American deterrence, though traditionally centered on the nuclear triad, is becoming ever more integrated and dependent on other technologies in space and the cyber world, Admiral Cecil D. Haney, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, told a Stanford audience.

Haney, appointed to lead USSTRATCOM by President Barack Obama last year, made a daylong visit to Stanford on Tuesday, holding seminars and private meetings with faculty, scholars and students at the Hoover Institution and the Center for International Security and Cooperation. His seminar at CISAC focused on strategic deterrence in the 21st century.

Admiral Haney has made it USSTRATCOM’s goal, in accordance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the 2010 START Treaty, to reduce America’s nuclear weapons stockpile. But he sees a world where maintaining a deterrent is still necessary.

“As we work to continue our nation’s goal of reducing the role of our nation’s nuclear weapons, we find other nations not only modernizing their strategic capabilities but also promoting them,” he said. Russia, Iran, and China attracted particular concern. Haney declined to estimate how much the U.S. can reduce its stockpile without hurting its deterrent posture.

While the nuclear triad is still the foundation of American deterrence, space and cyberspace technology are now fully integrated with nuclear platforms, making cyber and space security indispensable.

“Deterrence is more than just the triad,” said Haney. “We are highly dependent on space capabilities, more so than ever before. Space is fully integrated in our joint military operations as well as in our commercial and civil infrastructure. But space today is contested, congested, and competitive.” 

Haney said there are more than 20,000 softball-sized objects orbiting Earth.

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“Only about 1,000 of those objects are satellites, the rest is debris, increasing threats to our operational satellites as they travel at speeds exceeding 17,000 mph,” he said. The Joint Space Operation Center receives an average of 30 collision alerts per day.

Damage to some of our satellites could have devastating impacts on our economy, communications and infrastructure. Rival nations also pose space security challenges.

According to the U.S. government, China recently tested an anti-satellite missile. This follows a 2007 test when China successfully destroyed one of its satellites, and consequently created a cloud of debris that still poses a threat to international satellites.

“Keeping assured access to the space domain is a full-time job,” Haney said.

Likewise cybersecurity. America’s increasing reliance on cyberspace for both military and civilian purposes has created security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by both state and non-state actors. Haney cited the recent attacks on J.P. Morgan and Sony, Russia and China’s attacks on regional rivals, and non-state terror groups.

“We have benefited enormously from advanced computer capabilities, but it has opened up threat access to our critical infrastructure,“ Haney said. “As we confront terrorist groups we all know that they are not only using cyber for recruiting and messaging – but also to seek weapons of mass destruction.”

In a Q&A session after his talk during the CISAC seminar, a variety of concerns were raised about the USSTRACOM mission, including triad modernization, the ongoing personnel issues that have been in the news, and missile defense.

FSI Senior Fellow Scott Sagan asked about the recent spate of personnel problems at U.S. nuclear silos. Haney said a full review of personnel and procedures, ordered by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, was completed and changes have been enacted.

“We are trying to positively reinforce our workforce and I am getting a lot of positive feedback from operators,” Haney said. “We are having monthly conversations that include operational officers. When I visit sites I don’t just meet with commanders, I have meals with smaller groups of lower-ranking personnel.”

Haney previously served as commander of the Pacific Fleet. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he has personal experience with America’s nuclear deterrent as he served in submarines armed with nuclear ballistic missiles, which, in addition to land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and strategic bombers, make up part of the United States’ nuclear triad.

USSTRATCOM is one of nine unified commands that have control of forces from all four branches of the U.S. military. The command’s well-known responsibility is command and control of America’s nuclear arsenal, a role it inherited from the Cold War-era Strategic Air Command. Since its establishment in 1992, USSTRATCOM has been assigned additional responsibilities, most notably cyberspace and outer space.

You can listen to the audio of his presentation here.

Joshua Alvarez was a CISAC Honors Student during the 2011-2012 academic year.

Michael McFaul, the next director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies who recently returned from his position as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, joins Karl Eikenberry, the former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and the William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at CISAC, to discuss the current state of foreign policy. The Nov. 11, 2014, talk was part of the fall course, "State of the Union,"  which examined major themes that contribute to the health, or disease, of the U.S. body politic.

Led by Rob Reich (Political Science), David Kennedy (History), and James Steyer (CEO, Common Sense Media), the course brought together distinguished analysts of American politics who noted that we live in an age of rising inequality, dazzling technological innovation, economic volatility, geopolitical uncertainty, and the accumulating impact of climate change. These conditions confront our political leaders and us as citizens of a democracy plagued by dysfunction.

Michael McFaul, a Stanford political scientist and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has been selected as the next director of the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

The announcement was made Wednesday by Stanford Provost John Etchemendy and Ann Arvin, the university’s vice provost and dean of research. McFaul will succeed Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, who was nominated in July as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court and elected Tuesday.

McFaul takes the helm of FSI in January.

"Stanford has long been a home for scholars who connect academia to policy and public service, and Professor McFaul is the embodiment of that model," Etchemendy said. "We are grateful for Mike's service and confident he will be a strong leader for FSI."

Arvin said McFaul is a strong fit for the position.

“Professor McFaul’s background as an outstanding scholar and his service as an influential ambassador give him a vital perspective to lead FSI, which is Stanford’s hub for studying and understanding international policy issues,” she said. “His scholarship, experience and energy will keep FSI and Stanford at the forefront of international studies as well as some of the most pressing global policy debates."

McFaul has been a faculty member in the department of political science at Stanford since 1994.  He joined the Obama administration in January 2009, serving for three years as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House. He then served as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation from 2012 to 2014.

McFaul already has a deep affiliation with FSI. Before joining the government, he served as FSI deputy director from 2006 to 2009.  He also directed FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) from 2005 to 2009.

During his four years leading CDDRL, McFaul launched the Draper Hills Summer Fellowship program for mid-career lawyers, politicians, advocates and business leaders working to shore up democratic institutions in their home countries. He also established CDDRL’s senior honors program.  From 1992-1994, McFaul also worked as a Senior Research Fellow at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

“I am thrilled to be assuming a leadership role again at FSI,” McFaul said.  “FSI has become one of the premier institutions in the country for policy-relevant research on international affairs.  I look forward to using my recent government experience to deepen further FSI’s impact on policy debates in Washington and around the world.”

Arvin said McFaul’s previous positions at FSI and CDDRL will make for a smooth transition in the institute’s leadership.

“His familiarity with FSI’s history and infrastructure will allow him to start this new position with an immediate focus on the institute’s academic mission,” she said.

McFaul is also the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and plans to build on his long affiliations with both Hoover and FSI to deepen cooperation between these two premier public policy institutions on campus.

He has written and co-authored dozens of books including Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

“In so many ways, Mike represents the best of FSI,” said Cuéllar, who has held leadership positions at FSI since 2004 and begins his term on the California Supreme Court in January. “He knows the worlds of academia and policy extremely well, and will bring unique experience and sound judgment to his new role at FSI.”

McFaul currently serves as a news analyst for NBC News, appearing frequently on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC as a commentator on international affairs. He also appears frequently on The Charlie Rose Show and The Newshour, as well as PBS and BBC radio programs. He has recently published essays in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Politico, and Time. 

McFaul was one of the first U.S. ambassadors to actively use social media for public diplomacy. He still maintains an active presence on Facebook at amb.mcfaul and on Twitter at @McFaul.

McFaul received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986.  As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.

“Since coming here in 1981 as 17-year-old kid from Montana, Stanford has provided me with tremendous opportunities to grow as a student, scholar, and policymaker,” McFaul said. “I now look forward to giving back to Stanford by contributing to the development of one of the most vital and innovative institutions on campus.” 

In a recent speech, Stanford professor Rosamond Naylor examined the wide range of challenges contributing to global food insecurity, which Naylor defined as a lack of plentiful, nutritious and affordable food. Naylor's lecture, titled "Feeding the World in the 21st Century," was part of the quarterly Earth Matters series sponsored by Stanford Continuing Studies and the Stanford School of Earth Sciences. Naylor, a professor of Environmental Earth System Science and director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford, is also a professor (by courtesy) of Economics, and the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

"One billion people go to bed day in and day out with chronic hunger," said Naylor. The problem of food insecurity, she explained, goes far beyond food supply. "We produce enough calories, just with cereal crops alone, to feed everyone on the planet," she said. Rather, food insecurity arises from a complex and interactive set of factors including poverty, malnutrition, disease, conflict, poor governance and volatile prices. Food supply depends on limited natural resources including water and energy, and food accessibility depends on government policies about land rights, biofuels, and food subsidies. Often, said Naylor, food policies in one country can impact food security in other parts of the world. Solutions to global hunger must account for this complexity, and for the "evolving" nature of food security.

As an example of this evolution, Naylor pointed to the success of China and India in reducing hunger rates from 70 percent to 15 percent within a single generation. Economic growth was key, as was the "Green Revolution," a series of advances in plant breeding, irrigation and agricultural technology that led to a doubling of global cereal crop production between 1970 and 2010. But Naylor warned that the success of the Green Revolution can lead to complacency about present-day food security challenges. China, for example, sharply reduced hunger as it underwent rapid economic growth, but now faces what Naylor described as a "second food security challenge" of micronutrient deficiency. Anemia, which is caused by a lack of dietary iron and which Naylor said is common in many rural areas of China, can permanently damage children's cognitive development and school performance, and eventually impede a country’s economic growth.

Hunger knows no boundaries

Although hunger is more prevalent in the developing world, food insecurity knows no geographic boundaries, said Naylor. Every country, including wealthy economies like the United States, struggles with problems of food availability, access, and nutrition. "Rather than think of this as 'their problem' that we don't need to deal with, really it's our problem too," Naylor said.

She pointed out that one in five children in the United States is chronically hungry, and 50 million Americans receive government food assistance. Many more millions go to soup kitchens every night, she added. "We are in a precarious position with our own food security, with big implications for public health and educational attainment," Naylor said. A major paradox of the United States' food security challenge is that hunger increasingly coexists with obesity. For the poorest Americans, cheap food offers abundant calories but low nutritional value. To improve the health and food security of millions of Americans, "linking policy in a way that can enhance the incomes of the poorest is really important, and it's the hard part,” she said.” It's not easy to fix the inequality issue."

Success stories

When asked whether there were any "easy" decisions that the global community can agree to, Naylor responded, "What we need to do for a lot of these issues is pretty clear, but how we get after it is not always agreed upon." She added, "But I think we've seen quite a few success stories," including the growing research on climate resilient crops, new scientific tools such as plant genetics, improved modeling techniques for water and irrigation systems, and better knowledge about how to use fertilizer more efficiently. She also said that the growing body of agriculture-focused climate research was encouraging, and that Stanford is a leader on this front.

Naylor is the editor and co-author of The Evolving Sphere of Food Security, a new book from Oxford University Press. The book features a team of 19 faculty authors from 5 Stanford schools including Earth science, economics, law, engineering, medicine, political science, international relations, and biology. The all-Stanford lineup was intentional, Naylor said, because the university is committed to interdisciplinary research that addresses complex global issues like food security, and because "agriculture is incredibly dominated by policy, and Stanford has a long history of dealing with some of these policy elements. This is the glue that enables us to answer really challenging questions."