1268 Events

A reverse-glass painting of the international trade concession in Canton circa 1805.

Public Domain

Seminar - Open to the Public

Virtuous Emulations of Liberty: American Diplomatic Culture After the American Revolution

Thu., Mar. 30, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

Note New Date

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-

Taiwan National Day Fireworks 2022, 10 October 2022.

Wikimedia CC/Wang Yu Ching / Office of the President

Seminar - Open to the Public

Does Taiwan Matter? A Practitioner's Perspective

Thu., Mar. 23, 2023 | 12:15pm - 1:15pm

Online

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

French commandos enter Japanese-occupied Indochina, 1945

Public Domain

Seminar - Open to the Public

Free France, Colonial Reform, and the Genesis of Cold War Counterinsurgency, 1941–1954

Mon., Mar. 13, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

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

Close-up of the brick apartment building, which was outfitted with a fallout shelter in the middle of the last century, 28 February 2016.

Wikimedia CC/Andre Carrotflower

Seminar - Open to the Public

Insurance or Strategy: When Does Population Protection Constitute Deterrence?

Thu., Mar. 9, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

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

An unarmed U.S. Air Force LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launches at 4:36 a.m. PST during an operational test Dec. 17, 2013, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

Public Domain/USAF Airman 1st Class Yvonne Morales

Seminar - Open to the Public

The Delicate Balance of Error: Perceived Counterforce Feasibility and the Nuclear Taboo

Thu., Mar. 2, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

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

Keep Sanctions against South Africa, March 25, 1990

Flickr CC/Craig Bellamy

Seminar - Open to the Public

Who Supports What? Understanding Domestic Support for Economic Sanctions

Thu., Feb. 23, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

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

Sign along a road in Argentina, October 6, 2006.

Flickr CC/Tjeerd Wiersma

Seminar - Open to the Public

Inherited Sovereignty: 'Uti Possidetis Juris' and the Falklands/Malvinas Dispute

Thu., Feb. 16, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

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

Former Gate of National Chengchi University in Nanjing, 28 December 2011.

Wikimedia CC/猫猫的日记本

Seminar - Open to the Public

The Party School: The Kuomintang's Central Political Institute and the Transformation of Chinese Foreign Policy

Thu., Feb. 9, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

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

Combat operations at Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam, November 1965. Major Bruce P. Crandall's UH-1D helicopter climbs skyward after discharging a load of infantrymen on a search and destroy mission.

Public Domain/United States Army

Seminar - Open to the Public

Dovish Reputation Theory: When Fighting to Demonstrate Resolve Backfires

Thu., Feb. 2, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

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

Postcard commemorating the signing of the Second Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Issued by Mitsukoshi Department Store, Tokyo in 1905.

Wikimedia CC/Mitsukoshi Department Store (1905)

Seminar - Open to the Public

Despite Divisions: When Alliances Require Coercion to Form

Thu., Jan. 26, 2023 | 12:15pm - 2:00pm

Online

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