International Security

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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-

Speaker: Lt. Col. Charles Bursi, Research Fellow, International Security Program

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's August 2022 trip to Taiwan made headlines around the world because she was the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit in decades. Her trip to this small democratic island only 100 miles from Communist China set off a firestorm of internal debates on U.S. East Asia strategy (New Yorker link). Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials trumpeted their frustration with the United States' incoherent diplomacy and launched aggressive military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. Ultimately, Pelosi's visit brought focus to the value of Taiwan in U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAlc-iqqzorGNYnXhuQt8-rznQ1v7nnlvBW

Speaker: Nate Grau, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This seminar traces the evolution of France's Cold War counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine from the Second World War to France's 1954 defeat in Indochina. Grau reveals the underappreciated roles of civilian colonial reformers in this process, tracing a network of "Free French" policymakers circulating from Algeria to the French wars in Madagascar (1947–1948) and Indochina (1945–1954). In each of these revolutionary independence struggles, reformist plans to encourage economic growth and develop local state capacity became tools of counterinsurgent repression that only escalated inter-communal cycles of violence.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAud-qurjkpE9LULcdi7fEzEUmflmTOWvYC

Speaker: Matthew Hartwell, Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

When and why is population protection considered an element of U.S. nuclear deterrence? While civil defense played a negligible role in nuclear strategy throughout the early part of the Cold War, beginning in the late 1950s, the limits to the program materialized twice as a potential gap in the U.S.-Soviet nuclear balance. Examining the public and congressional reaction to the programs, this seminar will demonstrate how domestic political barriers undermined the Kennedy and Reagan administrations' attempts to alter the role of population protection in U.S. nuclear strategy.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0ld-qrrzkpHtGKfE1mVLLIZ2s8dLCBcSp1

Speaker: David M. Allison, Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

As geopolitical and technological shifts challenge the underpinnings of nuclear deterrence, the implications of a nuclear taboo become increasingly important. Crucially, if the prohibition against nuclear use is binding, improved counterforce capabilities should have no effect on support for use. This seminar presents the results of a series of experiments designed to identify taboo believers and measure the durability of their commitment to nuclear non-use by increasing their perceptions of the military effectiveness of counterforce strikes. 

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUvc-uorTkoG9C3zILDI0wrhkBFNJWCkWIU

Speakers: So Jin Lee, Grand Strategy, Security, and Statecraft Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program; Pei-Yu Wei, Ph.D. Candidate, Political Science, Duke University

What impacts domestic support for economic sanctions? Although existing research on sanctions and public opinion have focused on how sanctions have impacted or shifted public opinion in target states, domestic factors are also important determinants in the implementation and design of economic foreign policy, including sanctions. Yet, less work has been undertaken to distill the roots of public support for economic sanctions, despite research showing policymakers benefit politically from imposing economic sanctions and are incentivized to use sanctions as a tool to "play to the home crowd." What, though, are the conditions under which the public of the sanction-sending state would lend their support to sanctions? 

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMkc-2uqjIjHtYgvSKjeIQYWO7yzHffEjo9

Speaker:  Paula O'Donnell, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

This seminar traces the origins of Argentine juridical thought concerning the perennial dispute with Great Britain over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands. Looking at legal scholarship of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, O'Donnell shows that the war of 1982 can be partially attributed to local understandings of "territorial integrity" which hinge upon the legal principle known as "uti possidetis juris of 1810." This international law doctrine provides the basis for the enduring maxim that still resonates with many Argentines today: that Argentina "inherited" the archipelago from Spain.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwsfuivqzIiH93snkXsZZCknA2eD5aVcSIM

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

This presentation follows the careers of a group of Chinese foreign policy experts who were chosen as college students in the 1930s to receive specialized training at the ruling Nationalist Party's civil service school. The speaker traces this cohort from the shared experience of an experimental educational program meant to instill the expertise necessary for modern diplomacy, through its bifurcation after the 1949 revolution. Almost half of the Kuomintang-trained experts stayed in Mainland China to work for the foreign policy apparatus of the new communist state while the other half followed Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan and continued to work for the Republic of China. 

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAqfuCtqDIjE92P1HubU-5jia7a5zl1QVWj

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

A fierce debate in international relations concerns the impact that past actions have on a state's future reputation and ability to deter adversaries. According to Hawkish Reputation Theory, states inevitably harm their reputation for resolve by backing down and enhance it by choosing to stand firm and engage in military conflict. This logic has been used to justify consequential and extremely costly military interventions like the Vietnam War. On the other hand, adherents of Skeptical Reputation Theory posit that a state's past actions—whether backing down or standing firm—do not matter much, if at all, for its future reputation and deterrence efficacy. The speaker advances a new theory of reputation—Dovish Reputation Theory—which challenges both of these existing theories. 

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwpdOiorjorHtIGt-AzN1bBLMAnHmibeCZs

Speaker: Mina Erika Pollmann, Research Fellow, International Security Program

Pro-alliance leaders would rather form an alliance by persuasion than by coercion. Whether pro-alliance leaders have to escalate from persuading to coercing anti-alliance leaders to form an alliance depends on how strongly anti-alliance leaders are motivated to oppose the proposed alliance. There are three distinct reasons possible for why anti-alliance leaders would oppose a proposed alliance: entrapment concerns, provocation concerns, and relative capabilities. The cases examined in this seminar suggest that entrapment concerns and provocation concerns both motivate anti-alliance leaders, though entrapment concerns have a slightly stronger correlation with when pro-alliance leaders must escalate to coercion. 

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0uduyopzsuHt3wAapgUd2AGTbkPuLJThca