The Institute of World Politics

About the lecture

Dr. Marek Chodakiewicz will discuss how the criminal underworld was coopted by the Bolshevik revolution, how it was tamed and broken by the Soviet state, how it coexisted with it and infiltrated it; how it became transformed in the post-Soviet realm; and how it became second nature of Putin's system in Russia. Dr. Chodakiewicz will stress historical continuities of Russia's criminal underworld which have now infiltrated into the mainstream of its national life.

About the speaker

Dr. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz holds the The Kosciuszko Chair in Polish Studies at The Institute of World Politics, where 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. 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.

About the Lecture: Xi Jinping, China's Communist Party Chairman and President, has ambitious plans to make China a global power. This lecture will discuss the plans to rebuild ancient trading routes with new infrastructure that can become military bases or ports. The lecture also will cover China's plans for a modern, powerful military that can project expeditionary forces to defend China's new, far-flung interests.

About the Speaker: Dr. Larry M. Wortzel served for 32 years in the United States Armed Forces, three years in the Marine Corps followed by 29 years in the Army. A graduate of the U.S. Army War College, Dr. Wortzel earned his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Hawaii-Manoa. Dr. Wortzel’s military experience includes seven years in the infantry as well as assignment in signals intelligence collection, human source intelligence collection, counterintelligence, and as a strategist. He served two tours of duty in Beijing, China, as a military attaché and spent twelve years in the Asia-Pacific Region. Dr. Wortzel is the former Director of the Strategic Studies Institute at the U.S. Army War College. Concurrently he was professor of Asian studies. He retired from the U.S. Army as a colonel at the end of 1999. After his military retirement, he was director of the Asian Studies Center and vice president for foreign policy and defense studies at The Heritage Foundation. Dr. Wortzel has written or edited ten books and numerous scholarly articles on China and East Asia. His books include Class in China: Stratification in a Classless Society; China’s Military Modernization: International Implications; Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese Military History; and The Dragon Extends its Reach: Chinese Military Power Goes Global. Dr. Wortzel was reappointed Commissioner for The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review by House Speaker Paul Ryan for a term expiring on December 31, 2018.

About the Book: Sovereignty in the 21st Century and the Crisis for Identity, Cultures, Nation-States, and Civilizations describes a world already at war with itself. It is a world in which urban globalists fear and despise regional nationalists, and vice-versa. It is a time when the concept of the nation-state sovereignty incarnate has slipped from the minds of many. The populations of the mega-cities have as they have in different ways in the past assumed that they alone represented the state . The response to this has been a voter revolt in many areas of the world and the sudden re-appearance of the schisms between cities and regions. Nationalism has become, for many in the cities, a pejorative term, but an expression of hope for revival of many in the regions. But what do we know of the issues which are really at stake in this changing century? Can we adequately describe the meaning of sovereignty of individuals as well as states or the fundamental differences between republics and constitutional monarchies; between empires and suzerainties? Yet all these issues will determine whether we will live in calm and prosperity, or chaos and fear. This may be the most remarkable book yet by Gregory Copley.

About the Author: Gregory Copley, an Australian, is the President of the International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), based in Washington, DC. He has served as an adviser on strategic issues to a number of governments and leaders. He has authored or co-authored 35 books on strategic and geopolitical issues, history, energy, aviation, and defense. Some of these works include: Sovereignty in the 21st Century, and the Crisis for Cultures, Nation-States, and Civilizations, UnCivilization: Urban Geopolitics in a Time of Chaos, and The Art of Victory. He co-authored Rise of the RedMed: How the Mediterranean-Red Sea Nexus is Resuming its Strategic Centrality, and Pakistan’s Metamorphosis: The Defense & Foreign Affairs Handbook on Pakistan. He is Editor-in-Chief of Defense & Foreign Affairs publications, and the Director of Intelligence at the Global Information System (GIS), an on-line, encrypted-access, global intelligence service which provides strategic current intelligence solely to governments. In 2007, he drafted the grand strategy framework document for Australia, called Australia 2050. He authored and edited the encyclopedia, The Defense & Foreign Affairs Handbook, from 1976 until the present time, taking it from a 2,500 page print book to an even bigger online publication in recent years. He has received a significant number of orders and decorations from governments, including, in 2007, being made a Member of the Order of Australia for his contributions to the international community in the field of strategic analysis. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographic Society in 2011, and was awarded the Society’s Erebus Medal in 2015. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Canadian Forces College Foundation. He received the Asian Council Award in 1990. Mr Copley also has had an extensive career as an industrialist, owning several shipyards and engineering companies in the United Kingdom, a naval architectural firm, and a chemical company in France. Among his other activities, he founded Argonaut LLC, a company exploring — and delivering — remote area, mobile energy and water purification solutions. He also served as Vice-Chairman of the Scottish national airline, Highland Express.

About the Lecture: This examination of American governance makes a rather unique comparison of economic democracy with political democracy. It will be shown that this is the mechanism that governs and regulates much of our lives, not government, and does so in a much more efficient, responsive manner than political democracy. In the process, it draws a variety of conclusions about the consequences of liberty, the consequences for equality, and the physical impossibility of democratic socialism.

About the Speaker: Professor Alan Messer served in the CIA for 32 years, first as an analyst on Soviet defense industries and economics for 17 years, in the Directorate for Science and Technology for two years, and then as an operations officer in the Clandestine Service for 13 years, specializing in the KGB and GRU. Prof. Messer has a Master's degree in international affairs from the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies and a Master's degree in economics from UCLA. Prof. Messer teaches A Counterintelligence Challenge: The Enigmas and Benefits of Defectors at IWP.

About the Lecture: In 1985 and 1986, the CIA experienced the unparalleled loss of its stable of Soviet assets, which all but wiped out human source reporting on the Soviet Union. In this lecture, Ms. Grimes will discuss her and her co-spy catcher's personal involvement in the CIA's effort to identify the reason for those losses and to protect future Soviet assets from a similar fate of execution. In 1991, the quest led them to search for a Soviet spy in the CIA. They came to identify that individual as CIA Case Officer, Aldrich Ames, a long-time friend and co-worker. In February of 1994, Ames was arrested by the FBI and sentenced to life in prison.

About the Speaker: Sandy Grimes is a twenty-six year veteran of the CIA's Clandestine Service. She spent most of her career working against the former Soviet Union supporting many of the CIA's most valuable cases, including penetrations of the KGB and GRU. She is co-author of the book "Circle of Treason," which details the search for a Soviet traitor in CIA. It is also the basis for an ABC News mini-series "The Asset", which aired in 2014. The daughter of parents who worked on the Manhattan Project, Sandy spent her formative years in Denver, Colorado, where she substituted a course in Russian for the dreaded junior year of physics that set the direction of her personal and professional life. She holds a BA in Russian from the University of Washington, Seattle. She is a mother of two daughters and grandmother of four. She lives in Great Falls, Virginia with her husband of 49 years.

Maria Juczewska, IWP, Kosciuszko Chair of Polish Studies.

This year, we are celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Poland's regaining independence. One of the factors that greatly contributed to the rebirth of Poland was the support of General Haller's Army, created on the American soil. The lecture discusses the Army's diplomatic and military contribution to Polish independence.

Matthew J. O’Brien, Federation for American Immigration Reform, Director of Research.

The nations of Europe are rapidly becoming the victims of their unnecessarily generous immigration policies, their overly broad concepts of religious freedom and their unwillingness to defend Judeo-Christian culture from Islamic encroachment. Will Poland and its neighbors be the next casualties of this disturbing trend?”

About the Lecture: On March 15, 2018, the DHS and FBI announced that the Russian government cyber actors had conducted, since at least March 2016, a multi-stage cyber intrusion campaign in various U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, including the energy, nuclear, commercial, water, aviation, and manufacturing sectors. In her upcoming lecture, “Russian Cyber Doctrine and the Targeting of U.S. Critical Infrastructure,” Russia expert and private intelligence consultant Rebekah Koffler will examine this highly significant event within the context the Russian cyber doctrine. Ms. Koffler also will provide an open source intelligence assessment of Russia’s intentions for this specific cyber campaign and how cyber fits in Moscow’s overall doctrine/strategy targeting the United States.

About the Speaker: Rebekah Koffler is an intelligence expert on Russian Doctrine/Strategy and Cyber Operations and a former U.S. intelligence officer who specializes in open source intelligence analysis of the Russian threat to U.S. and Western security. As a recognized IC expert on Russia, Ms. Koffler delivered classified briefings to top U.S. military commanders and policymakers, the White House National Security Council, the Directors of the CIA and DIA, NATO, senior Congressional Staff, and the Vice Chairman-select of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As a Russian-English bilingual analyst with a Russian native background, Rebekah has a deep understanding of the Russian strategic culture, mindset and behavior. Ms. Koffler holds an M.A. in International Transactions from the George Mason University in Virginia, a B.A./M.A. in Foreign Languages from Moscow State Pedagogical University, and a Graduate Certificate in Intelligence from the Institute of World Politics in Washington D.C. She is the founder of the private intelligence consultancy Doctrine & Strategy Consulting LLC.

About the Book: The history of espionage is far older than any of today’s intelligence agencies, yet the long history of intelligence operations has been largely forgotten. The codebreakers at Bletchley Park, the most successful World War II intelligence agency, were completely unaware that their predecessors in earlier moments of national crisis had broken the codes of Napoleon during the Napoleonic wars and those of Spain before the Spanish Armada. Those who do not understand past mistakes are likely to repeat them. Intelligence is a prime example. At the outbreak of World War I, the grasp of intelligence shown by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was not in the same class as that of George Washington during the Revolutionary War and leading eighteenth-century British statesmen. In this book, the first global history of espionage ever written, distinguished historian Christopher Andrew recovers much of the lost intelligence history of the past three millennia—and shows us its relevance.

About the Author: Christopher Andrew is emeritus professor of modern and contemporary history and former chair of the faculty of history at Cambridge University. He is also chair of the British Intelligence Study Group, founding co-editor of Intelligence and National Security, former visiting professor at Harvard, Toronto, and the Australian National universities, and a regular presenter of BBC Radio and TV documentaries. His most recent book, Defend the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, was an international hit. His fifteen previous books include The Sword and the Shield, The World Was Going Our Way, and other path-breaking studies on the use and abuse of secret intelligence in modern history.

About the Lecture: The collapse of Venezuela is no longer an internal or domestic problem; its migrant exodus has made it a hemispheric crisis. Most impacted is key US ally Colombia, where they are swelling the ranks of the ELN terrorist group. Maduro will reach the end of his presidential term in January 2019, but, with deepening repression and escalating brutality, shows no signs of leaving office democratically or indeed peaceably. The traditional opposition is fractured, conflicted and increasingly racked by corruption scandals. Yet the region's leaders are increasingly agreed that the only way to end the crisis is for the Maduro regime to end. With this complex Rubik's cube, what could the future hold for Venezuela?

About the Speaker: Dr. Vanessa Neumann is an authority on Latin American politics and security, as well as on crime-terror pipelines, particularly on stemming illicit trade as a counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency strategy that supports businesses. She is the author of a book on crime-terror pipelines, Blood Profits: How American Consumers Unwittingly Fund Terrorists (St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan). The Brazilian Portuguese edition Lucros de Sangue will be published in late November 2018; the Spanish language edition is currently being negotiated. Dr. Neumann is also the co-author of The Many Criminal Heads of the Golden Hydra (Asymmetrica and Counter-Extremism Project, May 2018), an extensive analysis of illicit trade and corruption in the Tri-Border Area, that has been covered by more than 75 media outlets and forced Paraguayan troop movements.

Dr. Neumann has served four years on the OECD’s Task Force on Countering Illicit Trade (since its inception) and on their Advisory Group. She holds a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Columbia University, and fellowships at Yale University, Columbia University and the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Her company Asymmetrica is a member of the Global Counter Terrorism Research Network (GCTRN) for the United Nations Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED). Notably, Dr. Neumann was the academic reviewer for USSOCOM’s ARIS Series teaching manual on counterinsurgency (COIN) in Colombia. She is a widely sought speaker to media, academia and governments.