International Security Studies and Military Policy Analysis

Under the direction of principal investigator Richard Betts, during the 2004-07 academic years The Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies was pleased to again offer its program, "International Security Studies and Military Policy Analysis. The program, begun in 1996, involves a speakers series program and related activities designed to promote the integration of graduate students' academic research with applied analysis of security policy. We remain concerned that the upcoming generation now being trained as specialists in security studies, though intellectually impressive and highly creative, has insufficient opportunity to gain practical skills in policy analysis and to link academic work with practical policy concerns. In part, this is due to the structure of academic career incentives, which typically gives insufficient weight to policy skills and interests.  

I. Columbia University's Security Studies Program

Columbia Ph.D. students and recent graduates of our program are significant contributors to the fields of international security studies and military policy analysis, and will play a major role in shaping their evolution over the coming decades. Through our teaching and writing, we try to instill the message that the best academic work makes explicit connections with current policy problems, and that there is no contradiction between being a good political scientist and being an active contributor to the understanding of current public issues. However, our students are aware that the broader discipline of political science does not necessarily reward work on policy, and academic debates often take their attention away from policy issues.

Accordingly, we conducted a set of activities, centered on a series of outside speakers who embody the ideal of integrating academic rigor and policy applicability, to excite and educate students about policy-relevant academic research. The series not only appealed to Ph.D. students in the Columbia political science department, but also to students in the International Security Policy concentration in the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) as well as students at other universities in the region.

The Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies

The Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies (SIWPS) houses one of the world's largest groups of prominent senior faculty teaching and writing on security affairs and strategic studies. As a result, we have a significant and influential group of Ph.D. students and recent graduates who are playing a major role in setting the tone for the future of security studies through their teaching and publications.

Among the faculty, Richard Betts has written on many aspects of international security policy, both as an academic and as a policy analyst at the Brookings Institution. He teaches the introductory graduate course on war and strategy as well as upper level seminars. Robert Jervis, the country's most esteemed theorist of international relations and former President of the American Political Science Association, writes and teaches on international conflict, deterrence, and political psychology. Jack Snyder has written on military strategy, empires, and nationalism, and teaches a graduate comparative methods course which stresses the connections between academic research and policy analysis.    

Warner Schilling, who teaches courses on American foreign policy, military technology and strategy, and the causes of war, has written classic studies on the security policy-making process. Page Fortna has research interests in the durability of peace with particular regard to the factors conducive to war termination and to multinational peace-keeping efforts. Kimberly Marten of Barnard College and the Harriman Institute, an expert on Russian military affairs, is affiliated with SIWPS and is currently conducting collaborative research on peace-keeping with Page Fortna. Tanisha Fazal has completed her book on the death and survival of states in the international system, while our newest faculty addition, Pablo Pinto, is examining t he links between domestic politics and foreign direct investment.

Robert Legvold of the Harriman Institute, who teaches about foreign policy and security policy in the post-Soviet states, is another tenured member of the international relations contingent in the political science department. Erik Gartzke, one of the earliest alumni of another Smith Richardson project, the Summer Workshop on the Analysis of Military Operations and Strategy (which he attended in 1997 while he was an assistant professor at Penn State), joined the Institute faculty several years ago and focuses on the role of information (what actors know and don't know) in how states, leaders, and others interact across borders.    Kenneth Waltz, one of the most influential scholars of international relations, is a senior research scholar at the institute and teaches a graduate seminar.

Our Institute also houses Research Associate Stephanie Neuman, Director of the Comparative Defense Studies Program, which focuses on Third World security issues. All of the faculty at the Institute of War and Peace Studies have strong policy interests. We write for policy journals such as Foreign Affairs , and International Security , the top journal in its field, with a mixed audience of policy analysts and academics. Faculty, recent graduates, and students have written more articles over the past several years in International Security than scholars from any other institution. Professor Betts alone has more articles in IS than any scholar other than John Mearsheimer - Professors Snyder and Jervis are not far behind.

SIWPS faculty write for and serve on the editorial boards of the more strictly academic International Organization . Most of us also participate as consultants or visiting experts in the policy process in Washington or at the UN, and we play an informal role in media discussions of public issues.

Finally, SIWPS is the institutional affiliate for several adjunct faculty in the School of International and Public Affairs International Security Policy program -- people who combine Ph.D. training with experience in government and policy analysis in their teaching. Our Ph.D. program in international relations and international security affairs is the largest and arguably the strongest in the country. In recent years we have graduated several Ph.D. students in the security field each year, and have close to 20 Ph.D. candidates working on security topics on campus at any given time.

Our recent graduates in security affairs and related fields of international relations have gotten positions at many of the best universities and colleges, including Cornell, Michigan, Ohio State, the University of Washington, Brown, Yale, Williams, Harvard, the University of Minnesota, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and Dartmouth. Columbia Ph.D. students and recent graduates comprise a large portion of recent Olin Institute Fellows in the international security program at Harvard. Our students and recent graduates are writing in prominent places on topics such as the military aspects of multilateral intervention, the role of international law in civil conflict, and the enduring nature of territorial conflict.

Because of the leading role of our graduates in the security field, a program to highlight the links between academic work and policy studies at Columbia has a substantial impact on the future generation of security specialists as a whole.

II. Graduate Student Workshop in Security Affairs

The format of the Student Workshop was a group meeting in which students had the opportunity to present their work and receive the comments of their peers. The workshop provided an ongoing forum in which students could discuss and improve their own work, keep abreast of the ongoing work and interests of their colleagues, and sharpen their analytic skills. The workshop also served as an encouraging support mechanism and helped to build a sense of community among graduate students in security studies.

During the academic years 2004-2007, students made presentations to their peers in the following subject areas, often on multiple occasions as they finished various chapters of their respective projects. The regular participation of resident and visiting scholars helped to make the workshop particularly effective for our students.

•  Anarchy, Force and Fraud in Founding Constitutions

•  Categorization of Nuclear Threats by the US Government

•  Credibility of Threats Issued by Democratic States

•  Declarations of War in the International System

•  Differences in Mobilization Capabilities across Regime Types

•  Distinguishing Means from Ends in Foreign Policy

•  Domestic Political Constraints and the Implementation of World Bank Programs

•  Dueling Behavior in International Politics

•  Effects of Mediator Characteristics on the Settlement of Interstate Disputes

•  Individual State Compliance with International Law

•  Lost Territories and Claims to Homeland Status

•  Militarization of Refugee Camps and the Spread of Civil Conflict

•  Privatization of Security and Violence

•  Regime Type and Military Effectiveness

•  The Limits of Enforcement in the International System

•  The Role of Credibility in Explaining War Duration

•  Third Party Intervention and War Duration

•  Transformation of Great Power Politics

III. Speakers Series in International Security Affairs

The speaker series demonstrated the connection between policy analysis and academic research. Speakers include individuals who have worked in both the academic, policy and practitioner realms.

During each academic year, SIWPS welcomed about 10 experts in the field of international security policy studies for afternoon and evening presentations. In light of recent events, several of the seminars given were on the topics of terrorism and intelligence reform. Attendance at all the seminars was high, with over 100 students and faculty in attendance alone at the seminar presented by Michael Scheuer on the realities of the war on terrorism. Scheduling problems due to weather and other unforeseen circumstances forced us to postpone one of the talks to Fall of 2007.  

Speakers 2004-2005 Academic Year:

November 11, 2004

Ethan Kapstein, INSEAD

"The Political Economy of Democratic Consolidation: Lessons from Iraq"

November 23, 2004            

Philip Zelikow, University of Virginia/Executive Director, 9/11 Commission

"The Road To -and From- 9/11"

December 2, 2004                        

John J. Mearsheimer, University of Chicago

"Lying in International Politics"

February 3, 2005            

Michael Scheuer, former Chief Director of Central Intelligence Counterterrorist

Center's bin Laden Unit

"They Still Don't Get It: The Danger of Ignoring Reality in the War on Terrorism"

February 22, 2005            

Deborah Avant, George Washington University

"The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security"

April 14, 2005                        

Andrew Bacevich, Boston University

"The New American Militarism"

Speakers 2005-2006 Academic Year:

October 11, 2005            

Nora Bensahel, RAND Corporation

"After Saddam: Prewar Planning for Postwar Iraq"

October 25, 2005
Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, Notre Dame and University of Pennsylvania

"End of Mutual Assured Destruction? The Nuclear Dimension of American Primacy"

February 9, 2006

William C. Wohlforth and Stephen G. Brooks, Dartmouth College

"The Challenge of American Primacy"

April 6, 2006

Monica Duffy Toft, Harvard University

"Peace Through Security: The Durable Settlement of Civil Wars"

April 10, 2006

Deborah Barger, Deputy Assistant Director of National Intelligence

"Revolution in Intelligence Affairs?"

April 17, 2006

Peter Katzenstein, Cornell University

"A World of Regions: National Security Policies in Asia and Europe"

Speakers 2006-2007 Academic Year:

October 24, 2006

Frederick Kagan , American Enterprise Institute

"Transformation is Dead, Long Live Transformation: Finding a New Course for the American Military"

November 2, 2006

Stephen P. Rosen , Harvard University

"New Nuclear Interactions"

January 25, 2007

Amy B. Zegart , UCLA

"US Intelligence and the Origins of 9/11"

February 8, 2007

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt , University of Chicago and Harvard University

"Setting the Record Straight: A Response to Critics of 'The Israel Lobby'"

April 25, 2007

John Mueller , Ohio State University

"Iraq, Terrorism, and Threat Exaggeration"

IV. Support for Short Term Research Travel for Ph.D. Students

Our Ph.D. students specializing in security affairs often find the need to take relatively short research trips to Washington, to Presidential libraries, or abroad for interviewing or archival research. Sometimes these are follow-up trips in the wake of longer stints of dissertation research. In a few cases, students go to professional association conferences to present papers based on their dissertations or other research.

Smith Richardson funds have allowed us to support these research trips, most of which the students would otherwise have been unable to undertake.  

Successful Applicants and Their Projects, 2006-2007 Academic Year:

Bernd Beber , "Qualitative Evidence on the Mechanics of Mediation and the Settlement of International Disputes" (Geneva, Switzerland). Beber's project focuses on various demands for autonomy within Indonesia and the central government's responses to these demands. In some cases, there have been constant outbreaks of violence while in others, transfers of power were peaceful. Beber's goal is to expand this particular case study into a wider dissertation work on the role of international institutions in conflict resolution. His travel to Geneva and the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, one of the largest and most renowned international non-governmental organizations in the field of mediation, will allow him to interact with resident mediators and support staff as well as make a presentation to a large gathering of high-profile international mediators.

Eric Mvukiyehe , "Making and Committing to Peace: Structural Constraints and Civil War Outcomes" (Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo). Mvukiyehe's work is motivated by the question of why some civil wars last much longer than others. More specifically, he explores the role of incumbent and rebel groups' government type on the duration of the civil wars. To establish an empirical bedrock for his analysis, he will interview key military and political leaders in Burundi and Congo.

Alexandra Scacco , "Riots and Restraint: Individual Participation and Patterns Ethnic Violence in Nigeria" (Jos and Kaduna, Nigeria). Scacco's research attempts to understand what factors have determined the location and timing of ethnic riots in Nigeria, especially why some precipitating events lead to riots while others result in no violence. She returned to Nigeria for several weeks to conduct further interviews with local police officers, government administrators, and politicians, with the assistance of NGO Human Rights Monitor. She plans to survey 250 and 150 individuals in Kaduna and Jos, respectively.

Aqil Shah , "Explaining Divergence in Civil-Military Relations and Democracy in Pakistan and India (1947-1958)" (Washington, D.C.). Shah's dissertation takes a geographically delimited approach to explaining how and why civilian control over the military arises in various regime types and India and Pakistan, due to their similar history, prove to be apt objects of study. Shah will use archival sources to trace the development of the U.S.-Pakistan security alliance and receive extensive training in archival research techniques.

Jesse Wilkins , "The Pursuit of Great Power Status: War as an Information Revealing Mechanism" (Surrey and Greenwich, Great Britain).   Wilkins' work concentrates on states' pursuit of Great Power status and the historical discrepancies between states' actual military capabilities and their perceived influence in the international system.   He is currently studying various ways states assess each other's capabilities and the extent to which war plays a role in revealing valuable information about a state's resolve and capabilities.   Focusing on the rise of the US and Japan to Great Power status after the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese wars, respectively, Wilkins' examines British and German perceptions of American and Japanese capabilities before and after these conflicts.

Successful Applicants and Their Projects, 2005-2006 Academic Year:

Jesse Wilkins , "The Pursuit of Great Power Status: War as an Information Revealing Mechanism" (England).   Wilkins' work concentrates on states' pursuit of Great Power status and the historical discrepancies between states' actual military capabilities and their perceived influence in the international system.   He is currently studying various ways states assess each other's capabilities and the extent to which war plays a role in revealing valuable information about a state's resolve and capabilities.   Focusing on the rise of the US and Japan to Great Power status after the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese wars, respectively, Wilkins' examines British and German perceptions of American and Japanese capabilities before and after these conflicts. Specifically, he will be examining the papers of the Admiralty, Cabinet, Committee of Imperial Defense, Naval Intelligence Department and the Foreign Office documents located at the National Archives in Surrey, England.

Milan Vaishnav , "Bolivia: State Weakness and Implications for US Foreign Policy" (La Paz, Bolivia). Vaishnav's work attempts to document and clarify the causal connections between state capacity and security threats by studying the nature of the US development and security policies toward Bolivia. In particular, he is interested in finding out to what extent those policies promote a mutually reinforcing state-building agenda. While in Bolivia, he will interview representatives in the Ministries of Economic Development and Foreign Relations, as well as resident US government officials working in USAID and members of the Bolivian think-tank Centro Boliviano de Estudios Multidisciplinarios (CEBEM).

Thania Sanchez , "International Law, Domestic Action: A Theory of Compliance with International Law" (Washington, D.C.). Sanchez's dissertation research seeks to understand the political processes that underlie compliance rates with international law, in particular why states sometimes sign treaties but fail to ratify them afterwards and how these actions differ across the security, environment, trade and human rights issues. While in D.C., she will study various congressional hearing documents on the Vienna Convention and Montreal Protocol as they relate to the protection of the ozone layer, the WTO agreement on Trade in Textiles and Clothing, the Convention on the prohibition of certain conventional weapons, and Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane Treatment. These documents are hosted in the Library of Congress and National Archives.  

Aldo Civico , "Domination and Hegemony of Paramilitary Groups in Colombia: The Case of Medellin" (Medellin, Colombia). Civico's dissertation in applied anthropology attempts to understand the impact of having more than 20,000 paramilitaries demobilized since 2003 in Colombia, a rate that is significantly higher than initially forecast by the national government when the unilateral cease-fire was declared by the AUC (United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia). While researching the impact of these demographic changes in Medellin, especially as they relate to gang membership and other illegal activities, Civico will conduct a series of interviews over a 10-week period aimed at evaluating the ongoing demobilization of paramilitary groups in the second largest city in Colombia.

Alexandra Scacco , "Riots and Restraint: Explaining Ethnic Violence in Nigeria" (Abuja and Kaduna, Nigeria). Scacco's research attempts to understand what factors have determined the location and timing of ethnic riots in Nigeria, especially why some precipitating events lead to riots while others result in no violence. She plans to spend several weeks in Abuja and Kaduna conducting interviews with local police officers, government administrators, and politicians, with the assistance of NGO Human Rights Monitor. In Abuja, she will also visit the Faculty of Social Sciences and Nigeria's Federal Office of Statistics headquarters, which holds extensive data on Nigeria's censuses and various household surveys conducted by the government.

Leila Kazemi , "Monopoly Broken: Private Security and the 'State' System" (Washington, D.C.).   Kazemi's work focuses on privatization within the security sector and its implications for the way scholars understand issues of sovereignty and security in both theory and practice.   In particular, Kazemi is interested in instances when private firms perform services that have traditionally been considered the exclusive realm of nation-states.   Her summer work consists of various interviews with officials at the World Bank (as it relates to the Chad/Cameroon pipeline project) and the Bank's private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (a major sponsor of the Baku-Tbilsi-Ceyhan pipeline project) as well as various officials at the State Department and the Defense Department.

Sue Nahm , "The Militarization of Refugee Camps" (Kampala, Uganda). Nahm's dissertation examines the ways in which refugees become embroiled in civil wars and the role they sometimes play as fighters in those conflicts. Nahm's research also looks at the role refugree camps play in the strategies rebel groups use to wage wars. She plans to interview officials at the regional office of the United Nations High Commissioner (UNHCR) and to conduct field research at several UNHCR camps and the University of Kampala Refugee Law Center.

            Jessica Stanton , "In Search of Legitimacy: Compliance with International Laws of War During Civil War." (Indonesia and East Timor).   Stanton is currently working on her dissertation examining the behavior of actors engaged in civil war.   She is seeking to uncover why some states and opposition groups commit severe human rights abuses during civil war while others exercise greater restraint and largely comply with international laws.   Her particular focus is on protections accorded to civilians under international law. Her trip will involve six weeks of field research in Indonesia and East Timor to conduct interviews with public figures able to provide insight into the internal conflicts that have taken place in Indonesia, especially the three internal conflicts that have occurred since 1965.

Successful Applicants and Their Projects, 2004-2005 Academic Year:

Dafna Hochman , "Staying Politically Relevant: Morocco, Jordan and Elite Foreign Policy Making" (Morocco).   Hochman's research focuses on a series of authoritarian successions from father to son that have recently taken place in the Middle East and North Africa.   She is attempting to understand what factors shape the nature of these new regimes' international outlook and dictate the sons' policy choices.   Specifically, Hochman is studying to what extent these new regimes embrace globalization, international economic markets, foreign investment and technological growth as policy priorities.

Leila Kazemi , "Monopoly Broken: Private Security and the 'State' System" (United Kingdom and Belgium).   Kazemi's work focuses on privatization within the security sector and its implications for the way scholars understand issues of sovereignty and security in both theory and practice.   In particular, Kazemi is interested in instances when private firms perform services that have traditionally been considered the exclusive realm of nation-states.   Her summer work consisted of various interviews of individuals involved with the private security sector.

Sue Nahm , "The Militarization of Refugee Camps" (Geneva, Switzerland). Nahm's dissertation examines the ways in which refugees become embroiled in civil wars and the role they sometimes play as fighters in those conflicts.   As data on this topic is often scarce and/or unreliable, a significant portion of her project focuses on collecting data and organizing it.   One of the primary sources for such data are the UNHCR archives in Geneva.

            Jessica Stanton , "In Search of Legitimacy: Compliance with International Laws of War During Civil War." (Uganda).   Stanton is currently working on her dissertation title and examining the behavior of actors engaged in civil war.   She is seeking to uncover why some states and opposition groups commit severe human rights abuses during civil war while others exercise greater restraint and largely comply with international laws.   Her trip involved a month of field research in Uganda, a country that has experienced three civil wars since 1945, with varied outcomes and behaviors by the participants.

Amy Widstein , "Trade Conflicts and Trade Wars: The Domestic and International Battleground of American and European Commercial Rivalry" (Atlanta and Little Rock).   Widstein's work on trade wars forms the case study portion of her dissertation on the role of domestic politics in international trade conflicts.   She visited the Carter and Clinton presidential libraries to research trade disputes between the US and the European Union on a wide range of issues, from automobile imports and TV broadcasting rights to beef hormone and banana disputes that eventually escalated into trade wars.   Widstein is trying to understand why some disputes escalate into trade wars while others do not.

Jesse Wilkins , "The Pursuit of Great Power Status: War as an Information Revealing Mechanism" (Germany).   Wilkins' work concentrates on states' pursuit of Great Power status and the historical discrepancies between states' actual military capabilities and their perceived influence in the international system.   He is currently studying various ways states assess each other's capabilities and the extent to which war plays a role in revealing valuable information about a state's resolve and capabilities.   Focusing on the rise of the US and Japan to Great Power status after the Spanish-American and Russo-Japanese wars, respectively, Wilkins' examines British and German perceptions of American and Japanese capabilities before and after these conflicts.

V. Graduate Student Administrative Assistant

During the program's three years the Smith Richardson Foundation supported one graduate student in the Political Science department through fellowships. Ph.D. candidate Marko Djuranovic organized the speaker series, student security workshop, other activities, and provided reports on the program. Beyond coordinating the grant, Marko also presented a precis of his dissertation at an International Studies Association meeting in Chicago, completed course requirements necessary to receive the Ph.D., and made significant progress on the development of the theoretical underpinnings and quantitative research of his dissertation.

VI. Implications for Policy

We anticipate several kinds of policy impact from the Speakers Series, and student research travel. In the long run, the Smith Richardson Foundation support of the speaker series corrects a bias in the field of security studies that favors abstract theoretical work over policy relevant studies. SRF funded programs have helped make this lesson an integral part of the formative graduate school experience of Columbia students of security affairs in both the Ph.D. program and International Security Policy concentration at SIPA.

The programs also raise the likelihood that students will have access to the expertise and research opportunities they need to complete their projects with the highest level of sophistication. A less likely policy impact, but one that we can hope for, is that the speakers from the policy community will pick up some good ideas during their visit to Columbia and put them to work.

Other Events

In addition to collaborating with ISERP on CUIPS, the Saltzman Institute co-sponsors a number of special events in conjunction with other Columbia affiliates during the academic year to promote academic discourse on a range of pertinent public policy issues.

Please click here for the list of other events in PDF format.