The Institute of World Politics

Prof. Paul Davis gave a talk on "Cyber Terrorism: Current Threats and Responses" at IWP's annual Chancellor's Council Meeting, which was held on October 27, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel.

Prof. Davis is an Adjunct Professor at IWP, Vice President of Government Business Development for SecureDAM, and Founder and President of JANUS Think. At IWP, he teaches Cyber Terrorism and Intelligence (IWP 692).

Learn more about joining the Chancellor's Council: https://www.iwp.edu/donate/chancellors-council/

Prof. Alan Messer gave a talk on "Defectors and Intelligence" at IWP's annual Chancellor's Council Meeting, which was held on October 27, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel.

A former CIA Analyst and Operations Officer with with 32 years of combined experience, Prof. Messer teaches a course at IWP entitled "A Counterintelligence Challenge: The Enigmas and Benefits of Defectors" (IWP 676).

Learn more about joining the Chancellor's Council: https://www.iwp.edu/donate/chancellors-council/

Dr. Anne Rathbone Bradley discussed "Economic Freedom: The Forgotten Weapon in the War on Terror" at IWP's annual Chancellor's Council Meeting, which took place on October 27, 2021 at the Mayflower Hotel.

Dr. Bradley is an Adjunct Professor at IWP, and serves as the George and Sally Mayer Fellow for Economic Education and Academic Director at the Fund for American Studies. She formerly served as an Economic Analyst for the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis.

At IWP, she teaches a course on Economics for Foreign Policy Makers (IWP 642/IWPO 642).

Learn more about joining the Chancellor's Council: https://www.iwp.edu/donate/chancellors-council/.

About the interview: Dr. John Tierney, IWP professor, gives a historical perspective on the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He discusses potential consequences, strategic culture, and how the U.S. should respond to August 16th.

About the speaker: Dr. John Tierney is a Professor Emeritus at The Institute of World Politics and teaches History of American Foreign Policy, History of International Relations, Peace, Strategy and Conflict Resolution, and U.S. Foreign Policy: Current and Future Challenges. Dr. Tierney is a Former Special Assistant and Foreign Affairs Officer for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1981-1993); He formerly participated in various national security negotiations for the U.S. Government. He was Executive Director of the Congressional Caucus on National Defense and the National Security Research Group, U.S. House of Representatives. He is former Chairman of the Politics Department at Catholic University and former Professor of International Relations at University of Virginia and The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Chasing Ghosts and The Politics of Peace.

About the lecture: This lecture will review the nuclear weapons policies established by various administrations of both parties, focusing on the areas of bipartisan continuity and possible upcoming changes being considered by the current administration.

About the speaker: The Honorable David J. Trachtenberg is Vice President of the National Institute for Public Policy, a nonprofit research center located in Fairfax, Virginia. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 17, 2017 as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and served in this capacity until his retirement from government service in July 2019. From October 2017 until January 2018, he also served as the Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the principal civilian advisor to the Secretary of Defense on defense policy matters. His duties spanned a range of regional and functional portfolios, including homeland defense, space, cyber, nuclear, and missile defense policy, technology security policy, and strengthening security cooperation activities with allies, friends, and partners abroad. He was also the senior Department of Defense civilian official responsible for developing, coordinating, and overseeing compliance with DoD policy regarding civilian casualties resulting from military operations.

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

About the lecture: Colonel David S. Maxwell will discuss the nature, objectives, and strategy of the Kim family regime, why the regime poses a threat to the Republic of Korea, and why it is in the US national interest to ensure there is a strong ROK/US alliance to deter war. He will outline the “Big Five” — war, regime collapse, human rights, asymmetric threats, and unification. He will underline that the only way the world will see an end to the North’s nuclear program, threats, human rights abuses, and crimes against humanity is through unification and the establishment of a United Republic of Korea.

About the speaker: David S. Maxwell is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).* He is a 30-year veteran of the US Army, retiring as a Special Forces Colonel with his final assignment teaching national security at the National War College. He served over 20 years in Asia, primarily in Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. Colonel Maxwell served on the ROK/US Combined Forces Command staff and the Special Operations Command Korea. He is the co-author of the first CONPLAN 5029, the plan for North Korean Instability and Regime Collapse. He commanded the Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines and was the G3 at the US Army Special Operations Command. Following retirement, he served as the Associate Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is on the Board of Directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, the International Council of Korean Studies, the Council on Korean-US Security Studies, the Special Operations Research Association, the OSS Society, and the Small Wars Journal. He earned a B.A. in political science from Miami University, and an M.A. in Military Arts and Science from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and from the School of Advanced Military Studies, and an M.S. in National Security Studies from the National War College. Colonel Maxwell has taught Unconventional Warfare and Special Operations for Policy Makers and Strategists at graduate schools in the DC area.

* FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

This event is in honor of Constitution Day and co-sponsored by the Jack Miller Center

About the lecture: The American Founders had a coherent philosophy of foreign policy, which was informed by the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Those principles provided guides for statesmen to achieve the overarching goals of American foreign policy: securing the rights and interests of the United States and its citizens, and satisfying the demands of justice.

About the speaker: Christopher Burkett is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Ashbrook Scholar Program for undergraduate students at Ashland University. He is editor of Ashbrook’s 50 Core American Documents and has written on the American Founding, Progressivism, and American Foreign Policy.

This event is part of the China Series sponsored by The Institute of World Politics.

About the lecture: Today’s space race is different than the Cold War-era race between the United States and the Soviet Union to achieve symbolic space milestones to prove the superiority of our market-based economic system for the benefit of unaligned nations. Space 2.0 or the new space race, primarily between the United States and China, is about the economics of space-derived capabilities, access to space resources, and the technologies for acquiring and controlling them. Strategic competition with China is occurring 24/7 on across all domains of which space is increasingly becoming America’s Achilles heel. China aims to be the dominant space power by 2050 – just 30 years from today. The United States can either prepare and position itself to shape a future with American strategic leadership in space or resign itself to second-class. Thus, the new space race is a high-stakes economic competition that will influence our modern way of life and the prospect of democratizing American society for millions will be threatened by authoritarianism.

About the speaker: Dr. Mir Sadat has more than 25 years of experience in private industry and government. Mir is a former policy director at the U.S. National Security Council, where he led interagency coordination on defense and space policy issues. In this role, Mir supported the establishment of both the US Space Force and US Space Command, and reviewed national security decisions involving civil space (NASA) and the US commercial space sector. Mir is also a naval officer with intelligence and space qualifications and in his preceding two naval assignments; he served as a space policy strategist with Chief of Naval Operations and as a space operations officer with U.S. Tenth Fleet. Mir has a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University and has taught at various universities in California and Washington, DC.

About the lecture: As a general, Ulysses S. Grant was often dismissed as a butcher of men and no strategist. This reputation is undeserved, however. Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir of the Civil War is a treasure trove of insights for the strategist. In its pages, Grant invites his reader to contemplate with him the constant struggle to reconcile military means with political ends, the way military maxims crumble under the weight of the reality of war, and, most importantly, the vital role that character and personality play in the design and execution of military operations and strategy.

About the speaker: Peter Campbell is Associate Professor of Political Science at Baylor University. He holds an MA in War Studies from King’s College London and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Military Realism: The Logic and Limits of Force and Innovation in the U.S. Army (University of Missouri Press, 2019). His areas of research include national security decision making, civil-military relations, strategy, international relations scholarship and policy relevance, insurgency and counterinsurgency, the just war tradition, and cyber warfare.

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

About the lecture: Based on an excerpt from his recently published book, Japanese Foreign Intelligence and Grand Strategy (Georgetown University Press), Dr. Williams will discuss Japan’s intelligence cooperation with the United States during the Cold War. Drawing from and modifying a generic framework presented by H. Bradford Westerfield, the presentation assesses the impact of bilateralism – defined as “behaving [primarily] in the international system within the remit of the bilateral [US-Japan] alliance” (Hook et al. 2005, 72) – on Japan’s foreign intelligence-related institutions and activities across four core mechanisms of liaison: institution building and collaborative operations, facilities access, information sharing, and support via training and equipment provisions. It highlights how the United States initially assisted in establishing intelligence organizations in Japan that would serve as liaison partners and engage in various forms of collaborative operations in pursuit of regional geostrategic objectives during the Cold War. Other liaison mechanisms served a similar function and were also employed as a means of keeping a junior ally under Washington’s intelligence umbrella. While Japanese foreign intelligence largely adhered to bilateralist norms, the relationship did occasionally cause tensions between the respective intelligence communities and their political overseers.

About the speaker: Dr. Brad Williams is an associate professor in the Department of Asian and International Studies at the City University of Hong Kong. He has studied, taught, and conducted research in Australia, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Myanmar, Taiwan, and the US. Brad has published on a diverse range of issues in Japanese politics and foreign policy and is also the author of Resolving the Russo-Japanese Territorial Dispute: Hokkaido-Sakhalin Relations (Routledge 2007, 2011).canva