The Global Security and International Affairs program area draws on the expertise of a broad range of policymakers, practitioners, and scholars to foster knowledge and promote innovative and evidence-based policies to address crucial issues affecting the international community. Projects underway in this area engage with pressing strategic, development, and moral questions that underpin relations among people, communities, and states worldwide. Each initiative embraces a broad conception of security as the interaction among human, national, and global security imperatives. Project recommendations move beyond the idea of security as the absence of war toward higher aspirations of collective peace, development, and justice at all levels of society.
Committee on International Security Studies
CHAIRS
Scott D. Sagan
Stanford University
Jennifer M. Welsh
McGill University
MEMBERS
Tanja M. Börzel
Freie Universität Berlin
Neta C. Crawford
University of Oxford
Matthew Anthony Evangelista
Cornell University
Tanisha M. Fazal
University of Minnesota
Martha Finnemore
George Washington University
M. Taylor Fravel
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lawrence D. Freedman
King’s College London
Oona A. Hathaway
Yale University
Susan Landau
Tufts University
Rose M. McDermott
Brown University
Steven E. Miller
Harvard Kennedy School
Anne Woods Patterson
Georgetown University
Barry R. Posen
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Paul H. Wise
Stanford University
Project
Promoting Dialogue on Arms Control and Disarmament
Unlike the Cold War, the current nuclear age is characterized by a simultaneous collapse of arms control agreements and the absence of any strategic dialogue among the three main nuclear players. One strand of work in the Promoting Dialogue on Arms Control and Disarmament project consists of a series of Track II dialogues between experts and former policymakers from the United States, Russia, and China, which is designed to identify critical short-term goals in arms control that would serve to minimize and reduce the potential risks of nuclear arms-racing and escalation. The meetings identify areas for cooperation and promote conceptual thinking about measures that might strengthen strategic stability and help to reduce the significant dangers of nuclear weapons being used in the future.
Additional work weaves the project’s expert discussions and policy recommendations together to produce publications on critical debates within nuclear arms control. Through targeted briefings and events with policymakers, the project also seeks to foster and strengthen knowledge on key issues and challenges facing the United States in arms control and international security, with particular attention to the careful management of the strategic competition posed by China and Russia.
PROJECT CHAIR
Steven E. Miller
Harvard University
PROJECT STAFF
Mitch Poulin
Program Associate for Global Security and International Affairs
Peter Robinson
Chief Program Officer
Ottawa Sanders
Raymond Frankel Nuclear Security Policy Fellow
Former Project Staff
Melissa Chan
Program Coordinator for Global Security and International Affairs
Jumaina Siddiqui
Program Director for Global Security and International Affairs
FUNDER
The Raymond Frankel Foundation
Project Publications
The Future of Nuclear Arms Control and the Impact of the Russia-Ukraine War, Nadezhda Arbatova, George Perkovich, and Paul van Hooft (2024)
The Altered Nuclear Order in the Wake of the Russia-Ukraine War, Rebecca Davis Gibbons, Stephen Herzog, Wilfred Wan, and Doreen Horschig (2023)
Missile Defense and the Strategic Relationship among the United States, Russia, and China, Tong Zhao and Dmitry Stefanovich (2023)
Minimizing the Negative Effects of Advances in Military-Relevant Space Capabilities on Strategic Stability, Nancy W. Gallagher and Jaganath Sankaran (2023)
Nuclear Perils in a New Era: Bringing Perspective to the Nuclear Choices Facing Russia and the United States, Steven E. Miller and Alexey Arbatov (2021)
Project Meeting
The Implications of Missile Defense on the U.S.-China Strategic Relationship
January 23, 2024
Washington, D.C.
In collaboration with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Â鶹´«Ã½AV organized a round-table discussion with policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to explore ideas from Missile Defense and the Strategic Relationship among the United States, Russia, and China. Tong Zhao, Senior Fellow at Carnegie, provided an overview of his essay in the publication. Steven E. Miller (Harvard University), chair of the project, served as a discussant. James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at Carnegie, provided closing remarks. The discussion focused on Chinese concerns over U.S. missile defense, misperceptions that exacerbate strained relations between the United States and China, and ways in which the bilateral strategic relations between the two countries can be strengthened.
Exploratory Meeting 
Climate Conundrum: Bridging the Gap between Science and Security
May 14–15, 2024
House of the Â鶹´«Ã½AV, Cambridge, MA
The Â鶹´«Ã½AV convened an off-the-record workshop, led by Neta Crawford (University of Oxford) and Tanisha Fazal (University of Minnesota), that brought together scholars of international relations and climate change experts. The discussions focused on military emissions, the securitization of climate, and solar geoengineering. Questions around global governance were threaded throughout each conversation.
MEETING CHAIRS
Neta Crawford
University of Oxford
Tanisha Fazal
University of Minnesota
PROJECT STAFF
Mitch Poulin
Program Associate for Global Security and International Affairs
Peter Robinson
Chief Program Officer
Former Project Staff
Melissa Chan
Program Coordinator for Global Security and International Affairs
Jumaina Siddiqui
Program Director for Global Security and International Affairs
FUNDER
American Â鶹´«Ã½AV Exploratory Fund