Wednesdays with SSP

Europe was the principal battleground of the Cold War. Theater nuclear forces trained on targets across the continent, both east and west-the Euromissiles-highlighted how the peoples of Europe were dangerously placed between hammer and anvil. For those within NATO, the Euromissiles highlighted the fault lines of their alliance. Euromissiles is a history of diplomacy and alliances, social movements and strategy, nuclear weapons and nagging fears, and politics. To tell that history, Colbourn takes a long view of the strategic crisis-from the emerging dilemmas of NATO's defenses in the early 1950s through the aftermath of the INF Treaty thirty-five years later. Bio Susan Colbourn is the Associate Director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS), based at the Sanford School. A diplomatic and international historian, she is interested in questions of strategy and security in the atomic age. She specializes in the history of the Cold War with a focus on NATO, the politics of European security, and the role of nuclear weapons in international politics and society. Prior to joining TISS, she held fellowships at Yale University's International Security Studies program and at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Toronto.

Under what conditions do coalition partners fighting alongside each other in a war take the next step and field their forces together in battle? While states frequently go to war with partners, they do not always fight side-by-side on the battlefield. Existing scholarship focuses largely on the motives of coalition partners to deepen their cooperation when considering why such actors fight battles together. We argue that, for coalition partners to employ their forces side-by-side in combat, they require the opportunity as well as the motive to do so. More specifically, we contend that coalition partners’ logistical capacities—their abilities to transport and sustain troops and associated equipment to the battlefield—exert a powerful influence on the creation of battlefield coalitions.

When does bureaucracy make states prone to miscalculate in international crisis? International relations scholarship often assumes that bureaucracy increases the propensity for miscalculation, but offers comparatively few insights into what makes bureaucracy in some states more prone to miscalculation than in others. I develop a theory of crisis miscalculation that emphasizes variation in institutional relationships between political leaders and foreign policy bureaucracies. I argue that two dimensions of these institutions -- the capacity for information search and inter-bureaucratic information sharing -- help explain why some states are more prone to miscalculate than others. To test my argument, I introduce a novel data set that measures these institutional differences across the globe from 1946 to 2015. Contrary to canonical theories that argue that bureaucratic advice undermines strategic judgment, the analysis finds that institutions that integrate bureaucrats into a leader's decision-making process tend to perform better in international crises than those that exclude them. The theory and findings improve our understanding of how bureaucracy shapes the crisis behavior of modern states.

Azmat Khan speaks about her years of work investigating the human toll of America's air wars in the Middle East, including her recent award-winning reporting published in The New York Times, The Civilian Casualty Files. Azmat Khan is an award-winning investigative journalist with The New York Times Magazine, a Carnegie Fellow, and an assistant professor of journalism Columbia University. Her investigations for The New York Times Magazine, the PBS series FRONTLINE, and BuzzFeed's Investigations team have exposed major myths of war, prompting widespread policy impact from Washington to Kabul, and winning nearly a dozen awards, including: the National Magazine Award for Reporting; the Overseas Press Club Ed Cunningham Award for Magazine Reporting; the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism; the Deadline Club Award for Independent Digital Reporting; the Deadline Club Award for Magazine Investigative Reporting; the SAJA Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding Reporting on South Asia; a Livingston Award finalist in International Reporting; and shared the Online News Association award for “General Excellence in Online Journalism” (small); the Gannett Foundation Award for Innovative Investigative Journalism; and an Emmy nomination in New Approaches to Documentary Film.

Rebel organizations regularly provide public services to citizens, even as they primarily focus on fighting. Existing scholarship documents many predictors of insurgent service provision, but the downstream effects of these activities and theoretical mechanisms for why they might change behavior remain unclear. This study examines Taliban judicial activity in Afghanistan, using a difference-in-differences design to find that Taliban courts significantly reduced the frequency of major interpersonal disputes between civilians, especially around property, in districts where they operated. We find a corresponding reduction in survey-reported citizen willingness to use government courts, and a major increase in approval for Taliban rule. Finally, we find that the Taliban were able to increase bombings and other attacks against government and foreign troops. Together, the results indicate that rebel courts, if competent, can significantly sway public opinion and enhance the fighting capacity of rebels. These findings also help to explain the Taliban's rapid takeover of Afghanistan in the wake of US and NATO withdrawal from the country. Bio: Renard Sexton studies conflict and development with a focus on local level violence and interventions intended to curb violence. His research covers insurgency, terrorism, social conflict around natural resources, and police crackdowns; he has regional expertise in Afghanistan, Southeast Asia and Andean Latin America. His research has been published in top scholarly journals, including The American Political Science Review and American Journal of Political Science. His policy pieces and commentary have been published by The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, International Crisis Group, Foreign Policy and other outlets. Before joining Emory, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and Economics of Conflict fellow at the International Crisis Group. Transcript: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ljYId5Ju4ro4B2v8DNmRStYm63q9zcpP?usp=sharing

When, why, and how do belligerents choose to negotiate in the midst of war? Dr. Eric Min argues that wartime negotiations are an underappreciated and highly strategic activity that not only help to settle wars, but also to manage, fight, and potentially win them. Dr. Min is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at UCLA. He received his B.A. in International Relations at New York University, where he was valedictorian of the College of Arts and Science. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science at Stanford University and was also Zukerman Postdoctoral Fellow in Social Sciences at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Eric’s research focuses on interstate diplomacy, information gathering and sharing during crises, and applications of machine learning and text analysis techniques to declassified documents related to conflict and foreign policy. His dissertation received the 2018 Kenneth Waltz Prize from the American Political Science Association’s International Security Section. This work is currently being converted into a book manuscript that develops a theory and creates new quantitative data regarding the role and strategic use of negotiations in the midst of war. Transcript: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tx6TELyGhd1TIcHESfoYBjGK0ao9Td49/view?usp=sharing

The Hon. Kevin Rudd, president and CEO of Asia Society, served as Australia's 26th Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010, then as Foreign Minister from 2010 to 2012, before returning as Prime Minister in 2013. He discusses major topics of his new book, "The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China" Rudd graduated from the Australian National University with honors in Chinese studies, and is fluent in Mandarin. He also studied at the National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei.

In this episode, Dr. Amy Zegart examines the past, present, and future of American espionage, focusing on how emerging technologies are radically challenging every aspect of the intelligence enterprise. In this talk, Zegart also shares her findings about nuclear threat detection. Thanks to Internet connectivity, automated analytics like machine learning, and the proliferation of commercial satellites, nuclear intelligence isn't just for superpower governments anymore. A vibrant emerging ecosystem of nongovernmental individuals and organizations is using open-source intelligence to track illicit nuclear activities. Dr. Amy Zegart is the Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) at Stanford University. She is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Chair of Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence and International Security Steering Committee, and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She received an A.B. in East Asian studies magna cum laude from Harvard University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University. Transcript available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nKvZEAqOQ0nCd-4ch3GhhwtusyUklhOo/view?usp=sharing

"Understanding the War in Ukraine" is a special seminar presented by MIT's Security Studies Program on Wednesday, March 2, 2022. Participants in the panel discussion and subsequent Q&A were: Dr. Mariya Grinberg, a professor of Political Science at MIT Dr. Barry Posen, a professor of Political Science at MIT Dr. Carol Saivetz, a special adviser to MIT SSP Dr. Elizabeth Wood, a Russia specialist and professor of History at MIT Moderated by Dr. M. Taylor Fravel, director of MIT SSP. Transcript available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11ZCq3UNFXTf5RLcPu_SqFVcPNUkyL-1i/view

In this presentation for MIT SSP's Wednesday Seminar Series, Dr. Caitlin Talmadge analyzes the strategic implications of Chinese control of Taiwan, a "curiously understudied topic given Taiwan’s location at the center of the first island chain." Dr. Talmadge is Associate Professor of Security Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, as well as Senior Non-Resident Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution and Research Affiliate in the MIT Security Studies Program. Program recorded on Nov. 10, 2021 at MIT SSP in Cambridge, Mass. Transcripts for all of our podcasts can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ljYId5Ju4ro4B2v8DNmRStYm63q9zcpP?usp=sharing

A part of MIT SSP's Wednesday Seminar series, recorded on Feb. 9, 2022. Dr. Michael Poznansky asks: How has the liberal international order shaped American foreign policy? Proponents argue its impact has been profound. Critics charge that it has failed to prevent the U.S. from violating rules and norms. The answer lies in between. While rule violations have been a constant feature of the postwar order, the nature of violations have varied in unappreciated ways. Michael Poznansky is an Associate Professor in the Strategic and Operational Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College and a core faculty member in the Cyber & Innovation Policy Institute. He is the author of In the Shadow of International Law: Secrecy and Regime Change in the Postwar World (Oxford University Press, 2020). Transcripts for all of our podcasts can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ljYId5Ju4ro4B2v8DNmRStYm63q9zcpP?usp=sharing

In this Wednesday Seminar presented by MIT SSP, Dr. Melissa Lee talks about recent research into grammatical shifts in the Unites States following the American Civil War. Specifically, how those shifts relate to conceptions of nationhood and sovereignty. "Contestation over the structure and location of final sovereign authority – the right to make and enforce binding rules – occupies a central role in political development. Historically, war often settled these debates and institutionalized the victor’s vision. Yet sovereign authority requires more than institutions; it ultimately rests on the recognition of the governed. How does war shape imagined sovereignty? We explore the effect of warfare in the United States, where the debate over two competing visions of sovereignty erupted into the American Civil War." Dr. Melissa M. Lee is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. She studies the international and domestic politics of state-building and state development. Professor Lee is the author of Crippling Leviathan: How Foreign Subversion Weakens the State (Cornell University Press, 2020). Her research has also been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, International Organization, and the Annual Review of Political Science, and her policy writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs. Transcripts for all of our podcasts can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ljYId5Ju4ro4B2v8DNmRStYm63q9zcpP?usp=sharing

As part of MIT SSP's Wednesday Seminar Series, Dr. Emma Ashford, of the Atlantic Council, speaks on the chance for the U.S. to alter its foreign policy priorities and strategies. "We're at a moment in the debate over U.S. foreign policy where change seems possible for the first time in 30 years." Emma Ashford is a senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, where her work focuses questions of grand strategy, international security, and the future of US foreign policy. Previously, she was a research fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute. Program recorded on Dec. 1, 2021 at MIT SSP in Cambridge, Mass. Transcripts for all of our podcasts can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ljYId5Ju4ro4B2v8DNmRStYm63q9zcpP?usp=sharing