The Institute of World Politics

Dr. Frank Marlo is Dean of Academics at The Institute of World Politics. He formerly served as a Professor of Strategic Studies at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. He received his Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in May 2006.

From January 2002 until January 2005, he served as Assistant for Counterproliferation Policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy.

He is the author of Planning Reagan's War: Conservative Strategists and America's Cold War Victory (Potomac Books, 2012) and a contributing editor to the book The Grand Strategy That Won the Cold War: Architecture of Triumph (Lexington Books, 2016).

About the Book: In Invisible Slaves, W. Kurt Hauser discusses slavery around the world, with research and firsthand stories that reframe slavery as a modern-day crisis, not a historical phenomenon or third-world issue. Identifying four types of slavery—chattel slavery, debt bondage, forced labor, and sex slavery—he examines the efforts and failures of governments to address them. He explores the political, economic, geographic, and cultural factors that shape slavery today, illustrating the tragic human toll with individual stories. Country by country, the author illuminates the harsh realities of modern-day slavery. He explores slavery's effects on victims, including violence, isolation, humiliation, and the master-slave relationship, and discusses the methods traffickers use to lure the vulnerable, especially children, into slavery. He assesses nations based on their levels of slavery and efforts to combat the problem, citing the rankings of the United States' Trafficking Victims Protection Act. He concludes with an appeal to governments and ordinary citizens alike to meet this humanitarian crisis with awareness and action.

About the Author: W. Kurt Hauser received BA and MBA degrees from Stanford University. While at Stanford he was a member of the varsity track and rugby teams. He was the head of an investment management firm for most of his career. He is the author of Taxation and Economic Performance and his work has been published in many news media including the Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and Investor's Business Daily among others. He has appeared on KRON, CNN, FOX, CNBC, and PJTV. His research on the relationship between marginal tax rates, federal government revenues as a percent of Gross Domestic Product and economic growth has become known as Hauser's Law. Kurt is the past Chairman of the Board of the Hoover Institution at Stanford and continues to be a board member. He has served on the board of many organizations including AON Risk Services, the Bay Area Red Cross, the Stanford Business School Trust, the Hill School, and the Economic Round Table of San Francisco. For the past decade Kurt has devoted his time to researching the origin, evolution, development, and ubiquity of global slavery.

About the Panel: Iraq and Syria have become major sources of instability in the Middle East, drawing in Islamic extremists from around the world, sending floods of refugees outside of their borders, and seeing genocide at the hands of the Islamic State. The societies of both Iraq and Syria have suffered much from Baathist politics and ideology, which has in many ways set the stage for much of the dysfunction and problems that we are seeing in those countries today – a factor not usually recognized in analyses of events there. Events within Iraq and Syria have also been influenced by external actors jockeying for influence and in pursuit of their own geopolitical goals. In each country, however, there are hopeful signs, despite all of the tragedy. The dynamics in Syria and Iraq are related, yet distinct and different.

This panel will explore the distinct dynamics in each country as well as some common dynamics, the changing role of the United States in the region, the role of other external factors such as Russia, Iran, Turkey, and the Gulf States, and will examine what the economic and political future may look like for ethnic and religious minorities in both countries. In Iraq, where the Christian population has dropped by approximately 90% since 2003 and where Yazidis have suffered genocide along with their Christian neighbors, the future role and status of ethnic and religious minorities is critical to that country's stability and future. The Iraqi panelist, Loay Mikhael, is an Iraqi Christian, now living in the Washington, D.C. area.

In Syria, approximately 30% of Syrian territory, located in the northeast of the country, is governed by the Self-Administration of North and East Syria, which was announced on 6 September 2018, is heavily populated by Syrian Kurds, along with Arab, Christian and other minorities. The legislature for this body is the Syrian Democratic Council. Two of our panelists, Bassam Ishak, a Syrian Christian, and Sinam Sherkany, a Kurdish Muslim, are part of the SDC, and represent the SDC here in Washington, D.C. They will discuss how they are attempting to build a pluralistic society with protections for freedom of religion, speech, and dissent, in the midst of the chaos of the Syrian civil war.

This panel was moderated by IWP Research Professor Paul Coyer, who specializes in the role of religion in foreign affairs and who spent time this past summer with the Yazidi and Christian communities of northern Iraq.

About the Lecture: Mr. Maibach will share 10 lively stories of ethics, strategy and decision-making drawn from his 18 years as Vice President of Global Government Affairs at the Intel Corporation. These stories sometimes involve the first four CEOs of Intel – Dr. Robert Noyce, Dr. Gordon Moore, Dr. Andrew Grove, and Dr. Craig Barrett. These are three of the four founders of the company. Dr. Noyce is the co-inventor of the integrated circuit (computer chip). Dr. Moore is famous for “Moore’s Law.” Dr. Grove was Time Man of the Year in 1997. Dr. Barrett is a former professor at Stanford University. All four are men of exceptional intelligence and high integrity. Inside each story is a “lesson” or a “moral to the story.” At the end of the talk, Mr. Maibach will explore with our audience what some of those lessons were and remain today.

About the Speaker: Michael Maibach is a seasoned professional in global business diplomacy, advisor to several non-profits, and a Fellow of the International Academy of Management. While in college he was elected to the DeKalb County Board (Illinois), the first person elected to public office under 21 years of age in US history. He is currently a Senior Fellow in American Federalism at the American Opportunity Foundation, and a Trustee and Managing Director at the James Wilson Institute. From 2003-12, he served as the President and CEO of the European-American Business Council. He was Vice President, Global Government Affairs at Intel Corporation from 1983-2001. He has served as an advisor to two White House Commissions under Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. and served on two US State Department advisory councils. He has testified before the US Congress on 17 occasions. He is a graduate of The Institute of World Politics, and also holds M.A. degrees from Georgetown University and Northern Illinois University.

About the Lecture: In a gathering trend previously discounted by some analysts, China is building the means to achieve global military power projection. By the 2030s China's People's Liberation Army will have robust and growing capabilities in the areas of maritime and airmobile global power projection, and will be contesting control of the Earth-Moon system. The United States can continue to deter China into the 2030s by achieving early astro-strategic advantages, staying ahead in emerging 6th generation warfare paradigms and doubling down with allies to build robust deterrent networks.

About the Speaker: Rick Fisher is a Senior Fellow on Asian Military Affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center. Fisher is a recognized authority on the PRC military and the Asian military balance and their implications for Asia and the United States. His most recent book is China’s Military Modernization: Building for Regional and Global Reach. Fisher has worked on Asian security matters for over 20 years in a range of critical positions — as Asian Studies Director at the Heritage Foundation, Senior Analyst for Chairman Chris Cox’s Policy Committee in support of the report of the Select Committee for US National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, and a consultant on PLA issues for the Congressionally chartered US China Security & Economic Review Commission. The author of nearly 200 studies on challenges to American security, economic and foreign policy in Asia, Fisher is a frequent commentator on Asian issues for radio and television and has testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the House International Relations Committee, the House Armed Services Committee, and the U.S. China Security Commission, on the modernization of China’s military. Fisher has been Editor of the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief, and a regular contributor to publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Far Eastern Economic Review, Jane’s Intelligence Review, National Interest, Air Forces Monthly, and World Airpower Journal. He has served as an election observer in Cambodia, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, and performed field research in China, Taiwan, Russia, India and Pakistan. Fisher studied at Georgetown University and at Eisenhower College where he received his BA with honors. He is currently President of Pacific Strategies, Inc.

This event is a part of the Global Impact Discussion Series by founder and moderator Patricia Schouker, IWP alumna.

About the Book: This highly accessible book provides new material and a fresh perspective on American National Intelligence practice, focusing on the first fifty years of the twentieth century, when the United States took on the responsibilities of a global superpower during the first years of the Cold War. Late to the art of intelligence, the United States during World War II created a new model of combining intelligence collection and analytic functions into a single organization—the OSS. At the end of the war, President Harry Truman and a small group of advisors developed a new, centralized agency directly subordinate to and responsible to the President, despite entrenched institutional resistance. Instrumental to the creation of the CIA was a group known colloquially as the “Missouri Gang,” which included not only President Truman but equally determined fellow Missourians Clark Clifford, Sidney Souers, and Roscoe Hillenkoetter.

About the Author: Richard E. Schroeder specializes in Cold War and intelligence issues. His Ph.D dissertation at the University of Chicago was on the Hitler Youth as a paramilitary organization. Trained as an infantry platoon leader, he served as a US Army intelligence officer on the Army Staff in Washington, DC, and the US Military Command in Vietnam. He is the author of classified US Army political studies. Following his tour in Vietnam, he was research director on the Louisiana gubernatorial campaign of the late Congressman Gillis W. Long. During his thirty-one year career as an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Clandestine Service, he held senior management positions both in Washington and Europe in the CIA Directorates of Operations and Science and Technology, and spent three years in CIA’s Office of Congressional Affairs responsible for Directorate of Operations liaison with Congressional Intelligence Oversight Committees. He also served as Deputy Director of the CIA Center for the Study of Intelligence. His final assignment before retirement in 2003 was as CIA Chair and Professor of Political Science at National Defense University’s Industrial College of the Armed Forces. He is a founding member of the Board of Advisors of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. He currently consults on national security issues and since 1999 has been an adjunct professor in the graduate Security Studies Program and the undergraduate Science, Technology, and International Affairs Concentration of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He has lectured on intelligence at the Bush School at Texas A&M, the University of Missouri, the Air Force and Naval Academies, Marquette, the Ohio State University, the Patterson School at the University of Kentucky, Westminster College, New Mexico State University, Kent State University, the Allied Museum, Berlin, and the National Security Agency. He and his wife Leah have one son, and live in Washington, DC.

About the Lecture: Amidst the collapse of the “socialist paradise” of Venezuela, expanding bloodshed in Nicaragua, refugees fleeing Central American gang extortion, the election of a leftist populist president in violence-torn Mexico, and Chinese and Russian advances across the region, Dr. Ellis draws the conclusion: The U.S. needs a strategic concept for what it is trying to achieve in Latin America and the Caribbean. Dr. Ellis will argue that advancing “democratic governance” is a useful strategic concept for U.S. national security and other policymakers and without clarity regarding what the U.S. is seeking to achieve, the regional security environment devolves into responses to the invariable crises and advances of foreign actors.

About the Speaker: Dr. Evan Ellis is a research professor of Latin American Studies at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC) Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), with a focus on the region’s relationships with China and other non-Western Hemisphere actors, as well as transnational organized crime and populism in the region. Dr. Ellis has published more than 170 works, including: China in Latin America: The Whats and Wherefores (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009); The Strategic Dimension of Chinese Engagement with Latin America (William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, 2013); and, China on the Ground in Latin America (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014). Dr. Ellis has presented his work in a broad range of business and government forums in 26 countries throughout four continents, and has given testimony on Chinese activities in Latin America to the U.S. Congress. Dr. Ellis has discussed his work regarding China and other external actors in Latin America on a broad range of radio and television programs; he is cited regularly in print media in both the United States and Latin America for his work in this area. Dr. Ellis holds a Ph.D. in political science with a specialization in comparative politics.

About the Book: Nationalism is the issue of our age. From Donald Trump's "America First" politics to Brexit to the rise of the right in Europe, events have forced a crucial debate: Should we fight for international government, or should the world's nations keep their independence and self-determination? In The Virtue of Nationalism, Yoram Hazony contends that a world of sovereign nations is the only option for those who care about personal and collective freedom. He recounts how, beginning in the sixteenth century, English, Dutch, and American Protestants revived the Old Testament's love of national independence and showed how their vision eventually brought freedom to peoples from Poland to India, Israel to Ethiopia. It is this tradition we must restore, he argues, if we want to limit conflict and hate--and allow human difference and innovation to flourish.

About the Author: Yoram Hazony is President of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem. His book The Virtue of Nationalism will be published by Basic Books in September 2018. Hazony’s other books include The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture and The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel’s Soul. His essays appear frequently in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and other media, including, recently: “What Is Conservatism?”; “The Dark Side of the Enlightenment”; and “Jordan Peterson and Conservatism’s Rebirth.”

A geopolitical game of “Gō” now unfolds between the rising Chinese superpower and the status quo powers of the Indo-Pacific led by the United States while Russia holds Eurasia's pivot point. This great “Gō” Game is on the cusp of power transitions comparable to the rise of Japan at the end of the nineteenth century and America’s Pacific preeminence in the mid-twentieth. Across the Indo-Pacific, geopolitical change surges Tsunami-like throughout the region. Politicians, statesmen, soldiers, businessmen, and economists reassess their region’s future vis-à-vis an emerging bipolar U.S.-China superpower rivalry. If America’s prospects appear good, Indo-Pacific states will continue to side with the United States and “balance” against China. If China appears able and determined to overwhelm the Indo-Pacific's America-anchored alliance network, however, Asia will bandwagon with China.

Mr. John Tkacik is a retired U.S. foreign service officer, businessman and policy commentator with over 40 years of continuous experience in East Asian affairs. He spent 24 years in the Department of State including four tours in Chinese-language posts. Dr. Tkacik was Chief of China Analysis in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) before retiring in 1994. He was vice president for government relations for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco International and was a consultant to RJR-Nabisco China from 1996 to 1999. He joined The Heritage Foundation in 2001 where he was senior research fellow in Asian studies. At Heritage, Dr. Tkacik penned commentaries and research on Chinese, Taiwanese, and Mongolian issues, and he edited two books: Rethinking One China and Reshaping the Taiwan Strait. He has degrees from Georgetown and Harvard.

This event is a part of the Student Lecture Series at IWP.

About the Lecture: The United States, like most Western liberal countries, is a secular nation, as the American Founders established a political system that effectively separates Church and State. Nevertheless, religion has played an important role in developing the “American Character.” The speaker will discuss how religion was indispensable for the success of the young American Republic and argue that it is nearly impossible to imagine the United States without it. This lecture is an installment of IWP's Student Speaker Series.

About the Speaker: Tobias Brandt is originally from Germany and graduated from the University of Hamburg with a degree in Middle Eastern and Religious Studies in 2015. For his Bachelor’s Thesis, he analyzed al-Qaeda’s propaganda strategy on the basis of original Arabic documents. He is currently studying Statecraft and International Affairs with a specialization in International Politics at the Institute of World Politics. His key research areas are U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the role of religion in politics, as well as the transatlantic relationship. Mr. Brandt’s lecture is based on a paper he submitted for IWP's course on American Founding Principles.