-General of the Asian and Oceanic Affairs Bureau, and Director of the Treaties Division, Ambassador Sugiyama will discuss the U.S.-Japan security cooperation as the two countries mark the 60th anniversary of their security treaty in 2020. He will also explore possible future trajectories of the bilateral alliance in changing regional and global security environment.

Co-sponsored by the International Security Program

Speaker: Jill Goldenziel,  Associate Professor, Marine Corps University, Quantico, Virginia

This presentation will argue that the United States needs to develop a Lawfare strategy to combat its adversaries. It will first define the concept of Lawfare and discuss how its use has evolved and escalated in recent years. It will illustrate this phenomenon by examining three different types of Lawfare between China and the United States or its allies: international arbitration over China's claims to the Spratly Islands, China's non-uniformed maritime militias, and litigation involving the United States and Huawei.

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