FPRI Events

Robert S. Litwak is vice president for scholars and director of international security studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He is also a consultant to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Litwak served on the National Security Council staff as director for nonproliferation in the first Clinton administration. He was an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and has held visiting fellowships at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Oxford University. He is the author of Deterring Nuclear Terrorism, Iran’s Nuclear Chess: After the Deal, Outlier States: American Strategies to Contain, Engage, or Change Regimes, and the forthcoming Preventing North Korea’s Nuclear Breakout. Dr. Litwak is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and received a doctorate in international relations from the London School of Economics.

Jeremy Black addresses the turmoil in Europe -- from Brexit to the rise of nationalist parties to Russian machinations in Ukraine. One of our most popular lecturers, Jeremy is the author of over 100 books on military and diplomatic history.

In this talk, Admiral Titley will explore the direct and indirect ways that climate change erodes U.S. national security and how the U.S. military plans to mitigate the risks associated with climate change. A professor of meteorology and founding director of the Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk at Penn State, Titley is a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Climate and Security. Prior to joining Penn State, Titley was chief operating officer of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the chief oceanographer of the U.S. Navy, in which he served for 32 years. He initiated and led the U.S. Navy’s Task Force on Climate Change.

Clint Watts, an FPRI Robert A. Fox Fellow, is a widely-consulted expert on radicalization, counter-radicalization, and the use of social media by terrorists and other criminal elements. A former FBI Special Agent, Watts is a regular on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and has recently testified on Capitol Hill about the terrorist attacks in Europe and ISIS’ recruitment efforts. His essays and blogs appear regularly in Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, and Geopoliticus: The FPRI Blog.

On 23 June, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. The majority for “Brexit” (52% to 48%) surprised observers on both sides, and exposed geographical and generational divides in British society. Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain, while Wales and England, voted to leave; voters over 60 voted overwhelmingly to leave, while voters under 35 voted as strongly to remain. The referendum also highlighted deep divisions within Britain’s ruling Conservative Party. Prime Minister David Cameron had hoped that simply holding the referendum would appease Tory Euroskeptics, but was so surprised by the vote for Brexit that he immediately announced his intention to resign. The opposition Labour Party proved equally divided, and only the stoutly Euroskeptic United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) celebrated the vote. Theresa May eventually emerged as the new Prime Minister, only the second woman to hold that position, and now faces the challenge of managing a delicate diplomatic dance which will include not only her party colleagues, but restive regions and a fragmented British electorate—not to mention Britain’s twenty-seven soon-to-be-former EU partners.

Why did the UK hold the referendum? Why did the result come as such a surprise? How will the British political class and electorate respond to the realities of Brexit? What will the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union look like?

For answers to these and other questions, join us for Geopolitics with Granieri, where Ron Granieri will welcome Prof. Dominic Tierney of Swarthmore College for a wide-raging discussion of the causes and consequences of Brexit. Tierney is a Senior Fellow with FPRI’s Program on National Security and associate professor of political science at Swarthmore College.

On May 20, Taiwan inaugurated a new president, Tsai Ing-wen, who has been described as the most powerful woman in the Chinese-speaking world. It was a historic election not just because Taiwan elected its first female president but because the opposition, the Democratic Progressive Party, won both the presidency and a majority in the Legislative Yuan. What does the new administration intend for Taiwan's future and for the future of cross-strait relations, how will China respond, and what role is there for the US to play to promote regional security?

In this briefing, FPRI Senior Fellow Paul Springer assessed the cyber capabilities of the United States and its peer competitors within the cyber domain, and contrast cyber war with cyber terrorism, cyber crime, cyber espionage, while offering insight into the likely future uses of capabilities particularly in the context of interstate conflict.

How do an Iraqi comic, an Algerian military recruitment video, and a musical sketch from the American TV show "Schoolhouse Rock" illuminate the defining challenge of Arab politics for a generation to come? From radicalism to reform, from post-colonial states to newly-minted caliphates – the Middle East’s contentious identity politics have both raised new challenges and revealed new opportunities. Using video footage from the region rarely seen outside the Middle East, Braude illuminates little-known but potentially significant developments that may give hope to a troubled region. Braude is a senior advisor to the Al Mesbar Center for Research and Studies, a reformist think tank in the UAE. He broadcasts weekly on Moroccan National Radio, and writes regularly for Arabic-language periodicals.

Japan remains the world’s third-largest economy, but its political clout has not matched its economic status. At the same time, China’s rapid militarization and growing political aspirations, North Korea’s nuclear ambitions, and heightening economic rivalries and growing nationalism in East Asia are reshaping the landscape of the Asia-Pacific. Japan’s security and economic policy choices will play a key role in shaping the future of the world’s most populous region. What is Japan’s likely trajectory? How will it impact the region? And what are the implications for the United States? To address these questions, we feature Shihoko Goto, a fellow of the Mansfield Foundation/Japan Foundation U.S.-Japan Network for the Future. Prior to joining the Wilson Center, she spent over ten years as a journalist writing about the international political economy with an emphasis on Asian markets. She is a former correspondent for Dow Jones News Service and United Press International based in Tokyo and Washington.

Amid growing evidence that the world is experiencing a resurgence of authoritarianism, FPRI Senior Fellow Michael Boyle argues that the challenge is actually two-fold: there is the challenge to democracy in individual countries but there is also a larger challenge to the international order largely built by the United States after the end of the Second World War. In a sobering essay in the current issue of Survival, published by London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, Boyle asks how should the United States respond to the emergence of an illiberal order? And how can it be “a more effective geopolitical competitor in the less hospitable, more violent world to come”?

Michael Boyle is a Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and an Associate Professor of Political Science at La Salle University. He was a lecturer in international relations at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he was also a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence. His most recent book is Violence After War: Explaining Instability in Post-Conflict States (Johns Hopkins Press, 2014).