The Institute of World Politics

By The Institute of World PoliticsEducation

The Institute of World Politics episodes

April 26, 2022 Ukrainian National Identity and Russian Intelligence Failure
Ethan S. Burger, IWP Cyber Intelligence Instructor and International Attorney, discusses "Ukrainian National Identity and Russian Intelligence Failure."
About the Lecture:
Upon independence in 1991, Ukraine was divided by linguistic and geographic fault lines. This situation existed throughout Ukrainian society and presumably its institutions. Over the subsequent 30 years, the extent of social cohesion changed. The schools began to teach about Ukrainian history and emphasize the Ukrainian language and literature. Throughout Ukrainian society, a civic culture evolved where the concept of “citizenship” supplanted ethnic or linguistic identity in importance.
Whereas Russian President Putin maintained his post-Soviet persona, a majority of Ukrainians were educated in an independent Ukraine that was more influenced by Western than Russian values. President Putin believed that his armed forces could exploit fault lines that remained in Ukraine to achieve a decisive military victory in a short amount of time and with light casualties. Most specialists believed that the Russians intended to decapitate the leadership of the Ukrainian government and put a “friendly” government into power.
Both Russia and the NATO countries undervalued Ukraine’s social cohesion political culture and hence its willingness and ability to resist Russian aggression militarily. Clearly, Russia’s military setbacks can be attributed to intelligence failures when assessing Ukrainian societal unity. Similarly, the NATO countries might have been more forthcoming with military assistance to Ukraine if it had confidence that Ukraine, if properly armed, could resist Russian aggression.
About the Speaker:
Ethan S. Burger, Esq. is an Instructor and Advisory Board Member for IWP’s Cyber Intelligence Initiative. He is a Washington D.C.- based international attorney and educator with a background in cybersecurity, transnational financial crime, and Russian legal matters. He has been a full-time faculty member at the American University (School of International Service — Transnational Crime Prevention Center) and the University of Wollongong (Australia) (Faculty of Law — Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention), as well as an Adjunct Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, Washington College of Law, and the University of Baltimore. He oversaw a program on transnational crime and corruption for US Department of Justice at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University and gave lectures in Kyiv, Lviv, and Odessa. Mr. Burger earned his J.D. at the Georgetown University Law Center, A.B. from Harvard University, and obtained a Certificate in Cybersecurity Strategy from Georgetown University.
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58 min
April 22, 2022 War in Ukraine: Geopolitical Implications for Europe and the United States
Dr. Lucja Cannon discusses "War in Ukraine: Geopolitical Implications for Europe and the United States."
This lecture is part of the 12th Annual Kościuszko Chair Spring Symposium in honor of Lady Blanka Rosenstiel sponsored by the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium studies.
About the lecture:
Analysis of far reaching effects that the war in Ukraine is having on foreign policies of Western Europe, mainly Germany, and Eastern Europe, mainly Poland, and the increasing distance between the two. Repercussions for European integration and the position of the United States are also explored.
About the speaker:
Dr. Lucja Swiatkowski Cannon is a strategist, expert and author on Eastern Europe, Russia and US-East European relations. She has a BA, M.Phil. and Ph.D. in international relations and Russian/East European studies from Columbia University.
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33 min
April 22, 2022 Current Discussions on the Rule of Law in Poland
In this video, Dr. Marcin Romanowski discusses "Current Discussions on the Rule of Law in Poland – In Light of Changes in the Judiciary after 1989."
This lecture is part of the 12th Annual Kościuszko Chair Spring Symposium in honor of Lady Blanka Rosenstiel sponsored by the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium studies.
About the lecture: Since 2015, the United Right (Zjednoczona Prawica) has won the presidential and parliamentary elections twice, gaining a majority that allows for self-rule. The reforms, in particular in the area of the judiciary, met with fierce resistance from liberal and post-communist opposition parties and judges from higher courts. The central institutions of the European Union (the Commission, the EU Parliament, and the CJEU) are also involved in the dispute, interfering – in the opinion of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal – with the constitutional competencies of the EU Member States in a way that goes beyond scope of the competences conferred upon the EU by its Members in the Treaties.
However, the real source of the aggressive opposition to judicial reforms is the fact that the Polish judiciary has not been transformed since 1989 when communism has officially fallen in Poland. As a result of the so-called “Round Table,” agreements were made in 1989 between a part of the opposition and the communist party, leaving the judiciary unchanged, becoming a de facto guarantee of the status quo for post-communist interest groups. Since 2015, Poland has been struggling with many unresolved problems from the communist era. Settlements with the past were implemented after 1989 to a very small extent, which influenced and still affects the quality of political, social, and academic life, and media, making Poland a country of “late post-communism.” The judiciary, the reform of which is under dispute, is one of the most important areas of this “late post-communism.” The lecture will present the causes of contemporary disputes over the Polish rule of law.
About the speaker: Dr. Romanowski is an assistant professor at the Department of Theory and Philosophy of Law of the Faculty of Law and Administration within the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. He has a doctoral degree in law from the Faculty of Law and Administration at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun.
The main areas of his research interest are the law of settlement with the past lawlessness in countries, the natural law and the non-positivist concepts of law, the theory of European and global law, and legal anthropology and its applications in the creation and application of the law.
During his professional career, Dr. Romanowski was the Director of the Institute of Justice (2016-2019), an expert of the parliamentary investigative commission to investigate allegations of corruption cases disclosed in the media during work on the amendment of the Broadcasting Act (2003-2004) and a co-author of the report prepared by this commission and, in the years 2005-2007 and 2015-2019, advisor to the Minister of Justice. Since 2019, he has served as Poland’s Deputy Minister of Justice.
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IWP admissions: https://www.iwp.edu/admissions/
54 min
April 22, 2022 The American Rescue of Poland Through Danzig in 1919
This lecture is part of the 12th Annual Kościuszko Chair Spring Symposium in honor of Lady Blanka Rosenstiel sponsored by the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium studies.
About the lecture: In early 1919, newly reborn Poland was virtually a landlocked country. Border conflicts caused by the geopolitical earthquake of World War I had brought international trade to a standstill. The only hope for economic relief and humanitarian aid to the war-ravaged nation was access to the Baltic sea through German-controlled Danzig. In the late winter of 1919, the small Mission to Danzig, led by the first chief of the American Relief Administration in Poland, Colonel William R. Grove, and the versatile Chief Delegate of the Polish Government, Mieczysław Jałowiecki, would play an indispensable role in opening Poland's economy to the world, before the decisive showdown with Bolshevik Russia in 1920.
About the speaker: Nicholas Siekierski earned his PhD at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. His dissertation, "Operations of the American Relief Administration in Poland, 1919-1922", tells the story America's critical role in the early history of the Second Polish Republic. Dr. Siekierski is also a translator, most recently of 485 Days at Majdanek, the memoir of concentration camp survivor Jerzy Kwiatkowski, published last year by the Hoover Institution. It was the subject of a presentation at last year's Kościuszko Chair Spring Symposium at IWP.
45 min
April 22, 2022 Hitler’s Eastern Dream: Its Origins and Consequences
This lecture event is part of the 12th Annual Kościuszko Chair Spring Symposium in honor of Lady Blanka Rosenstiel sponsored by the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium studies.
About the lecture: This talk will provide a broad overview of Germanic expansion into Eastern Europe which provides the historic background to Hitler’s Eastern Dream.
About the speaker: Joseph Poprzeczny holds a Master of Arts degree in history from the University of Western Australia, where he also majored in Economics.
He has been a part-time tutor (American and Soviet Politics), 1971-1972, at the University of Western Australia; full-time Teaching Fellow (British and Chinese Economic History), 1973-1975, Monash University, Melbourne; and part-time tutor (South-East Asian history course), 1982, Murdoch University, Perth.
He has worked for various federal politicians as an electoral officer and researcher. This eventually led him to become a journalist with various State and national publications before he retired in 2015.
In 2004 his book, Hitler’s Man in the East, Odilo Globocnik, was published in America. He is currently working on two other unconnected research projects.
52 min
April 22, 2022 Channeling Stalin: Unscrambling Russian Propaganda in Ukraine
This lecture is part of the 12th Annual Kościuszko Chair Spring Symposium in honor of Lady Blanka Rosenstiel sponsored by the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium studies.
About the lecture: In Ukraine, Russia has presently redeployed a trusty Soviet propaganda trope: “liberation from Nazism.” This narrative is, of course, mendacious. Yet, every lie contains a kernel of truth. Our objective here is to extract it and put it in its proper context. We shall consider “liberation” and “Nazism” separately.
“Liberation from Nazism” is standard Soviet cliche originating in the Second World War. However, Moscow also lustily employed it during the crushing of the Polish Poznan uprising in June 1956, the Hungarian insurrection in November 1956, and the Czechoslovak upheaval in August 1968.
In fact, throughout its history, the USSR justified its imperialist aggression invariably in terms of bringing “liberty” and annihilating evil. Usually, the target was “fascism/Nazism/Hitlerism” but there were derivatives such as “imperialism,” “oppression,” and so forth. Often the Soviets would refer to their actions as “rendering fraternal assistance.”
All those propaganda threads are present today in the war in Ukraine. A more sophisticated iteration of “liberation from Nazism” focuses on the Western public, while its cruder form targets domestic, Russian audiences.
About the speaker: Dr. Chodakiewicz holds the Kosciuszko Chair of Polish Studies at The Institute of World Politics and leads IWP’s Center for Intermarium Studies. At IWP, he also serves as a Professor of History and teaches courses on Contemporary Politics and Diplomacy, Geography and Strategy, Mass Murder Prevention in Failed and Failing States, and Russian Politics and Foreign Policy.
He is the author of Intermarium: The Land Between the Black and Baltic Seas and numerous other books and articles. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and has previously taught at the University of Virginia and Loyola Marymount University.
35 min
April 22, 2022 Polish-Ukrainian Relations, Past and Present: Some Thoughts
This lecture is part of the 12th Annual Kościuszko Chair Spring Symposium in honor of Lady Blanka Rosenstiel sponsored by the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium studies.
About the lecture: The current crisis in Ukraine has understandably evoked not only worldwide sympathy for the appalling plight of the Ukrainian people but also admiration for the magnanimous Polish response to the consequent mass exodus of refugees. These developments, however, serve to obscure the complex historical reality of Polish-Ukrainian relations in the modern era. This presentation offers an objective and impartial assessment of a generally tense and often violent symbiosis.
About the speaker: Peter Stachura held a Personal Chair in Modern European History at the University of Stirling (UK), where he was also Director of The Centre for Research in Polish History. He is now Director of the independent Research Centre for Modern Polish History and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London. Professor Stachura has published extensively in his primary research specialisms of Weimar Germany and the Second Polish Republic.
30 min
April 21, 2022 Strategic Deception and Active Measures
Dr. John Lenczowski gives a lecture on "Strategic Deception and Active Measures."
This is the 10th Annual Ronald Reagan Intelligence Lecture sponsored by The Institute of World Politics.
About the speaker:
Dr. John Lenczowski is Founder, President Emeritus, and Chancellor of The Institute of World Politics, an independent graduate school of national security, intelligence, and international affairs in Washington, D.C.
From 1981 to 1983, Dr. Lenczowski served in the State Department in the Bureau of European Affairs and as Special Advisor to Under Secretary for Political Affairs Lawrence Eagleburger. From 1983 to 1987, he was Director of European and Soviet Affairs at the National Security Council. In that capacity, he was principal Soviet affairs adviser to President Reagan.
He has been associated with several academic and research institutions in the Washington area, including Georgetown University, the University of Maryland, the American Enterprise Institute, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Council for Inter-American Security, and the International Freedom Foundation. He has also served on the staff of Congressman James Courter.
Dr. Lenczowski attended the Thacher School, earned his B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
He is the author of Soviet Perceptions of U.S. Foreign Policy (1982); The Sources of Soviet Perestroika (1990), Cultural Diplomacy: A Multi-faceted Strategic Asset of Soviet Power (1991); Full-Spectrum Diplomacy and Grand Strategy (2011) and numerous other writings and addresses on U.S. foreign policy, public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, counter-propaganda, political warfare, Soviet/Russian affairs, comparative ideologies, intelligence, strategic deception, counterintelligence, and integrated strategy.
Make a gift to IWP: https://www.iwp.edu/donate/
IWP admissions: https://www.iwp.edu/admissions/
1 hr 6 min
April 08, 2022 THE CORPORATE WARRIOR? Strategies for Executives from Top Generals
About the lecture: Author, James Farwell will review the precepts of strategy and leadership that the military uses, and applies them to the business world. This presentation will show commercials that companies use, and that the book describes, in terms of effective communication and loyalty-building strategy.
About the speaker: James P. Farwell is an author, attorney, and national security expert who has advised the U.S. Government on global initiatives and actions, communication strategy, cyber policy development and authorities, and cyber security.
He holds a B.A. from Tulane University, a J.D. in Law from Tulane University, and a D.C.L.S. in Comparative Law from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College). He is an Associate Fellow at King’s College, London, and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. He is a Visiting Scholar at A.B. Freeman Tulane School of Business.
46 min
March 30, 2022 Russia’s War on Ukraine
About the lecture: David Satter discusses the origins of Russia’s war on Ukraine, its likely evolution, and what the U.S. can do to help Ukrainians prevail.
About the speaker: David Satter is a former Russia scholar, Moscow correspondent (Financial Times of London), and author of five books on Russia and the Soviet Union.
More about IWP:
Learn more about our graduate programs: www.iwp.edu/academic-programs/.
Learn more about supporting the work of IWP: www.iwp.edu/donate/.
1 hr 2 min

About The Institute of World Politics

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The Institute of World Politics is a graduate school of national security and international affairs, dedicated to developing leaders with a sound understanding of international realities and the ethical conduct of statecraft, based on knowledge and appreciation of the principles of the American political economy and the Western moral tradition.