The Institute of World Politics

About the book, "Ethics, Law, and Natural Hazards: The Moral Imperative for Intervention Post-Natural Hazard":

This book argues that the international community has a moral duty to intervene on behalf of a population affected by a natural hazard when their government is either unable or unwilling to provide basic, life-saving assistance.

The work draws on law, international relations theory, and political philosophy to articulate that non-response to a natural hazard is unethical. In providing policy suggestions the author articulates what should happen based on an ethical analysis. Readers will thus gain an ethical lens with which to view intervention in the aftermath of a natural hazard. The book encourages readers to consider the nuances of arguments from various disciplines about whether or not intervention is appropriate. Whilst arguing throughout that an intervention policy in response to natural hazards should be developed by the international community, the study also accounts for why intervention should only be used in very limited situations.

This interdisciplinary approach makes the book essential reading for researchers, academics, and policy-makers working in the areas of international law, humanitarian studies, human rights, international relations, and political science.

About the speaker:

Dr. Lauren Traczykowski is an American living in Birmingham, England. She started her education at Boston University studying International Relations. Whilst completing her undergraduate degree, she studied American Foreign Policy at IWP for one summer. After completing her degree and with three internships under her belt – the U.S. Department of State, Fine Gael HQ (Dublin), and Demos (London) – Dr. Traczykowski moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to contribute to the Hurricane Katrina response and recovery from within the Office of International Affairs.

Dr. Traczykowski then moved to the U.K. to do an MA in International Studies: Globalisation & Governance. Later, she completed a Ph.D. in Global Ethics focusing on the research she will present.

Whilst still working on her Ph.D., Dr. Traczykowski taught modules on Bioethics, Contemporary Ethics, Politics and the State, Professional Ethics, and Medical Ethics at institutions around the West Midlands of the United Kingdom. Dr. Traczykowski now teaches at Aston University (Birmingham, U.K.) as a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor). Her main teaching is in Business Ethics and Ethics in a Crisis. Dr. Traczykowski is also editing a collected work on Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching to be submitted to Edward Elgar Publishing later this year.

About the lecture: As head of three Asian countries’ flagship firms, Mr. McCarthy learned the secrets to being successful in other cultures. Often, he was the only American working with 3,000 local employees, giving him a peek into the Zeitgeist of the local business and government leaders that most Americans never see.

He learned how to succeed in turnarounds where many others had failed and how to first think like a local then gain their trust. He developed a set of skills and tactics that allowed him to build strong high-performing local teams.

In this lecture, he will explain his use of “Sunau or Ting Hua” and other recommendations for how to succeed overseas that will surprise many Americans.

About the speaker: Mr. Timothy F. McCarthy’s career has been evenly divided between the U.S. and overseas. During the ’90s, he was President of Fidelity Investment Advisor Group prior to becoming President of Charles Schwab and Co.

In 2000, Mr. McCarthy became Chairman of Good Morning Securities Group in South Korea then Chairman and CEO of Nikko Asset Management in Japan. These were the first times each country’s government approved a foreigner to lead one of their flagship financial services companies. Also, notably, during this tenure at Nikko, he co-founded the Rongtong JV in China. His firms attracted over 8 million Asians to invest $300 billion in fund assets. He is now active in venture capital high-tech investing.

Mr. McCarthy is fluent in 6 languages. He has published two books – one a best seller in Japanese. Mr. McCarthy’s academic history includes an MBA from the Harvard University Graduate School of Business as a Baker Scholar in 1978 and a BA in Economics and International Relations from the University of California, Davis, with honors in 1973.

Full title: Incels as a Domestic Terrorist Group Within the Violent Non-State Actor Framework

About the lecture: This presentation will define and analyze the threat of incels as an emerging domestic terrorist threat within the Violent Non-State Actor framework. In an era of online recruitment and social media radicalization, incels have created a community that centers around getting revenge as a result of being rejected by women in the past. This online network of disgruntled individuals has served as the breeding ground for lone actor violence that has claimed more than 50 lives in the United States and Canada.

About the speaker: Hannah Wilk works as an Investigative Analyst and is pursuing her master’s degree at The Institute of World Politics. She is studying Statecraft and National Security Affairs with a concentration in Public Diplomacy and Strategic Influence. In 2019 she received her bachelor’s degree in Criminology from George Mason University with a concentration in Homeland Security and a double minor in Intelligence Analysis and Forensic Psychology. In her free time Hannah enjoys spending time with friends and family, baking, and trying out new brunch spots in the Washington, D.C. area.

About the Lecture: Muqtada al-Sadr is the leader of the Sadrist Movement, a Shia political group with a militia called the Mahdi Army. Al-Sadr has a complicated history with the United States but is now in a position to create a stable democracy and protect Iraq from Iranian influence. While the U.S. looks to thwart Iranian efforts in the region, it needs to consider how to work with political actors like al-Sadr.

About the Speaker: Caroline Hickey is a graduate student at IWP where she is pursuing a Master’s degree in Statecraft and International Affairs. Her regional interest is in the Middle East and has focused her studies on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Full title: Avenging Angels: Russia’s Legacy of Female Terrorism in Revolution and the Chechen Conflict

About the Lecture: Female-perpetrated terrorism is a compelling subject largely for the shocking dichotomy between traditional perceptions of femininity and brutal, premeditated violence. From the fiery revolutionaries of the 1800s to modern-day Chechen suicide bombers, Russia’s legacy of women’s involvement in terrorist activity is remarkable for its violence, fervor, and popular mythologization. This presentation will discuss what in Russia’s political history and society has encouraged such distinctive, violent female political actors by assessing the revolution’s “avenging angels” and modern “black widows” as part of the same legacy. It will also explore the personal, ideological, and cultural disparities between female terrorists in Russia’s revolutionary era and those in modern-day Chechnya.

About the Speaker: Emily Miller is an international development professional with five years of experience in business development, communications, and program design/implementation. She graduates this semester with an M.A. in Statecraft and National Security Affairs from IWP, with a specialization in Public Diplomacy and Strategic Influence. Her graduate research has focused on pre-Soviet and Soviet Russia, the influence of non-state actors on international security, and the intersection of policymaking and ideology.

About the book review: In certain ways China has moved off its Maoist model. But Maoism has had strong and unexpected roles in the violent underground in many places outside China. The best known cases may be the revolutionary wars of the latter 20th c. in Malaya, Vietnam, and Cambodia. But other contests by ideological Maoists opened up in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and even the western hemisphere's Peru.

What is Maoism's appeal to foreigners?

To what degree has it been exportable?

In this new podcast, Professor Christopher C. Harmon will offer his insights into "Maoism Overseas" and discuss the admirable new book on the topic by Julia Lovell.

About the Speaker: Dr. Harmon holds the Bren Chair of Great Power Competition at Marine Corps University and is also a professor at IWP, where he teaches courses on Military Strategy and Terrorist Advocacy and Propaganda.

About the lecture: Ethan S. Burger will share his views of the most surprising feature of the long-awaited unclassified version of the National Intelligence Council’s Intelligence Community Assessment “Foreign Threats to the 2020 US Federal Election,” March 10, 2021, principally that is it contained few if any surprises. Perhaps its discussion of China and Iran influence campaigns are noteworthy — the former country did not “take sides” in the presidential contest and the latter engaged in an effort targeting individual voters. To date, no one has systematically examined what if any impact foreign influence campaigns have there been on the 2020 Congressional elections.

Compared with its efforts in 2016, Russia’s actions seemed not to affect the election outcome in the form of influencing opinions or suppressing turnout. In a sense, this reflects that its objective of sowing further discord within American society has achieved a level of success previously not anticipated. Nonetheless, at least throughout the summer, the Russian leadership seems to believe that Mr. Trump would be re-elected.

Shortly before being fired by President Donald Trump after the election, Christopher Krebs, the Department of Homeland Security Director saw that his agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, had achieved its goal of ensuring “the most secure [presidential election] in American history.” Indeed “t]here is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

Mr. Burger will seek to put China’s, Iran’s, and Russia’s efforts into a historical context, where their objectives are similar to those of many countries’ attempts to sway voters in foreign countries to place into power a “friendly government,” albeit with less sophisticated tools. In the future, the principal cybersecurity threats are likely to be attacks on infrastructure, governmental institutions, and financial crimes.

About the Speaker: Ethan S. Burger, Esq., is a Washington-based international legal consultant and an cyber instructor with IWP's Cyber Intelligence Initiative, where he teaches a seminar about the international law governing cyber operations. His lectures at the IWP have included: The Application of International Law to Cyber Operations, Better Understanding Russian Use of Mercenaries to Advance Foreign Policy Goals, and Contextualizing Russian Interference in the 2016 UK Brexit Referendum and the U.S. Presidential Election. His areas of interests include corporate governance, transnational crime (corruption, cybercrime, and money laundering), and Russian affairs. After working as an attorney on Russian commercial, investment, and risk issues, he segued into academic, and advisory roles.

He has taught at Vilnius University about cybersecurity issues while on a Fulbright Foundation grant during which time he participated in the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence’s, a seminar on the international law governing cyber operations. He was a full-time faculty member at the Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (American University — School of International Service) and the Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention (Wollongong University — Faculty of Law).He received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University and J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.

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

About the lecture: Diplomacy with North Korea must factor in an understanding of the Kim regime’s fears and insecurity. Pyongyang’s military actions and negotiating gambits jeopardize the United States, South Korea, and other nations’ vital interests and policy goals. Accordingly, the study of North Korean threat perceptions—how Kim Jong-un thinks about the utility of force and about threats to his regime—is essential for averting strategic surprise and buttressing diplomacy. Dr. Cronin will address North Korean threat perceptions by examining the ruling elite’s basic instincts of fear and insecurity. Drawing on the more than seven-decade of war and cold war on the Korean peninsula, he will offer constructive ideas for diplomacy, crisis management, and security policy.

About the speaker: Patrick M. Cronin is the Asia-Pacific Security Chair at Hudson Institute. Dr. Cronin’s research program analyzes the challenges and opportunities confronting the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, including China’s total competition campaign, the future of the Korean peninsula, and strengthening U.S. alliances and partnerships.

Dr. Cronin was previously senior advisor and senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and before that, senior director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University, where he simultaneously oversaw the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs.

Dr. Cronin has a rich and diverse background in both Asian-Pacific security and U.S. defense, and foreign and development policy. Prior to leading INSS, Dr. Cronin served as the director of studies at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). At IISS, he also served as editor of the Adelphi Papers and as the executive director of the Armed Conflict Database. Before joining IISS, Dr. Cronin was senior vice president and director of research at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

In 2001, Dr. Cronin was confirmed by the United States Senate to the third-ranking position at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). While serving as Assistant Administrator for Policy and Program Coordination, Dr. Cronin also led the interagency task force that helped design the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).

From 1998 until 2001, Dr. Cronin served as director of research at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Prior to that, he spent seven years at the National Defense University, first arriving at INSS in 1990 as a senior research professor covering Asian and long-range security issues. He was the founding executive editor of Joint Force Quarterly, and subsequently became both deputy director and director of research at the Institute. He received the Army’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award upon his departure from NDU in 1997.

He has also been a senior analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, a U.S. Naval Reserve intelligence officer, and an analyst with the Congressional Research Service and SRI International. He was associate editor of Strategic Review and worked as an undergraduate at the Miami Herald and the Fort Lauderdale News.

Dr. Cronin has taught at Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program, Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and the University of Virginia’s Woodrow Wilson Department of Government.

He read international relations at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, where he received both his M.Phil. and D.Phil. degrees, and graduated with high honors from the University of Florida. He regularly publishes essays in leading publications and frequently conducts television and radio interviews.

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

About the lecture: The United States is party to several security alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific Theater. These relationships vary in scope and commitment, but they are all rooted in shared concerns about the PRC’s hegemonic ambitions. Collectively, they have the potential to provide the United States with clear, long-term advantages over the PRC, diplomatically, economically, and militarily. Leveraging these advantages will require sustained U.S. leadership and innovative statecraft.

About the speaker: The Honorable James H. Anderson is a former Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and a twice confirmed presidential appointee. In August 2018, the U.S. Senate confirmed Dr. Anderson as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities. In June 2020, the U.S. Senate confirmed him as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

Prior to his most recent Pentagon service, he served as the Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Marine Corps University and Dean of Academics at the Marine Corps War College. He has also worked as Professor at the George C. Marshall Center for European Security Studies, Director of Middle East Policy at the Pentagon, Project Manager at DFI International, Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and Associate Professor at Command and Staff College, Marine Corps University.

Dr. Anderson is the co-author of Leading Dynamic Seminars: A Practical Handbook for University Educators (Palgrave Macmillian, 2013), and the author of America at Risk: The Citizen’s Guide to Missile Defense (Heritage Foundation, 1999). He has written more than eighty articles and op-eds on a wide range of national security topics.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Anderson served three years on active duty as an intelligence officer in the United States Marine Corps.

Dr. Anderson earned his Doctorate in International Relations and Masters of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School, Tufts University.

He is a recipient of numerous professional awards, including the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the Department’s Highest Award for non-career Federal employees.

Full title: “The Pygmy Among the Giants”? – Polish Eastern Policy in the Eyes of the British Political Elite (1919–1923)

This lecture event is part of the 11th Kościuszko Chair Spring Symposium in honor of Lady Blanka Rosenstiel sponsored by the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies and the Center for Intermarium studies.

Lady Blanka Rosenstiel and the American Institute of Polish Culture (AIPC) established the Kościuszko Chair of Polish Studies at IWP in 2008. The Kościuszko Chair serves as a center for Polish Studies in the broadest sense, including learning, teaching, researching, and writing about Poland's culture, history, heritage, religion, government, economy, and successes in the arts, sciences, and letters, with special emphasis on the achievements of Polish civilization and its relation to other nations, particularly the United States. We remain grateful for Lady Blanka’s leadership in founding this Chair at IWP.

About the lecture: The Treaty of Versailles established the new order in Western Europe, but its clauses did not bring peace to independent Poland. The young state was struggling with external threats. First of all, from Soviet Russia, the Ukrainian national self-determination was endangering the Polish state’s security; in 1919, the Polish-Lithuanian antagonism sprang to life. In reality, its political, social, and military situation was anything but “stable.” Those conditions made the Polish-British inter-state diplomatic relation the essential factor in Polish foreign policy.

This discussion attempts to explain the evolution of the British political elite’s perception of Polish Eastern policy. The speaker will introduce the British attitude towards Poland since the Peace Conference in Paris, which commenced its proceedings from 18th January 1919 until 15th March 1923, when Britain recognized Polish Eastern borders. The talk seeks to answer the following questions: what kind of factors—a geopolitical theory or a strategic necessity—determined British policy towards Polish Eastern policy? Moreover, what factors influenced the British approach towards Poland? Finally, according to the British officials, what role did the Eastern border’s recognition play in the Anglo-Polish reciprocal relationship? What was the importance of this fact in the perception of Poland’s role as one of the factors of stability in East-Central Europe?

About the speaker: Dr. Jolanta Mysiakowska carried out her graduate work at the University of Warsaw (2005). She has a doctorate in modern history from the Polish Academy of Sciences (2010). In 2015, she won a research grant from the Polonia Aid Foundation Trust. In 2020, she won a research grant from Lanckorońskis’ Foundation. Currently, she works with the Institute of National Remembrance, Warsaw, Poland. She is also editor-in-chief of Glaukopis—a scholarly periodical produced in cooperation with The Institute of World Politics (Washington, D.C., USA).

She is a historian of 20th century Poland, with a particular interest in developing independent Poland after the First World War, its political and domestic situation, and its inter-state diplomatic relationship with Great Britain. She also has research interests in political ideology from the late 19th to the first half of the 20th century—Member of British International Study Association and Britain and the World association.

Much of her recent research is focused on the perception of independent Poland among the British political and intellectual elite (1919–1926).