Eighty years ago, almost to the day, the end of the Second World War still looked a long way off to the men caught in the meat grinder of Iwo Jima. But the inexorable movement toward the total defeat of the Axis states—graphically depicted in the mushroom cloud that would soon loom over Hiroshima—was already palpable to Americans poring over the images of the Allies’ bloody advance across the European plains and the vast Pacific Ocean.

Yet the symbolic weight of the nuclear holocaust had unintended consequences, appearing to solve one geopolitical problem—the sharpening conflict with the Soviet Union—while exacerbating another: the crisis of colonial rule spreading across the “revolutionary crescent” in the lands of the former Co-Prosperity Sphere. Strategists in Washington later worried that the war had, paradoxically, ended too soon, leaving Americans ill-prepared to take on the burdens of world leadership, the end toward which the entire war effort had been directed since 1940.

Ruth Lawlor, Cornell University, discusses the crisis of hegemony, which unfolded precisely when U.S. economic, political, and military power was at its height. From the shatter zones of Eastern Europe and the anticolonial rebellions sweeping Southeast Asia to the global strikes erupting in Latin America and West Africa and the civil wars raging in China, Greece, and elsewhere, the emergence of a new, U.S.-led global order was a protracted and violent process. As that order now unravels before our eyes, the time seems right to return to the moment of its creation and, in so doing, to look beyond the watershed of 1945.

About the Speaker
Ruth Lawlor is a historian of U.S. foreign relations focusing on diplomatic, military, and global history. She was previously a visiting fellow at Yale and Boston Universities and was a Junior Research Fellow at Queens’ College, University of Cambridge, where she also received her PhD.

Her book on sexual violence and the U.S. military justice system in World War II is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. With Andrew Buchanan (University of Vermont), she has also led an international effort to globalize the history of the Second World War, a project that has most recently included a radical reinterpretation of the Good Neighbor Policy and a dramatic revision of the history of the Mediterranean theatre as the proverbial “Lilliputian bathtub.” This work has culminated in the publication of a new edited volume, titled The Greater Second World War, which will be published with Cornell University Press next Spring. Today’s talk is drawn from the research for that book.

While her work on the Global Second World War is ongoing, Ruth is writing her second monograph on the geopolitics of the polar regions and especially the history of the U.S. military in Alaska. At Cornell, she teaches classes on the history of war in American and global history, U.S. imperialism, and (soon!) geopolitics and grand strategy.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies​​​​​​​

Drawing on more than a decade of archival research in the US and UK, including in many never-before-used records, the book follows computerized systems' technological and legal history for aiming the big guns of battleships in the first half of the 20th century. The pioneering system was invented by two British civilians named Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood in the decade before 1914. At its heart was indisputably the most sophisticated analog computer of the day, decades ahead of its time, and one that contemporaries regarded as a form of artificial intelligence ("a machine that uses intelligence"). Rather than pay for their invention, however, the British Navy and then the US Navy pirated it. Then, when the inventors sued for patent infringement, the British and American governments invoked legal privileges to withhold evidence from plaintiffs on the grounds of national security secrecy.

In the United States, their lawsuits became entangled with high-level Anglo-American diplomacy during World War II and with the Manhattan Project. The arguments developed by the government in their case, which built on precedents stretching back to 19th-century Britain, helped to lay the groundwork for the nuclear-secrecy regime.

Analog Superpowers thus speaks to several major issues: the relationship between intellectual property and national security in the two most powerful liberal societies of the modern era, the impact of patent laws on defense innovation, the history of nuclear secrecy, and the transition from the Pax Britannica to the Pax Americana. With tensions between the US and China over computing technology and AI all over the news today, the book also offers a historical perspective on matters of intense contemporary relevance.

About the Speaker
Katherine C. Epstein is an associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden. She is the author of two books: Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain (Harvard University Press, 2014); and Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National Security State (Chicago, 2024). Her research, supported by an ACLS Burkhardt fellowship and membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, examines the intersection of government secrecy, defense contracting, and intellectual property in the United States and Great Britain in the first half of the 20th century. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, American Purpose, and Liberties, among other publications.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Cosponsor
Brooks Tech Policy Institute

Do acts of military insubordination affect states’ ability to prevent foreign aggression? Muhib Rahman, Cornell University, argues that military mutiny makes a state more vulnerable to international coercion. Mutinies help foreign adversaries differentiate weak targets from strong ones by “affecting” and “revealing” states’ war-fighting costs and resolve. They disrupt the military command structure and thus increase the costs of organizing well-coordinated defense against foreign threats.

Mutinies also act as an informative signal and reveal two sets of critical information. First, they make it public that the disruptions weakened command and control. Second, they expose deeper, systematic issues within the state apparatus that set the stage for the mutiny. As a strategic actor, the military is more likely to attempt a mutiny when it expects the government to be weaker and more amenable to making concessions. This strategic timing is informative for foreign adversaries, as it signals that the government’s resolve is low and allows them to distinguish weak targets from strong ones. The more severe the mutiny, the larger the effects. They have a greater effect on command structures and can draw significantly more international attention.

The author's quantitative analyses show that military mutinies (a) increase the likelihood that the state is targeted in a militarized interstate dispute, (b) decrease the likelihood of its resistance once the MID is initiated, and (c) more severe mutinies have stronger effects on state vulnerability to external coercion. The paper advances our understanding of how civil-military relations affect states’ external threat environment. It also underscores the dynamic role of private information in international conflict processes.

About the Speaker
Dr. Muhib Rahman is a Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell University, affiliated with the Department of Government and the Gender and Security Sector Lab. His research intersects international security, civil-military relations, and democratic governance. He examines how interstate crisis bargaining and defense cooperation affect government-military conflicts in domestic politics, focusing on elite defection and anti-government armed uprisings. He is also interested in understanding how civil-military relations influence states’ external threat environment and interstate conflict processes, especially in the Global South.

The Hayek Fund has supported Dr. Rahman’s work at the Institute for Humane Studies, the Marcus Foundation, the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies, and the Clements Center for National Security. His research has been published in journals such as Foreign Policy Analysis and International Interactions, and he is revising manuscripts for the Journal of Conflict Resolution and Security Studies. He holds an M.A. in Political Science from McGill University and a Ph.D. in Government from the University of Texas at Austin.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

From Local Voices to Global Impact: The Power of Civic Engagement in Peacebuilding

This lecture will examine the role of youth, women, and community-based movements in advancing peace and reconciliation, focusing on deliberative processes, alternative conflict resolution tools, and civic-led initiatives that have shaped global approaches to peacebuilding. Evidence demonstrates that peace agreements are 64 percent less likely to fail when civil society representatives participate. Participatory democracy in the form of civic forums, national dialogues, and community-based structures are at the center of several peace processes, including Northern Ireland, Colombia, and Guatemala.

The active participation of civic society in peacebuilding can lead to stronger decision-making as well as have a positive impact on the social fabric, fostering greater cooperation. What lessons can we learn? And how can greater inclusion levels from women, youth, and community-based movements advance the pillars of a positive peace?

About the Speaker
Emma DeSouza is a journalist, award-winning campaigner, peacebuilder, and civic innovation specialist. She is the Founder and Co-Facilitator of Northern Ireland’s Civic Initiative, Director of the Northern Ireland Emerging Leaders program with the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, and a consultant on peace processes and civic innovation. In 2020, DeSouza successfully delivered substantial changes to UK immigration law after a five-year court case to bring legislation in line with UK commitments to the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.

She established the first All-island Women’s Forum to work collectively in addressing women, peace, and security issues, acting as Chair and Facilitator of the Forum from 2021-23 before founding the Civic Initiative in 2023, a new participatory democracy structure that brings together a wide range of civic society organizations to create a space for deliberative dialogues on advancing and supporting peace, reconciliation, and wellbeing. Emma is a freelance journalist writing for the Guardian, Irish Times, Business Post, Byline Times, Irish News, Euronews, and several other publications, to mark the 25th anniversary of Northern Ireland's peace process, she hosted a limited podcast series on the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement titled 'Lost in Implementation'.

Host:
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies