Event organiserSchool of International Relations

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The Institute for the Study of War and Strategy (ISWS) seminar series presents Dr Sara Plana postdoctoral fellow at Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania.

How do states control non-state armed groups they sponsor in foreign civil wars (proxies)? The speaker argues that the state sponsor’s goal against the shared enemy with the proxy—specifically, whether it involves defeating the enemy or stopping short of defeat—affects the tools of control states use and how effective they are at achieving proxy compliance. The seminar will test this theory and reveal the various dilemmas facing state sponsors by drawing on nested case studies of three efforts by the US to support non-state armed groups in the proxy war in Syria from 2013 to 2020.

Sara Plana received her PhD from MIT in September 2021 and is a postdoctoral fellow at Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania. Her book project examines how states manage non-state armed groups they sponsor in foreign civil wars (proxies) through in-depth, multi-method case studies of state-proxy relationships in the Syrian civil war from 2011 to present. Her broader research agenda investigates the causes, conduct, and consequences of proxy warfare as well as military organizational behavior and civil-military relations. She is a Fellow with the Bridging the Gap Project and a non-resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). She graduated with an A.B. in Government from Harvard University.

How does the global rise of populism impact regional governance? Media pundits and scholars often portray populism as a fundamental challenge to multilateralism and a rules-based international order. Especially in its current right-wing variant, populism appears to engender narrowly nationalist agendas, inward-looking policies, and sometimes open hostility to the very notion of transboundary cooperation. However, the track record of populist leaders around the world reveals no general unilateral backlash. Virtually all populist-led governments of recent years have remained engaged in multilateral organisations to a notable degree, and some of them have even launched new cooperation initiatives. The regional level is a particularly lively scene of such strategies, and regional organizations have become a primary site of contestation between populist and non-populist actors. This roundtable brings together experts on populism and regionalism to discuss the link between populism and foreign policy, how populist leaders perceive regional cooperation, and the broader implications for the so-called liberal international order.

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The CSS and MECACS present a joint presentation;

Dr. Phil. Carsten Wieland is a scholar, German diplomat, senior UN consultant, Middle East, and conflict expert with high-ranking mediation experience.
Book Presentation “Syria and the Neutrality Trap: The Dilemmas of Delivering Humanitarian Aid through Violent Regimes”
The Syrian war has been an example of the abuse and insufficient delivery of humanitarian assistance. According to international practice, humanitarian aid should be channelled through a state government that bears a particular responsibility for its population. Yet in Syria, the bulk of relief went through Damascus while the regime caused the vast majority of civilian deaths. Should the UN have severed its cooperation with the government and neglected its humanitarian duty to help all people in need? Decision-makers face these tough policy dilemmas, and often the “neutrality trap” snaps shut.

Dr Michelle Burgis-Kasthala – University of Edinburgh
Assembling Atrocity Archives for Syria: Assessing the Work of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability and the UN Syria Mechanism.
What types of material are being archived in the midst of Syria’s conflict? Who is gathering this material and for what ends? How might this material inform future criminal trials or broader transitional justice mechanisms? This talk draws on ethnographic research into two key archival actors in Syria’s war to reflect on avenues for redress and responsibility through such activities.
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In recent decades, rapid technological developments and the rise of a diverse commercial space industry have opened-up space to a much wider array of state and non-state actors. Space-based applications from satellites now enable virtually every aspect of modern life, from military operations to just-in-time logistics, banking, navigation and weather forecasting.

The growing volume and diversity of space operations raise concerns that the primary orbital zones are, in the oft-used phrase, increasingly “congested, competitive and contested”. These realities have led to intensifying calls for renewed multilateralism to address pressing challenges and ensure the peaceful and sustainable uses of outer space.

This expert roundtable examines the one key dimension of these multifaceted debates, concerning the prospective regulation of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons. The discussion will begin by introducing a recent open letter from the Outer Space Institute at the University of British Columbia (UBC), which urges the UN General Assembly to take up consideration of a treaty that would prohibit debris-generating ASAT tests. Panellists Professor Michael Byers, Victoria Samson and Sarah Thiele will situate this initiative in its technological, scientific, legal and diplomatic context and will consider additional proposals for regulating ASAT systems along with the political difficulties in developing restraints.

Professor Michael Byers of the Department of Political Science at UBC is Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law and co-director of the Outer Space Institute at UBC where, among other initiatives, he was a lead author of a recent International Open Letter on Kinetic Anti-Satellite (ASAT) Testing which provides the basis for this roundtable.
Victoria Samson is the Washington Office Director for Secure World Foundation, an internationally recognised expert on military space and security issues, and a prolific author of numerous op-eds, analytical pieces, journal articles and updates on missile defence and space security matters. She is the co-editor of the annual Global Counterspace Capabilities report, published by the Secure World Foundation.

Sarah Thiele is a fourth-year undergraduate student at UBC studying for a Bachelor of Science with Combined Honours in Physics and Astronomy. She is a Junior Fellow of the Outer Space Institute and previous intern at the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx). Sarah conducted the calculations on debris-generation from kinetic anti-satellite weapons presented in the OSI open letter.

The Institute of Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies (MECACS) presents Dr Una McGahern – Exercising the right to move in Israel-Palestine: The power of everyday cross-border movements among Palestinian citizens of Israel

A rich body of work exists today which examines cross-border mobilities in Israel-Palestine and the ways in which these mobilities are intertwined not only with the structure of the occupation but with geographies of inclusion and exclusion, enclosure and enclavisation and processes of creeping apartheid across the Green Line. Much of this scholarship, however, focuses on the privileged and high-speed flow of Israeli Jewish settler-citizens compared with the slow and tightly constricted movements of Palestinian day-labourers from the occupied Palestinian territories as they navigate a complex system of gated settlements, checkpoints, permits, walls, fences and by-pass roads within the occupied Palestinian territories. Comparatively little attention has focused on the cross-border movements of Palestinian citizens of Israel who make up over 20 per cent of Israeli population, and who travel in-between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in search of more affordable goods and services; work and social opportunities, a sense of community and place, as well as access to spaces for leisure, recreation and social interaction.

In this lecture, I will cast light on the neglected cross-border movements of Palestinian citizens of Israel focusing, in particular, on two forms of cross-border movements which illustrate subtle strategies of social and political innovation and contestation in practice: first, social or group running practices in the city of Jerusalem, and, second, the movements of thousands of young Palestinian citizens who study medicine and paramedical degree programmes at universities in the northern West Bank. In so doing, I will not only argue, as others have, that there is radical power in movement (to disrupt, challenge and potentially transform uneven geographies of power), but that the act of movement itself reveals the centrality of informal, flexible and mobile social networks in the exercise of the basic right to move.

Una McGahern is Senior Lecturer in Politics. Her research is interdisciplinary and ethnographic in nature and focuses on issues relating to security, mobility, protest and space in Israel-Palestine, with a particular focus on the everyday experiences of Palestinian citizens of Israel.

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and the School of International Relations presents

Central Asian Reaction to the Taliban –

With the withdrawal of US and coalition forces from Afghanistan and the rapid takeover by the Taliban, neighbouring Central Asian countries are once again at the focus of international attention. Most Central Asian governments recognized the Taliban in a pragmatic decision to peacefully coexist with the neighboring extremist regime that will likely remain in power for the foreseeable future. Tajikistan is, however, denying the Taliban recognition and indirectly supporting resistance movement in Panjshir. Political leaders hope that most people in their countries will see it in the same way — a pragmatic solution to a difficult security challenge. However, the public in the region is largely split between those who consider Afghanistan as a culturally alien country and those who quietly support the Taliban’s ascend to power as testament of successful Islamic movement capturing state politics. The political and human catastrophe in Afghanistan is threatening to boost autocratic tendencies and further deepen political gaps in Central Asian societies. I will discuss the rationale behind each Central Asian government’s approach to the Talibanized Afghanistan and the looming domestic and external challenges to the region.

Erica Marat is an Associate Professor at the College of International Security Affairs, National Defense University. Her research focuses on violence, mobilization and security institutions in Eurasia, India, and Mexico. Before joining NDU, Dr. Marat was a visiting scholar at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center. Dr. Marat latest book titled The Politics of Police Reform: Society against the State in Post-Soviet Countries (Oxford University Press 2018) explores conditions in which police reform is likely to succeed or fail. Her articles appeared in Foreign Affairs, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and other outlets.

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Maritime powers are the exception, while continental powers are the rule. Maritime powers can defend their homeland by sea whereas continental powers cannot. What opportunities does geography open and what opportunities does it foreclose? Under what circumstances does it make sense for countries to invest in a big navy or a big army? The answers to these questions have profound military, political, and economic implications. The lecture focuses on the military implications of geopolitics, using the Chinese, Mongol, Russian, and British empires as examples. Because continental empires and maritime empires organized themselves and attempted to organize others in fundamentally different ways, they had mutually exclusive preferred international orders, one focused on maximizing territorial control and the other focused on maximizing commercial profits. Although the Industrial Revolution and ensuing transportation revolution upended the world of empires by producing compounding economic growth, the continental-maritime disagreement endures. Those promoting continental security paradigms seek a world divided into exclusive spheres of influence, while those following maritime security paradigms envision a world of shared maritime commons governed by universal rules to maximize the compounding wealth from trade. The lecture will conclude by highlighting the implications for Britain, the United States, Russia, and China. The analysis is based on two decades teaching historical case studies about maritime powers at the U.S. Naval War College, and years of archival research in China, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, and the United States.

Nine years of research in Australia, China, Japan, Russia, and Taiwan form the basis for Prof Paine’s publications: The Japanese Empire (Cambridge, 2017); Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 (Cambridge, 2012), The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 (Cambridge, 2003), and Imperial Rivals: China, Russia, and Their Disputed Frontier (M. E. Sharpe, 1996). Most recently she co-edited with Andrea J. Dew and Marc A. Genest, From Quills to Tweets: How America Communicates about War and Revolution (Georgetown University Press, 2019). Her degrees include B.A. Latin American Studies, Harvard University; M.I.A. Columbia University School for International and Public Affairs; certificates from both the East Asian and Russian Institutes; M.A. Russian, Middlebury College; and Ph.D. history, Columbia University.

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What if the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp had been closed, and replaced by a museum that critically reflects on the social and political significance of the prison? This is the premise that animates The Guantanamo Bay Museum of Art and History, an art project initiated by Ian Alan Paul and involving more than a dozen activists, theorists and artists.

Join us for a presentation on the museum, followed by a discussion between the artist and Dr Jeffrey Murur and a Q&A session.

Ian Alan Paul (b. 1984, US) is an artist-theorist whose work examines enactments of power and practices of resistance in global contexts. Their transdisciplinary practice is formally diverse, and is situated at the intersections of critical theory, contemporary art, and digital media studies. Ian has developed projects and lived for extended periods in the United States, Mexico, Spain, Egypt, and Palestine, and has exhibited their work and given lectures internationally.

Their research-creation practice approaches issues that are geographically diffuse yet thematically connected, including the digitized surveillance of the Mexico-US Border, the contested past and future of the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities, and the politics of memory in Post-Revolution Cairo. They received their PhD in Film and Digital Media Studies from UC Santa Cruz in 2016, their MFA and MA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2011, and is presently based in Barcelona.

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The Centre for Syrian studies together with MECACS Presents – The Question of Religion in the Syrian Constitutions

This lecture will discuss the question of religion within all the Syrian constitutions since the first ever attempt to write a constitution for Syria exactly a century ago and until the current constitution. It will go beyond the constitutional provisions and examines the debates and discussions surrounding the question of religion as recorded in the debates of the constitutional assemblies and in the public debate. It will discuss how the debate around the question of religion took on different dimensions depending on the context of the time, and the social and political climate in which the constitutional argument took place.

Dr Rim Turkmani is the principal investigator of the LSE based research project Legitimacy and citizenship in the Arab world project.
She is also the research director of the Syria conflict research programme at the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Her policy-oriented research work focuses on the political economy and governance in Syria and the local drivers of the conflict and their relation to external dynamics. She is member of the Women Advisory Board to the UN special envoy to Syria.

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Farah Nabulsi – Filmmaker & Human Rights Advocate

Farah Nabulsi is an Oscar Nominated and BAFTA Award Winning Palestinian British filmmaker and human rights advocate. She has written, directed and produced short fiction films exploring topics that matter to her. Farah has spoken and screened her work internationally at film festivals, universities and at the United Nations. Her most recent film,

The Present, underscores the importance of freedom of movement as a basic human right for Palestinians. The Present received over 30 Audience and Jury Awards at top tier international film festivals, a BAFTA Award for Best British Short Film and an Oscar nomination for Best Live Action Short. It was licensed internationally including to Canal+ and Netflix Worldwide.

Farah uses the power of storytelling, her social media and online platform www.oceansofinjustice.com to share the Palestinian experience with Western audiences. Her novel approach has been endorsed by Noam Chomsky, Hanan Ashrawi, John Pilger, Ken Loach and others.

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Institute for the Study of War and Strategy (ISWS) Presents,

Michael A. Hunzeker is an assistant professor at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, the associate director of the Schar School’s Center for Security Policy Studies, and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. His work on deterrence, military adaptation, and war termination has appeared in Security Studies, the Journal of Strategic Studies, PS: Politics and Political Science, Parameters, Defense One, War on the Rocks and the RUSI Journal. Michael recently published a book on wartime learning, Dying to Learn: Wartime Lessons from the Western Front with Cornell University Press. He has also coauthored monographs on conventional deterrence in northeastern Europe and the Taiwan Strait. Michael served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2000–2006 and holds an A.B. from the University of California, Berkeley as well as a Ph.D., M.P.A., and A.M. from Princeton University.

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Institute of Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies presents Civil-military coordination to save civilian lives while defeating the Islamic State in Iraq

Between 2015 and 2017, cooperation between the Iraqi government, the United States, the European Union, individual European states, the international military coalition to defeat ISIS, and the United Nations effectively ended the Islamic State’s so-called caliphate in Iraq. Less well known is the extensive, unusual, and largely successful civil-military coordination by these same players aimed at saving civilian lives during the rolling land battles, providing assistance to internally displaced persons, and returning IDPs to their homes in safety and with dignity. Given the right conditions, this example could serve as a template for internatioanl civil-military coordination in other conflict areas.

Ambassador Douglas A. Silliman is president of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He previously served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2016-19 and U.S. ambassador to Kuwait from 2014-16. From 2013-14, he served as a senior advisor in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in the U.S. Department of State, working on Iraq issues and the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. Silliman was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq from 2012-13, minister counselor for political affairs in Baghdad from 2011-12, and deputy chief of mission in Ankara, Turkey from 2008-11. He joined the Department of State in 1984.Silliman served as director and deputy director of the Department of State’s Office of Southern European Affairs, as political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Jordan, and as the regional officer for the Middle East in the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. He worked as a political officer in Islamabad, Pakistan, in the Office of Soviet Union Affairs, as the desk officer for Lebanon, and as a staff assistant to the assistant secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Silliman began his career as a visa officer in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and a political officer in Tunis, Tunisia.

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