Stanford University

Security

FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.

Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions. 

Mark Leonard: "The connectivity wars: European security and the weaponization of the internet, trade, migration and international institutions"

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THIS EVENT HAS REACHED FULL CAPACITY. PLEASE CONTACT MAGDALENA magdafb@stanford.edu TO GET ON THE WAITLIST
 
Our world is built on links and connections. Roads, railways, supply chains, underwater cables, and social networks are thefoundation of our societies. It was the hope of the late 20th century that these interdependencies would further understanding anddecrease conflict. Like no other organisation, the European Union was based on this idea.
But now, what has brought us together is driving us apart. Instead of bringing us closer, these interdependences are turning sour, causing conflicts – and being used as weapons. The most important battleground of these conflicts will not be the air or ground but rather the interconnected infrastructure of the global economy: disrupting trade and investment, international law, the internet, transport links, and the movement of people. Welcome to the Connectivity Wars. 
 
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Mark Leonard is co-founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the first pan-European think tank.  As well as writingand commenting frequently in the media on global affairs, Mark is author of two best-selling books. His first book, Why Europe will run the21st Century, was published in 2005 and translated into 19 languages. Mark’s second book, What does China think? was published in 2008and translated into 15 languages. He writes a syndicated column on global affairs for Reuters.com and is Chairman of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Geoeconomics. In 2016 he published an edited volume on Connectivity Wars and is working on a future book on the same topic.
Previously he worked as director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform and as director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a think tank he founded at the age of 24 under the patronage of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the 1990s Mark worked for the think tank Demos where his Britain™ report was credited with launching Cool Britannia. Mark has spent time in Washington, D.C. as a Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and in Beijing as a visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences.
Honoured as a “Young Global Leader” of the World Economic Forum, he spends a lot of time helping governments, companies, andinternational organisations make sense of the big geo-political trends of the twenty-first century. He is a regular speaker and prolific writerand commentator on global issues, the future of Europe, China's internal politics, and the practice of diplomacy and business in a networked world. His essays have  appeared in publications such as Foreign Affairs, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Le Monde, Süddeutsche Zeitung, El Pais, Gazeta Wyborcza, Foreign Policy, the New Statesman, The Daily Telegraph, The Economist, Time,and Newsweek.
 
 
Mark Leonard Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations
Lectures
European Security Initiative
European Security Initiative Lecture Series

Ivo Daalder: "America First: Donald Trump and the New World Order"

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Ivo Daalder

Ivo Daalder has been president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs since July 2013. Prior to joining the Council, Daalder served as the Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for more than four years. Daalder also served on the National Security Council staff as director for European Affairs from 1995-97.
 
Ambassador Daalder is a widely-published author. His most recent books include In the Shadow of the Oval Office: Profiles of the National Security Advisers and the Presidents they Served—From JFK to George W. Bush (with I. M. Destler) and the award-winning America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (with James M. Lindsay). Other books include Beyond Preemption: Force and Legitimacy in a Changing World (2007); Crescent of Crisis: US-European Strategy for the Greater Middle East (2006); and Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo (2000). Daalder is a frequent contributor to the opinion pages of the world’s leading newspapers, and a regular commentator on international affairs on television and radio.
 
Before his appointment as ambassador to NATO by President Obama in 2009, Daalder was a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, specializing in American foreign policy, European security and transatlantic relations, and national security affairs. Prior to joining Brookings in 1998, he was an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and director of research at its Center for International and Security Studies.
 
Ambassador Daalder serves on the board of UI LABS, on the leadership board of the chancellor of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and on the Advisory Committee of the Secretary of State's Strategic Dialogue with Civil Society, for which he also cochairs the Global Cities Working Group.
 
Ambassador Daalder was educated at Oxford and Georgetown Universities, and received his PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is married to Elisa D. Harris, and they have two sons.

 

 
Ivo Daalder Former U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO
Lectures
European Security Initiative
European Security Initiative Lecture Series

The Kremlin's Trojan Horses?: Russia and the European Far Right

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A wave of far-right populism is sweeping across Europe. Euroskeptic, nationalist, populist parties, once on the fringes of European politics, are poised to enter the mainstream. The rise of the far right is first and foremost a cultural backlash against the rapid economic and political integration of the E.U. over the last 25 years. But while far-right parties are nothing new in Europe, their explicit pro-Russian turn is. Far right parties are not simply puppets of the Kremlin, but they are undoubtedly allies. They act as agents of influence in Europe’s institutions by supporting pro-Russian views, praising Mr. Putin’s foreign policy in Ukraine and Syria, and advocating against EU policies that would hurt Russian interests, such as sanctions. Increasing electoral support for the far right populists is no doubt domestically driven, but by supporting Putin, far-right leaders conveniently play into the Kremlin’s geo-political agenda.

 

 

Alina Polyakova, PhD, is the Director of Research for Europe and Eurasia at the Atlantic Council. She is the author of  the book, The Dark Side of European Integration (2015), which examines the rise of far-right populism in Europe. Dr. Polyakova is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a frequent media commentator on developments in Ukraine, Russia, and Europe. Her writings have appeared in major publications such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The American Interest, Newsweek, and academic journals. Concurrently, Dr. Polyakova is a Swiss National Science Foundation Senior Research Fellow and coinvestigator on a multi-year project examining the rise of far-right political parties in the European Union. She has been a fellow at the Eurasia Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Fulbright Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Bern. Dr. Polyakova has taught courses on European politics, foreign policy, and Russia at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Bern, Switzerland. She holds a PhD and MA in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in Economics and Sociology with highest honors from Emory University.

 

THIS EVENT HAS REACHED FULL CAPACITY. PLEASE CONTACT MAGDALENA magdafb@stanford.edu TO GET ON THE WAITLIST. 

Alina Polyakova
Lectures
European Security Initiative
European Security Initiative Lecture Series

Bits and pieces: Liberal democracy in the digital era

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The event is a joint sponsorship between CISAC, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the European Security Initiative (in The Europe Center) and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES).

About the Event: Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Bernard and Susan Liautaud Distinguished Visiting Fellow, FSI, Visiting Scholar at CISAC, and former President of Republic of Estonia (2006 - 2016), will be interviewed by Michael McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), FSI Senior Fellow, Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Professor of Political Science. Audience members will have an opportunity to ask questions after the interview. 

About the Guest Speaker: Toomas Hendrik Ilves was born to an Estonian family living in Stockholm, Sweden. He was educated in the United States, receiving a degree from Columbia University in 1976 and a master's degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978.

In 1984 he moved to Munich, Germany, to work at the office of Radio Free Europe, first as a researcher and foreign policy analyst and later as the head of the Estonian Desk.

From 1993 to 1996 Ilves served in Washington as the ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to the United States and Canada. During this time, he launched the Tiger Leap Initiative to computerize and connect all Estonian schools online with Education Minister Jaak Aaviksoo. He then served as minister of foreign affairs from 1996 to 1998. After a brief period as chairman of the North Atlantic Institute in 1998, he was again appointed minister of foreign affairs, serving until 2002.

From 2002 to 2004, Ilves was a member of the Estonian Parliament and in 2004 he was elected a member of the European Parliament, where he was vice-president of the Foreign Affairs Committee. As a MEP, he initiated the Baltic Sea Strategy that was later implemented as official regional policy of the European Union.

Ilves was elected president of the Republic of Estonia in 2006. He was re-elected for a second term in office in 2011.

During his presidency, Ilves has been appointed to serve in several high positions in the field of ICT in the European Union. He served as chairman of the EU Task Force on eHealth from 2011 to 2012 and was chairman of the European Cloud Partnership Steering Board at the invitation of the European Commission from 2012 to 2014. In 2013 he chaired the High-Level Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms convened by ICANN. From 2014 to 2015 Ilves was the co-chair of the advisory panel of the World Bank's World Development Report 2016 "Digital Dividends" and was also the chair of World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Cyber Security beginning in June 2014.

Starting from 2016, Ilves co-chaired The World Economic Forum working group The Global Futures Council on Blockchain Technology. In 2017 he joined Stanford University as a Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

President Ilves has published many essays and articles in Estonian and English on numerous topics ranging from Estonian language, history, and literature to global foreign and security policy and cyber security. His books include essay collections in Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Hungarian, and Russian.

His international awards and honorary degrees include Knight of Freedom Award by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation (2016), the Aspen Prague Award by the Aspen Institute (2015), the Freedom Award by the Atlantic Council (2014) and the NDI Democracy Award by the National Democratic Institute (2013). His Honorary Degrees include an Honorary Degree from St. Olaf College, US (2014), an Honorary Degree from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland (2010), and an Honorary Degree from Tbilisi University, Georgia (2007).

 

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Encina Hall, 2nd floor

Republic of Estonia, Stanford University
Panel Discussions
European Security Initiative
European Security Initiative Lecture Series

America needs to play both the short and long game in cybersecurity

Paragraphs

In his last news conference of the year (and maybe last ever as president) last week, President Obama squarely assigned blame to the Russian government for stealing data from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman, with the intent of disrupting our electoral process and helping one candidate, President-elect Donald Trump. Obama also promised to respond but left out details about how and when.

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1
Publication Type
Commentary
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
The Washington Post
Authors
Michael A. McFaul
Amy Zegart
External URL

Ivan Krastev, "The Imitation Imperative"

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Although the post-1989 world is the world that America and Europe made, it has now become the world that America and Europe have started to fear and sometimes even hate. Looking back across the turbulent decades since 1989, we are astounded by the speed with which yesterday's euphoric victory has turned into today's anxiety and distress. Explaining why and how it happened in the different parts of Europe, Russia, Turkey, Eastern Europe is the principal ambition of this lecture.

 

[[{"fid":"225445","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto"}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"style":"font-size: 13.008px; height: 320px; width: 320px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto","data-delta":"1"}}]]Ivan Krastev is the Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and Permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Board of Trustees of The International Crisis Group and is a Contributing Opinion Writer of The New York Times. His latest books in English are “Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest” (UPenn Press, May 2014); “In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders?” (TED Books, 2013). He is a co-author with Stephen Holmes of a forthcoming book on Russian politics.  His book “After Europe” is forthcoming in English (Penn Press, 2017) and in German (Suhrkamp, 2017).

 

 

THIS EVENT HAS REACHED FULL CAPACITY. PLEASE CONTACT MAGDALENA magdafb@stanford.edu TO GET ON THE WAITLIST. 

Ivan Krastev Chairman of the Center for Liberal Strategies Speaker
Lectures
European Security Initiative
European Security Initiative Lecture Series

US Ambassador to Poland, Paul Jones

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The Ambassador's remarks will address:

  • U.S. military deployments
  • Poland’s regional and global relations with the European Union, NATO and the United States 
  •  Poland’s current domestic situation

 

Paul Jones was confirmed by the United States Senate as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Poland on August 5, 2015, and sworn in by Secretary Kerry on September 11, 2015.

Amb. Jones has a wide-ranging background in Europe. As Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from 2013-15, he was responsible for all aspects of U.S. policy and operations in Europe, particularly Russia and Ukraine. He was also Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and at the U.S. Embassy in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia (1996-99).

Ambassador Jones’ service in Asia and South Asia has complemented his European focus. As U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia, 2010-13, he led significant growth in the U.S.-Malaysian relationship, becoming the first U.S. Ambassador to be conferred the honorary title of Dato’. Ambassador Jones is a career member of the State Department’s Senior Foreign Service. His awards include the Presidential Meritorious Service Award, the Robert C. Frasure Memorial Award for peace building, and several Superior Honor Awards.

 
Paul W. Jones US Ambassador to Poland Speaker US Embassy in Poland
Lectures
European Security Initiative
European Security Initiative Lecture Series

"Russian Military Reform and its Consequences" by Aleksandr Golts

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In March 2014 Russian Armed Forces managed to deploy thousands troops on Ukrainian bordere in less than 48hs. This fact was crucial in capturing Crimea. In 2015 Russia showed rapid and surprise deployment of its forces in Syria. Such success was the result of very painful military reform of  former  Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov. As the result of the reform President Putin received in his disposal up to 40 units of permanent readiness. Russia got total military superiority in post-Soviet space. All this puts important questions to answer. What are the results of progressive “sectoral” reform in authoritarian society? Does it weaken the regime or strengthen it? What  are the consequences for European and world security? Can Kremlin preserve the results of the reform in situation of new confrontation with the West?

 

Alexander Golts received his M.A. in Journalism from the Moscow State Lomonosov University in 1978. From 1980 to 1996, he worked with the "Krasnaya zvezda" ("Red star") editorial board, and the  Soviet, then Russian, military daily. From 1996 to 2001, Golts served as military editor of Itogi, a premier Russian news magazine, and from 2001 to 2004 he worked for the magazine "Yezhenedelnyi journal" ("Weekly") as deputy editor-in-chief (Moscow). He spent the 2002/2003 academic year at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) of Stanford as a Visiting Fellow. Today, Golts works as deputy editor for the website EJ.RU. and as military analyst for the New Times magazine in Moscow. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Kennan institute. 

 

THIS EVENT HAS REACHED FULL CAPACITY, PLEASE CONTACT MAGDALENA FITIPALDI (magdafb@stanford.edu) TO GET ON THE WAITLIST.

Reuben Hills Room

Encina Hall, 2nd floor East wing

 

Lunch will be served.

Aleksandr Golts

Book Talk: "Everyone Loses" by Samuel Charap and Timothy Colton

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Disorder erupted in Ukraine in 2014, involving the overthrow of a sitting government, the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and a violent insurrection, supported by Moscow, in the east of the country.

This Adelphi book argues that the crisis has yielded a ruinous outcome, in which all the parties are worse off and international security has deteriorated. This negative-sum scenario resulted from years of zero-sum behaviour on the part of Russia and the West in post-Soviet Eurasia, which the authors rigorously analyse. The rivalry was manageable in the early period after the Cold War, only to become entrenched and bitter a decade later. The upshot has been systematic losses for Russia, the West and the countries caught in between. All the governments involved must recognise that long-standing policies aimed at achieving one-sided advantage have reached a dead end, Charap and Colton argue, and commit to finding mutually acceptable alternatives through patient negotiation.

 

Samuel Charap is Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in the Institute’s Washington, DC office. Prior to joining the Institute, Samuel served as Senior Advisor to the US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff.

 

 

Lectures

How Trump Can Play Nice With Russia, Without Selling Out America

Paragraphs

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump was a whirlwind of vagaries and contradictions when it came to foreign policy, making it difficult to predict how his new administration will approach dozens of international issues. On Russia, however, he was clear and consistent. He praised President Vladimir Putin often, defended many of Putin’s policies, and declared with enthusiasm, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with Russia?” Since his election, Trump has persisted in defending Putin, questioning in multiple tweets and comments the intelligence community’s assessment regarding Russia’s interference in our electoral process last year. In nominating Rex Tillerson as his secretary of state, Trump is proposing for Senate approval the perfect emissary for improving relations with the Kremlin. Along with Henry Kissinger and Steven Seagal, Tillerson is one of the very few Americans to have enjoyed direct and sustained access to Putin in recent years. The conditions seem set for another reset with Russia.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Foreign Policy
Authors
Michael A. McFaul
External URL
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