The IGCC Washington Forum offers UC faculty doing policy-oriented research an opportunity to present their work at the UC Washington Center in Washington, D.C. (UCDC).

Any UC researcher working on a policy-oriented project in IGCC's areas of interest is eligible to participate. Programs take place at UCDC and are open to the public.

IGCC's Washington Representative, Joseph McGhee, can assist in making arrangements.

2008 Events

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Bush Military Buildup
Daniel Wirls, Professor of Politics, UC Santa Cruz

Monday, February 25, 2008
2:00–3:30 p.m.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 not only triggered a declaration by the Bush administration of a "global war on terror," they also facilitated, under the cover of that conflict, a military buildup separate from the funding for the war on terror—one of the largest increases in military spending in the country’s history.

From 2000 to 2008. defense spending increased more 70 percent. That might not seem like a lot for a nation at war, were it not for the fact that the 70 percent increase does not include the more than $500 billion separately appropriated since 2002 to cover the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This buildup is one of the most important legacies of the Bush presidency and yet one of the less understood and least controversial. Wirls argues that the politics of war has protected and obscured its size and significance.

Professor Daniel Wirls has research interests in four areas of American politics: Congress, U.S. political history, the politics of military policy, and contemporary political transformations. His recent projects have focused on congressional history and the politics of bicameralism. He is currently working on an analysis of U.S. military policy from the end of the Cold War to the war in Iraq, as well as a critique of the Senate, with an emphasis on the nature and consequences of Senate representation and procedures. He is the author of, among other works, Buildup:  The Politics of Defense in the Reagan Era (Cornell, 1992) and The Invention of the United States Senate (Johns Hopkins, 2004).

Defending Against Terrorist Attacks with Limited Resources
Robert Powell, Professor of Political Science, UC Berkeley

Tuesday, February 5, 2008
10:00–11:30 a.m.

“One fact dominates all homeland security threat assessments,” the National Strategy for Homeland Security emphasizes, "terrorists are strategic." Making one target more secure and less attractive may make an attack on another target more likely.

Robert Powell presents a game-theoretic analysis of the problem of allocating scarce resources that takes the strategic nature of the attacker fully into account. The analysis offers general principles for allocating these resources, for assessing the trade-off between site defense and border defense, and for deciding how much spending is enough.

Professor Powell’s research focuses on war, international conflict, and the politics of weakly institutionalized states, and he is a specialist in game-theoretic approaches to these issues. His published work includes Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility, (Cambridge, 1990) and In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics (Princeton, 1999).

Nuclear Logics: Contrasting Paths in East Asia and the Middle East
Etel Solingen, Professor of Political Science, UC Irvine
Chair, IGCC Steering Committee

With comment and discussion by:

Dr. Gary Samore
Council on Foreign Relations

Doyle McManus
Los Angeles Times Washington Bureau

Michael Vance
Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Thursday, January 24, 2008
12:00–2:00 p.m.

Why do some states seek nuclear weapons while others renounce them? In her latest book, Etel Solingen discusses two distinct regional patterns. In East Asia, the norm since the late 1960s has been to forswear nuclear weapons while North Korea became the anomaly. By contrast, in the Middle East various states are suspected of pursuing nuclear-weapons capabilities while Egypt remained an anomaly. Solingen explains the logic behind these contrasting trajectories and whether or not they will endure. Please join us to hear Prof. Solingen outline her main conclusions, followed by an in-depth discussion of their implications for future policy.

Nuclear Logics is receiving prominent attention in the professional and policy communities. It was the subject of a special panel at the 2007 American Political Science Association annual meetings and was reviewed in the Chronicle of Higher Education shortly after its publication. A wide range of experts have praised it, from former United Nations Chief Weapons Inspector and International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Hans Blix to prominent academics and practitioners.

Professor Solingen is interested in the connections between international political economy and international security, internationalization, institutional theory, regional and international security regimes, democratization, and the comparative political economy of science and technology. In addition to Nuclear Logics, she is the author of Regional Orders at Century's Dawn: Global and Domestic Influences on Grand Strategy (Princeton, 1998) and Industrial Policy, Technology, and International Bargaining: Nuclear Industries in Argentina and Brazil (Stanford, 1996)

Joseph McGhee
IGCC Washington Representative
Phone: (202) 974-6295
Fax: (202) 974-6299
E-mail: joseph.mcghee@ucdc.edu

For more information on IGCC and its programs, please contact:
IGCC Central Office
Phone: (858) 534-3352
Fax: (858) 534-7655