The Institute of World Politics

The Third Annual Herb Romerstein Memorial Propaganda and Deception Lecture:

The Challenge of Counterintelligence Cultures: The Counterintelligence State from Tsarist Russia and the USSR, to Putin’s Russia, the PRC, Cuba & Venezuela, and Resurgent Militant Islam

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About the Lecture:

This presentation will begin with the counterintelligence cum provocational style of the Tsarist Okhrana’s near classic penetration operations against its indigenous Marxist revolutionary terrorists; proceed through the long, ugly Soviet secret police period (originally annealed in struggling with Okhrana provocations); and explore the counterintelligence continuities and refinements of former KGB Lt. Col. and now Russian President Putin. Yesteryear’s Okhrana/KGB are today’s siloviki. We will then briefly probe the PRC counterintelligence state, whose pedigree long antedates that of Russia; then highlight client counterintelligence state systems such as Cuba and Venezuela; and close with a look at the unsurprising similarities between resurgent militant Islam and the Soviet/Russian counterintelligence state paradigm.

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About the Speaker:

Dr. Jack Dziak is co-founder and President of Dziak Group, Inc., a consulting firm in the fields of intelligence, counterintelligence, counter-deception, national security affairs, and technology transfer. Dr. Dziak is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC. He has served over five decades as a company President and as a senior intelligence officer and senior executive in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and in the Defense Intelligence Agency, with long experience in counterintelligence, hostile deception, counter-deception, strategic intelligence, weapons proliferation intelligence, and intelligence education. Dr. Dziak received his honors Ph.D. in Russian history from Georgetown University, is a graduate of the National War College, and is a recipient of numerous defense and intelligence awards and citations. He was the co-developer and co-director of the Masters Degree Program in Strategic Intelligence at the Defense Intelligence School, the original predecessor to the current National Intelligence University. He has taught graduate courses at the Institute of World Politics, the National War College, Georgetown University, and The George Washington University; and lectures on intelligence, military affairs, and security issues throughout the US and abroad. Dr. Dziak is the author of the award-winning Chekisty: A History of the KGB, numerous other books, articles, and monographs, including The Military Relationship Between China and Russia, and Soviet Perceptions of Military Power. He currently is preparing a book on foreign counterintelligence systems, as well as other works on intelligence and national security issues.

About the Lecture: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev made it clear to Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenka: Minsk must take steps towards deeper integration between the two countries. Polls have shown that, following the rise of Russian media presence in Belarus, pro-Russian sentiment increased within the society. What, exactly, is the situation in Belarus? What role could Belarusian civil society, the EU, and the U.S. play in the new paradigm?

About the Speaker: Franak Viačorka is the Vice President of the Digital Communication Network. He concurrently works as the consultant for U.S. Agency for Global Media, and he is the Creative Director of RFE/RL Belarus Service. Mr. Viačorka is a frequent speaker and advocate for democracy and personal freedom in post-Soviet countries. An expert in Russian disinformation, he recently published research on the Kremlin-backed media, Russian Orthodox church, and think-tanks as the Kremlin's “soft-power.”

Mr. Viačorka is the founder and vice president of the Belarusian cultural initiative Art Siadziba. In 2014, after the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, he launched a nationwide campaign promoting the national identity of Belarus." Before that, he served as a leader of the youth wing of the Belarusian Popular Front (BNF).

After suffering through torture while serving under forced conscription in the Belarusian army, Mr. Viačorka’s personal story became the plot for the award-winning, Polish-French film Viva Belarus. His work in Belarus has been chronicled by documentary filmmakers and recognized by many international organizations, including the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and Open Society Foundations. Mr. Viačorka was the first Vaclav Havel fellow for RFE/RL under Havel’s personal recommendation.

Mr. Viačorka has earned degrees from American University in Washington D.C. and Warsaw University in Poland, and he has also studied at Georgetown University and European Humanities University.

About the Lecture: While broad economic sanctions have long been used as instruments of foreign policy, targeted sanctions focusing on specific individuals, entities, and transactions are relatively new and less understood. Dr. Ahn will present some of his recent assessing the economic impact of targeted sanctions, using big data/machine-learning techniques on a unique database of firm and individual-level data. He shall focus on sanctions deployed by the United States and the European Union against primarily Russian targets after the crisis in Ukraine in 2014 as a natural experiment. Dr. Ahn has been able to identify specific impacts on targeted companies by category and by industry and to ascertain the extent to which ‘strategic’ companies received special support (“shielding”) from the Russian state. His work is particularly relevant for anyone who wishes to understand the policy effects of sanctions at both the micro and macro levels, and the extent to which a target state is able or unable to avoid the intended impacts of sanctions.

About the Speaker: Dr. Daniel P. Ahn is currently a Professorial Lecturer at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he teaches graduate courses on energy economics and conflict, a Senior Advisor at the Rapidan Energy Group, and an advisor for the U.S. government. He was previously the Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of State, where he advised the Secretary and senior principals on a wide range of international economic and security topics relevant to U.S. foreign policy, including global macroeconomic growth, financial stability, economic sanctions, counter-terrorist financing, international trade, and energy security.

Prior to public service, Dr. Ahn was the chief economist for commodities at Citigroup in New York and also held senior positions at Citadel, Barclays Capital, and Lehman Brothers. He has also held research and teaching positions at Harvard University, the National Bureau of Economic Research, Columbia University, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the International Monetary Fund. He is the author of multiple research articles, Congressional testimony, and a forthcoming economics textbook. He was featured in Forbes Magazine as one of 30 under 30 in Finance. He completed his A.B. in economics and finance with honors from Princeton University, and his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

About the Book: For centuries an aggressive secularism has fought to occupy the place once held by religion in Western society. Its intellectual leaders are ambitious. Their goal is to remove God from public discourse and then from memory. While they claimed that godlessness would bring about an era of peace, it brought history’s bloodiest century instead. Civic institutions founded on Judeo-Christian principles began to crumble apart from them. Firm and commonly held ideas — about rights, duties, and dignity — have vanished when their divine origin was denied.

Alberto Martinez Piedra, a respected scholar and former U.S. ambassador, tells the intellectual story of our time in a sweeping overview that places the New Atheism in its proper context and valiantly upholds the greatness and incomparable richness of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Sir Winston Churchill said in 1948: “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” No God, No Civilization:The New Atheism and the Fantasy of Perpetual Progress aims to help opinion leaders and policymakers of today avoid the tragic mistakes of the past.

About the Author: Amb. Alberto Martinez Piedra, Ph.D. is a Professor Emeritus at the Institute of World Politics. In 1959, Amb. Piedra was the Director General of Exports and Imports of the Cuban Ministry of Commerce. He was the Technical Assistant of the Department of Economic Development of the Cuban National Council. Amb. Piedra was the Director of the Latin American Institute and Chairman for the Department of Economics and Business at The Catholic University of America. He was the U.S. Representative to the Economic and Economic and Social Council of the Organization of American States. He served as the United States Ambassador to Guatemala from 1984-1987. From 1987-1988, he was the Senior Area Advisor for Latin America during the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. Amb. Piedra has authored two books, Natural Law: The Foundation of an Orderly Economic System and No God, No Civilization:The New Atheism and the Fantasy of Perpetual Progress.

About the Lecture: This lecture will focus on the background of the build up to the 2014 - 2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa and what the United States Government did to respond to this epidemic. Steven VanRoekel will discuss how the US tackled the challenges from the epidemic and what the government learned from it.

About the Speaker: Steven VanRoekel is the Chief Operating Officer of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York City. Prior to this role, Steve was a technology and innovation consultant for the Foundation, seeking to further its mission through the use of data, technology and innovation. Steven began his engagement with Rockefeller in the Fall of 2017. Steve is a maker, investor and philanthropist. Prior to Rockefeller, Steve was in the Obama Administration where he last served as Chief Innovation Officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). At USAID, Steve helped coordinate the Administration’s response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, including coordinating efforts to clarify and systemize the collection of data from the field and led the maker efforts to redesign the Ebola protective suit. Prior to his role at USAID, Steven was the second Chief Information Officer of the United States, appointed by President Obama in 2011. At the White House as U.S. CIO, Steve led the creation of the PortfolioStat agency review process, launched the “FedRAMP” cloud computing program, co-founded the United States Digital Service and the Presidential Innovation Fellows program, and led the U.S. Government’s Open Data and Mobile policies. Wired Magazine named Steve one of the world’s top 10 influencers of cloud computing. Concurrently, Steve spent a year as the acting Deputy Director for Management/Chief Operating Officer for the U.S. Before joining the White House, Steve held two prior positions in the Obama Administration at USAID and the Federal Communications Commission. Prior to the Administration, Steve’s entire professional career was at Microsoft Corporation where he held many roles, including the longest-serving Business and Strategy Assistant to Microsoft founder, Bill Gates. His final role at Microsoft was as Senior Director of the Windows Server and Tools Division of Microsoft – a division, that at his departure, had risen to the be the second largest revenue generator for Microsoft. Steve is on the board of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, the board of the Maret School of Washington D.C., and is on the board of VetSports, a nonprofit that helps veterans with opportunities to reintegrate into their communities through sports, community Service, events, and partnership. Steve, his wife Carrie, and three daughters (age 12, 10 and 8) live in Washington, DC.

This is the Sixth Annual Brian Kelley Memorial Lecture at The Institute of World Politics.

About Brian Kelley Memorial Lectures: The passing of Professor Brian Kelley was a grave loss to the Institute and to our country. His knowledge, experiences and dedication were at a level that is hard to match. In his time at IWP, he brought his own knowledge, as well as the knowledge of experts in the intelligence community, to help the students gain as much as they possibly could during their time at IWP. This lecture is meant to honor his memory and continue his tradition of providing students with the opportunity to hear comments from experts in their given careers within the intelligence community.

About the Speaker: Dr. David L. Charney, MD is the Founder and Medical Director of Roundhouse Square Counseling Center, in Alexandria, Virginia. He specializes in Anxiety and Mood Disorders, Couples and Family Therapy, as well as Attention Deficit Disorder in adults. In addition to his usual practice, he has also treated personnel from within the Intelligence Community. As a result of unusual circumstances, he had the opportunity to join the defense team of his first spy case, Earl Pitts. Subsequently, Plato Cacheris, the attorney of Robert Hanssen, invited Dr. Charney to join his defense team, which added a further dimension to his experience. With the addition of his third spy case, Brian Regan, Dr. Charney further deepened his knowledge of the psychological nuances of captured spies. As a member of their defense teams, Dr. Charney was perceived by these insider spies as an understanding and supportive figure, which lowered their defensive mindsets, and provided a truer picture of their inner lives. Many common assumptions of spy motivation were brought into question by Dr. Charney’s work. Dr. Charney elaborated his findings in Part One of his White Paper, entitled True Psychology of the Insider Spy. Part Two of his White Paper, entitled NOIR: A White Paper – Proposing a New Policy for Improving National Security by Fixing the Problem of Insider Spies, lays out Dr. Charney’s innovative and perhaps controversial recommendations for making use of what he learned to better manage the problem of insider spies. To educate and promote these concepts and ideas, he founded NOIR for USA, a non-profit organization.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Intermarium Studies and the Kosciuszko Chair of Polish Studies at IWP.

About the Lecture: The European Union is facing immense internal pressures as well as complex external dilemmas. The migration crisis, Brexit, and the rise of new political ideas have put the debate regarding the future of the EU integration in focus. The upcoming European Parliamentary elections in May 2019 will be a milestone in this debate. Hungarian Ambassador László Szabó will discuss the political and cultural vision of Central and Eastern Europe, and its implications to the region's relations with the United States.

About the Speaker: Mr. László Szabó, M.D. physician, businessman, politician and diplomat who is the current Hungarian Ambassador to the United States since 2017. In 1990, Ambassador Szabó graduated from Debrecen Medical University, Hungary with a degree in medicine and practiced as a transplant surgeon for couple of years. In the early 1990’s he shifted to the pharmaceutical industry. He spent more than 20 successful years in the pharma field, held several local and international leadership positions, such as country manager for New Zealand and the South Pacific, vice president of China Human Resources at Eli Lilly; later he became CEO of the Hungarian operations of TEVA. In 2014, when the Government of Hungary decided to put foreign trade and investment to the forefront, and looked for a seasoned business leader, Ambassador Szabó was approached to join public service. He served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, building up the trade pillar of the Ministry until his appointment as Ambassador to the U.S. in July 2017.

About the Lecture: In 1927, Mr. David Smolansky’s Jewish grandparents fled Soviet Ukraine for Cuba, from which they fled to Venezuela in 1970 after Fidel Castro's socialism caused their family business to crumble. This family history contributed to Mr. Smolanksy’s desire to become involved in politics and to oppose Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. Eventually, he earned the position of mayor of El Hatillo, in which he concentrated on decreasing kidnappings and crime and increasing security and transparency, causing the Maduro regime's decision to remove him from office and put out a warrant for his arrest. This decision forced him to make more than a month long escape to the United States. Now, Mr. Smolansky, as a visiting scholar at Georgetown University, has conducted research focusing on the explosion of violent crime and criminal gangs in Venezuela and the security implications of the Maduro regime's ties with such groups as Hezbollah, and he provides insight on shifting regional politics and what that may mean for Venezuela, including various futures that could unfold in the country.

About the Speaker: David Smolansky is the former mayor of El Hatillo municipality in Caracas, Venezuela. He is currently living in exile and is a visiting scholar at Georgetown University. Mr. Smolansky was removed from office by the Maduro administration, disqualified from any public administration role, and has a warrant out for his arrest. He was forced to flee from Venezuela after 35 days in hiding, in which he faced more than 35 checkpoints until he finally reached Brazil. Mr. Smolansky is one of the best-known young Venezuelan politicians, and he was a vital member of the student movement that defeated Hugo Chávez’s constitutional reform proposal in 2007. Elected as the youngest mayor in Venezuela, his administration decreased kidnapping rates in El Hatillo, making the municipality one of the most secure and transparent in the country. Mr. Smolansky is also a founding member and deputy secretary general of Voluntad Popular, one of the main opposition political parties led by Leopoldo López. In 2015, he was recognized by Junior Chamber International as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World. Mr. Smolansky also received the Global Impact Award from Georgetown University in 2018. A journalism graduate from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, he holds a master’s degree in political science from the Universidad Simón Bolívar and participated in the Global Competitiveness Leadership Program at Georgetown University.

About the Book: Soon after the American Revolution, certain of the founders began to recognize the strategic significance of Asia and the Pacific and the vast material and cultural resources at stake there. Over the coming generations, the United States continued to ask how best to expand trade with the region and whether to partner with China, at the center of the continent, or Japan, looking toward the Pacific. Where should the United States draw its defensive line, and how should it export democratic principles? In a history that spans the eighteenth century to the present, By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 follows the development of U.S. strategic thinking toward East Asia, identifying recurring themes in American statecraft that reflect the nation's political philosophy and material realities. Drawing on archives, interviews, and his own experience in the Pentagon and White House, Green finds one overarching concern driving U.S. policy toward East Asia: a fear that a rival power might use the Pacific to isolate and threaten the United States and prevent the ocean from becoming a conduit for the westward free flow of trade, values, and forward defense. By More Than Providence works through these problems from the perspective of history's major strategists and statesmen, from Thomas Jefferson to Alfred Thayer Mahan and Henry Kissinger. It records the fate of their ideas as they collided with the realities of the Far East and adds clarity to America's stakes in the region, especially when compared with those of Europe and the Middle East.

About the Author: Michael Jonathan Green is senior vice president for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and director of Asian Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He served on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) from 2001 through 2005, first as director for Asian affairs with responsibility for Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, and then as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia, with responsibility for East Asia and South Asia. Before joining the NSC staff, he was a senior fellow for East Asian security at the Council on Foreign Relations, director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center and the Foreign Policy Institute and assistant professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and senior adviser on Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also worked in Japan on the staff of a member of the National Diet.

Dr. Green is also a nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, a distinguished scholar at the Asia Pacific Institute in Tokyo, and professor by special appointment at Sophia University in Tokyo. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Strategy Group, the America Australia Leadership Dialogue, the advisory boards of Radio Free Asia and the Center for a New American Security, and the editorial boards of the Washington Quarterly and the Journal of Unification Studies in Korea. He also serves as a trustee at the Asia Foundation, senior adviser at the Asia Group, and associate of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Dr. Green has authored numerous books and articles on East Asian security, including most recently, By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 (Columbia University Press, 2017). He received his master’s and doctoral degrees from SAIS and did additional graduate and postgraduate research at Tokyo University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his bachelor’s degree in history from Kenyon College with highest honors. He holds a black belt in Iaido (sword) and has won international prizes on the great highland bagpipe.

About the Lecture: This discussion will examine the influential role played by Iran within Iraq and the challenge of building a functioning Iraqi state in the context of Iranian penetration of Iraqi politics, economics, security, and religion. In security, the rise of the Islamic State provided an opportunity for Iran to assist Iraq by standing up Shi'a militias, which are now being used to further Iran's security presence in key areas of Iraq and are helping Iran to realize its strategic vision of building a "Shi'a arc" from Tehran to the Mediterranean. This has complicated Baghdad's ability to grasp the security situation within Iraq. Iran, also, has benefited from a one-sided economic and trade relationship with Iraq. At the same time that its influence has been rising within its neighbor, Iran has been becoming increasingly unpopular among the Iraqi people for its interference in Iraq, and Iraqi nationalists such as Muqtada al-Sadr are pushing back against that influence. This talk will examine all of these aspects of Iranian interference with a particular focus on how to build healthy Iraqi governance functions in the midst of these major challenges.

About the Speaker: Mike Pregent is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute. He is a senior Middle East analyst, a former adjunct lecturer for the College of International Security Affairs, and a visiting fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. Pregent is a former intelligence officer with over 28 years of experience working in security, terrorism, counter-insurgency, and policy issues in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southwest Asia. He is an expert in Middle Eastern and North African political and security issues, counter-terrorism analysis, stakeholder communications, and strategic planning. He spent considerable time working malign Iranian influence in Iraq as an advisor to Iraq’s Security and Intelligence apparatus. Pregent served in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, and he served as a liaison officer in Egypt during the 2000 Intifada, as a counter-insurgency intelligence officer at CENTCOM in 2001, and as a company commander in Afghanistan in 2002. Additionally, Pregent served as an embedded advisor with the Peshmerga in Mosul from 2005-2006. Also, as a civilian SME working for DIA, Pregent served as a political and military advisor to USF-I focusing on reconciliation, the insurgency, and Iranian influence in Iraq from 2007-2011. He was a violent extremism and foreign fighter analyst at CENTCOM from 2011-2013.