The Institute of World Politics

About the lecture: Just because the “Russian collusion” between Russian President Vladimir Putin and former US President Donald Trump turned out to be a hoax, it doesn’t mean that Russia did not intervene in 2016 election, and in two subsequent elections. Not only Moscow’s covert influence operations poisoned American politics, the Kremlin also sowed confusion about the real Russian threat to the United States. In today’s presentation, Ms. Koffler will speak about Putin’s long-range plan— his “playbook”—to destabilize, weaken and subdue the United States, preparing for the war that he believes is inevitable. She will also reveal how unprepared the U.S. lumbering bureaucracy is to defend America from Putin’s threat.

About the speaker: Rebekah Koffler, the author of Putin’s Playbook: Russia’s Secret Plan to Defeat America, is a former intelligence officer who served as a Russian Doctrine & Strategy specialist in the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2008 until late 2016. She has delivered classified briefings to top U.S. military commanders, NATO ministers, the directors of the CIA and DIA, the White House National Security Council, and senior congressional staff. In her post-public service career, Rebekah is a writer, commentator, and national security consultant whose work has been published on the Fox News website, The Hill, the New York Post, the Daily Caller, and the Washington Times. She has appeared on Fox News, Newsmax, One America News, and the Sean Hannity nationally syndicated radio show.

Purchase book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZZJ8HF4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1.

About the lecture: Syria has seen an internecine civil war for the last decade. It has involved 4 out of the 5 Permanent Security Council members on either side of the conflict making it international, throwing to the wind the cardinal principles of the UN Charter particularly, sovereignty, non-interference, and self-defense. It sets an extremely retrograde principle for the conduct of international relations.

About the speaker: Ambassador Rajendra Abhyankar is Visiting Professor at the College of Liberal Arts, Purdue University, Lafayette. From 2012 to 2019, he was Professor of Practice of Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University.

Amb. Abhyankar was in the Indian Foreign Service from June 1968 and retired in August 2005. He was Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs from 2001 to 2004, retiring as Ambassador to the EU, Belgium and Luxembourg. He has been Indian Ambassador to Cyprus, Syria, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Consul General in San Francisco.

From 2005 to 2009 he was Professor/ Director of Centre for West Asian Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi. He has written seven books on Indian diplomacy and related issues. His latest book is Syria, The Tragedy of a Pivotal State (Palgrave, 2020).

This event is sponsored by the Asia Initiative Lecture Series at The Institute of World Politics.

About the lecture: The problems arising from the presence of North Korean refugees in China warrant a human security approach, meriting protection from the UN and the international community. There are three scenarios dreaded by the refugees: first is being caught by North Korean border patrol while trying to escape; second is being subjected to human trafficking ring; and third is being repatriated after being caught by either the Chinese police or North Korea’s own secret police operating in China. Despite the 1995 agreement between the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and China, which provides the UNHCR unimpeded access to all refugees within China, the UNHCR has been passive in exerting its mandate to protect the North Korean refugees. One possible solution is the construction of a refugee camp in China or Mongolia. If China allowed for this, it would catapult itself as a genuine “soft power” deserving of the much-coveted G2 status. Otherwise, China’s leadership ambition, UNHCR’s reputation, and most importantly, human rights of the refugees will remain in jeopardy so long as the discriminatory sŏngbun system in North Korea continues.

About the speaker: Ambassador Jung-Hoon Lee is Dean and Professor of International Relations at the Graduate School of International Studies, Yonsei University.

He is formerly the ROK government’s Ambassador for Human Rights as well as its inaugural Ambassador-at-Large for North Korean Human Rights. On campus, he served as Dean of the Underwood International College and the Office of International Affairs. He has also served as Director of the Institute of Modern Korean Studies, the Yonsei Human Liberty Center, the Center for American Studies (IEWS), and the Center for European Studies (IEWS). His other academic affiliations include a visiting professorship at the Dept. of Politics, Faculty of Law, Keio University, and a senior fellowship at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Ambassador Lee has advised South Korea’s National Unification Advisory Council, Ministry of Unification, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Security Council, and the National Assembly. In the case of the Ministry of Unification, he chaired the Advisory Committee for Humanitarian Affairs.

His current domestic commitments include his role as Chairman of SaveNK, an NGO that helps the defector community, Senior Advisor to the Future Korea Weekly, a current affairs magazine, and Chairman of the Board of Tongwon Educational Foundation.

Internationally, he is a Board Member of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) based in Washington, D.C., an International Patron of the Hong Kong Watch, a UK-based organization that promotes Hong Kong’s democracy, and an Advisory Council Member of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, also based in London.

He received his BA from Tufts University, MALD from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford (St. Antony’s College). In 2017, he published Tongbukah Kyŏkrang ui Hanbokp’anesŏ [In the Midst of a Northeast Asian Current]. His most recent journal contributions include “Déjà Vu in South Korea? Lessons from the 1992 Philippines Withdrawal” in The Washington Quarterly (2020), “The UN’s Human Security Challenge: The Plight of North Korean Refugees in China” in the Journal of International Politics (2020), and “North Korea’s Nuclear and Human Rights Conundrum: Implications for South Korea’s Unification Goal” in Pacific Focus (2020).

This lecture event is part of the 14th Annual Kościuszko Chair Conference presented by the Kościuszko Chair of Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium Studies.

About the lecture: On July 10, 1941, the Germans burned alive most of the Jewish population of Jedwabne in north-eastern Poland. Some of the local Christians assisted in the crime but the nature of their exact involvement and deeds remains obscure. In fact, recently declassified documents suggest it was more negligible than some scholars argued before. However, we shall not know the precise details of the crime and the exact perpetrators without an exhumation and further forensic study of the victims.

Dr. Chodakiewicz will discuss new evidence and present a documentary collection he co-edited: over 2,000 pages of newly accessible evidence of the crime.

About the speaker: Dr. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz holds The Kosciuszko Chair in 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 Geography and Strategy, Contemporary Politics and Diplomacy, Russian Politics and Foreign Policy, and Mass Murder Prevention in Failed and Failing States. 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.

This lecture event is part of the 14th Annual Kościuszko Chair Conference presented by the Kościuszko Chair of Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium Studies.

About the lecture: Dr. Radzilowski will discuss the Invasion of Poland in 1939 by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and the seemingly deliberate amnesia about the campaign that persisted for almost 80 years. He will examine Poland’s defensive strategy and its successes and failures and why historians have failed so often to understand the campaign’s importance. He will draw on recent scholarship on the topic as well as comparisons with another campaign that is similarly misremembered, the Sino-Japanese War that began in 1937. Lastly, Dr. Radzikowski will examine the role of Cold War politics and efforts of Western countries to save face after their inadequate response to the threats of totalitarianism in the 1930s and 1940s in shaping popular perceptions of these campaigns.

About the speaker: Dr. John Radzilowski has taught history, art history, and geography at University of Alaska Southeast on the Ketchikan campus since 2007. Prior to moving to Alaska, he taught history courses at the University of St. Thomas, Hamline University, and Anoka-Ramsey College in Minnesota. Dr. Radzilowski also served as assistant project director at Center for Nations in Transition, at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota where he helped design and administer USAID and State Department-sponsored training programs for business, economics, and political science faculty and NGO leaders in Ukraine and east central Europe.

Dr. Radzilowski’s research and teaching interests are wide-ranging and diverse: immigration and ethnicity, military history, war and genocide, the impact of technology on the history and geography of the Great Plains and Midwest, local and regional studies, and the history of Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and central and eastern Europe.

This lecture event is part of the 14th Annual Kościuszko Chair Conference presented by the Kościuszko Chair of Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium Studies.

About the lecture: This lecture will focus on the forgotten human aspect of the 1940 Katyń massacre of Polish officers by the NKVD. Dr. Alexander Jabłoński will discuss the life of one Polish officer – Major Władysław Julian Siemek, a staff member of the highly regarded pre-war military institution, the Military Geographical Institute (Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny) in Warsaw, Poland. More than 30% of its staff perished during WWII, with the majority killed in Katyń forest.

About the speaker: Alexander M. Jabłoński received his BSc & MS in civil engineering at the Technical University of Cracow, Poland (1970), MS in mechanics and materials engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago (1982) and PhD in structural dynamics at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada (1989).

He has more than 50 years of experience in various fields of engineering, and reconnaissance projects, project management and strategy planning. He worked as an engineer in Poland, Finland, Norway, Germany, and in the USA. Since 1992, he has been working as Research Scientist, Research Engineer and Manager in Canadian Public Service. He was one of Managers of the Space Plan Task Force (SPTF) for the development of the Long-Term Space Plan III for Canada (1999-2009). Currently, he is working at the David Florida Laboratory, Canadian Space Agency in Ottawa. He is also an Adjunct Research Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Carleton University in Ottawa. He is Fellow of CASI, Associate Fellow of AIAA, Member of Aerospace Division of ASCE, and recipient of various engineering and scientific awards.

Since his early life in Poland, he has studied the Polish and world history for decades. He writes historical essays and presentations, especially on the modern history of Poland including the World War II and the postwar era of the Soviet occupation. Currently he serves as President of the Oskar Halecki Institute in Canada and as a member of the Program Council of the newly established Institute of the Heritage of the National Thought in Warsaw, Poland.

This lecture event is part of the 14th Annual Kościuszko Chair Conference presented by the Kościuszko Chair of Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium Studies.

About the lecture: Prof. Grzegorz Kucharczyk will summarize the analysis of communism provided by the Cardinal Wyszyński, Primate of Poland. Shortly before WWII, Rev. Stefan Wyszynski pointed to the destructive role played by Western intellectuals infatuated with communism, calling them “strange people.” In 1934, Stefan Wyszynski first drew attention to a new strategy of the international communist movement, which aimed its efforts at intelligentsia as a class very much prone to fall into this trap. More than thirty years later, in 1967, Cardinal Wyszyński warned against “a new type of communism reflected in the youth revolution.” As the Primate of Poland, Cardinal Wyszynski not only correctly analyzed communism but also knew what means were to be employed to achieve victory against this ungodly ideology. This victory was to be achieved over long distances, and therefore, strategic perspective was very much needed. In 1981, the Cardinal said, “When you go to war, and we are in a war, you have to use binoculars.” The latter, in the form of the Great Novena and the Millennial celebration of 1966, was efficiently used by the blessed Cardinal Wyszyński.

About the speaker: Grzegorz Kucharczyk is a professor at the Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, at the Gorzow Academy of Jacob of Paradyz and in the Center for Totalitarian Studies at the Pilecki Institute. His main research fields include: history of Germany (particularly Prussia) in the 19th and the 20th century, history of anti-Catholicism, and the history of Polish political thought.

This lecture event is part of the 14th Annual Kościuszko Chair Conference presented by the Kościuszko Chair of Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium Studies.

About the lecture: It was initially believed that active measures would disintegrate and disappear with the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, it has become evident that active measures have not disappeared, but rather have only largely transferred to the digital domain. The term active measures was coined in the 1920’s; however, Russia has practiced these political warfare tactics for centuries. Through all this time the message has stayed the same, Russia hopes to sow divisions between societies and allies, but ultimately wants citizens to lose hope in liberal democracies. The end goal is to make the world a safer place for Putin’s authoritarian regime. Through analyzing active measures that have taken place in both the near abroad nations and the United States from the Cold War years until today, it becomes evident that active measures have not disappeared, but rather have only evolved in their technique and form.

About the speaker: Ms. Agnes Tycner recently graduated from The Institute of World Politics with a master’s degree in Statecraft and International Affairs with a specialization in Russia and Central/Eastern Europe. She will be working for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation starting January as a Research Fellow in Polish Studies. Agnes also plans to continue her education by attending law school.

Hon. James H. Anderson gave an inaugural address after a formal inauguration ceremony installing him as the second President of The Institute of World Politics.

The event took place on October 27, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.

GEN (Ret.) Keith Alexander, Founder & Co-CEO of IronNet Cybersecurity, former commander of USCYBERCOM, and former director of the National Security Agency, gave the keynote address at The Institute of World Politics' 30th (+1!) Anniversary Gala on October 27th at the Mayflower Hotel.