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Terrorism

The Wrong Way to Stop Terrorism

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On January 27, true to his campaign promise to suspend Muslim immigration, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting all immigration from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, and indefinitely barring Syrian refugees from entering the United States. By doing so, the Trump administration has taken a definite stance on what it holds as the threat posed by immigrants and refugees to U.S. security. As we argued in April 2016, however, democracies like the United States “are not opening their doors to terrorism when they let in Muslim immigrants.”

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Commentary
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Foreign Affairs
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Claire L. Adida
David Laitin
Marie-Anne Valfort
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Office of the Director of National Intelligence: From Pariah and Piñata to Managing Partner

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This is a chapter in the second edition of The National Security Enterprise, a book edited by Roger Z. George and Harvey Rishikof that provides practitioners' insights into the operation, missions, and organizational cultures of the principal national security agencies and other institutions that shape the U.S. national security decision-making process. Unlike some textbooks on American foreign policy, it offers analysis from insiders who have worked at the National Security Council, the State and Defense Departments, the intelligence community, and the other critical government entities. The book explains how organizational missions and cultures create the labyrinth in which a coherent national security policy must be fashioned. Understanding and appreciating these organizations and their cultures is essential for formulating and implementing it. Taking into account the changes introduced by the Obama administration, the second edition includes four new or entirely revised chapters (Congress, Department of Homeland Security, Treasury, and USAID) and updates to the text throughout. It covers changes instituted since the first edition was published in 2011, implications of the government campaign to prosecute leaks, and lessons learned from more than a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. This up-to-date book will appeal to students of U.S. national security and foreign policy as well as career policymakers.

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Georgetown University Press
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Thomas Fingar

National security scholars participate in MOOC on South Asia

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Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar, FSI Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker, and CISAC Senior Fellow Scott Sagan are part of a group of 80 national security experts included in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) focused on the prospects for peace and security in South Asia.

The MOOC, titled Nuclear South Asia: A Guide to India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, is an inaugural course in a series produced by the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. It is free to enroll and can be taken anytime and at any pace from a digital device.

Learn more about the MOOC.

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A Conversation with General Michael Hayden

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About the Event: In conversation with Philip Taubman, General Hayden will discuss intelligence and cybersecurity challenges the United States faces in combatting terrorism, dealing with North Korea, Iran and Russia, and will assess President Trump’s relations with the U.S. intelligence community. 

About the Speaker: General Michael Hayden is a retired four-star general who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency when the course of world events was changing at a rapid rate. As head of the country’s premier intelligence agencies, he was on the frontline of global change, the war on terrorism and the growing cyber challenge. He understands the dangers, risks, and potential rewards of the political, economic, and security situations facing us. General Hayden dissects political situations in hot spots around the world, analyzing the tumultuous global environment and what it all means for Americans and America’s interests. He speaks on the delicate balance between liberty and security in intelligence work, as well the potential benefits and dangers associated with the cyber domain. As the former head of two multi-billion dollar enterprises, he can also address the challenges of managing complex organizations in times of stress and risk, and the need to develop effective internal and external communications.

In addition to leading CIA and NSA, General Hayden was the country’s first principal deputy director of national intelligence and the highest-ranking military intelligence officer in the country.  In all of these jobs, he worked to put a human face on American intelligence, explaining to the American people the role of espionage in protecting both American security and American liberty.  Hayden also served as commander of the Air Intelligence Agency and Director of the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center and served in senior staff positions at the Pentagon, at U.S. European Command, at the National Security Council, and the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria. He was also the deputy chief of staff for the United Nations Command and U.S. Forces in South Korea.

Hayden has been a frequent expert and commentator on major news outlets and in top publications, valued for his expertise on intelligence matters like cyber security, government surveillance, geopolitics, and more. He was featured in the HBO documentary Manhunt, which looked at espionage through the eyes of the insiders who led the secret war against Osama bin Laden, and in Showtime’s The Spymasters, a detailed look at the directors of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Hayden is currently a principal at the Chertoff Group and a distinguished visiting professor at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government. He is on the board of directors of Motorola Solutions and serves on a variety of other boards and consultancies. In 2013, the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) awarded Hayden the 29th annual William Oliver Baker Award.  General Hayden is also the first recipient of the Helms Award presented by the CIA Officers’ Memorial Foundation.  In 2014 he was the inaugural Humanitas visiting professor in intelligence studies at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.  His recent memoir, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, has been a New York Times best-seller and was recently selected as one of the 100 most notable books of 2016.

Philip Taubman is Adjunct Professor at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is also the former Moscow and Washington Bureau Chief, and Deputy Editorial Page Editor, of The New York Times. Philip Taubman served as a reporter and editor at The New York Times for thirty years, specializing in national security coverage. He is author of Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage, and The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb. He is working on a biography of George P. Shultz, the former secretary of state.

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Michael Hayden Former director, CIA, NSA
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Preventing ISIS 3.0: Winning the Peace in Iraq

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ABSTRACT

The Iraqi government, the Peshmerga, the international coalition and a consortium of militia have been winning the war against ISIS in Iraq.  The concern moving forward is whether Iraq’s state institutions have what it takes to prevent ISIS from reemerging in a new, and more deadly form after the current conflict is over. What does recent history, the current military campaign, and the Donald Trump administration’s current trajectory tell us about Iraq’s prospects?

 

SPEAKER BIO

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Zaid Al-Ali is the Senior Adviser on Constitution-Building for the Arab Region at International IDEA and an independent scholar.  In his work, Al-Ali focuses on constitutional developments throughout the Arab region, with a particular focus on Iraq and the wave of reforms that took place in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan and Yemen following the start of popular uprisings in December 2010.  Al-Ali has published extensively on constitutional reform in the Arab region, including on process design issues and the impact of external influence.  He is the author of The Struggle for Iraq’s Future: How Corruption, Incompetence and Sectarianism Have Undermined Democracy (Yale University Press 2014).  Prior to joining International IDEA, Zaid worked as a legal adviser to the United Nations in Iraq, focusing on constitutional, parliamentary and judicial reform.  He also practiced international commercial arbitration law for 12 years, representing clients in investment and oil and gas disputes mainly as an attorney with Shearman & Sterling LLC in Paris and also as a sole practitioner.  He holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, a Maitrise en Droit from the University of Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and an LL.B. from King’s College London.  He was a Law and Public Affairs Fellow and Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University in 2015-2016.  He is the founder of the Arab Association of Constitutional Law and is a member of its executive committee.

Reuben Hills Conference Room
2nd Floor East Wing E207
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, California 94305

Zaid Al-Ali Senior Adviser International IDEA
Seminars
Arab Reform and Democracy Speaker Series

Summary and Briefings from the Stanford-China Workshop on Reducing Risks of Nuclear Terrorism

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The Summary and Briefings from the Stanford-China Workshop on Reducing Risks of Nuclear Terrorism is the result of a collaborative project engaging researchers from the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and several Chinese nuclear organizations focused on the response to nuclear terrorism threats. A goal of the research was to identify prospective joint research initiatives that might reduce the global and regional dangers of such threats. Initiatives were identified in three technical areas: interdiction of smuggled nuclear and radiological materials; nuclear forensics; and countermeasures to radiological (“dirty bomb”) threats. Application of the methodologies of systems and risk analysis to the framing and initial assessment of these areas was emphasized in the project. The workshop summarized in the report brought together the analysis work from this project and related efforts by both Chinese and U.S. analysts.

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Working Papers
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Larry Brandt
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Countering Terrorism

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This event is at maximum capacity. We thank you for your interest and regret that we cannot accept more registrations.

Abstract:  What is it about terrorism that makes it such a challenging policy problem? Why is terrorism so intractable? Many barriers to understanding and action flow from the issue itself, not the particular political predispositions of individual policymakers or flawed organizational processes. Moreover, scholars and policymakers face similar difficulties—the academic study of terrorism and counterterrorism is often confused, contentious, and frustrating. Terrorist attacks are actually rare, yet they encourage immediate and far-reaching responses that are not easily rolled back. Most attempts fail or are foiled, so that examining only successful terrorist attacks gives an incomplete picture. The actors behind terrorism are extremely difficult to identify, since there is no standard “terrorist organization.” Governments and researchers often struggle to establish responsibility for specific attacks. Finally, evaluating the effectiveness of counterterrorism is problematic.

About the Speakers: MARTHA CRENSHAW is a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and professor of political science by courtesy. She taught at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., from 1974 to 2007. In 2005-2006 she was a Guggenheim Fellow. Since 2005 she has been a lead investigator with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland. In 2009 she was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation/Department of Defense Minerva Initiative for a project on "mapping terrorist organizations" (see mappingmilitants.stanford.edu). In 2015 she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. She is the recipient of the International Studies Association International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award for 2016. Ghent University also awarded her the degree of  Doctor honoris causa in 2016. She serves on the editorial boards of the journals International Security, Political Psychology, Security Studies, Orbis, Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict, and Terrorism and Political Violence. 

GARY LAFREE is professor of criminology and criminal justice and director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland. Dr. LaFree has served as president of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) and was named a fellow of the ASC in 2006. He is a member of the US Attorney General’s Science Advisory Board and the National Academy of Science’s Crime, Law and Justice Committee.  Dr. LaFree has written over 100 articles and book chapters and seven books, mostly looking at criminal and political violence. In addition to the just published Countering Terrorism with Martha Crenshaw (Brookings Press), other recent books are Putting Terrorism in Context (with Laura Dugan and Erin Miller) and Applying Criminology Theories to Terrorism:  New Applications and Approaches (with Josh Freilich). He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University in 1979.

A book signing will follow. Copies of Dr. Crenshaw and Dr. LaFree's book will be available for purchase in the CISAC Central Conference Room, on the second floor of Encina Hall. 

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Encina Hall, 2nd floor

Stanford University
Gary LaFree Director National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START)
Panel Discussions

Separating Fact from Fiction in the Debate over Drone Proliferation

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What are the consequences of drone proliferation for international security? Despite extensive discussions in the policy world concerning drone strikes for counterterrorism purposes, myths about the capabilities and implications of current-generation drones often outstrip reality. Understanding the impact of drones requires separating fact from fiction by examining their effects in six different contexts—counterterrorism, interstate conflict, crisis onset and deterrence, coercive diplomacy, domestic control and repression, and use by nonstate actors for the purposes of terrorism. Although current-generation drones introduce some unique capabilities into conflicts, they are unlikely to produce the dire consequences that some analysts fear.

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Journal Articles
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International Security
Authors
Matthew Fuhrmann
Michael C. Horowitz
Sarah E. Kreps
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Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to state authority in an era of softened sovereignty (edited volume)

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"Ungoverned spaces" are often cited as key threats to national and international security and are increasingly targeted by the international community for external interventions—both armed and otherwise. This book examines exactly when and how these spaces contribute to global insecurity, and it incorporates the many spaces where state authority is contested—from tribal, sectarian, or clan-based governance in such places as Pakistani Waziristan, to areas ruled by persistent insurgencies, such as Colombia, to nonphysical spaces, such as the internet and global finance. Within this multiplicity of contexts, the book addresses a range of security concerns, including weapons of mass destruction, migrants, dirty money, cyberdata, terrorists, drug lords, warlords, insurgents, radical Islamist groups, and human privacy and security.

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Books
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Stanford University Press
Authors
Harold Trinkunas
Anne Clunan
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