Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Non-Recognition of Illegal Annexations: Will the Rule of International Law Hold?

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The rule in international law which prohibits forcible seizure of territory has lately come under pressure, for example when Russia seized and annexed Crimea in 2014. In the presentation, we will take a look back at the history of this rule, including the Western non-recognition of the Soviet annexation of the Baltic States in 1940-1991, of which Mälksoo has written a leading monograph. Current threats to the rule will be discussed such as the ideas that great powers are entitled to historic justice which may differ from what international law dictates or there is a regional international law dictated by the leading great power in the region. With President Putin's demands to the US and NATO, these international legal questions have again become utterly topical.

Lauri Mälksoo


Lauri Mälksoo is Professor of International Law at the University of Tartu in Estonia, member of the Institut de Droit International and of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. He has published widely on Russian and Soviet approaches to international law and human rights, including the monograph "Russian Approaches to International Law" (OUP, 2015).

 

*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact Shannon Johnson at sj1874@stanford.edu. Requests should be made by January 13, 2022.

Co-sponsored by Stanford University Library.

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Lauri Mälksoo Professor of International Law speaker University of Tartu in Estonia

The Russian Military Threat to Ukraine: How Serious?

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For winter quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

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About the Event: The Russian military has deployed and sustained major forces on or near Ukraine’s border, raising significant concerns in Washington and other NATO capitals that the Kremlin may be planning a new assault on its western neighbor.  Meanwhile, Moscow has demanded security guarantees for Russia and indicated that it otherwise will take unspecified “military-technical” measures.  Michael Kofman, Research Program Director in the Russia Studies Program at CNA, will discuss the Russian build-up, the military options it gives the Kremlin, and how a Russia-Ukraine conflict might play out.

 

About the Speaker: Michael Kofman serves as Research Program Director in the Russia Studies Program at CNA and as a Fellow at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC.  His research focuses on the Russia and the former Soviet Union, specializing in Russian armed forces, military thought, capabilities, and strategy. Previously, he served as a Program Manager and subject matter expert at National Defense University, advising senior military and government officials on issues in Russia and Eurasia.  Mr. Kofman is also a Senior Editor at War on the Rocks, where he regularly authors articles on strategy, the Russian military, Russian decision-making, and related foreign policy issues.  He runs a personal blog on the Russian armed forces at https://russianmilitaryanalysis.wordpress.com/.

Mr. Kofman has published numerous articles on the Russian armed forces, security issues in Russia/Eurasia, and analyses for the US government.  He holds an MA in International Security from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

This event is virtual only. This event will not be held in person.

Michael Kofman
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European Security Initiative

Moscow’s Proposed Security Agreements: A Genuine Opening for Bargaining?

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For winter quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

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About the Event: As large Russian military formations threaten Ukraine, the Kremlin demanded security guarantees and publicized draft U.S.-Russia and NATO-Russia agreements encapsulating its desired provisions.  With discussions with Russian officials set for mid-January, are these draft agreements intended for rejection in order to provide another pretext for Russian military action against Ukraine, or do they represent an opening bid in a negotiation that might ultimately address Western, Russian and Ukrainian security concerns?  Jim Goldgeier, Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Rose Gottemoeller, Steven C. Házy Lecturer at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, will discuss the Russian draft agreements, whether they offer a basis for serious negotiation, and how the United States and NATO should respond. 

 

About the Speaker: James Goldgeier is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service at American University, where he served as Dean from 2011-17.  Previously, he was a professor at Cornell University and George Washington University.  He has held appointments or fellowships at the Library of Congress, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Transatlantic Academy at the German Marshall Fund, the Hoover Institution, and at the State Department and on the National Security Council Staff.  He is a senior adviser for the Bridging the Gap initiative and is co-editor of the Bridging the Gap book series at Oxford University Press.  He has authored or co-authored four books, and he currently serves as the chair of the State Department Historical Advisory Committee.

Rose Gottemoeller is the Steven C. Házy Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before joining Stanford Gottemoeller was the Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019, where she helped to drive forward NATO’s adaptation to new security challenges in Europe and in the fight against terrorism.  Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. While Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in 2009 and 2010, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation.

This event is virtual only. This event will not be held in person.

Rose Gottemoeller
James Goldgeier
Seminars
European Security Initiative

Johannes Ludewig

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Chairman of National (Germany) Regulatory Control Council 2006-2021; CEO of German Railways and afterward Community of European Railways, Brussels 1997-2010; State Secretary Federal Ministry of Economics (1995-1997); Economic and Financial Advisor to the German Federal Chancellor, also responsible for the economic reconstruction of East Germany after Reunification 1990; Dr.(PhD) 1975 (University of Hamburg); MS 1972 (Stanford University).

CDDRL Visiting Scholar, 2022

Hate Crimes, Terrorism, and The Framing of White Supremacist Violence

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For winter quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

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About the Event: In this talk, Professor Shirin Sinnar will unpack the historical roots and contemporary implications of framing racist political violence as “hate crimes” or “terrorism.”  She will explain how the “hate crimes” and “terrorism” frames took hold in our politics, law, and culture, and how they supply two starkly different ways of conceptualizing and responding to white supremacist violence.  She argues that the current move to reframe white supremacist violence as terrorism comes with grave risks, and that ultimately, neither frame is consistent with aspirations for racial justice.  The response to white supremacist violence should begin with a critical reexamination of both frames.  This talk is based on Professor Sinnar’s forthcoming article in the California Law Review.

This event is part of the year-long initiative on “Ethics & Political Violence” jointly organized by the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and The McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. This event is hosted by CISAC and is co-sponsored by McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society.

 

About the Speaker: Shirin Sinnar joined the Stanford Law faculty in 2012. Her scholarship focuses on the legal treatment of political violence, the procedural dimensions of civil rights litigation, and the role of institutions in protecting individual rights and democratic values in the national security context.  In 2017, she was the co-recipient of the inaugural Mike Lewis Prize for National Security Law Scholarship for her article, The Lost Story of Iqbal.  In March 2021, she testified on anti-Asian hate violence before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. Prior to her appointment at Stanford, Sinnar worked as a civil rights attorney for the Asian Law Caucus and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and as a law clerk to the Honorable Warren Ferguson of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

This event is virtual only. This event will not be held in person.

Shirin Sinnar Professor of Law & John A. Wilson Faculty Scholar Stanford Law School
Seminars

Political Entrepreneurs: The Rise of Challenger Parties in Europe

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Challenger parties are on the rise in Europe. Like disruptive entrepreneurs, these parties offer new policies and defy the dominance of established party brands. In the face of these challenges and a more volatile electorate, mainstream parties are losing their grip on power. Drawing on research from her recent book, Professor Sara Hobolt explores why some challenger parties are so successful and what mainstream parties can do to confront these political entrepreneurs.


Sara Hobolt

Sara B. Hobolt is the Sutherland Chair in European Institutions and a professor at the Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science.

She has published five books and over 60 journal articles on European and EU politics and political behaviour.

Her most recent book is Political Entrepreneurs: The Rise of Challenge Parties in Europe (Princeton University Press, 2020, with Catherine De Vries). She is also the Chair of the European Election Studies (EES), a Europe-wide project studying voters, parties, candidates and the media in European Parliamentary elections. Professor Hobolt regularly provides commentary in the media on elections, Brexit, public opinion and European and EU politics.


*If you need any disability-related accommodation, please contact: Shannon Johnson (sj1874@stanford.edu) by January 6, 2022.

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Sara Hobolt Sutherland Chair of European Institutions speaker London School of Economics

Keeping It Professional: Language and Bureaucracy in the Cold War

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For winter quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

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About the Event: How do states communicate internally about foreign policy and how does this change over time? Applying concepts from linguistics to a novel corpus of all President’s Daily Briefs from 1961 to 1977, we analyze change over time in the variety of terms used in national security writing (“lexical diversity”). We find a consistently declining level of lexical diversity across presidential administrations and despite variation in exogenous changes in foreign affairs. We argue that this increasingly homogenized language reflects a larger process of bureaucratization in American national security institutions in the 1960s and 1970s. We build on the concept of “organizational sensemaking” and argue that bureaucratization directly and indirectly compresses the terminological range used by individual bureaucrats and homogenizes the language of its outputs. One key payoff is shedding light on what is “lost in translation” when bureaucratic experts communicate with leaders and the foreign policy mistakes and misperceptions that may follow. Our research contributes to work on bureaucracy and perceptions in IR by identifying a subtle shift in the spectrum of terms with which the state interprets the world – a finding that is only tractable by combining computational and linguistic techniques with a large corpus of formerly classified intelligence materials.

 

About the Speaker: Eric Min is Assistant Professor of Political Science at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University, where he was the Zukerman Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation for the 2017-2018 academic year. He is a 2020 Henry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Distinguished Scholar. His research interests focus on the application of machine learning, text, and statistical methods to the analysis of interstate war, diplomacy, decision-making, and conflict management. His research has been published or is forthcoming in American Political Science Review, International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, and Journal of Strategic Studies.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

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Research Seminar Series

James Goldgeier

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James Goldgeier is a Research Affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and a Professor at the School of International Service at American University, where he served as Dean from 2011-17. From 2019-2025, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. In 2018-19, he held the Library of Congress Chair in U.S.-Russia Relations at the John W. Kluge Center and was a visiting senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to joining American University, he was a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, where from 2001-05 he directed the Elliott School’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. He also taught at Cornell University, and has held a number of public policy appointments and fellowships, including Director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council Staff, Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress, and Edward Teller National Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Dr. Goldgeier has authored or edited six books, most recently Evaluating NATO Enlargement: From Cold War Victory to the Russia-Ukraine War (2023), co-edited with Joshua Shifrinson. He is the recipient of the Edgar S. Furniss book award in national and international security and co-recipient of the Georgetown University Lepgold Book Prize in international relations. Dr. Goldgeier is a senior adviser to the Bridging the Gap initiative, which promotes scholarly contributions to public debate and decision making on global challenges and U.S. foreign policy, and is co-editor of the Oxford University Press Bridging the Gap Book Series.

Dr. Goldgeier is past president of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (2015-2017). He received his M.A. and PhD in Political Science from the University of California Berkeley and his A.B., magna cum laude in Government, from Harvard University.

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Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare

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For winter quarter 2021, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

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About the Event: This event is a book talk based on my forthcoming book, Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare. Below is a brief summary of the book.

When Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram were first introduced to the public, their mission was simple: they were designed to help people become more connected to each other. Social media became a thriving digital space by giving its users the freedom to share whatever they wanted with their friends and followers. Unfortunately, these same digital tools are also easy to manipulate. As exemplified by Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, authoritarian states can exploit social media to interfere with democratic governance in open societies. 

Tyrants on Twitter is the first detailed analysis of how Chinese and Russian agents weaponize Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to subvert the liberal international order. In addition to examining the 2016 U.S. election, David L. Sloss explores Russia's use of foreign influence operations to threaten democracies in Europe, as well as China's use of social media and other digital tools to meddle in Western democracies and buttress autocratic rulers around the world. 

Sloss calls for cooperation among democratic governments to create a new transnational system for regulating social media to protect Western democracies from information warfare. Drawing on his professional experience as an arms control negotiator, he outlines a novel system of transnational governance that Western democracies can enforce by harmonizing their domestic regulations. And drawing on his academic expertise in constitutional law, he explains why that system—if implemented by legislation in the United States—would be constitutionally defensible, despite likely First Amendment objections. This book is essential reading in a time when disinformation campaigns threaten to undermine democracy.

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About the Speaker: David L. Sloss is the John A. and Elizabeth H. Sutro Professor of Law at Santa Clara University. He is the author of The Death of Treaty Supremacy: An Invisible Constitutional Change (Oxford Univ. Press, 2016) and Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare (Stanford Univ. Press, forthcoming 2022). He is the co-editor of International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: Continuity and Change (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2011) and sole editor of The Role of Domestic Courts in Treaty Enforcement: A Comparative Study (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009). He has also published several dozen book chapters and law review articles. His book on the death of treaty supremacy and his edited volume on international law in the U.S. Supreme Court both won prestigious book awards from the American Society of International Law. Professor Sloss is a member of the American Law Institute and a Counsellor to the American Society of International Law. His scholarship is informed by extensive government experience. Before entering academia, he spent nine years in the federal government, where he worked on U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations and nuclear proliferation issues.

This event is virtual only. This event will not be held in person.

David Sloss Professor of Law Santa Clara University
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Research Seminar Series

What Biden should say to Putin on Ukraine

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President Joe Biden will hold a secure video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin December 7 against the backdrop of a menacing Russian military build-up near Ukraine. U.S. intelligence believes the Russians may amass 175,000 troops near its western neighbor early in 2022.

Does Putin intend to invade Ukraine? He could be bluffing. In April, the Russian army deployed a large force near Ukraine but did not act. On the other hand, given the scale of ongoing military preparations and the hostile rhetoric pouring out of Moscow, Putin may mean it this time.

It is also possible that Putin has not yet made a decision. He likes options and might hope the threat of force will secure concessions from Kyiv toward settling the simmering conflict in Donbas in eastern Ukraine on Moscow’s terms. In any case, the Biden-Putin conversation may offer one of the last best chances to affect Kremlin calculations of the costs of an assault on Ukraine.

Biden has said he would make it “very, very difficult” for Putin to attack. He should lay out the potential costs to ensure his Russian counterpart fully understands what would follow a Russian invasion. Those costs are substantial:

  • A West-Russia freeze. Small positive developments in the U.S.-Russia relationship have occurred since Biden and Putin met in June in Geneva, including a broadening of diplomatic contacts and a strategic stability dialogue that both sides report as constructive. Nothing would kill those prospects more quickly than a Russian invasion of its neighbor. The same is true of relations with other Western countries; Putin should anticipate pariah status.
  • New sanctions. Biden should explain that military action would trigger new Western sanctions targeting Russian state-owned enterprises, bans on holding Russian state debt, and visa bans and asset freezes on individuals and their families (let Russian oligarchs explain to their spouses why they cannot make their annual shopping trip to London). Even expulsion from the SWIFT international payment mechanism could be on the table. Biden should add that, if Germany and the European Union do not shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, he would not waive U.S. sanctions as he did in May, and that he would work with European countries in a concerted effort to expand their access to alternatives to Russian energy.
  • Bolstering NATO’s defenses. Following Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, NATO deployed battlegroups to Poland and each of the Baltic states. Biden should remind Putin that each battlegroup numbers less than 1,500 soldiers and that NATO still abides by its 1997 assurance that it would not permanently deploy substantial combat forces on the territory of new members. However, if the Russian military assaults Ukraine, then the Baltic states, Poland, and others in Central and Eastern Europe will request more NATO military power and infrastructure on their territory — and Biden would consider such requests sympathetically.
  • Military assistance. Biden should note that individual NATO members have exercised restraint in the kinds and amount of assistance and equipment they have provided Ukraine’s military. That could change.
  • A potential military quagmire. Lastly, some in Moscow apparently believe the Russian army would be welcomed in Ukraine. Biden should note that the Ukrainians will fight and, even if losing, would extract a price from Russia. He might recall the experiences of the Soviet Union and United States in Afghanistan: getting in proved relatively easy; the real casualties and costs came later.

Biden should also tell Putin that Washington is prepared to engage more actively on diplomacy. He should offer to join the German and French leaders in the Normandy format process aimed at mediating a resolution between Russia and Ukraine. He should also reaffirm the U.S. position supporting the Minsk agreements.

Biden might offer two qualifiers regarding Minsk. First, all parties must implement the agreements, including Russia. Second, U.S. support does not mean acceptance of Russia’s desired interpretation of undefined Minsk provisions. For example, “special status” for Donbas should not include the right to veto national-level policies.

Questions about Europe’s security architecture and how Ukraine and Russia fit in underlie the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Biden should offer Putin a discussion on those issues, while noting that they cannot solve the questions over the heads of the Europeans. The Ukrainians, in particular, need to be at the table.

Biden can tell Putin there is no enthusiasm within NATO for putting Kyiv on a membership track now. But the alliance will not reverse its “open door” policy. Doing so would require consensus, and not many members — let alone all 30 — would agree to such a reversal. “Not now but not never” for Ukraine would defuse the question by kicking it down the road. If Russia genuinely worked with the United States and NATO members to mitigate the tensions that now divide Europe, its relationship with the alliance could well change.

Biden can also tell Putin that he would be ready to take due account of legitimate Russian security interests. For example, Putin expressed concern about deployment in Ukraine of U.S. missiles that could strike Moscow.  Biden can tell Putin that, in the right context, Washington would assure Moscow that it would not deploy offensive missiles on Ukrainian territory.

The U.S. president should aim to leave Putin with an understanding that military action would have painful costs for Russia but that U.S. diplomacy is prepared to engage more actively to resolve the problems at the root of the crisis. That just might help stop a war.

Originally for Brookings

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President Joe Biden will hold a secure video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin December 7 against the backdrop of a menacing Russian military build-up near Ukraine. U.S. intelligence believes the Russians may amass 175,000 troops near its western neighbor early in 2022.

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