The Institute of World Politics

About the Book: Generally, there are two major approaches in research on Katyn: the perspective of the victims and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the perpetrators‘ perspective. In his Encounter with Katyn Wolsza has touched upon another dimension of this atrocity, which has not been addressed in the work done so far. He describes the stories of over 60 representatives of various social groups who visited the Katyn site in 1943. The postwar Communist regime in Poland consistently plugged the Katyn Lie and conducted a campaign of repression and reprisals against witnesses of the Soviet crime. They were accused of collaboration with the Germans, forced to cancel testimonies about the real perpetrators, put under surveillance, and imprisoned. Some of them had to leave the country. Wolsza’s book portrays the Katyn Massacre not only as the extermination of Polish elites by a totalitarian regime, but also as a symbol of the struggle for universal values such as memory, truth, and justice. This corresponds to the wider perspective of the struggle of an enslaved society fighting for its freedom and independence.

About the Author: Professor Tadeusz Wolsza is a recognized Polish historian and political scientist (academic affiliations: Institute of History at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, the Casimir the Great University at Bydgoszcz, Institute of National Remembrance). He was born in 1956 in Poland. He specializes in the contemporary history of Poland, especially in the wartime and postwar Polish political émigré community, the Katyn Massacre, the anti-Communist resistance movement in Poland, and Stalinist crimes in postwar Poland. Professor Wolsza has published over 280 academic papers and books, and some of them have been translated into Russian, German, English, Italian, Serbian, and Slovak.

About the Lecture: In 2017, Graham Allison, founding dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and former assistant secretary of defense, published “Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” Allison’s Thucydides’s Trap rapidly became an influential statement on the challenge that a rising China poses to the international order created and lead by the United States. To help understand the dangers that China’s rapid economic, technological, and military growth poses to both countries, Allison draws on the classic statement on great power war — Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War — to argue that the “structural stress caused when a rising power threatens to upend a ruling one” makes even “ordinary flashpoints” likely to trigger large-scale conflict.” Allison is certainly right about the growth of China. And he is right to look to Thucydides for help. But Allison reduces Thucydides’ magisterial work to an instrument of realpolitik. Using Thucydides’ account of the siege of Plataea as a guide to China’s contemporary treatment of Hong Kong, we can see another, deeper and richer, lesson in Thucydides’ History, one that must not be forgotten by those who wish, in the face of Chinese authoritarianism, to preserve the fragile but precious gift of freedom at the heart of Western civilization.

About the Speaker: Bernard J. Dobski is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Assumption College and is currently a Visiting Scholar for 2019-2020 at the Heritage Foundation. He is the co-editor of two volumes on Shakespeare’s political thought. His articles and essays on the political wisdom of Thucydides, Xenophon, Shakespeare, and Mark Twain appear in the Review of Politics, Interpretation, Society, and Philosophy & Literature. He has also published on foreign policy, military strategy, sovereignty, and nationalism.

About the Book: Historically, operations and studies regarding maritime security focus on individual threats (e.g., piracy, terrorism, narcotics, etc.) and individual measures to target them (e.g., counter-piracy, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics). This book explores, for the first time, an overall strategy for maritime security, integrating these issues into a single framework.

Tallis argues that as maritime security threats rise in sophistication, it will be increasingly appealing to apply military resources to counter them. Military tactics, however, may not be the ideal mechanisms for addressing challenges that are often closer to crime than they are to war. Leveraging the sea services’ capabilities, without overly militarizing maritime security, is a complicated problem set that requires a more strategic and partner-oriented approach to the challenge. At stake, in Tallis’ estimation, is the war for tomorrow’s most important communities, their human security, and the muddy waters on which they and the global system rely.

About the Author: Dr. Tallis is a research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, a Federally Funded Research and Development Center where he specializes in maritime security, naval strategy, and foreign policy. His project management experience includes directing cross-disciplinary teams building novel research designs to address unstructured strategic and operational questions. He has also conducted independent field research, including embarking USS Harry S. Truman during the U.S. Navy’s first Arctic carrier deployment in nearly 30 years as civilian analyst and adviser to the strike group commander. Tallis holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the University of St Andrews, where he researched theories of littoral security that resulted in the book, The War for Muddy Waters: Pirates, Terrorists, Traffickers, and Maritime Insecurity (Naval Institute Press, 2019).

About the book: In the halcyon days of the Reagan administration, a young artist was brought in to give the president’s closest friend piano lessons with White House clearance as a political appointee. What the young pianist saw is what few Americans knew. In this true but little known story, John Robilette has changed the names in a novelized account of being the only Reagan appointee that was fired and rehired before creating a public diplomacy program that helped to win the Cold War. And not with the firing of a gun, but with classical music in 63 countries around the world. This sad, comical and explosive story of an innocent in the vortex of power is a must for Americans who are interested in their government, humor, and the arts.

“John Robilette is a brilliant pianist and famous international performer — but, as he shows in this fascinating little book, he was keeping his eyes wide open in that world he so crowned. ‘Federal Pianist,’ based on his own rich experience with the arts in the federal government is alternatively engrossing, sad, and comical. Bravely, he opens a heretofore closed door into the little-known world of arts and foreign policy; you’d be wise to walk right in.”

~Georgie Anne Geyer, Syndicated Columnist, and Foreign Correspondent.

About the author: John Robilette is an international concert pianist who has performed in 26 countries around the world including some of its major classical music venues. He has also recorded commercial CDs’ of solo pieces as well as piano concerti with leading orchestras in Europe. Also now a SAG actor, he has had the lead or supporting roles in nine independent films, many of which were officially selected in film festivals around the United States and in Tokyo, Japan. He further wrote, directed, and produced a 30-minute short comedy film entitled, “My Piano Lesson.” This year he has been named to the 26th Annual SAG awards nominating committee to determine the best male and female actors in drama and comedy for television. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from UCLA, a Doctor of Musical Arts from the Catholic University of America with earlier studies at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, France. Dr. Robilette has further served on the piano faculties of two universities and given master classes around the world. As a young man in 1981, he was asked to play a recital at the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan. Subsequently, he was brought into the administration as a political appointee where he created and directed the Artistic Ambassador Program for the United States Information Agency from 1983-1989. This was an intercultural exchange program revolving around classical music which became popular in 63 countries around the world and was honored at the White House.

About the Lecture: The Maduro regime in Venezuela is sustained through a multi-dimensional, multi-faceted, sophisticated matrix of foreign and domestic actors that includes armed groups in Venezuela and transnational criminal and foreign terrorist organizations. While most attention is paid to Cuba, China, and Russia’s role in Venezuela, the regime has increasingly relied on an array of Middle Eastern actors, namely Hezbollah and Iran, to project their revolutionary goals regionwide. Joseph Humire, a former Marine and Iraq war veteran, will present the findings of more than three years of ongoing research that includes many trips to South America to collect firsthand information from those with intimate knowledge of the threat. He has repeatedly briefed these findings on the historic and immigration ties between Venezuela and the Middle East to the Defense Ministries of Brazil, Colombia, as well as various entities within the US Department of Defense, namely Special Operations Command.

About the Speaker: Joseph M. Humire is a global security expert, specializing in trans-regional threats in the Western Hemisphere. Mr. Humire provides regular briefings and lectures on international terrorism, transnational organized crime, Islamism and Iran and Hezbollah’s influence in the Americas to various entities within the U.S. national security community, as well as prominent think tanks and universities worldwide. He has testified numerous times before the U.S. Congress as well as the European and Canadian Parliament. Mr. Humire has also served as an expert witness to several important terrorism trials in South America, including an ongoing trial of an accused Hezbollah operative in Peru.

Mr. Humire is a regular national security commentator for a variety of major English and Spanish language media, including Univision, Telemundo, CNN en Español, and NTN24 regional news network, as well as Fox News and CNN International. He has published in both languages for various newspapers and academic journals across the Americas and released his first book in 2014 titled Iran’s Strategic Penetration of Latin America, published by Lexington Books. More recently, he wrote the foreword for a new book by Dr. Max G. Manwaring, titled Confronting the Evolving Global Security Landscape published by Praeger Security International.

Mr. Humire currently serves as the executive director of the next generation, national security think tank—Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS)—based in Washington D.C. and is a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Middle East Forum. Prior to SFS, he served in the U.S. Marine Corps with a combat tour in Iraq and a multinational training exercise UNITAS in Latin America and the Caribbean. After leaving the military, he graduated from George Mason University with a degree in Economics and Global Affairs. Mr. Humire began building SFS’s global network of more than 100 security scholars in almost 30 countries worldwide as the Director of Institute Relations at the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

Mr. Humire’s unique blend of military experience, economics education, and expertise in asymmetric warfare, offers a new perspective to U.S. foreign policy and national security.

About the Lecture: The Trump Administration’s national defense strategy contains the following judgment: “The central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security is the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition by…revisionist powers.” Why has “great-power competition” become a—if not the—dominant construct guiding the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s understanding of contemporary geopolitics? What are its analytical underpinnings and prescriptive implications?

About the Speaker: Ali Wyne is a Washington, DC-based policy analyst in the RAND Corporation’s Defense and Political Sciences Department. He serves as a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a nonresident fellow with the Modern War Institute. Since January 2015 he has been the rapporteur for a U.S. National Intelligence Council working group that convenes government officials and international relations scholars to analyze trends in the world order.

Ali served as a junior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s China Program from 2008 to 2009 and as a research assistant to Graham Allison at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs from 2009 to 2012. He has also conducted research for Robert Blackwill, Derek Chollet, Henry Kissinger, Wendy Sherman, and Richard Stengel. From January to July 2013 he worked on a team that prepared Samantha Power for her confirmation hearing to be ambassador to the United Nations. From 2014 to 2015 he was a member of the RAND Corporation’s adjunct staff, working for the late Richard Solomon on its “Strategic Rethink” series.

Ali graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with dual degrees in Management Science and Political Science (2008) and received his Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School (2017), where he was a course assistant to Joseph Nye. While at the Kennedy School, he served on a Hillary for America working group on U.S. policy towards Asia.

Ali is a coauthor of Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World (2013) and a contributing author to Our American Story: The Search for a Shared National Narrative (2019), Power Relations in the Twenty-First Century: Mapping a Multipolar World? (2017), and the Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy (2008). He has published extensively in outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, and the Christian Science Monitor.

Ali delivered the welcome address at the 2011 St. Gallen Symposium, participated in the 2015 Manfred Wörner Seminar, was selected to attend the 2016 Young Strategists Forum and the 2018 Brussels Forum Young Professionals Summit, and participated in the 2018 China-U.S. Young Scholars Dialogue, the 2019 Taiwan-U.S. Policy Program, and the 2019 Atlantik-Brücke Young Leaders Program. In 2012, Young Professionals in Foreign Policy and the Diplomatic Courier selected him as one of the 99 most influential professionals in foreign policy under 33.

Ali is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a David Rockefeller fellow with the Trilateral Commission, and a security fellow with the Truman National Security Project.

About the Lecture: What sorts of people rise to leadership in the Chinese Communist Party? How do they get to the top? What qualities define them? How should we deal with them? A retired American diplomat speaks from his experience in China.

About the Speaker: William McCahill joined NBR as a Senior Resident Fellow in July 2016. His work focuses on Chinese politics and policy. Before joining NBR, Mr. McCahill had worked in Hong Kong and China as the Senior Advisor for China at Mirabaud & Cie., a Swiss private bank headquartered in Geneva, and earlier in a similar capacity for Religare Capital Markets. He had previously co-founded and managed a China-focused equities and macro research firm, opened the Beijing office of a major American law firm, and operated a business consultancy in China. A 25-year Foreign Service career preceded McCahill’s business activities. He began his diplomatic service in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Beijing; subsequently held senior posts at US missions in Western Europe, Scandinavia, and Canada; and in 2000 retired from his last posting as Chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. His academic background includes degrees from Boston College and Harvard University in Theology, English, the History of Religion, and Sanskrit & Indian Studies.

About the Book: The media often suggest that Russia poses the greatest threat to America’s national security, but the real danger lies farther east. While those in power have been distracted and disorderly, China has waged a six-front war on America’s economy, military, diplomacy, technology, education, and infrastructure–and they’re winning. It’s almost too late to undo the shocking, though nearly invisible, victories of the Chinese.

In Stealth War, retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Spalding reveals China’s motives and secret attacks on the West. Chronicling how our leaders have failed to protect us over recent decades, he provides shocking evidence of some of China’s most brilliant ploys, including:

• Placing Confucius Institutes in universities across the United States that serve to monitor and control Chinese students on campus and spread communist narratives to unsuspecting American students.

• Offering enormous sums to American experts who create investment funds that funnel technology to China.

• Signing a thirty-year agreement with the U.S. that allows China to share peaceful nuclear technology, ensuring that they have access to American nuclear know-how.

Spalding’s concern isn’t merely that America could lose its position on the world stage. More urgently, the Chinese Communist Party has a fundamental loathing of the legal protections America grants its people and seeks to create a world without those rights.

Despite all the damage done so far, Spalding shows how it’s still possible for the U.S. and the rest of the free world to combat–and win–China’s stealth war.

About the Author: Robert Spalding retired from the U.S. Air Force as a brigadier general after more than twenty-six years of service. He completed his career as the senior director for strategic planning to the president at the National Security Council, and was the chief architect for the National Security Strategy. He is a former China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, as well as a senior defense official and defense attaché to China. He earned his doctorate in economics and mathematics from the University of Missouri and is fluent in Mandarin.

About the Lecture: Energy security has been a perennial concern since the early 1970s. But what exactly do we mean by energy security, and how do we know if it’s getting better or worse? This presentation discusses different dimensions of U.S. energy security and how they can be measured in an index. The presentation also will look at how the U.S. performs compared to other large energy-using countries.

About the Speaker: Stephen D. Eule is vice president for climate and technology at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute. With more than two decades of experience, Eule is a recognized and respected expert on the nexus between energy and climate change. He engages with business groups across the world, is asked frequently to testify before Congress, and is quoted often in major media outlets.

Eule represents the Chamber in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and helped found the Major Economies Business Forum on Energy Security and Climate Change, a coalition of more than 20 national cross-sector business organizations from major economies.

Eule also is responsible for GEI’s two authoritative energy security reports—the Index of U.S. Energy Security Risk and the International Index of Energy Security Risk. These risks indices represent the first and most comprehensive efforts to quantify energy security risks over time and across a wide range of measures. They have been cited by the International Energy Agency and are used by universities and think tanks across the world.

Previously, Eule was director of the Office of Climate Change Policy & Technology at the Department of Energy. There he oversaw the development of the U.S. Climate Change Technology Program Strategic Plan in 2006 and ran President Bush’s Climate VISION program. Internationally, Eule represented DOE as part of the U.S. government delegations to the UNFCCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the G20, and other multilateral forums. He was lead chapter author on the U.S. Climate Action Report—2006 and contributed to other U.S. government publications.

His prior experience includes a decade working in various public policy positions. He was a subcommittee staff director on the House Science Committee and served as legislative director for Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI). In addition, Eule was an environmental analyst in the Washington, D.C., office of New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R-NJ). Earlier, he worked for eight years as an Orkand Corporation consultant to the Energy Information Administration and worked at the Heritage Foundation.

Eule earned a Master of Arts degree in geography from The George Washington University and a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Southern Connecticut State College.

About the Book: In spring 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turned to his friend and army commander, Manaf Tlass, for advice about how to respond to Arab Spring-inspired protests. Tlass pushed for conciliation but Assad decided to crush the uprising — an act which would catapult the country into an eight-year long war, killing almost half a million and fueling terrorism and a global refugee crisis.

Assad or We Burn the Country examines Syria’s tragedy through the generational saga of the Assad and Tlass families, once deeply intertwined and now estranged in Bashar’s bloody quest to preserve his father’s inheritance. By drawing on his own reporting experience in Damascus and exclusive interviews with Tlass, Dagher takes readers within palace walls to reveal the family behind the destruction of a country and the chaos of an entire region.

Dagher shows how one of the world’s most vicious police states came to be and explains how a regional conflict extended globally, engulfing the Middle East and pitting the United States and Russia against one another.

Timely, propulsive, and expertly reported, Assad or We Burn the Country is the definitive account of this global crisis, going far beyond the news story that has dominated headlines for years.

About the Speaker: Sam Dagher is a senior correspondent for The Wall Street Journal focused on Syria, Iraq and Iran. He has worked in the Middle East for more than 12 years. He covered Syria starting in spring 2012. He reported from inside Syria for more than two years and was the only Western correspondent working and living in the Syrian capital Damascus fulltime between June 2013 and August 2014. While in Syria, Dagher reported mainly on the steps taken by the regime of Bashar al-Assad to stay in power and the impact of this on the country and its people. Dagher’s first story from inside Syria in October 2012 was about the counterinsurgency strategy adopted by Assad and his allies Iran and Hezbollah in Damascus which involved demolishing entire neighborhoods sympathetic to rebels and standing up loyalist militias.

Dagher also reported on how the regime fueled sectarianism, mobilized loyalist businessmen to evade international sanctions, rallied minorities to fight on its side, besieged and starved opposition areas and contributed to the rise of Islamic militancy in the country. Dagher reported extensively from the strategic central city of Homs, which was subdued by the regime and its allies only after destroying large parts of it and changing its demographics by driving out most of its Sunni inhabitants. Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority is leading the rebellion against Assad. He also spent time in Syria’s largest city Aleppo, a place partitioned by war.

In August 2014 the regime banned Dagher from entering Syria. In October 2014 he was able to enter the Kurdish-controlled part of the country in the northeast, where he reported on how Kurds were battling Islamic State in order to establish their own self-rule area. He also reported on the battle between Kurds and Islamic State for oil resources and the impact of this on people.