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Join the Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies Program for a discussion about the roots and causes of misinformation, disinformation, and fake news in times of war. Learn more about the informational contents of foreign and domestic actors when addressing the informational threats. How it must be faced for the future of democracy, and is at stake when protecting media freedoms and civil liberties in Israel.

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Omer Benjakob is an investigative journalist for Haaretz, Israel's sole newspaper of record, focused on the intersection of politics and technology. He covers disinformation, cyber, and surveillance and has participated in several international investigations, including the Project Pegasus — the misuse of spyware made by the NSO Group — and “Team Jorge,” a groundbreaking undercover investigation into the private disinformation market and digital mercenaries offering election interference as a service. His investigation into the sale of spyware to a militia in Sudan was shortlisted for the EU's European Press Prize for investigative journalism (2023).

He is also a researcher and his writing on Wikipedia has been published in Wired UK, the Columbia Journalism Review and MIT Press, as well as academic journals. Born in New York and raised in Tel Aviv, he lives in Jaffa with his wife and teaches in a local college in Israel. He is also an associate research fellow at the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (LPI) in Paris, a research institute affiliated with the Université Paris Cité focused on open science.
 

Omer Benjakob

Omer Benjakob

Cyber and Disinformation Reporter for Haaretz
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Tomer Naor is a father, educator, lawyer, and a well-known social activist in Israel. Tomer holds an LLB in Law from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and an LLM graduate degree in Public Law from Northwestern University and Tel Aviv University. For the past ten years Tomer has been working for The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, one of Israel’s leading grass roots organizations, fighting corruption and promoting the values of democracy, transparency, good governance and civic participation and volunteerism in Israeli society.

Tomer has led multiple legal cases discussed in the Supreme Court that are pertinent to the core issues of preserving democracy in Israel, and has frequently appeared before the Supreme Court to argue constitutional and administrative petitions as well as before Knesset committees on various issues. In 2020, Marker magazine named Tomer as one of their "40 Under 40" influencers, and he continues to feature as a regular guest in the Israeli and international media. In addition to his legal work, Tomer is involved in a variety of social initiatives in Israel and won the Civil Society Award in 2015.
 

Tomer Naor

Tomer Naor

Chief Legal Office at The Movement for Quality Government in Israe
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Alon Tal

Online via Zoom

Tomer Naor
Omer Benjakob
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The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and the The Europe Center (TEC) are pleased to host President Zuzana Čaputová of the Slovak Republic for a fireside chat with Michael McFaul, director of FSI, with welcome remarks by Anna Grzymała-Busse, director of TEC. 

President Čaputová will speak about the impact Russia's war on Ukraine is having on Central European countries.


About President Zuzana Čaputová 


Elected on June 15, 2019, Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová is the first woman to hold the presidency as well as the youngest president in Slovakia's history. President Čaputová's political career began in 1996, after graduating from the Comenius University Faculty of Law in Bratislava. After her studies, Čaputová worked in the local government of Pezinok and then transitioned into the non-profit sector working at the Open Society Foundations. At the Open Society Foundations, she worked closely on the issue of abused and exploited children. In 2017, Čaputová joined the Progressive Slovakian political party and was elected as a Vice-Chairwoman for the party. She also served as the Deputy Chair until 2019, when she resigned to launch her presidential campaign.

In 2016, she was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize for her work in addressing the toxic landfill in Pezinok. In addition, in 2020, Čaputová ranked #83 on the Forbes’ World's 100 Most Powerful Women list.

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Michael McFaul
Anna Grzymała-Busse
Anna Grzymała-Busse
Zuzana Čaputová President of Slovakia
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White nationalism remains an often overlooked terror threat amongst the many national security risks facing the United States and Russian Federation. While typically grounded in domestic theaters, white nationalist groups have increased the frequency and scale of their armed activities by incorporating aspects of transnational cooperation that are tactics often used by larger terrorist networks. This trend has raised questions regarding the ways in which white nationalism represents a new type of international technology-enabled terror threat toward the United States and Russian Federation and how policy makers can best address this challenge. This research paper will explore how white nationalist groups in the United States and Russian Federation have sought cooperation with one another through wider ideological and strategic alignment. This paper will also explore the respective communication techniques of these groups, which have been enabled through the internet and new technologies. This paper will conclude with a reflection on potential avenues of cooperation between the United States and the Russian Federation, drawing on previous examples of collaboration among government officials and non-state actors in combating terrorism.

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Ilya Tolmachev
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Webinar recording: https://youtu.be/sp4EWuLct7E 

 

 

Following the end of World War II, more than 45,000 young Japanese women married American GIs and came to the United States to embark upon new lives among strangers. The mother of Kathryn Tolbert, a former long-time journalist with The Washington Post, was one of them.

 

Tolbert noted, “I knew there was a story in my mother’s journey from wartime Japan to an upstate New York poultry farm. In order to tell it, I teamed up with journalists Lucy Craft and Karen Kasmauski, whose mothers were also Japanese war brides, to make a short documentary film through a mother-daughter lens. Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides was released in August 2015 and premiered on BBC World Television.”

 

Tolbert spent a year traveling the country to record interviews, funded by a Time Out grant from her alma mater, Vassar College. The Japanese War Brides Oral History Archive is the result of her interviews. The Oral History Archive documents an important chapter of U.S. immigration history that is largely unknown and usually left out of the broader Japanese American experience. In these oral histories, Japanese immigrant women reflect on their lives in postwar Japan, their journeys across the Pacific, and their experiences living in the United States.

 

Join Kathryn Tolbert as she describes bringing the legacy of these stories to life through the documentary film, oral history archive project, and upcoming Smithsonian traveling exhibit. Waka Takahashi Brown, SPICE curriculum writer, will also share an overview of the teacher’s guide that she developed to accompany the documentary film, which is available to download for free from the SPICE website.

 

To attend, register here.

 

This webinar is sponsored by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia (NCTA), and the USC U.S.-China Institute.

Featured Speakers:

 

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Kathryn Tolbert is a former editor and reporter on the Metro, National and Foreign desks, a correspondent in Tokyo and director of recruiting and hiring at The Washington Post. She has also worked for The Boston Globe and the Associated Press. In addition, she has written about Japanese women who married American servicemen after World War II and co-directed the film Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides. Tolbert is a graduate of Vassar College with a BA in Political Science and an MA in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

 

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Waka Takahashi Brown is an educator and writer. She manages and teaches Stanford e-Japan for SPICE and has authored curriculum on several international topics. She is the recipient of the Association for Asian Studies’ national Franklin Buchanan Prize, and has also been awarded the 2019 Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher award for her groundbreaking endeavors in teaching about U.S.–Japan relations to high school students in Japan and promoting cultural exchange awareness. In addition, Brown has authored three middle-grade novels: While I Was AwayDream, Annie, Dream; and The Very Unfortunate Wish of Melony Yoshimura. She is a Stanford graduate with a BA in International Relations and an MA in Secondary Education.

Online via Zoom.

Kathryn Tolbert

616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, E005
Stanford, CA 94305-6060

(650) 723-6784
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Waka Brown is a Curriculum Specialist for the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). She has also served as the Coordinator and Instructor of the Reischauer Scholars Program from 2003 to 2005. Prior to joining SPICE in 2000, she was a Japanese language teacher at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, CA, and a Coordinator for International Relations for the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program.

Waka’s academic interests lie in curriculum and instruction. She received a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University as well as teaching credentials and M.Ed. through the Stanford Teacher Education Program. 

In addition to curricular publications for SPICE, Waka has also produced teacher guides for films such as A Whisper to a Roar, a film about democracy activists in Egypt, Malaysia, Ukraine, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, and Can’t Go Native?, a film that chronicles Professor Emeritus Keith Brown’s relationship with the community in Mizusawa, an area in Japan largely bypassed by world media. 

She has presented teacher seminars nationally for the National Council for the Social Studies in Seattle; the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia in both Denver and Los Angeles; the National Council for the Social Studies, Phoenix; Symposium on Asia in the Curriculum, Lexington; Japan Information Center, Embassy of Japan, Washington. D.C., and the Hawaii International Conference on the Humanities. She has also presented teacher seminars internationally for the East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools in Tokyo, Japan, and for the European Council of International Schools in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

In 2004 and 2008, Waka received the Franklin Buchanan Prize, which is awarded annually to honor an outstanding curriculum publication on Asia at any educational level, elementary through university. In 2019, Waka received the U.S.-Japan Foundation and EngageAsia’s national Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award, Humanities category.

Instructor and Manager, Stanford e-Japan
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Waka Takahashi Brown
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Sean Penn walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, Ukraine

This event is in-person only.

Co-directed by Aaron Kaufman and Sean Penn, "Superpower" is a documentary following events in Ukraine before and during Russia's invasion in February 2022. Following the screening, Sean Penn will discuss the film with FSI Director Michael McFaul in a conversation moderated by Natalia Antelava, editor-in-chief of Coda Story and a Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University.

Hosted by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University.

Natalia Antelava

Hauck Auditorium, Traitel Building, 435 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA 94305

Sean Penn

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies, Department of Political Science
Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
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Michael McFaul is Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. Dr. McFaul also is as an International Affairs Analyst for NBC News and a columnist for The Washington Post. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

He has authored several books, most recently the New York Times bestseller From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia. Earlier books include Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (eds. with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. He is currently writing a book called Autocrats versus Democrats: Lessons from the Cold War for Competing with China and Russia Today.

He teaches courses on great power relations, democratization, comparative foreign policy decision-making, and revolutions.

Dr. McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. In International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. His DPhil thesis was Southern African Liberation and Great Power Intervention: Towards a Theory of Revolution in an International Context.

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Chelcey Adami
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In early October, Arab Barometer, a central resource for quantitative research on Arab countries, completed its most recent survey in Palestine, offering unique insight into the views of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. The next day, Oct. 7, Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel.

On Wednesday, Nov. 29, Stanford’s Program on Arab Reform and Democracy presented the online event, “Public Opinion in Palestine Before the Conflict,” to discuss the survey findings in the context of the attacks. Amaney A. Jamal and Michael Robbins, two principal investigators at Arab Barometer, discussed how Palestinians view their government, their living conditions, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and international actors. The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy is housed at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).

Read the full article in the Stanford Report.

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Stanford’s Program on Arab Reform and Democracy – housed at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law – hosted an event last Wednesday to discuss the Arab Barometer’s most recent survey, which concluded just as Hamas conducted its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

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As part of on ongoing effort by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) to provide research-based programming on the current situation in the Middle East, Scott Sagan and Allen Weiner joined moderator Janine Zacharia at an event co-sponsored with the Stanford Law School to discuss the legal framework of war and how the current conflict in Gaza fits into those precepts.

Scott Sagan is senior fellow at FSI and co-director of the institute’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Allen Weiner, an FSI affiliate, is a senior lecturer in law and director of the Stanford Program in International Law at Stanford Law School, and a former legal counselor at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. Janine Zacharia is a lecturer in the Department of Communication.

Their discussion took place  before a Stanford student audience.



Conduct in Conflict


To understand how the principles of just war theory are relevant  today, Dr. Sagan began by outlining what they are and where they came from.

Principles governing honorable and dishonorable conduct in conflict have ancient origins, but the most comprehensive foundations of the law of armed conflict, or international humanitarian law, originate from the four Geneva Conventions concluded in the years following WWII and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, with atomic weapons. Beginning in 1949, these conventions provided an important set of agreements governing the rules of war. In the 1977 Additional Protocols, these agreements were developed and expanded on in greater detail to create the framework recognized internationally today.

However, as Sagan noted, neither Israel nor the United States is party to the Additional Protocols of the 1977 Geneva Convention.  Nevertheless, both countries accept that some of the foundational principles codified on the Protocols constitute customary international law, and are thus legally binding on them.
 

Key Principles of the Laws of War


In their discussion, Sagan and Weiner focused on three principles in particular: the principle of distinction, the principle of proportionality, and the principle of precaution. As defined by Sagan, they state the following:

Principle of Distinction — Only military targets are permissible in conflict; civilians and civilian targets are not permitted. It is left up to warring parties to determine what constitutes each one. 

Principle of Proportionality — Collateral damage will occur in war, even if civilians are not targeted. Therefore, militaries must weigh the advantage of attacking a particular target compared to the harm that it will do to civilians. Attacking a military target of high importance, even if it entails the risk of harming many civilians, might be acceptable, but attacking a target of low-importance with high potential for collateral damage is unacceptable.

Principle of Precaution — Military commanders must take precautions to limit the amount of civilian damage while pursuing targets.

Expanding on that, Weiner also reminded the audience of what the principles of armed conflict are not:

“The laws of war are not the same as human rights law,” he emphasized. “They recognize the existence of war. They recognize that armies are going to engage in killing and destruction. International humanitarian law is designed to minimize the worst suffering that war causes.”
 

The Laws of War in Practice


While these principles provide a general framework, applying them to the specific case of Israel and Hamas is legally complex.

“There is a lot of flexibility and discretion in the application of these laws,” Weiner explained.

The status of Gaza adds another layer of complication. As a sui generis entity, it falls into a gray zone of independent legal classification. Originally part of the Palestinian Mandate, after the Arab-Israeli 1948 war, it was controlled by Egypt until 1967. Israel took control of the territory at the end of the 1967 Six-Day War.  Around the time of 1979 Camp David Accords, Anwar Sadat relinquished any territorial claims Egypt might have to the territory.  Israel withdrew its military forces and citizens from the Gaza Strip in 2005, and since 2007 the territory has been governed by Hamas, which is not the recognized government of Palestine, whose status as a state is likewise contested on the geopolitical stage.

“All of these issues create incredibly complex issues regarding which bodies of law apply to Gaza,” says Weiner.

Beyond the contestation about what legal rules apply to this conflict between Israel and Hamas, and how they should be interpreted, another confounding issue in analyzing the application of laws governing the use of force is the scarcity of reliable, clear facts about what is or is not happening in Gaza. As other Stanford scholars have reported, misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war has been rampant, further fueling animosity and anger both on the ground and online.

Speaking to this, Weiner acknowledged, “I am not able to ascertain with confidence what the facts are around many actions taking place on the ground. And that makes commenting as an outsider about the application of the laws of war in this situation extremely difficult and fraught. We have to be modest and we have to be humble about this.”
 

Questions of Scale


Because many key facts regarding what has and is happening on the ground in Gaza remain unclear, Sagan and Weiner refrained from offering definitive opinions on if or how the rules of war are being violated.

Both scholars agreed that Israel’s goal of eradicating Hamas as the governing entity in Gaza as a response to the attacks on October 7 was a legitimate goal. But each was quick to caution that legitimacy alone is not always the best guiding principle in cases of conflict.

“We need to recognize that there can be acts which are lawful, but awful,” Sagan reminded the audience. “The aims may be legitimate, but if in pursuing those aims you are creating more terrorists than you are killing, the aim you had may have been lawful in terms of its scope, but awful in terms of its consequences.” 

Weiner returned to the principle of jus ad bellum proportionality in thinking about the consequences of scale in responding to an attack such as the one conducted by Hamas on October 7. That principle is different from the jus in bello concept of proportionality, which requires the military advantages of a particular action to be weighed against civilian harms. Under jus ad bellum proportionality, there is also the need to weigh whether the overall scope of a military campaign is proportional to the cause that triggered the response.

But, Weiner cautioned, the jus ad bellum proportionality test “is among the most notoriously fuzzy and ambiguous standards that is used.”  

Looking specifically at Gaza, Weiner continued, “I stipulate that destroying Hamas is a legitimate war aim for Israel under these circumstances. But if you can’t do that without causing excessive damage, I do wonder whether the goal of the state in resorting to war has become greater than the harm it is causing.”
 

Beyond Revenge


While laws and legal precedent may provide a type of formal structure for conduct in conflict, Sagan and Weiner also acknowledged the very impactful role that emotion and human impulses play in how the spirit of those structures are interpreted. 

Speaking to data he and colleagues have collected on the relationship between identity, nationalism, and the ethics of war, Sagan admitted that, “I am concerned that in this conflict and others, the desire for vengeance can easily cloud judgements about what is right and what is wrong.” 

Reflecting on his own experiences, Weiner offered this consideration:

“Having lived through the American response to 9/11, I felt that because there was so much demand for retribution and for vengeance, something about our norms and values and practices changed in the United States. And, clouded by that sense of vengeance, I think after 9/11 the United States made a series of decisions that turned out to be very bad decisions from a national security standpoint and a humanitarian standpoint. And I do worry that the same might be true in Israel, particularly in respect to the scope of the war aims that it is setting.”

As the conflict continues and more information becomes available, Sagan encouraged those in attendance to be judicious and open in their thinking and analysis, even — and particularly — when that may be uncomfortable.

“In cases like the one we are witnessing now, we have to be very strict about what are facts and what are values. We have rights to our own values and our own interpretations. But we don’t have rights to our own facts,” said Sagan.

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Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law director Kathryn Stoner, former national security advisor H. R. McMaster and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer were panelists in a talk titled "How the War in Ukraine Could End" on Oct. 31 at Encina Hall.
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Students, alumni, and professors reflected on the role of American democracy in the global arena at the International Luncheon panel on Democracy Day.
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Amichai Magen, Marshall Burke, Didi Kuo, Larry Diamond, and Michael McFaul onstage for a panel discussion at Stanford's 2023 Reunion and Homecoming
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At Reunion Homecoming, FSI Scholars Offer Five Policy Recommendations for the Biden Administration

FSI scholars offer their thoughts on what can be done to address political polarization in the United States, tensions between Taiwan and China, climate change, the war in Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas war.
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Scott Sagan and Allen Weiner explain the principles that govern the laws of armed conflict and the current war between Israel and Hamas.

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Matthew Wigler, JD ’25 (BA ’19)
Luke Schumacher, JD ’25
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We studied millennia of Ukrainian history. We debated the legality of seizing frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction. And we drank a cherry liqueur that was once a staple in every household of Old Lviv.

As Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine dragged into its twentieth month this September, we took off with a group of Stanford Law peers from campus to Warsaw, Poland, as part of the school’s inaugural S-Term program (S stands for September). Led by Erik Jensen, director of Stanford’s Rule of Law Program, and Michael Strauss, JD ’01, general counsel at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, our S-Term class, titled Ukraine: The Promise and Perils of Legal Reform and Governance, in Wartime and Reconstruction, was the first ever course at the law school to focus on Ukraine. Inspired by S-Term’s vision of providing unique, immersive learning experiences with faculty leaders and renowned practitioners, Professors Jensen and Strauss gave students an opportunity not only to learn about but also to help address the many challenges facing Ukrainians as they seek a secure, prosperous, and democratic future.

Read the full story in Stanford Lawyer.

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Law students discuss their field study of Ukraine via Warsaw, including meetings with experts including former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, Ukraine Parliament member Oleksandra Ustinova, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker, Judge Olena Kibenko of Ukraine’s Supreme Court, and more.

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Rachel Owens
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How and why do armed actors intervene in democratic politics? In a CDDRL seminar series talk, postdoctoral fellow Andres Uribe presented a multifaceted theory explaining the strategies violent groups adopt to influence democratic processes. The talk drew on Uribe’s research on Colombia and Peru.

Uribe shows that armed groups face a choice between co-opting or undermining democracy. More specifically, groups pursuing co-optation try to influence the existing political process through either “corruption” or “capture.” Corruption entails the use of positive inducement to shape the behavior of elected officials or voters, whereas capture entails the use of the threat of force to achieve similar goals.

Those groups seeking to attack democracy do so through two different strategies. The first is “delegitimization,” which could involve attacks on elections and voting sites. The second is “displacement” or the violent removal of the democratic system and its replacement with an entirely different political order.

What determines a given armed group’s choice of strategies (i.e., corruption, capture, delegitimization, or displacement)? The answer, according to Uribe, is determined by the group’s ideological compatibility with democracy and its coercive capacity. Among groups professing ideologies compatible with democracy, they are likely to engage in corruption under low levels of coercive capacity, and capture under higher levels. As for groups whose aims are incompatible with the democratic process, they tend to pursue delegitimization when their coercive capacity is low, and displacement at higher levels of coercive capacity.

Uribe tested his theory based on a paired comparison of Peru’s Sendero Luminioso (SL) and Colombia’s FARC. To characterize each group’s relative ideological compatibility with democratic politics, he drew on a corpus of 7500 documents spanning 21 Latin American countries. He found FARC to be more compatible with democracy than the average armed actor, while SL was less compatible.

To measure coercive capacity, Uribe used data on coca production and cocaine retail pricing in the US as reflective of SL’s and FARC’s military finances. Using casualties in attacks against democracy as an indicator, he found that when FARC possessed a high coercive capacity, there was a slight increase in the number of victims, whereas a similar increase in Sendero’s capacity yielded a 15-fold increase in the number of deaths.

Uribe’s analysis shows that during electoral contests, FARC attempted to reduce the conservative vote share, whereas SL attempted to reduce overall turnout. These outcomes are consistent with Uribe’s theory — FARC’s compatibility with democracy pushes them to work within the system, focusing their attacks on the other party. Sendero, conversely, attempts to prevent all participation in the democratic process.

Uribe’s findings suggest the importance of ideology in understanding how armed actors behave and emphasizes that they do not all share the same motivations. His work also highlights the way some groups play the democratic game using violence, a choice previously seen as mutually exclusive.

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María Ignacia Curiel presents during CDDRL's research seminar
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In a recent CDDRL seminar, postdoctoral fellow Andres Uribe presented a multifaceted theory explaining the strategies violent groups adopt to influence democratic processes.

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This essay originally appeared in The Diplomat.


With major crises in Gaza and Ukraine, the Biden administration might be tempted to overlook the importance of Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s mid-November visit to Washington. That would be a mistake. Indonesia is an important country that is heading into crucial presidential elections in early 2024, and the results of Jokowi’s visit could go a long way to shaping the next Indonesian government’s attitudes toward its relations with the United States.

Although U.S.-Indonesian security cooperation is good and trade has grown, by all accounts Jokowi and his team are heading to Washington feeling less than satisfied on several fronts. First, Indonesians remain upset by President Joe Biden’s decision to skip the recent Indonesia-hosted East Asia Summit, which they took as a serious snub. Biden invited Jokowi in part to make up for that absence, but the White House might have underestimated the extent to which Indonesians remain upset over the initial affront. The protocol-conscious government no doubt will also contrast their modest White House schedule with the lavish welcome recently received by Australian Prime Minster Anthony Albanese.

Indonesian authorities also remain unhappy with what they see as Washington’s failure to deliver on the high-profile Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), under which the U.S. committed to lead G-7-plus efforts to mobilize $20 billion to support Indonesia’s accelerated transition from coal to cleaner energy. Indonesian officials have complained publicly for months that the U.S. has pressed them to take difficult steps while offering little in the way of concessional financing to pay for it. The reality is more complicated, but the perception in Jakarta that Washington “sold them a bill of goods” is real. Some Indonesian officials have contrasted that with substantial Chinese funding on priority infrastructure initiatives, highlighting the regional perception of U.S. weakness vis-à-vis China as a reliable economic partner. (The Indonesians have largely ignored the fact that the U.S. is their second-largest export market and has risen rapidly to be their fourth-largest source of foreign direct investment.)

Jokowi also is looking for Biden to move forward on a proposed limited free trade agreement under which Indonesian critical minerals (namely nickel and processed nickel) would meet the criteria for inclusion in the electric vehicle tax credits provided for in the Inflation Reduction Act. The Biden administration reportedly is interested in such a deal, which by promoting diversification of both suppliers for the U.S. and markets for Indonesia would be in the U.S. national interest. It has, however, hesitated to proceed due to concerns about the congressional reaction, environmental and labor issues, and heavy Chinese investment in Indonesian nickel mining.

 

Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, has long supported the Palestinian cause and has vigorously pursued diplomatic efforts to achieve an immediate ceasefire… Indonesian public opinion has put the two governments at odds over the crisis.
Scot Marciel

Finally, one has to assume that the Gaza crisis will be at the top of Jokowi’s agenda (if not Biden’s) when the two presidents meet. Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, has long supported the Palestinian cause and has vigorously pursued diplomatic efforts to achieve an immediate ceasefire. While working hard to keep the issue from blowing up domestically, there is no question but that Indonesian public opinion (and genuinely held beliefs among top officials) has put the two governments at odds over the crisis.

At this late date, there is little prospect of major initiatives coming out of the Biden-Jokowi meeting that would ease Indonesian concerns or generate significant positive momentum. There is, however, still time to make some small investments that could result in Jokowi and his team leaving Washington feeling more positive about the relationship.

First, on Gaza, the meeting will not resolve the two countries’ differences, but it is important that Biden listen to and engage with Jokowi seriously on the issue and that he highlights his efforts to encourage Israel to show restraint and to promote a humanitarian pause. Jokowi’s post-meeting public comments about this discussion likely will have a significant influence on the Indonesian public and media perceptions of the U.S. role, so it is critical that Biden do all he can to ensure those comments are positive.

Second, it is important that Biden understand that Jokowi and many Indonesians are still upset over the president’s decision to skip the recent Jakarta summit. Biden cannot undo that, but he can and should acknowledge it in his discussion with Jokowi and emphasize that he appreciates how important Indonesia is.

Even such moves will only go so far without some movement on JETP and the critical minerals trade question. On the former, there isn’t time to achieve major progress before the meeting, but President Biden should instruct his team to redouble their efforts to mobilize funding and get the initiative moving. This goes beyond Indonesian concerns and gets to the heart of regional wariness about Washington being able to put meat on the bones of its various economic initiatives.

On critical minerals, Biden should agree to send trade officials to Jakarta to discuss the outlines of a possible agreement, though he will have to be careful not to overcommit absent confidence he will be able to deliver. Indonesia, for its part, needs to stop rotating ambassadors through Washington so quickly and install an envoy who can effectively make the case for a limited trade deal to Congress and others.

Some serious, last-minute work needs to be done to ensure that next week’s meeting between the leaders of the world’s second and third-largest democracies does more than highlight the differences and problems in the relationship.

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President Joko Widodo and his team arrive in Washington at an uncertain time in U.S.-Indonesia relations.

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