About the event: With the wider Russian war on Ukraine in its third year and greater uncertainty as a new U.S. administration prepares to take power in January 2025, this event brings together experts from across Stanford to discuss how states around the world view the conflict and its potential resolution. Some states have aligned with Ukraine, the United States and the European Union, viewing Russia’s aggression as a gross violation of international law. Others, such as North Korea, Iran and China, have supported Russia economically and militarily. Some emerging powers, such as Brazil and India, have advocated for a peaceful and negotiated end to the conflict. And many developing states, which have complicated cross-cutting relations with Ukraine, Russia, the United States, the European Union and China, have chosen to remain unaligned, even if they recognize the war is a violation of the UN Charter. Zuzana Čaputová, Erin Baggot Carter, Sumit Ganguly, and Harold Trinkunas will compare the full range of policy responses from across the globe. Scott Sagan, co-director of the Center of International Security and Cooperation, will moderate the discussion.

About the speakers:

Zuzana Čaputová, the former president of Slovakia, is the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at FSI, effective September 16, 2024.

As a Liautaud Fellow, Čaputová is deeply enmeshed in the daily intellectual life of FSI, with simultaneous affiliations with the Institute’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, and The Europe Center.

Having entered office on June 15, 2019, Čaputová was the first woman to serve as the president of Slovakia, as well as the youngest president in the country’s history. She began her civic activism in 1996, after graduating from the Comenius University Faculty of Law in Bratislava. During her studies, Čaputová worked in the local government of the Pezinok municipality and then transitioned into advocacy. Here, she closely worked with the non-profit sector on issues such as reforms of the judiciary, the fight against corruption, and accountability of public officials.

As a public interest lawyer, she took up cases related to the protection of the environment. One of the cases, of a landfill in Pezinok, resulted in a ruling by the European Court of Justice affirming that under the EU-wide law, the public must have access to urban planning decisions concerning the establishment of installations significantly affecting the environment. For her leadership on this case, she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2016.

In 2020, Čaputová ranked #83 on the Forbes’ World's 100 Most Powerful Women list. In 2017, Čaputová joined the Progressive Slovakian political party and was elected as a Vice-Chairwoman for the party. She also served as the Deputy Chair until 2019, when she resigned to launch her presidential campaign. In February 2024, FSI hosted Čaputová for an event in Encina Hall, where she joined FSI director Michael McFaul for a fireside chat, and spoke about the challenges to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe 35 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain as well as the impact Russia's war on Ukraine is having on the region.

Erin Baggott Carter is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California, a faculty affiliate at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute, and a nonresident scholar at the 21st Century China Center at UC San Diego. She has previously held fellowships at the CDDRL and Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. She received a PhD in political science from Harvard University.

Dr. Carter's research focuses on Chinese politics, propaganda, and foreign policy. Her first book, Propaganda in Autocracies (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), uses an original dataset of eight million articles in six languages drawn from state-run newspapers in nearly 70 countries to explore how political institutions determine propaganda strategies. She is currently working on a book on how domestic politics influence US-China relations. Her other work has appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, and International Interactions. Her work has been featured by a number of media platforms, including the New York Times and the Little Red Podcast.

Sumit Ganguly is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a distinguished professor emeritus of political science and is the Tagore Chair Emeritus in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University–Bloomington. He is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of more than 20 books on the contemporary politics of South Asia. Professor Ganguly is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is currently the editor in chief of the International Studies Review.

Harold Trinkunas is the Deputy Director and a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Prior to arriving at Stanford, Dr. Trinkunas served as the Charles W. Robinson Chair and senior fellow and director of the Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution. His research focuses on issues related to foreign policy, governance, and security, particularly in Latin America. Trinkunas has written on emerging powers and the international order, ungoverned spaces, terrorism financing, borders, and information operations.

Trinkunas has co-authored Militants, Criminals and Warlords: The Challenge of Local Governance in an Age of Disorder (Brookings Institution Press, 2017), Aspirational Power: Brazil’s Long Road to Global Influence (Brookings Institution Press, 2016) and authored Crafting Civilian Control of the Military in Venezuela (University of North Carolina Press, 2005). He co-edited and contributed to Oxford Handbook of Peaceful Change in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2021), Three Tweets to Midnight: The Effect of the Global Information Ecosystem on the Risk of Nuclear Conflict  (Hoover Institution Press, 2020), American Crossings: Border Politics in the Western Hemisphere (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to State Authority in an Era of Softened Sovereignty (Stanford University Press, 2010), Global Politics of Defense Reform (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), and Terrorism Financing and State Responses (Stanford University Press, 2007).

Dr. Trinkunas also previously served as an associate professor and chair of the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He received his doctorate in political science from Stanford University in 1999. He was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.