Join Kim Aris, son of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, for an important discussion on Myanmar's ongoing crisis. This event is an opportunity to come together, hear firsthand about Kim's mission and explore ways we can take action to support the people of Myanmar together.

Topics to be discussed:

The urgent need for access to his mother and concerns over her health.The worsening humanitarian crisis and ways to help those in need.Advocacy efforts to free all political prisoners and restore democracy.

Winston Churchill famously quipped, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.” For generations, the United States has wrestled with the complexities that come with international alliances. Nonetheless, ever since the early days of the Cold War, America's ability to attract like-minded allies to support and defend its interests has given it a competitive advantage relative to its main adversaries. As we continue the debates of previous generations regarding where and how the United States should be involved in the world, we need to understand the value of alliances, and how the debate itself—both within the United States and with its allies—matters to national security. Three panelists from the US Army War College will share perspectives on how Australia contributes to US security; the complexities of improving NATO effectiveness via increased contributions from its European members; and the importance of the American public engaging in well-informed debate about the country’s role in the world.

Panelists
Colonel Rob Haertsch, an Australian Army Officer with 25 years of service, recently served as Director - Land at Army Headquarters in Canberra, overseeing the integration of operational planning with the joint force and government. Prior to this, he was the Defense Adviser in Suva, Fiji, working with the Head of Mission at the Australian High Commission. His operational deployments include to the Solomon Islands, Iraq, and Afghanistan, along with domestic support to civil authorities in Australia. Colonel Haertsch holds a Bachelor of Civil Engineering from the University of New South Wales and a Masters in Defense and Military Studies from the Australian National University.

Lieutenant Colonel Frank Hartnett is a Public Affairs Officer in the U.S. Air Force. He has served for over 19 years, and his last assignment was as the Public Affairs Advisor to the Secretary of the Air Force. In this capacity, Lt Col Hartnett supported the Secretary’s efforts to modernize the force and improve the lives of Airmen through the coordinated use of media engagement, community outreach, and internal coverage. He holds a Master's Degree from Air University and a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

Lieutenant Colonel Christiana Crawford is a U.S. Marine Corps Reserve Operational Planner and Western Europe Foreign Area Officer. She was commissioned in 2004 from the United States Naval Academy. She has spent considerable time living and working in Europe where she participated in the Robert Bosch Fellowship Program and worked in the German Foreign Ministry. Most recently Lieutenant Colonel Crawford served as the lead planner in the Pacific, overseeing the implementing of Marine Corps force modernization efforts. She is fluent in German and holds a Doctor of Chiropractic as well as master’s degrees in international relations and defense and strategic studies.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

It is a familiar observation that the possibility of war permeates relations among states under anarchy. It is less well appreciated that states deliberately and routinely regulate that possibility by delineating prohibitions on the use of militarized bargaining. Three ambitious examples of such prohibition – the rule of non-aggression embedded in the Covenant of the League of Nations (1920), Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), and Charter of the United Nations (1945) – have attracted enormous attention from political scientists and historians alike. Few scholars appreciate that these three instruments are, however, only the most well-known cases inhabiting a much broader universe. Indeed, across the past two centuries alone, various groups of three or more states concluded over 97 legal instruments containing 120 distinct provisions variously circumscribing the right and ability of different states to engage in militarized bargaining. Despite their ubiquity in modern international relations, states’ use of such prohibitions is documented only incompletely and rather imperfectly understood. Why do states enact them? What explains variation in their design? And what does the practice of such prohibitions tell us about the ability of states, especially the great powers, to cooperatively limit the use of military force in the international system? In this lecture, Anatoly Levshin will articulate a new institutionalist theory that resolves these questions. He will provide guidance on the use of prohibitions on militarized bargaining as policy instruments and, drawing on extensive archival research, develop new narratives of the origins of some of the most familiar prohibitions, including the rule of non-aggression articulated in Article 10 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

Anatoly Levshin is a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University. He is presently affiliated with two fellowships at the School’s Belfer Center: Technology and Geopolitics and the International Security Program. Anatoly is also Director’s Fellow with the Reimagining World Order research community at Princeton University, which he formerly co-curated with its director, G. John Ikenberry. Anatoly’s research explores fundamental international-security issues from the standpoint of world order. His first book project, Bounding War: Rules of Neutralization, Demilitarization, and Non-Aggression and the Institutional Logic of Prohibitions on Militarized Bargaining, investigates the history and theory of the rules of neutralization, demilitarization, and non-aggression as instruments for the bounding of war in the international system. Anatoly is also interested in the geopolitical implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an emerging technology. He is currently investigating the ability of specialized AI systems, trained specifically in the strategic logic of interstate bargaining, to reliably assist policymakers, advisors, diplomats, and statesmen in negotiating complex international challenges. Anatoly’s second book project, tentatively entitled The Geopolitics of Digital Oracles, will explore the risks and benefits of national-security applications of AI more generally and consider alternative models of arms control that states can draw on to manage strategic contests supercharged by competitive deployment of rival AI systems.

Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies

Cosponsor
Brooks Tech Policy Institute
Department of Government

The Bomb is a critically acclaimed documentary film that puts viewers at the center of the story of nuclear weapons. It explores their immense power, their perverse allure, and the profound death wish at their very heart. Combining archival footage, animation, music, and text, The Bomb offers a visceral and unsettling experience, taking audiences inside the complex cultural and technological realm of nuclear weapons.

Free admission. This special screening of The Bomb (one hour) will be followed by a panel discussion. The film and panel event is sponsored by the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

Panel

Rebecca Slayton (moderator), Director, Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict StudiesAnindita Banerjee, Associate Professor of Comparative LiteratureDavid Cortright, Reppy Affiliated Scholar, Professor Emeritus of the Practice, Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre DameAgnieszka Nimark, Reppy Visiting Scholar, Associate Senior Researcher in Global Geopolitics and Security at CIDOB – Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, Spain***

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Watch the trailer.

Roland Marchal, CNRS, SciencesPo

For a longtime observer of armed conflicts in Central and Eastern Africa, it is striking that we are witnessing a higher number of conflicts than in 1991. This presentation will address several recurrent aspects. First, Marchal will address the intricacies of violence and local politics. Second, the organization of armed groups frequently does not correspond to the kind of violence they are exercising on the population. And third, paradoxically, the international community has often been unable and unwilling to frame its understanding of conflict, with the consequence that transitions to peace are becoming more problematic, while international support for conflict grows.

Hosted by Brooks Center on Global Democracy with support from the Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies and the Institute for African Development.

Nuclear weapons and associated technologies have been primarily developed by and for Global North nations, often using the labor and natural resources of indigenous populations around the world, and often doing violence to those populations and their environments. As a result, many scholars analyze the development of nuclear technologies–including uranium mining, the processing and production of fissile materials, nuclear weapons testing, and use–as a form of colonialism. But as a state-centric framework, colonialism does not always capture practices that transcend national boundaries; radioactivity does not respect borders. This panel will elucidate the uses and limitations of the colonial framework for understanding the social and political implications of nuclear technologies. The panel will discuss how nuclear technologies have been developed in ways that are both locally specific and globally-interconnected, and the implications of this history for social and environmental justice.

Virtual panel discussion with-

Vincent Intondi, PACS Domestic Affiliate Scholar

Myrriah Gomez, Associate Professor at University of New Mexico

Mary Mitchell, Assistant Professor at New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers Newark

Magdalena Stawkowski, Assistant Professor at University of South Carolina

Hirokazu Miyazaki, Former Director of the Einaudi Center, Professor at Northwestern University

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Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies