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.

Image

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.”

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.