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Sam Nunn School of International Affairs

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Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts

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Center for European and Transatlantic Studies

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Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy

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https://finding-aids.library.gatech.edu/agents/corporate_entities/151

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Publication Search Results

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Health, Resilience, Responsibility, and the Arts: things happening at the Institute for People and Technology

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-08-22) Best, Michael L.

For the first IPaT: GVU Lunch Lecture of the academic year, Michael Best, executive director of the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT), will present an overview IPaT’s activities and offerings, and welcome the team and our partners. IPaT has four new research foci, and he will introduce the new research Initiative Leads: Professors Rudy Gleason (Global Health Equity and Wellbeing), Danielle Willkens (Just, Resilient, and Informed Communities), Allen Hyde (Responsible and Ethical Technologies), and Lisa Marks (Arts, Expression, and Creative Technologies). Each Initiative Lead will develop programs to enhance interdisciplinary research, community, funding opportunities, and impact in their areas. Best will also foreshadow some of this term’s events, including a stellar line-up for the Lunch Lecture series itself, the upcoming Wearable Innovations for Health Equity Workshop, the Fall Town Hall, and other programs. IPaT’s emerging global initiatives will be overviewed, with activities currently in Asia and Africa. He will announce this Fall’s IPaT/GTRI Research & Engagement Grant recipients. Finally, for folks new to IPaT, he will present IPaT's infrastructure and service offerings, such as its Craft and Prototyping Lab and the Aware Home. The lecture will end with an opportunity for conversation, input, and interaction.
Development Finance as the Foreign Policy Tool of Choice United States And China In Africa as a Case of Great Power Competition

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-04-12) Meredith, Wesley

The debate on Great Power Competition (GPC) is traditionally framed within the space of security and is thus viewed through the lens of hard power and military might. This framing, however, may be counterproductive, as it has the potential to cause policy makers operating in the traditional framework to narrow their field of vision and miss how the current great powers are competing in Africa. With respect to Africa, and how U.S.-China GPC is playing out, official development finance (ODF) has developed as a tool of this competition. The data has shown that China has given varying amounts of aid to different countries during different years. Conversely, the United States has given sustained levels of ODF to 48 Sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries examined over the 20- year period from 2000 to 2019. This dissertation examines the total amount of ODF given by each country, and tests the motivations for ODF as it relates to GPC. For U.S. disbursement of ODF to countries in SSA, five findings matter: a historical disbursement of ODF, poverty, population, corruption, and violence. For Chinese ODF, three things matter: population, gross national income per capita, and resources. Are these motivations complementary or antagonistic, and what does this mean for the future of GPC between the United States and China in Africa? In areas, such as corruption, the research demonstrated that the motivations work counter to one another. In areas, such as security in Africa, the motivations for U.S. and Chinese ODF have the potential to work at cross-purposes. When it comes to ideological alignment in UN voting, the research demonstrates that in the case of extreme ends of the funding spectrum, the votes trend in favor of the predominant donor.
Deterrence through Entanglement

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-07-30) Stewart, Brian

Many components of the Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3) architecture of the United States are vulnerable space systems. These space systems are considered entangled, which means they support both strategic (nuclear) functions as well as tactical (conventional) missions. Space security experts believe these entangled NC3 systems could be attractive targets for adversaries, even in low-level or conventional conflicts, due to the U.S. military’s heavy reliance on these capabilities to project power and observe adversary activity. Some scholars claim that the entangled nature of these systems combined with the apparent willingness of adversaries to attack these systems crates a significant risk of inadvertent escalation. In their view, a state could be forced to escalate a conflict beyond what either party intended due to the strategic-level impacts that could occur as a result of attacks against NC3 systems. In order to mitigate these risks, the U.S. government has adopted a strategy of disentanglement and millions of dollars have been spent to begin the process of disentangling systems. Unfortunately, the Department of Defense (DoD) has not studied the potential effects of disentanglement on stability, security, and deterrence. I challenge the logic of disentanglement and offer a theory of deterrence through entanglement. I argue that potential adversaries understand that attacks against entangled NC3 systems affect both nuclear and conventional missions and as such, expect that attacks against these vital national assets could be met with the harshest possible response, up to and including nuclear retaliation. With entangled space systems, a potential adversary must be willing to accept strategic consequences even if they only seek tactical objectives, so the cost-benefit calculus for decision makers should ultimately favor deterrence. Continuing this logic, I argue that disentangling NC3 systems could make conventional versions of the systems less dangerous targets and therefore more susceptible to attack. By lowering the expected costs and expected severity of retaliation for attacks, an adversary could be more willing to target disentangled NC3 space systems. I test my theory with novel experimental wargaming scenarios and an elite sample survey that feature entanglement as the independent variable (IV) and operationalize deterrence as a dependent variable (DV), as measured through attacks against space systems. I also conducted a public opinion survey to gauge perceptions about space system attacks again using entanglement as the IV. The wargames provide strong support to the theory of deterrence through entanglement. These sessions demonstrated that entanglement deterred attacks against space systems better than disentanglement, with entangled systems a third as likely to be attacked as disentangled systems. Not only were entangled systems less likely to be attacked, when they were attacked, attacks were less severe than with disentangled systems. Based on both quantitative and qualitative data, entangled systems often carried too high a risk of escalation to justify attacks whereas disentangled systems were viewed as safer options and were attacked more frequently and with more severe methods. Entanglement also appeared to deter attacks in general; out of 20 teams that did not conduct any attacks during the wargaming sessions, 18 were from the entangled treatment. The elite surveys sampled military members in the space community and while these surveys did not demonstrate that entanglement affected the decision to attack NC3 space systems as a whole, entanglement did appear to deter attacks against missile warning systems, and respondents in the entangled treatment were three times more likely to cite fear of escalation as the primary factor for not attacking space systems. The elite surveys also showed interesting differences in perceptions of severity based on whether a respondent was the attacker or victim. On a 1 through 9 scale of response severity, scores were a full point higher on average if the respondent was the victim compared to the attacker, for the same type of attack. Finally, the public surveys did not show significant differences between entanglement treatments and recommended response, though there were significant differences in perceptions of kinetic vs. non-kinetic attacks. Respondents in the entangled treatment did support more severe responses, on average, and were less likely to support soft power measures, however the biggest factor affecting response decisions was proportionality. Some other interesting findings emerged from the research, including an aversion to kinetic weapons and acceptance of cyber weapons. Cyber weapons were generally regarded as safe and effective options for attacks by participants across all treatments. If the data are any indication of future events, cyber weapons will likely play a significant role in conflict moving forward. Additionally, my research revealed interesting findings with respect to human psychology. The disparity in perceptions of severity for respondents based on whether they were the victim or attacker finds support in behavioral economics and could be a source of misperception for leaders assessing likely responses to their actions. The effects of human psychology were also on display in a wargaming session conducted on the heels of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Participants in this session accounted for just 14% of total participants but conducted over 50% of all non-space related military attacks. Additionally, 6 of the 12 teams involved conducted conventional ground assaults, compared to just 1 of the other 72 teams from other sessions. This supports the notion that external factors can bias experimental My research contributes to space security and entanglement scholarship in a number of ways. Most importantly, this is the first-ever empirical analysis of space system entanglement. While scholars have conducted space security wargames, elite and public surveys, and other types of space security analyses in the past, none have used entanglement as a variable. More broadly, my research further demonstrates the possibility and utility in experimental approaches to space security studies. Importantly, through my research I have challenged widely held beliefs that disentanglement contributes to deterrence and demonstrated that not only are disentangled systems more likely to be attacked in future conflicts, but they will also likely face more severe attacks than entangled systems due to the perceived lower risk of escalation. This finding alone should give pause to leaders advocating for increased disentanglement in the U.S.’ NC3 architecture. I also challenge the notion that disentangled nuclear systems will be viewed as “clearly off limits,” as these systems were attacked in both the wargames and elite surveys. If this assumption is being used to inform policies and strategies within the U.S. government, my research shows that this could be a dangerous misperception. Overall, my research provides new data with which to assess entanglement and perceptions about space conflict, both from elite populations and the public. These data can be used to inform better policies and strategies for space moving forward.
THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND CIVIL CONFLICT: LEVERAGING ECONOMIC SECTORS FOR PEACE

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-12-13) Shabb, Rana Olivia

My dissertation, The Private Sector and Civil Conflict: Leveraging Economic Sectors for Peace, aims to better understand the relationship between the private sector and peace, filling an academic gap and addressing a policy need. To this end, I undertake three interrelated research projects. The inquiries put forth and their findings seek to leverage existing policy tools to help strengthen peacebuilding and conflict prevention interventions in countries affected by conflict. To frame the questions undertaken in this dissertation, I provide a quick overview in Chapter 1 covering the main bodies of literature that seek to understand peace and prosperity in developing countries. While metatheories of modernization, liberalism, and intuitionalism have sought grand-scale explanations, they tend to assume that capitalism is part and parcel of peaceful and prosperous societies. The private sector is treated as a black box. At a more granular level, this dissertation seeks to understand how capitalism and the private sector affect the civil conflict-peace dynamic. Further, more targeted civil conflict academic work – which is more positivist and exhaustive in nature – tends to highlight economic factors (economic growth, poverty, price shocks) as drivers for conflict. Nevertheless, there is significantly less examination or theorization of how the private sector and firms can contribute to these factors. Previous approaches treat the private sector as a consumer of its environment (in terms of property rights, labor, prices, privileges). As such, this dissertation fills an analytical and theoretical gap and shifts the level of analysis to the private sector and firm-level. From this perspective, the private sector engages with labor (would-be-rebels and those with possible grievances) and governments to advance their material interest. Better understanding the private sector- civil conflict nexus sheds light on previously unexamined areas and can help inform peacebuilding interventions in developing countries. Notwithstanding academic work, conventional wisdom in the practitioner community states that a vibrant private sector is necessary to help secure peace in conflict-affected countries. International development agencies, for instance, have adopted private sector development as a strategy to promote peace. Despite this conviction, there is little to no evidence in the academic literature to support this claim. In chapter 2, I draw on the business and peace, and civil conflict literatures, to argue that a strong private sector through job creation and growth decreases prospective rebels’ incentives to join a rebellion and eventually reduces the likelihood of civil conflict. The argument is tested by examining the effects of private sector strength, as measured by domestic credit granted to the private sector and investment climate, on the probability of civil conflict occurrence from 1995 through 2018. Statistical analysis shows that a strong private sector has a pacifying effect on civil conflict. Specifically, findings demonstrate that access to credit, rather than investment climate, is more effective at sustaining peace. I illustrate the quantitative findings with the comparative cases of Egypt and Tunisia to show the mechanism by which access to credit has higher peace dividends. These findings fill an academic gap and equip policymakers to make more effective peacebuilding interventions. Further, the civil conflict literature tends to compare conflict nationally and does not differentiate between economic sectors, with the exception of the extractive industries. In chapter 3, I address the question of whether some economic sectors are better than others at sustaining peace. To examine firms’ subnational contributions to peace or civil conflict, I build a theoretical framework to predict economic sectors’ propensity for peace. Based on the supply of factors of production in civil conflict, I deduce that economic sectors that rely on skilled labor, mobile, and high-tech equipment are more vulnerable than those that rely on unskilled, fixed, and low-tech equipment. Subsequently, I argue that firms operating in sectors vested in peace (for their bottom line) engage in peace-promoting activities. To test for differentiated effects, I conduct a focused and structured within case analysis in Lebanon examining two sectors: one vested in peace and the other peace-neutral (financial vs. quarrying sector). Analysis of fieldwork data, collected through semi-structured interviews and local news reports reveals that firms vested in peace support national policies to that effect, whereas peace-neutral business can engage in inflammatory tactics, which have occasionally led to violent conflict. Given that knowledge and high-tech intensive economic sectors are more vested in peace than others, can existing foreign policy tools be leveraged to promote innovation in recipient economies? Chapter 4 examines the conditions under which military aid to developing countries triggers innovation. This question emanates from a puzzle in the innovation literature. Studies focused on military expenditure in the developed world show a positive relationship between military expenditure and innovation. Conversely, studies centered on military expenditure in developing countries often note the unintended, negative consequences of such expenditure (autocracy, increased coups, and the undermining of human rights). Borrowing from current literature on innovation that examines diffusion channels from the military to the national economy, this research seeks to identify a similar process in developing countries. Using a congruence test on a least-likely case, this study finds that military aid – effectively a military expenditure subsidy – can indeed trigger the emergence of new high-tech knowledge intensive sector in a recipient economy. In Jordan, this is reflected as the emergence of an innovative domestic arms industry after its peace agreement with Israel and a major influx of U.S. military aid. Further, by dividing military aid into different sub-types and tracing and comparing their different effects, this study finds that with conducive industrial and S&T domestic policy, military aid can have secondhand virtuous effects and lead to innovation in the recipient economy. Finally, Chapter 5 concludes by highlighting the main findings from the project, policy recommendations, and avenues for future research. Overall, this dissertation sheds light on how the private sector can help sustain peace, and how military aid – already dispatched in the billions – can be leveraged to magnify virtuous second-hand effects that work to support peace and prosperity in the long run.
Nuclear Communities: Epistemic Community Structure and Nuclear Proliferation Latency

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-05-03) Baxter, Philip

This dissertation examines variation in nuclear weapons proliferation outcomes and program duration. This seeks to address a persisting gap in the scholarship of nuclear weapons and their proliferation using quantitative models probing various postulated determinants of proliferation efforts. It is argued that the structure of epistemic communities in proliferating states, working in areas related to the nuclear fuel cycle, directly impacts a country’s ability to acquire nuclear weapons and the length of time necessary to do so, referenced in this work as program latency. Distinct structural features of these technical communities, such as network size, cohesion, compartmentalization, and institutional reliance, as well as other potential explanatory variables, are examined to distinguish key factors of both proliferation outcomes and duration. Significant statistical support for the structure of epistemic communities within proliferating states, in particular the over-reliance on institutions for interconnectivity through the network, is demonstrated as being an important component of this variation puzzle. This yields important findings for the literature on nuclear proliferation, nonproliferation policy, as well as the study of network dynamics within large scientific enterprises.
Market-based approaches for postharvest loss reduction

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-03-16) Adebola, Olufunke T.

Do farmers in contract farming (CF) arrangements have lower levels of postharvest losses than do farmers who do not participate in contract farming? Does our current understanding of postharvest losses overlook other critical causes of loss? According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), about 1.3 billion tons of food, representing nearly one-third of annual global food production, is lost or wasted before it reaches the final consumer. In Africa, 18 percent of cereals is lost postharvest. Technologies have traditionally been deployed towards reducing these losses. However, the success of technology solutions has been inconclusive in Africa. In light of this, market-led approaches to reducing losses are becoming mainstream in the postharvest loss literature. The research finds that farmers who participated in formal contract farming schemes experienced lower postharvest loss than farmers who did not. However, farmers participating in informal contracting schemes suffered more significant postharvest loss than did farmers in formal schemes or no schemes at all. The research also finds that while contract farming is an effective market-based policy for increasing food production and reducing losses, several institutional and cultural factors can hinder the communities from maximizing the potential benefits of contract farming. It also finds that the current understanding of postharvest loss is limited because the issue has been approached at the macro-level. To improve our knowledge and governance of postharvest losses, researchers must move from the macro-theoretical level to consider the micro-practical level and examine other unanswered, ignored, and unaccounted-for social and policy issues that drive postharvest losses.
The Politics of the Military in China: The CCP and PLA

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-12-12) Bulanov, Alex ; Fatykhova, Amelia ; Gouhl, Anika ; Detzler, Benjamin ; Dykstra, Emily ; Durrani, Faris ; Brown, Geoffrey ; Feroz, Mariam ; Chandanala, Prabhath ; Cai, Runyu

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is and has always been a crucial part to help the Party and Republic to advance its goals, from helping Mao to establish his communist state to the current endeavor into the controversial South China Sea. From the Qing Dynasty, the chaotic struggle of power between the Guomindang, the Communist Party, and Imperial Japan of the mainland provided ample space for the former Red Army to grow from a period of near defeat to the dominant force in the mainland, a key to the establishment of the modern PRC under Mao Zedong. In line with Mao’s infamous line “The party must always control the gun, the gun must never control the party,” Mao sought to ensure the PLA keeps under his iron fist control, promoting the lack of clear distinctions between military and civil leadership, and creating the only armed forces that do not swear loyalty to its nation but rather to the Party. The Party today continues to utilize the PLA to consolidate its ruling status, protect China’s sovereignty and advance its interests, whilst strategically subjugating its power to ensure it will always be under the regime’s control. Historically a symbiotic relationship, relations between the Party and PLA have evolved into one that is more “institutionalized” where the Party attempts to assert greater control through civil-military bifurcation efforts, forced divestiture from commercial activities, and systematic penetration by a network of commissars in the ranks of the PLA. Besides leadership, the PLA plays an important role in the Chinese public through military training, disaster relief, communist propaganda, and even the production of films and children’s toys. The PLA exists because of the Party and serves for the Party; it is the sole body which represents the PRC’s military interests from its physical expansionist efforts to nuclear arsenals.
Military Deception and Strategic Culture: The Soviet Union and Russian Federation

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-12) Morrell, Sara

This article explores the influence of Soviet and Russian strategic cultures on the conduct of military deception operations, one facet of information warfare. Our thesis is that a subcomponent of strategic culture in the Soviet Union and Russia from 1941 to 2017, termed hierarchical culture, enabled the conduct of cohesive deception operations. Our case studies are World War II, the Soviet-Afghan War, and the recent conflict in Ukraine. For each conflict, we use contemporneous primary documents to verify the existence of hierarchical culture and determine the cohesion of millitary deception operations based on descriptions of their level of success. Our findings indicate that hierarchical culture may have aided in development and conduct, but did not guarantee attempted military deception operations would be cohesive.. This work shows that in the context of foreign policy toward Russia, not only does one need to consider advances in high technology for traditional military applications but also innovations and uses below the threshold of declared war.
Coordinating across chaos: The practice of transnational internet security collaboration

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-03-18) Chaudhary, Tarun

This dissertation explores transnational security provisioning on/for the internet. A unique framework of analysis is established that melds traditional understandings of security drawn from computing disciplines with levels of analysis from international relations (IR) theory. This helps bridge the gap between IR security literature that often places the State at the center of analysis with the system of distributed agency often called a “patchwork” that underlies security provisioning on/for the Internet. This results in the Information Centered IR Security Model (ICIRS pronounced Icarus). The recognition and remediation of large-scale issues on/for the Internet is shown to be a form of social practice which has instantiated a community of practice. Data across cases of malware recognition and remediation are used to establish a historical context for the provisioning of security on/for the Internet and to analyze the modern provisioning context. It is concluded that an information security community of practice has arisen as consequence of the Internet’s early structure while evolving through various important security events. That community is embedded within the functional structure of the Internet and, through the maintenance of professional social relations, individuals within the community can act both as sensors to recognize emerging threats and as agents to remediate such threats thus wielding an important dimension of power in a connected world.
New Geostrategic Challenges Facing Our Western Alliance

( 2018-11-06) Breedlove, Philip M.

General Breedlove will be speaking about the geostrategic challenges that western allies face.