Fraught U.S.-Russian security dynamics have spurred reevaluations of the entire relationship between the two former Cold War adversaries. The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM)’s U.S.-Russia Security Relations project focuses on establishing a constructive agenda for the two countries that includes security issues where the risks for confrontation are high but where cooperation to reduce shared dangers is possible.
No country, company, or private individual can fully utilize the benefits of information technology while protecting all of their own data, communications, or computer networks from every potential cyber threat, regardless of how much time and money they invest in protective systems. Each entity must set priorities, balance tradeoffs, and make choices about cyber protection, knowing that their choices will affect others and that others’ choices will affect them, too. Minimizing the most serious forms of cyber attack, espionage, and crime without hindering beneficial uses of information technology requires skillful multi-stakeholder governance. This project includes a set of research, education, and outreach activities to facilitate that process.
The lengthy process of negotiating, approving, and implementing a nuclear agreement with Iran has underscored how Iranian relations with the rest of the world can have major effects on international security—for both good and bad. This project seeks to improve U.S. and European security policy making towards Iran by increasing public and official understanding of the concerns and perspectives of Iran’s leaders and citizens.
Recent technological and geopolitical developments underscore again the need to balance a desire to preserve complete freedom of action and widely accepted governing rules as the basis for space operations. This project explores what has changed, and what has not, since George W. Bush’s quest for U.S. military space dominance first prompted CISSM to consider whether the United States could use its huge military advantages in space to achieve reliable security for itself and its allies, or if the stability, security, and safety of space operations required more equitable cooperation among all stakeholders.
In recent decades, civil conflict has become the principal source of global violence and is the arena where U.S. concerns about terrorism intersect most directly with the broader international security agenda. Yet the sources of civil conflict are not well understood. This project works to develop more sophisticated tools for analyzing the microdynamics of civil conflicts and to stimulate new thinking for policymakers on how to address their root causes, when to initiate crisis response measures, and what to do in their aftermath to assure reconstruction.
The Program for Public Consultation (PPC) seeks to improve the quality of governance by consulting the citizenry on the key public policy issues their government faces. It conducts surveys of public attitudes in the United States and in other countries, using innovative methods such as policymaking simulations.
This project began with the intention of exploring the role of missile defense in extended deterrence and nonproliferation worldwide. However, era-changing events in Europe, notably the Russian aggression in Crimea and Ukraine, mandated a core shift in the project’s focus. As a result, the project became more oriented toward Europe. As U.S.-Russia tensions continued to escalate and NATO allies searching for greater reassurance, missile defense—relegated to the back burner since the end of the Cold War—again took center stage. Familiar debates about the technical efficacy of missile defense, its role in assuring allies, and the potential for undermining strategic stability reemerged in today’s more complex security environment with a sense of greater urgency than at any time in the last 25 years.