Sagan is a senior fellow in the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford.

Scott D. Sagan, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, has been named a 2018 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. Sagan is also a senior fellow in the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) at Stanford.

Sagan joins this year’s class of 31 Carnegie Fellows, each of whom receives up to $200,000 to pursue a significant research and writing project.

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Sagan’s Carnegie project will focus on assumptions about nuclear deterrence and strategic stability, which will include a multi­country study of ethics, nuclear weapons and public opinion. The project will also run experiments to discover how information about the potential damage of nuclear weapons might alter public support for using such weapons during war and peace.

Sagan has been examining citizens’ attitudes about the use of nuclear weapons. His recent article (co-authored with Dartmouth College Professor Benjamin Valentino), “Revisiting Hiroshima in Iran: What Americans Really Think about Using Nuclear Weapons and Noncombatant Immunity,” has revealed alarming findings about the American public’s willingness to support the use of nuclear weapons in a variety of strategic scenarios.  This work has generated novel conversations in both the scholarly and policy worlds about future nuclear risks.

“Professor Sagan’s innovative work has helped illuminate assumptions about how the world views nuclear war today.” said FSI Director Michael McFaul. “I am thrilled that the Carnegie Corporation has recognized the importance of Scott’s work for our current, dangerous era.”

The Carnegie Corporation was established in 1911 by Andrew Carnegie to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding. In keeping with this mandate, the corporation’s work focuses on the issues that Andrew Carnegie considered of paramount importance: international peace, education and knowledge, and a strong democracy.

“We were reassured by the immense talent and breadth of experience reflected in the proposals from this year’s nominees for the Andrew Carnegie Fellows Program,” said Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York and president emeritus of Brown University. “Since its founding in 1911, the Corporation has provided strong support to individual scholars, as well as a wide variety of institutions, causes, and organizations. The response to the fellows program gives me great hope for the future of the study of the humanities and the social sciences as a way for this country to learn from the past, understand the present, and devise paths to progress and peace.”

Even as Indian officials watch the rise of China and recent changes to its foreign policy with apprehension, they prefer to avoid having to choose sides between the United States and China.

That sentiment marked the keynote address by veteran journalist Siddharth Varadarajan, winner of the 2017 Shorenstein Journalism Award. Speaking on April 16 at the Award’s sixteenth anniversary panel discussion titled “India, the United States, and China: The New Triangle in Asia,” Varadarajan described a triangle where all three parties were in flux.

The award recognizes Varadarajan’s exemplary record of excellence in reporting on India’s domestic and foreign affairs in both traditional and new media. As founding editor of The Wire, Varadarajan combines innovative digital strategies with quality reporting that advances positive social, economic, and political change.

“Today we can see, across Asia as well as the United States, that journalism has been somewhat reinvigorated by… the growth of authoritarianism,” said Daniel Sneider, Shorenstein APARC visiting scholar, who chaired the noon panel. “I think we feel even more vindicated in hosting this award…and giving some attention to people who are making this kind of contribution.”

Thomas Fingar, a China specialist and a Shorenstein APARC fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, and Nayan Chandra, the founder, former editor-in-chief, and current consulting editor of YaleGlobal Online magazine, joined Varadarajan on the panel.

The panelists addressed a host of questions related to Indian foreign policy under the geopolitical construct of a rising China and a retreating United States. Although the China-India-U.S. triangle has existed for some time, Varadarajan argued that present conditions make it an important topic for renewed discussion.

Pointing to recent internal changes by president Xi Jinping, India’s departure from the so-called Nehruvian consensus, as well as the unpredictability of U.S. foreign and trade polices under the Trump presidency, Varadarajan depicted a triangle comprised of shifting segment lengths and angles. He reviewed the India-U.S. and the India-China relationships and their evolution over the last decade-and-a-half; outlined significant changes in China’s foreign and economic policies over the last eight years; and elucidated the U.S.-India response to these changes.

Since 1998 and India’s declaration of its status as a nuclear power, U.S.-India relations have seen a succession of rises and falls under each presidency, with the present administration being no exception. “When the rest of the world was ambiguous, ambivalent, a bit worried about what the United States might do under Trump,” Varadarajan said, “Prime Minister Modi was one of the few world leaders to actually seek a doubling down of the relationship." Over the same period, India-China relations tended to follow a similar pattern of peaks and troughs, albeit in a reversed pattern. “If you look broadly at the India-China relationship,” Varadarajan summated, “it’s a textbook case of how improvements in economic relations and improvements in trade do not necessarily lead to improvements in political relations."

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Varadarajan closed his remarks by arguing against the existing viewpoint of the triangle as a zero-sum game. “You cannot, on the one hand, talk of the need for a free and open Indo-Pacific region and, on the other hand, create forums or architecture that in some ways are designed to keep the Chinese out… India's interests lie perhaps in an architecture that is genuinely inclusive.”

The Shorenstein Journalism Award, which carries a cash prize of $10,000, recognizes accomplished journalists committed to critical reporting on and exploring the complexities of Asia through their writing. It alternates between honoring recipients from the West, who mainly address American audiences, and recipients from Asia, who pave the way for freedom of the press in their countries. Established in 2002, the award honors the legacy of Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein. A visionary businessman, philanthropist, and champion of Asian-American relations, Shorenstein was dedicated to promoting excellence in journalism and deeper understanding of Asia.

Varadarajan called the award a “boost to those of us in India who are fighting the good fight of keeping independent journalism alive-and kicking under difficult circumstances.”

Watch Varadarajan’s keynote speech:

"We must remember that predatory authoritarianism is not stamped into the Russian DNA," writes Larry Diamond in this American Interest article. 

As a senior policy advisor on the Middle East at the Pentagon and the White House, Colin Kahl has witnessed struggles in the region first-hand. From working to shape the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamic State and the long-term partnership with Iraq to limiting Iran’s nuclear activities to helping craft the U.S. response to the Arab Spring, Kahl knows better than most how important it is to understand this rapidly changing region.

Now that he has joined the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) as its inaugural Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow, Kahl wants to improve understanding of how developments in the Middle East impact people in the region and security around the globe.

The launch of FSI’s Middle East Initiative provides a first step toward this objective. As the initiative’s first director, Kahl plans to create “connective tissue” for efforts already underway across Stanford.

“There are a number of disparate efforts around campus working on Middle East issues,” said Kahl. “There is a lot of terrific research and engagement going on. My hope is that the Middle East Initiative will serve as a focal point to expose the Stanford community to ongoing work and foster new conversations that are not happening now.”

Many of the Middle East activities already occurring on campus happen at FSI, making it a natural home for the initiative.

“Our scholars are already studying the dynamics of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, prospects for reform and democracy in the Arab world, ways to counter terrorist activities and promoting economic development,” said FSI Director Michael McFaul. “Stanford students want to dive more deeply into the region’s political, social, economic and technological development. We want to give them that opportunity.”

In the 2018-2019 academic year, FSI’s Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy plans to begin filling this need by adding a three-course sequence on the Middle East.

Kahl also plans to bring more Middle East scholars from outside Stanford to share their ideas and research.

“I look forward to helping Stanford students and scholars connect and collaborate in ways that enrich our understanding of this vital region,” said Kahl. “Stanford has much to contribute to some of the most pressing policy challenges we face.”

Answers to why the US-Russia relationship seems to be at a dangerous low these days can be found in a new book by Stanford scholar Michael McFaul.

McFaul’s new book, From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, illuminates this geopolitical impasse as he reflects on his career as the Obama administration’s ambassador to Russia and his service on the National Security Council.

“From my days as a high school debater in Bozeman, Montana, in 1979 to my years as ambassador to Russia ending in 2014, I had argued that closer relations with Moscow served American national interests,” wrote McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

As a student at Stanford, McFaul, AB/AM ’86, took Russian language classes and traveled to what Ronald Reagan dubbed “the evil empire” in the summer of 1983 to attend a summer language program at Leningrad State University.

“When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, I again packed my bags and moved to Russia to help support market and democratic reforms there, believing that those changes would help bring our two countries closer together,” wrote McFaul, a political scientist.

In 2009, he went to work for President Obama at the National Security Council, and in 2012 he became the US ambassador to Russia, where he noted that he felt “animated by the belief that a more cooperative relationship served American national interests.”

McFaul was positive about a healthier US-Russia relationship as he began his duties in Moscow. In fact, he helped craft the US policy known as “reset,” which advocated a new and unprecedented collaboration between the longtime adversaries.

But that did not last for very long, said McFaul.

‘Reset’ and Confrontation

When McFaul began his ambassadorship, the Russian government took measures to discredit and undermine him. The tactics included dispatching protesters to his place of residence; slandering him on state media; and closely surveilling McFaul, his staff, and even family.

A particularly tense time for McFaul was during the Arab Spring in 2011, which saw the fall of several Middle Eastern autocrats and the Obama administration’s embrace of a seemingly democratic swell throughout the region. Russia’s then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin found the US support for democracy in the Arab world— especially McFaul’s enthusiasm— as a threat to his own political system in Russia, according to McFaul. Putin possessed an entirely different view of “regime change” and US efforts to foster democracy.

In 2012, McFaul was appointed the US ambassador to Russia. He looked forward to the new challenge—but it was troubled from the beginning. The Russian government, led by President Putin after a power shift, was deeply influenced by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, McFaul said. They were both very suspicious of the US, and McFaul believed they saw him as the enemy due to his support of democracy and human rights.

“I left Washington as Mr. Reset. I landed in Moscow as Mr. Revolutionary,” he wrote.

Elections and Controversy

In December 2011 Putin’s party, United Russia, performed poorly in the parliamentary elections. Barely staying in power, it won only 49.3 percent of the vote— a significant drop from the 64.3 percent it had garnered four years earlier. Given its prior popularity, failing to win a majority of the popular vote represented a major setback for the ruling party. Serious allegations of election fraud on behalf of Putin’s party in 2011 soon dominated Russian media.

Russians, many of them young and connected by social media, took to the streets to protest the election. McFaul said that Putin’s first reaction to the demonstrators was anger and a sense of betrayal. “In his mind, he had made these young professionals rich, and now they had turned against him,” wrote McFaul.

Putin’s second reaction was fear. “He and his team were surprised by the size of the protests. Never before had so many Russians demonstrated against his rule. The message from the streets quickly turned radical, starting with outrage against falsification, but morphing into demands for the end of Putin’s regime,” wrote McFaul.

Putin, bedeviled by continuing demonstrations, seemed to believe the US was orchestrating the protests.

As a result, in 2014 McFaul announced he was stepping down and returning to the United States following the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Russia-US relations today

In his book, McFaul paints a sobering picture of the US-Russia relationship.

“To win reelection in 2012 and marginalize his domestic opponents, Putin needed the United States as an enemy again. He rejected deeper cooperation with us,” wrote McFaul. “As a result, our administration pivoted to a more confrontational policy after President Putin had rebuffed our attempts to engage with him.”

The United States, for its part, slowed down discussions about missile defense, enacted the Magnitsky Act to punish Russian officials responsible for the wrongful death of Russian lawyer Sergey Magnitsky, canceled the Moscow summit in 2013 and continued to criticize Putin’s autocratic tendencies, among other measures.

With the issue of Russian meddling in the 2016 US election dominating news narratives in America and continued aggression by Russia, which was recently blamed for the nerve agent attack of a Russian spy in London, prospects for a healthy US-Russia relationship seems bleak, said McFaul.

Despite his journey through dark times in Russia, McFaul still remains optimistic about the “long game” of US-Russia relations.

“I am still convinced that Russia will one day consolidate democracy and that the United States and Russia will be allies. I just do not know when that ‘one day’ will come,” he wrote.

At an event co-sponsored by the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Hoover Institution, "former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou addressed a crowd of 400 University faculty, students and local community members in his Wednesday talk on democracy, cross-strait relations and future challenges facing Taiwan." Read The Stanford Daily's full coverage of President Ma's visit here.