My Journey at the Nuclear Brink is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from a nuclear catastrophe. Decades of experience and special access to top-secret knowledge of strategic nuclear options have given Perry a unique, and chilling, vantage point from which to conclude that nuclear weapons endanger our security rather than securing it. At this presentation to launch the Chinese translation of his book, Perry will talk about the future of nuclear competition in the face of US and Russia’s nuclear capability boost claims, North Korea’s nuclear development and the recent deployment of US and South Korea THAAD system against North Korea’s missile. 

Although the post-1989 world is the world that America and Europe made, it has now become the world that America and Europe have started to fear and sometimes even hate. Looking back across the turbulent decades since 1989, we are astounded by the speed with which yesterday's euphoric victory has turned into today's anxiety and distress. Explaining why and how it happened in the different parts of Europe, Russia, Turkey, Eastern Europe is the principal ambition of this lecture.

[[{"fid":"225445","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto"},"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto"}},"link_text":null,"attributes":{"style":"font-size: 13.008px; height: 320px; width: 320px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto","data-delta":"1"}}]]Ivan Krastev is the Chairman of the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and Permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Board of Trustees of The International Crisis Group and is a Contributing Opinion Writer of The New York Times. His latest books in English are “Democracy Disrupted. The Global Politics on Protest” (UPenn Press, May 2014); “In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders?” (TED Books, 2013). He is a co-author with Stephen Holmes of a forthcoming book on Russian politics.  His book “After Europe” is forthcoming in English (Penn Press, 2017) and in German (Suhrkamp, 2017).

THIS EVENT HAS REACHED FULL CAPACITY. PLEASE CONTACT MAGDALENA magdafb@stanford.edu TO GET ON THE WAITLIST. 

Damian Collins MP is a member of the House of Commons, and Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport. He graduated in modern history from the University of Oxford, and Charmed Life, the Phenomenal World of Philip Sassoon is his first book.

No RSVP required.  For more information, please contact jewishstudies.stanford.edu.

This event is co-sponsored by The Taube Center for Jewish Studies, the Department of History, and The Europe Center.
 

Damian Collins MP is a member of the House of Commons, and Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport. He graduated in modern history from the University of Oxford, and Charmed Life, the phenomenal world of Philip Sassoon is his first book.

No RSVP required.  For more information, please contact jewishstudies.stanford.edu.

*This is an author event; the bookstore will be on-site selling copies of Collins' book.

This event is co-sponsored by the Taube Center for Jewish Studies, the Department of History, and The Europe Center.

Celebrated international artist Ori Gersht will be delivering a lecture entitled "Optical Unconsciousness" with an introduction by Alexander Nemerov (Department Chair & Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities; Stanford University). A public Q & A will follow. For more information, please visit The Contemporary.

Free and open to the public. 

Gersht's visit is generously co-sponsored by Kim Allen and Alex Cohen, in honor of the marriage of Karen Underhill and Richard Meller; The Taube Center for Jewish Studies; The Department of Art and Art History; The Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages; The Europe Center; and The Contemporary.

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The Ambassador's remarks will address:

• U.S. military deployments
• Poland’s regional and global relations with the European Union, NATO and the United States 
•  Poland’s current domestic situation

Paul Jones was confirmed by the United States Senate as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Poland on August 5, 2015, and sworn in by Secretary Kerry on September 11, 2015.

Amb. Jones has a wide-ranging background in Europe. As Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from 2013-15, he was responsible for all aspects of U.S. policy and operations in Europe, particularly Russia and Ukraine. He was also Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and at the U.S. Embassy in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia (1996-99).

Ambassador Jones’ service in Asia and South Asia has complemented his European focus. As U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia, 2010-13, he led significant growth in the U.S.-Malaysian relationship, becoming the first U.S. Ambassador to be conferred the honorary title of Dato’. Ambassador Jones is a career member of the State Department’s Senior Foreign Service. His awards include the Presidential Meritorious Service Award, the Robert C. Frasure Memorial Award for peace building, and several Superior Honor Awards.

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Disorder erupted in Ukraine in 2014, involving the overthrow of a sitting government, the Russian annexation of the Crimean peninsula, and a violent insurrection, supported by Moscow, in the east of the country.

This Adelphi book argues that the crisis has yielded a ruinous outcome, in which all the parties are worse off and international security has deteriorated. This negative-sum scenario resulted from years of zero-sum behaviour on the part of Russia and the West in post-Soviet Eurasia, which the authors rigorously analyse. The rivalry was manageable in the early period after the Cold War, only to become entrenched and bitter a decade later. The upshot has been systematic losses for Russia, the West and the countries caught in between. All the governments involved must recognise that long-standing policies aimed at achieving one-sided advantage have reached a dead end, Charap and Colton argue, and commit to finding mutually acceptable alternatives through patient negotiation.

Samuel Charap is Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in the Institute’s Washington, DC office. Prior to joining the Institute, Samuel served as Senior Advisor to the US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff.

This paper investigates the impact of human barriers on international trade using data on common ancestry. Using data on 172 countries covering the near universe of international trade, our analysis documents that country pairs with a large ancestral distance are less likely to trade with each other (extensive margin) and, if they do trade, they trade fewer goods (intensive margin). The results are robust to including a vast array of micro-geographic and political control variables. We explore the role of several proximate determinants that lead to this negative relationship, including differences in values, preferences, technology, as well as migration patterns. Our findings offer a partial explanation to the distance puzzle, the observation that estimates of geographic distance have remained persistently high despite substantial decreases in transportation costs in recent years.

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Lukas Schmid is an Assistant Professor at the University of Lucerne -- where he teaches empirical methods. His research interests include political economy, labor economics, and international economics. On-going projects explore the interaction between institutions and political and economic behavior, the impact of language and common ancestry on economic outcomes as well as the long-term consequences of education. His articles have been published in American Journal of Political Science, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Journal, and elsewhere.