2012-13 Mershon Center Speakers and Conferences

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Putin's Russia: Partner or Adversary
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-04-11) Beyrle, John
John Beyrle served as an American diplomat for more than three decades, in foreign postings and domestic assignments focused on Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Russia. He was twice appointed ambassador: to Bulgaria (2005-08), and to Russia (2008-12). During the latter assignment he led the implementation of policies leading to improved U.S.-Russian relations, highlighted by the signing of the START nuclear arms reduction treaty, Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization, and liberalized visa formalities.
China Town Hall: Local Connections, National Reflections
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2012-10-29) Cassel, Pär
CHINA Town Hall is a national day of programming on China involving 50 cities throughout the United States. Preceding the webcast will be a presentation by Pär Cassel, associate professor of history at the University of Michigan.
The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, the Corps Ethos, and the Korean War
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2012-11-29) Hammes, T. X.
T.X. Hammes is a senior research fellow with the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University and a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps. He has lectured widely and published on insurgency, irregular warfare, and future conflict.
Winning Without War: Human Security Strategies for the 21st Century
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-03-01) Cortright, David
The principles of nonviolence and human security offer realistic options for addressing contemporary security challenges and are superior to "old war" strategies for enhancing peace and promoting international cooperation. These principles are illustrated in an assessment of policy challenges and solutions in Iran, Afghanistan and the broader Middle East.
Perpetrators of Atrocity: A Work in Progress
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-02-28) Stern, Jessica
"Perpetrators of Atrocity" is a project involving detailed interviews with individuals who have been indicted or convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The goal of the study is to learn about the motivations and personal histories of those individuals who are currently standing trial, awaiting appeal, or serving sentences post-conviction. The project is unique in that nobody has ever sought to interview individuals indicted by the ICTY or any other war crimes tribunal on such a large scale, and in a manner that concerns not their alleged crimes, but rather elements of their personal and family histories. The ultimate goal is the publication of a book about the interviews. The project diverges from the majority of the current literature on the former Yugoslavia, most of centers on the political situation, both domestic and international, that led to the 1990s war and its aftermath. If the conflict is explored at a more individual level (itself a rare prospect), such exploration generally involves only victims, examining the crimes committed and their effects on those who suffered them. "Perpetrators of Atrocity" centers instead on the alleged perpetrators of war crimes, focusing not on their crimes, but on their personal lives, with the aim of identifying personal-level risk factors that may have made them susceptible to recruitment and participation in the conflict. Jessica Stern, the study's principal investigator, is particularly interested in studying instances of "inter-generational transmission of trauma," and analyzing the long-term impacts of violence upon a person, their children, grandchildren, etc.
Behavioral Traits and Preferences for International Legal Cooperation
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-02-27) Hafner-Burton, Emilie
Emilie Hafner-Burton is associate professor and director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her research examines ways to improve compliance with international law, protections for human rights, and a wide variety of other topics related to law, economics and regulation. She has published widely on these and other subjects.
The Power of Nightmares: Pathological Fear in U.S. Foreign Policy
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-02-21) Fettweis, Christopher
Five decades ago, Karl Deutsch described what he called "Parkinson's Law for national security": A state's insecurity expands directly with its power. This certainly seems to apply to the United States, which is simultaneously the strongest country in the history of the world and the most insecure of today's great powers. The threats it has recently identified in the international system, from Iraq to Chavez to terrorism, are minor compared to what most states have had to confront throughout history. As states grow in power they usually also become more materially secure; why, then, do they often seem to worry more, often about trivial matters? This talk will explore the political psychology of unipolarity, and discuss the importance of beliefs in explaining foreign policy behavior. Incorrect, baseless, pathological beliefs -- such as the common perception that the world is a dangerous place -- drive policy-making in counterproductive and often tragic directions, like onward toward Baghdad. Presumably better policy would result from more rational cost-benefit analyses.
Entangled Bodies of Learning: Gender, Islam, and Secularism in the Modern Turkish Republic
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-02-18) Hassan, Mona
Two striking educational trends with their roots in the early Turkish republic have fostered the unexpected emergence of Turkish state-sponsored female preachers. The social engineering of religious education and the coeducational principle of gender equality have facilitated an unprecedented feminization of religious higher education in Turkey and a related increase in professional opportunities for these female graduates. Employed by Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs, female preachers seek in turn to educate the public through regular sermons, lectures, and consultations in their assigned districts across the country. Located at the fraught intersection of religion, politics, gender, education, and secularism, Turkey's state-sponsored female preachers aptly illustrate the elaborate complexities of secular modernity.
Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-02-15) Preston, Andrew
From the first colonists to the presidents of the 21st century, religion has always shaped America's relationships with other nations. During the presidency of George W. Bush, many Americans and others around the world viewed the entrance of religion into foreign policy discourse, especially with regard to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a new development. Despite the official division between church and state, the presence of religion in American foreign policy has been a constant. Yet aside from leaders known to be personally religious, such as Bush, Jimmy Carter and Woodrow Wilson, few realize how central faith has always been to American governance and diplomacy–and indeed to the idea of America itself. Based on his recent book, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith, Preston's lecture will trace in broad outline the historical relationship between religion and American foreign relations, and use two case studies by way of example.
Domestic Cultural Diplomacy and Soviet State-Sponsored Popular Culture in the Cold War
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-02-11) Tsipursky, Gleb
Gleb Tsipursky is assistant professor of history at The Ohio State University. His research is in the field of modern Russian and Eurasian history, with a particular interest in socialist modernity, youth, consumption, popular culture, emotions, the Cold War, crime, violence, and social controls.
Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-02-07) Schmitt, Eric; Shanker, Thomas
Eric Schmitt is a terrorism correspondent for The New York Times. He is co-author of Counterstrike: the Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda (Times Books/Henry Holt, 2011). Schmitt has twice been a member of The Times reporting teams that were awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Thomas Shanker is a Pentagon correspondent for The New York Times. He is co-author, with Eric Schmitt, of Counterstrike: the Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda (Times Books/Henry Holt, 2011), and routinely spends time embedded with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Everyday Modernity, Urban Space and Citizenship: Public Beaches in Early Republican Istanbul
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-02-04) Bozdogan, Sibel
After more than a decade of relative insignificance in the shadow of the new capital Ankara, the first efforts to renew Istanbul's crumbling urban infrastructure and to transform the city from an oriental, imperial capital to a modern republican city took off in the 1930s, primarily through the work of the French urban planner Henri Prost who worked for Istanbul Municipality between 1936 and 1951. In this period, urban planning became an integral dimension of the republican project of re-making the city into a theater of modern life, and its people, into modern citizens. As the most visible forms of displaying healthy bodies (especially women's bodies) in public space, promenading, swimming and dancing came to be seen as quintessentially "modern" activities. Consequently parks, beaches and gazinos (music halls) became the paradigmatic spaces of modernity representing the "opening up" of a traditional Muslim society along secular western models of mixed-gender recreation while evoking the prevailing cult of body, youth and health that had captured Europe's imagination in the interwar period. Within this broader historical context, this lecture focuses on the emergence of beaches along Istanbul's Bosporus and Marmara shores, presenting them as symbolically charged urban sites where republican notions of modernity, secularization and citizenship acquired spatial expression. Rather than reading them as unequivocal expressions of a top-down state ideology however, they will be discussed as ambivalent sites where the official republican project of modernity and "social engineering" from above came in contact with the everyday lives of ordinary Istanbulites from below.
National Security Checks and Balances
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-01-28) Goldsmith, Jack
Jack Goldsmith is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor at Harvard Law School, where he teaches and writes about national security law, presidential power, cyber-security, international law, internet law, foreign relations law, and conflict of laws.
The Family Channel: Migrant Remittances and Government Finance
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-01-25) Singer, David
This paper argues that migrant remittances can ease government access to capital, generate tax revenue through household consumption, and ultimately allow governments to expand their size. The paper offers three empirical tests. First, using data for 76 developing countries from 1980 to 2007, I find that remittance inflows are associated with greater total government expenditures, whereas other forms of economic integration — especially trade—reflect the conventional view of the constraining influence of global markets. I then explore the possible causal mechanisms behind these results. In the second analysis, I find that remittances are associated with greater tax revenue due to the link between remittances, household consumption, and consumption taxes. These results are robust to using an instrumental variable approach based on exogenous variation in the wealth of migrant host countries. The third test explores the determinants of sovereign borrowing costs in emerging markets and finds that remittances are associated with lower sovereign spreads. The results suggest that private household financial flows can provide financial resources and ease access to credit to governments in developing countries.
Choosing Terror: Rebels' Use of Terrorism in Civil Wars
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-01-10) Fortna, Page
Page Fortna is professor of political science at Columbia University and a member of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. Her research focuses on the durability of peace in the aftermath of both civil and interstate wars, war termination, and terrorism.
Beneath Compliance: The Limits of Transnational Private Regulation
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-03-26) Bartley, Timothy
Global industries are increasingly littered with standards — claiming to promote fair labor conditions, sustainability, community development, and environmental justice around the world. In the past two decades, many NGOs and companies have sought to "push" such standards through global supply chains and use third-party certification to verify compliance. Many scholars have argued that these activities amount to a new way of regulating globalization — one that does not rely on the mobilization or coordination of unwilling or incapacitated states and which, if appropriately structured, can impose meaningful discipline in otherwise unruly industries. But how are these systems of "transnational private regulation" actually put into practice in particular places? To what extent can they actually bypass the state and provide meaningful, alternative sets of rules and enforcement practices? To address these questions, this project compares two fields of transnational private regulation—standards for fair labor and sustainable forestry — and their implementation in two countries — Indonesia and China. In this presentation, I will use the case of sustainable forestry certification in Indonesia to consider why, although a program like the Forest Stewardship Council has far more integrity than initiatives focused on fair labor standards, its influence in the crucial Indonesian setting has been quite circumscribed.
America Abroad: The United States' Global Role in the 21st Century
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-03-22) Wohlforth, William
William C. Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. He has research interests in international relations theory, international security, Russian foreign policy, and the Cold War.
Why the Korean War was the Most Important and Enduring Cold War Conflict: Contemporary Lessons
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-03-08) Suri, Jeremi
This talk will examine the legacy of the Korean War on the post-1945 international system. The changes the war elicited continue to characterize contemporary international relations. First, the Korean War militarized foreign policy-making, replacing the diplomatic efforts of the late 1940s with a new emphasis on limited war intervention-capabilities as a key measure of international power. Second, the conflict hardened animosities on the Korean peninsula and across East Asia. The region remains frozen in these hostilities. Third, and perhaps most important, the Korean War created a vision of "naked aggression" and "liberation" warfare that would dominate American thinking about international conflict thereafter. This lecture will explore these themes, with a focus on new historical scholarship.
A House Divided: Threat Perception, Regime Factionalism and Repression in Africa
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-03-04) Salehyan, Idean; Hendrix, Cullen
Why do governments in Africa repress certain contentious challenges but not others? This study adopts a blended approach to studying repression by taking seriously both the characteristics of contentious events as well as nature of the regime in power. We argue that the more threatening a movement is — as measured by the use of violence, opposition demands, and targets — the more likely the state is to use repressive force. However, we relax the assumption that the state is a unitary actor, and allow for the preferences of state leaders and of the security forces to diverge when it comes to carrying out repressive policies. Countries with a history of factionalism in their security forces face an additional challenge: orders to crack down on protesters, rioters, strikers, etc., may not be followed or could even cause police and military forces to defect. We argue this potential is greatest when the challenge is has ethnoreligious aims. We test these propositions using the Social Conflict in Africa Database, and find significant support for our core theoretical conjecture: regimes with a history of past military factionalism are generally less likely to use repression. Such regimes are especially unwilling to repress ethnoreligiously based, ascriptive movements. These results are robust to several estimators that address the hierarchical nature of the event data. These findings demonstrate the benefits of a blended, event-based approach to studying state repression.
Turkey Since 1980
(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2013-04-04) Pamuk, Şevket; Arat, Yeşim
Şevket Pamuk is professor of economics and economic history at Boğaziçi (Bosphorus) University in Istanbul, and professor and chair in contemporary Turkish studies at London School of Economics and Political Science. He has published many books and articles on the economic history of modern Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, Middle East and Europe. He is a past president of European Historical Economics Society and the current president of Asian Historical Economics Society. He is also co-editor of European Review of Economic History. Yeşim Arat is professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University (Bosphorus) in Istanbul. She has worked on questions of women's political participation and democratization in Turkey. Her scholarly work includes her books, Patriarchal Paradox: Women Politicians in Turkey; Rethinking Islam and Liberal Democracy: Islamist Women in Turkish Politics; Violence Against Women in Turkey, with Ayşe Gül Altınay; as well as numerous articles in edited volumes and professional journals. She was the provost of her university from 2008 to 2012 and is a member of the Science Academy, Turkey.

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