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.

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* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/bUXHbUj5uxE

 

About the Event: While most civil wars today are fought within Muslim-majority states and, frequently, by armed groups that self-identify as Islamic, we know little about the relationships between and amongst Islamic humanitarian law, Western (treaty-based) humanitarian law, and the rhetoric and behavior of Islamic armed groups. Our legal analysis suggests that, while there is a great deal of overlap between Western and Islamic humanitarian law, this overlap is not perfect. Our empirical analysis, which focuses on both the words and behaviors of Islamic armed groups, suggests similarly mixed results. Specifically, we find that, on average, Islamic armed groups do not appear to be more or less compliant with Western or Islamic humanitarian law than non-Islamic armed groups when it comes to civilian targeting and child soldiering. While they often appeal to Islamic humanitarian law, Islamic armed groups appear to be bound by similar political and military – rather than religious or legal – constraints to non-Islamic armed groups.

 

About the Speaker: Tanisha Fazal is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her scholarship focuses on sovereignty, international law, and armed conflict.  Fazal’s current book project analyzes the effect of improvements in medical care in conflict zones on the long-term costs of war.  She is the author of State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation (Princeton University Press, 2007), and Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the Regulation of Armed Conflict (Cornell University Press, 2018.

Virtual Seminar

Tanisha Fazal Professor of Political Science University of Minnesota
Seminars
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Please join the Cyber Policy Center on Wednesday, September 9th, from 10 a.m. - 11 a.m. pacific time for Navigating U.S.-China Technology Futures, an online seminar, open to the public with Andrew Grotto, Director of the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, Graham Webster, editor in chief of the Stanford–New America DigiChina Project, Jeffrey Ding from the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Jennifer Pan, Assistant Professor of Communication in the Stanford Department of Communication. Speakers will be exploring how the U.S. can address security and values challenges in U.S.-China technological cooperation, while avoiding excesses that impede innovation and harm innocent people.

This event is open to the public but registration is required.

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C428

Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 723-9866
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Andrew Grotto

Andrew J. Grotto is a research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

Grotto’s research interests center on the national security and international economic dimensions of America’s global leadership in information technology innovation, and its growing reliance on this innovation for its economic and social life. He is particularly interested in the allocation of responsibility between the government and the private sector for defending against cyber threats, especially as it pertains to critical infrastructure; cyber-enabled information operations as both a threat to, and a tool of statecraft for, liberal democracies; opportunities and constraints facing offensive cyber operations as a tool of statecraft, especially those relating to norms of sovereignty in a digitally connected world; and governance of global trade in information technologies.

Before coming to Stanford, Grotto was the Senior Director for Cybersecurity Policy at the White House in both the Obama and Trump Administrations. His portfolio spanned a range of cyber policy issues, including defense of the financial services, energy, communications, transportation, health care, electoral infrastructure, and other vital critical infrastructure sectors; cybersecurity risk management policies for federal networks; consumer cybersecurity; and cyber incident response policy and incident management. He also coordinated development and execution of technology policy topics with a nexus to cyber policy, such as encryption, surveillance, privacy, and the national security dimensions of artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

At the White House, he played a key role in shaping President Obama’s Cybersecurity National Action Plan and driving its implementation. He was also the principal architect of President Trump’s cybersecurity executive order, “Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure.”

Grotto joined the White House after serving as Senior Advisor for Technology Policy to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, advising Pritzker on all aspects of technology policy, including Internet of Things, net neutrality, privacy, national security reviews of foreign investment in the U.S. technology sector, and international developments affecting the competitiveness of the U.S. technology sector.

Grotto worked on Capitol Hill prior to the Executive Branch, as a member of the professional staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He served as then-Chairman Dianne Feinstein’s lead staff overseeing cyber-related activities of the intelligence community and all aspects of NSA’s mission. He led the negotiation and drafting of the information sharing title of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which later served as the foundation for the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act that President Obama signed in 2015. He also served as committee designee first for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and later for Senator Kent Conrad, advising the senators on oversight of the intelligence community, including of covert action programs, and was a contributing author of the “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program.”

Before his time on Capitol Hill, Grotto was a Senior National Security Analyst at the Center for American Progress, where his research and writing focused on U.S. policy towards nuclear weapons - how to prevent their spread, and their role in U.S. national security strategy.

Grotto received his JD from the University of California at Berkeley, his MPA from Harvard University, and his BA from the University of Kentucky.

Research Scholar, Center for International Security and Cooperation
Director, Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance
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Andrew Grotto
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Communication
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and of Sociology
Stanford Affiliate at the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Stanford Affiliate at the Tech Impact and Policy Center
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Jennifer Pan is a Professor of Communication and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. Her research focuses on political communication and authoritarian politics. Pan uses experimental and computational methods with large-scale datasets on political activity in China and other authoritarian regimes to answer questions about how autocrats perpetuate their rule. How political censorship, propaganda, and information manipulation work in the digital age. How preferences and behaviors are shaped as a result.

Her book, Welfare for Autocrats: How Social Assistance in China Cares for its Rulers (Oxford, 2020) shows how China's pursuit of political order transformed the country’s main social assistance program, Dibao, for repressive purposes. Her work has appeared in peer reviewed publications such as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, and Science.

She graduated from Princeton University, summa cum laude, and received her Ph.D. from Harvard University’s Department of Government.

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Jennifer Pan
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Research Scholar
Graham Webster

Graham Webster is a research scholar in the Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance and editor-in-chief of the DigiChina Project at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He researches, writes, and teaches on technology policy in China and US-China relations.

Before bringing DigiChina to Stanford in 2019, he was its cofounder and coordinating editor at New America, where he was a China digital economy fellow. From 2012 to 2017, Webster worked for Yale Law School as a senior fellow and lecturer responsible for the Paul Tsai China Center’s Track II dialogues between the United States and China and co-taught seminars on contemporary China and Chinese law and policy. While there, he was an affiliated fellow with the Yale Information Society Project, a visiting scholar at China Foreign Affairs University, and a Transatlantic Digital Debates fellow with New America and the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. He was previously an adjunct instructor teaching East Asian politics at New York University and a Beijing-based journalist writing on the Internet in China for CNET News. 

In recent years, Webster's writing has been published in MIT Technology Review, Foreign Affairs, Slate, The Wire China, The Information, Tech Policy Press, and Foreign Policy. He has been quoted by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Bloomberg and spoken to NPR and BBC World Service. Webster has testified before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission and speaks regularly at universities and conferences in North America, East Asia, and Europe. His chapter, "What Is at Stake in the US–China Technological Relationship?" appears in The China Questions II (Harvard University Press, 2022).

Webster holds a bachelor's in journalism and international studies from Northwestern University and a master's in East Asian studies from Harvard University. He took doctoral coursework in political science at the University of Washington and language training at Tsinghua University, Peking University, Stanford University, and Kanda University of International Studies.

Editor-in-Chief, DigiChina
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Graham Webster
Jeffrey Ding
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This event has been postponed. Please see below for details.

On the heels of Prime Minister Abe's resignation, a Cabinet meeting has been called for the morning of Wednesday, September 16 prior to the Diet vote for the new Prime Minister later that day. As much as he would like to join us that morning, Defense Minister Kono has to prioritize the cabinet meeting; the whole cabinet has to resign in order for the vote to take place. Therefore, we will be postponing our seminar "Turbulence in East Asia and Japan's Security," which was planned for September 15 at 4 PM (Pacific)/September 16 at 8 AM (Japan). 
 
We will advertise the new date for the event once it has been set. We hope you will be able to join us at that time. Thank you for your interest and understanding.
 
 
Starting with a landscape overview of Japan's security and defense as it regards the Asia-Pacific region and also the world, Japanese Minister of Defense Kono Taro will discuss recent changes in Japan's security environment, the challenges and opportunities these changes present, as well as their impacts on the country's security policy. Minister Kono will also examine the major issues for Japan's defense and Japan's approach to them. The webinar will end with a short audience Q&A moderated by APARC Japan Program Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui.
 
SPEAKER
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Portrait of Taro Kono, Japanese Minister of Defense
Kono Taro, 56, is an eight-term Member of the House of Representatives. He has been Minister of Defense in the Abe Government since September 11, 2019.
 
Among positions he has held are Foreign Minister; Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, or Minister in charge of the National Police Organization; Minister for Administrative Reform; Minister for Civil Service Reform; Minister for Regulatory Reform; Minister in Charge of Consumer Affairs and Food Safety; and Minister in Charge of Disaster Management in the Abe Government, Parliamentary Secretary for Public Management and Senior Vice-Minister of Justice in the Koizumi Government, and Chairman of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives.
 
Kono is a graduate of the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. He was Chairman of the Japan Race Horse Association and Chairman of the Shonan Bellmare Football Club, the 1995 Asia Champion Soccer Club. He is married to Kaori and has a son, Ippei.
Kono Taro Minister of Defense, <br>Government of Japan</br>
Seminars
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hazelton.jpg PhD

Jacqueline L. Hazelton is the executive editor of the journal International Security. She was previously an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College and an associate of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School. Hazelton's research ranges from grand strategy, great power military intervention, and U.S. foreign and military policy to counterinsurgency, terrorism, and the uses of military power. She recently published Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare and is working on a manuscript about great powers, liberal values, and military intervention.

Prior to her faculty appointment at the Naval War College, Hazelton was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Rochester and a research fellow with the Belfer Center's International Security Program. Earlier experience included a stint as an international journalist with the Associated Press where she analyzed and reported on world events from Tokyo to Kabul and covered U.S. news as well. She received M.A.’s in English Literature and in International Relations from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. from Brandeis University's Department of Politics.

Affiliate
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Christopher Darnton has a PhD from the Department of Politics at Princeton University. At CISAC, Christopher is writing a book on the hundred-year history of U.S. security cooperation in Latin America, using declassified military documents to analyze the day-to-day work of alliance politics from the vantage point of officers in the field. How should we explain and understand military roles in inter-American relations beyond specific cases of intervention, and what lessons should inform US defense cooperation and military diplomacy today? Christopher’s broader work examines the domestic and bureaucratic politics of foreign policy in the Americas, particularly related to enduring rivalries and regional wars; conflict resolution and public diplomacy; developing-country diplomacy in the Cold War and in contemporary great power competition; and the refinement of archival and case-study research methods in security studies.

Christopher is an associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he has worked since 2016, teaching Latin American politics, international relations, and US foreign policy. Before NPS, Christopher taught for seven years at the Catholic University of America, and before that, for a year at Reed College. Christopher also served as president of the Foreign Policy section of the American Political Science Association; as a contributing editor to the Library of Congress' Handbook of Latin American Studies; and as a summer associate at the RAND Corporation.

Affiliate
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Ryan A. Musto is the Director of Forums and Research Initiatives with the Global Research Institute (GRI) at William & Mary.

He is currently completing a book manuscript on the international history of regional nuclear weapon free zones. With his work, Ryan seeks to better understand the geopolitical and geostrategic dynamics that lead to proposals for regional denuclearization and determine their outcome. He also looks to further situate nuclear weapons within our understanding of the global north-south divide. Ultimately, Ryan aims to produce works of “applied history” that can inform contemporary efforts towards the completion of denuclearized zones and nuclear arms control more broadly.

Ryan served as a MacArthur Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow with CISAC from 2020 - 2022. He has also served as a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and as a Nuclear Security Fellow with the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) in São Paulo, Brazil. His work has been published in Diplomatic History, Cold War History, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Arms Control Today, and Americas Quarterly, amongst other outlets. Ryan is a frequent contributor to the Wilson Center’s Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP).

Ryan holds a Ph.D. in history from The George Washington University, master’s degrees in international and world history from Columbia University and the London School of Economics, and a B.A. (hons.) in history from New York University (NYU).

Affiliate
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