 Good afternoon, I am Professor Steve Sodergren, Chair of the Department of History and Political Science here at Norwich University. And I will be overseeing the last panel discussion of the day, our student panel here at the Peace and More Summit. From its very inception, a student panel has been part of the summit in order to allow students the opportunity to offer their views on the many significant themes and issues that come before us each year in the summit. And this year is no different. One point I wanted to make before I introduce our participants is that the student panel is not directly on point. The papers you're about to hear may be tangentially connected to the summit theme of Peace in the Middle East. But students were invited to submit papers related in any way, shape, or form to the issue of international relations, foreign policy, military history, modern issues facing the world at large. So what we have before us today is a rather variegated collection of papers touching upon certainly the Middle East, but also Russia, China, the United States, and all points in between. My goal here is to really get out of the way of our students. The students here are who we want to highlight and their work. And I think you're going to find that the work before you today is some rather amazing stuff given that all of the students sitting before you are undergraduates. The format will be as follows. I will introduce each of the students all at once now at the beginning and then we will go through with each student presenting quickly their presentation in about 10 minutes. This is to save time for you, the audience at the end to offer some Q&A and to maybe help these students. Students who are perhaps these projects perhaps works in progress who could use your assistance and your advice and your questions. After each student presents, we will turn to our discussants who will offer a few comments of their own having read all of the student papers and then we will open it up for Q&A. But first of all, I wanted to thank you as we close out the first day of Norwich's Peace and War Summit of 2023. Thank you for attending. Thank you for those who are watching online and for those of you who are in person. This is as ever a significant event for Norwich every spring and we are glad that you chose to be part of it by participating. But allow me to first introduce the students sitting before you. We have two of Norwich's own and we have two visitors from Dartmouth College here to offer their views on a variety of international affairs. Immediately starting to my left, we have Sean Bassey who is a senior at Norwich University, class of 23, majoring in political science and minoring in history and communications. He is from Springfield, Virginia and he is a pending member of Norwich's chapters of the National Society of Leadership Studies, a pending member of the Political Science Honor Society, Pi Sigma Alpha and a pending member of the History Honor Society, Pi Alpha Theta. He is also the 2021-22 Gary Lord Paper Award recipient. He's a Norwich University scholar, a participant in the 2021 EU Schumann Challenge and a Norwich delegate to the 2022-2023 Student Conference on US Affairs at West Point. His future career goals are to pursue a career in maritime security intelligence either as a Navy officer or as a civilian contractor. To his office is August, to his left is August G. Gurari who is an undergraduate majoring in political science at Norwich. He is a member of the school's core cadets and Army ROTC program. His academic interests have steered him towards analyzing modern conflicts and strategy through the lens of historical culture clashes and the dissonance between populist and elite sentiments. When not at school, he resides in media Pennsylvania with his family. To his left is Maddie Shaw, a second year student at Dartmouth College studying government, Russian and Middle Eastern studies. Her interests are in conflict resolution, human rights, and Eastern European and Middle Eastern affairs. And she plans to pursue a career in diplomacy or intelligence. At Dartmouth, Madeline is a War and Peace Fellow and Research Assistant for Dartmouth's Political Violence Field Lab. She also competes in Model UN and serves as Undersecretary General for Dartmouth's Model UN Conference. Helping to publish, she helps publish and host podcasts for the World Outlook International Affairs Journal. And she engages with the Polis Pre-Professional Government Society as a Fellow. She has previous experience interning for a refugee resettlement agency and is thrilled to be working for the State Department's Near East Bureau this spring. In her free time, Maddie competes with Dartmouth's figure skating team, leads admissions tours, and can often be found reading history novels at local cafes. Finally, to her left is John V. Sodie, a junior at Dartmouth College studying government and economics. She is currently doing research on rebel governance in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Her previous publication experience includes a paper she wrote for the Observer Research Foundation in India on the international response to the amendments to Article 370 of the Indian Constitution pertaining to Jammu and Kashmir. After graduation, she plans to pursue a career in research in matters of foreign policy and security. First of all, please welcome all of our student panelists today. We will now get to our presentations, and we will begin from my left here with Sean Bassie. Give me one second so I can set up my phone for a timer. First, I would like to thank everyone for being here today and taking your time out of the day to hear our research, particularly after a month's worth of effort. Today, I'll be speaking on a paper I developed amidst the U.S. pullout in Afghanistan. We all know what happened here, so I will not belabor the tragedy of the two-decade conflict. I rather will highlight the recommendations I believe the U.S. and E.U. should have done at the time based upon my research conducted in the immediate aftermath of the fall as well as upon lessons to be taken for future crises. This plan was created in the spring of 2022 with the world's tension on Afghanistan given the pullout. However, we failed to account for those Afghani, Gafgans, who collaborated with the U.S.-led coalition during the two-decade conflict and were left behind under Taliban rule. My paper, A Policy Proposed on the Metaphorical Evacuation Railroad, was an attempt to create a joint U.S.-E.U.-led effort under unique political circumstances, will, and interest whose goal is to evacuate our faithful allies who face daily persecution by the new Taliban regime. To accomplish this task, my research determined five key factors required to facilitate this evacuation. First, our asylum system of asylum and visas needed to be tooled to prepare for mass expiltration. Second, even with political will, we should need a hosting country as a staging area to host individuals for screening and care. Third, we would need to develop a means to engage with a regime which at the time could be decentralized, revisionary, and unwilling to cooperate and whose policy was to harm those who collaborated. Fourth, we would need a third party to actively be in-country to extricate individuals and ensure compliance with agreements made with the Taliban. And finally, we must facilitate the resettlement of evacuees. These five factors would provide a mechanism to facilitate the scale needed to evacuate allies who otherwise would be persecuted by the Taliban. First, of the system of asylum and visas. We already had pre-existing frameworks designed specifically for collaborators in the U.S. Special Immigrant Visa and the EU with the Common European Asylum System. These systems were never designed to take an influx of applicants who were at immediate risk in the area of processing, where services were not available for them to be processed with, and it was a consequence of a deception during the coalition era. The plan called for the retool of the system to increase the scale of processing through the relaxing of screening metrics, off-area processing, and coordinated the fusel across both programs and joint efforts, not unlike the past historical precedent of the UN Orderly Departure Program with the Fall of Saigon in South Vietnam. Second, even with retooling, evacuees would need temporary housing in areas where we could ensure proper treatment, safety, and access to facilities where they can be processed for the U.S. Special Immigrant Visa and the EU Common European Asylum System, as a result of the unprecedented volume and political will in hosting thousands of individuals. To accomplish this, we would expand with collaborating governments who had existing refugee systems and frameworks, such as Turkey, to temporarily house individuals alongside U.S. and EU efforts. We would engage these countries with preferential treatment of pre-existing financial assistance programs and packages during the duration of the crisis in order to ensure the participation. Third, we must keep open, well, we must open and keep open the door into Afghanistan through engagement with the Taliban regime. Their participation cooperation would be necessary to schedule flights out of Kabul, as well as to ensure the safety of individuals being attracted through this program. It is important to remember at the time that this was a new regime, seeking international recognition by foreign powers, financial assistance, and foreign aid for the economy, relaxing of sanctions, and the release of frozen economic reserves held by the U.S. and EU upon the fall of the Afghan Republican government. This plan called for a hard-power approach in engaging with the Taliban, offering small releases of frozen economic reserves between the U.S. and EU in exchange for their cooperation leading to the confirmed extraction for these allies. Fourth, provide all other tenants of the plan were accomplished. How do we physically extract individuals from a country whose policy is to limit international interference? The means to accomplish this in application would come from the engagement and utilization of pre-existing NGOs which operate during and after the fall of Afghanistan. These NGOs will be legitimized in facilitating on-ground evacuation, ensuring compliance with the Taliban as representatives under this framework, and finding and escorting individuals to be evacuated. Finally, fifth, once we evacuate our allies, what next? To address the fifth issue in resettlement, the plan called for financial assistance towards the expansion of pre-existing national, state, and NGO efforts to facilitate the evacuees' transfer and resettlement in both the U.S. and EU, much like those who were able to stay Kabul in the fall of 2021, who have had at that point resettled. Obviously, these circumstances and factors were created in the immediate fall of Afghanistan in the spring of 2022. And unfortunately, much has changed since then. And as part of this paper, the features of an early crisis and the data opportunities have long since passed. The Taliban are getting goals have shifted. They have sought alternative means for recognition, through foreign power competition, and remain comfortable with non-engagement with the West. And as a result, this framework is not as applicable as before. Some of the framework has been implemented on, but not to the scale which can address the totality of the crisis. But the beauty of knowledge and history is that even when its direct application is not possible, the information gathered can always remain applicable for future crises. In creating a policy across international boundaries and national bureaucracies, there are four lessons which can be gleaned from this incident, for the future, instead of leading this crisis with criticism. One, have an exit strategy. As a future business, government, and military leaders, we must remember to have a strategy for exit in any scenario which we must intervene, influence, and enter into hostilities. At the beginning of the century, as many panelists have pointed out during this symposium, if you will, we entered with, we find evidence of a political thinking of a short war, an easy war, and a quick transition to democracy and stability. The outcome of two decades of conflict have not only disproved this mass calculation, but the severity of its downfall was a result of a lacking of strategy of exfiltration, oversight, over features of moral and responsible planning. In the case of my research and policy proposal, well in advance before we decided to exit Afghanistan, we should have considered how we should facilitate both the evacuation of our personnel, but that of faithful allies and supporters during a time there in orderly fashion. We should have considered, in the instance of my policy proposal, that the US Special Immigrant Visa was designed in an era where the US remains stable in Afghanistan, or at least relatively stable, and where the process by which the visa operates is not designed for a scenario of a quick pullout. Two, we must consider populations at risk or affected. When considering to pull out, we left upwards of 100 to 300,000 individuals according to the Association of Wartime Allies, NGO in conjunction with the Department of Defense, who had assisted the coalition during the two decade conflict. Our evacuation was to the extent of trying to exfiltrate as many military personnel and equipment, as well as what individual who were conveniently in the vicinity of Kabul Airport, rather than all of our supporters, allies, and key individuals who were at their own peril decided to assist our efforts. The cost of leaving these individuals behind are more than we can imagine. With future conflicts, whether in Afghanistan or abroad, future allies will ask whether the US and coalition leaving behind those who have supported them if it will happen to them. Thus, in the second lesson of creating policy, think through the problem in its entirety of all populations of its state or at risk of the cost of our actions. Third, joint efforts move mountains. This policy proposal has utilized separate frameworks that exist across the European Union and United States in the form of foreign humanitarian aid, frozen economic assets, international recognition, and engagement with the Taliban regime through more neutral European states. The impotence of this research was the result of a policy challenge to blend the European Union and United States efforts into a cohesive and effective system combining the mass finances and political will of the Western world. With these combined resources, both hard and soft power, at hand, even engaging with the Taliban isn't too unimaginable. And finally, fourth, the fourth lesson is that the policy is not just governmental, it's non-governmental. My research found that the bulk of the efforts after the fall of 2021 came from non-governmental organizations in the evacuation, negotiation, and resettlement of refugees and collaborators both during the fall and after. Only limited by the lack of resources, these individuals managed to resettle tens of thousands of individuals across the US and EU, enabling more change and effect that one would otherwise assume a government would accomplish. Rather than advocating policy from a position of using purely government, a simpler, cheaper, and equally effective mechanism is to combine both government and non-government organizations to pick up the slack of the inabilities of the other. In this example, how can we physically find, escort and evacuate individuals whose regime, which they oversee, or oversees them, refuses to allow international governments to operate within its boundaries? The answer was to use NGO and solve the research problem, the resource problem many NGOs face through lack of government support and backing. And in conclusion, this work was based upon the symptoms of an early crisis of utilizing joint frameworks of government and non-government government to facilitate an evacuation of at-risk peoples. Since the time of its inception, the environment and thus symptoms of the crisis have changed, yet there are lessons to be learned. Have an exit strategy. Consider the populations who are affected or at risk. Use joint efforts to move mountains and policy is not just governmental, it's non-governmental. As a student of history and political science, the lessons of the past can shape the present and the future of the world. I can only hope that my research is one key study towards preventing or leaving future crisis disease so that we may not see these incidents again. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming and thank you especially to Professor Ku. Without him, this paper would not exist. I had the opportunity to take his nuclear deterrence and disarmament class last semester and this is an expansion on the final paper that I wrote for that class. If you get the chance, I highly suggest you take the class. So my paper covers the perceived strategic nightmare the US is undergoing with the attempted nuclear proliferation by China, Iran, and North Korea. In my paper, I identify North Korea as the most likely of the three to utilize nuclear weapons offensively, but I make the case that peace with all three nations is possible. I reject the notion that any of these nations present a true nuclear threat to the US. My paper is split into eight sections. The introduction where I lay out historical context, current nuclear powers and touch on why these three nations want to proliferate. Next, I cover the relative stability of the Iranian regime in spite of increasing social turmoil and provide more context about why the theocratic government is so opposed to the US. I move on to discussing a hardliner opposition to the Iran nuclear deal as hardliners on both sides present an obstacle to peace. I then make the argument for a new nuclear deal based on evidence of Iran's compliance and signals from their own government. Next, I discuss how Xi Jinping is not the crazy, unpredictable, totalitarian US politicians hope he is and how there is rationality in the Chinese Communist Party's nationalism. North Korea follows with a discussion on their strained history with China and how they do not have the luxury of allies other rogue states do. I end with a discussion on what a future peace with North Korea could look like and then discuss current events in my conclusion. The Cold War arms race between the US and the Soviet Union has culminated in today's situation with nine nations confirmed to possess nuclear weapons. The deterrence gained by nuclear weapons has caused additional states to pursue proliferation, especially Libya and Iraq in the past and Iran and North Korea today. The US and its allies deposed Moe Margadofi and Saddam Hussein to prevent Libya and Iraq from proliferating, leading to extreme instability in those nations. Islamic militants gained a foothold in Libya. A large refugee crisis began leading to a culture clash in Europe and Libya is still embroiled in a civil war. In Iraq, ISIS was formed out of the persecution of the Sunni minority, following the Shia takeover which we instigated and Iran stepped in to back the Shia majority. Knowing what happened to these nations when they surrendered nuclear weapons and ceased their programs, Iran and North Korea have no reason to follow suit. They would lose a key deterrence measure and become a target for US-backed regime change. With the rising face, with the rising threat in China, US foreign policy makers are experiencing a strategic nightmare. This flies in the face of the doctrine of mutual assured destruction, which is what the Cold War was defined by. Iran, China and North Korea do not present nuclear threats on their own. We suffer from a plague of governments whose immediate reactions to foreign policy issues are to threaten violence and stoke fears amongst their populations to justify their oppressive actions in the name of security. Jingoism from all governments creates crises. The theocratic government of Iran has survived a string of pro-Western resistance over the past few years. The Ayatollah Orients himself has the only legitimate anti-Western force in the country, thus delegitimizing all opposition in the eyes of many of the Iranian people. Logis clerics in Iran also back the government. Our posture toward Iran today has been largely dictated by Israel and pro-Israel politicians. They view Iran as Israel's greatest military threat, which is justified as they have threatened to wipe Israel off the map, and they continue to fund anti-Israel forces throughout the Middle East. As Dr. Zori covered earlier, our history with Iran inclines us to oppose them anyway. We backed the 1953 coup d'etat, which overthrew a nationalist government and reinstated Muhammad Reza Pallavi as the Shah. His regime was repressive and plagued with corruption. He turned Iran into a renter state dependent on oil revenues for national income. The revolution of 1979 followed and the country shifted to an Islamic Republic. The hostage crisis led to the complete severance of American-Iranian relations until a joint comprehensive plan of action, which you might know better as the Iran nuclear deal, was passed in 2015. Despite Republican opposition to Iranian proliferation, as Waltz argues, but unfortunately you can't see what the color of the text. And a nuclear Iran would probably be the best possible result, the one most likely to restore stability in the Middle East. The possession of nuclear weapons would prop up any security weaknesses they have and would cause them to behave more prudently. Hardline our opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. In America, opposition was based on perceived appeasement and unverified rumors. The deal included the sunset clause, which would end restrictions on Iran by 2031. The rumors of non-compliance were unfounded with the International Atomic Energy Agency and other international inspectors verifying Iran in compliance with the deal. They dismantled thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium. They kept under the allowed amount of enriched uranium and they welcomed increased surveillance by agency inspectors. Despite this verified compliance by the international community, President Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018, at which point Iran returned to their pre-deal activities. Iranian opponents to the deal raised concerns over the loss of sovereignty due to the presence of international inspectors, as well as the desire to grow an arsenal unrestricted by the West. Despite this, I propose a new nuclear deal with Iran. The international community verified that the Iran nuclear deal worked. It proved that moderates in both nations could overcome radicals and push for peace. If the US wants to pursue a new deal, they have three options. One, they could reinstitute the original Joint Comprehensive Plan, which would be difficult now as Iran has grown well past the original restrictions in place and they develop advanced centrifuge models. Secondly, we could utilize the framework of the Iran nuclear deal, but reduce the limitations of the deal as a compromise with Tehran. A compromise would make it easier to observe commitments of the deal and signal to the current president our willingness to come to the table. The last option would be to recognize Iran as a nuclear power. This would make Iran feel more secure in its position, but it would also put them in a position that they would be subject to even more international scrutiny to keep them in check. By allowing the program to advance to weapons-capable levels, it would also give us the opportunity to encourage more of their program to be used for energy purposes. Moving on from Iran to China. The Chinese Communist Party has taken major steps to exert control over their claims. They are now Africa's number one trade partner. They're bolstering their Belt and Road Initiative as well. They are expanding their nuclear arsenal, having successfully tested a hypersonic glide missile, that glide vehicle that evaded American detection and are also constructing new missile silos in Xinjiang. The DOD projects China to have 1,000 warheads by 2030. American strategists predict that China would be willing to exercise nuclear might in the war over Taiwan, but I say the CCP is not as trigger happy as we have made them out to be. It was predicted that they would shoot down Nancy Pelosi's plane when she visited Taiwan. They did not. They merely conducted a military exercise to flex their might. We have done this plenty of times with NATO allies in Eastern Europe, with the goal of intimidating Russia. China also sees the struggles within the American military working to their favor. We are amid a recruiting crisis. Our laws and policies shift dramatically every four years as a result of our Republican model. We failed to nation build in the Middle East. Meanwhile, China is rising to overtake American hegemony in economic, cultural, and conventional might. As for North Korea, the lonely nation. Whereas Iran has strong allies in Russia and China to back them up, as well as regional allies in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon, North Korea does not enjoy this surplus of allies to come to their aid. China has helped them in the past, but since then they have clashed politically, economically, and even militarily throughout history. There were armed clashes in 1969. China turned away from North Korea to increase trade with South Korea in the 80s. And there have been multiple attempts by China to foster a coup within North Korea. China has even attempted to distance itself from the North Korean nuclear program. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea sees nukes as the key to preserve their existence. Seeing themselves as having the same legal status as the United States and other states possessing nuclear deterrent forces. Ramped up rhetoric by the Biden administration has not assisted in deterring this point of view. I believe a peaceful resolution with North Korea is possible. President Trump's summits with Kim Jong-un proved that headway could be made towards a diplomatic peaceful existence with North Korea, just as the Obama administration proved that negotiating with Iran is possible. The 2018 Singapore summit led to a joint declaration, which included recovery of soldiers remains, peaceful relations, and even an agreement to denuclearize. Unfortunately, the US Senate passed a military bill in August of 2018 that blocked President Trump's efforts at peace as it forbid the reduction of US forces on the Korean Peninsula. The 2019 Hanoi summit did not have a formal agreement reached, but in June of that year, Trump became the first US president to step foot in North Korea at the invitation of Kim Jong-un. This show of peace was supported by the South Korean political world, the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Pope Francis, and even Al Jazeera. Detractors decried the summit as appeasement of a dictator and indicated support for regime change, which has failed time and time again. The DPRK's main goal is to feel secure on the Korean Peninsula. It is unlikely that we could convince them to surrender their whole arsenal as they still look to the Iraq and Libya examples. And nuclear North Korea is simply a fact of life unless the US wants to conduct another regime change operation. Today, our new cycles are dominated by events like the invasion of Ukraine, continuing ineffective civil unrest in Iran, and the commander of the US Air Mobility Command predicting war with China by 2025. In 2022, we saw the most active year yet of North Korean missile tests. We stand at a precarious, fragile position, but we do not need to fear nuclear war. The nuclear powers of the Cold War have used sharp economic sanctions and extreme violence to punish nations who attempted to attain nuclear deterrence. They justify these actions by selling us on the potential of a nuclear holocaust and sacrifice truth to the send. Peace is possible so long as we are willing to help reason and unity prevail. Thank you. Hi, everyone. My name is Madi Shah. I'm a sophomore at Dartmouth and today I'll be presenting my research paper entitled Legacy of Lost, the Armenian Genocide in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. So to begin, a little bit of background. What is Nagorno-Karabakh? Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnically Armenian region located in the Caucasus region south of Russia. It was placed under Azerbaijan control in the Soviet Union as part of Stalin's Soviet and Soviet rule policy to split up national groups. And while nationalist sentiment was suppressed during the Soviet Union, it reemerged in the 1980s when tens of thousands of Armenians took to the streets demanding that Nagorno-Karabakh or Artsakh, as it is called in Armenian, would be reincorporated into Armenia. That resulted in a series of pogroms by Azerbaijani troops who killed over 20,000 Armenians and those events together emerged into the first Nagorno-Karabakh conflict of 1991 as the Republic of Artsakh officially declared its independence. In the bloody three-year conflict, Armenia eventually retook control of the region, resulting in 30,000 civilian casualties and over a million displaced. Russia eventually broke out a ceasefire in 1994 that officially held until 2020, although numerous border incursions and violent flare-ups happened specifically in 2016. In late 2020, in the peak of COVID, Azerbaijan, which was economically reinvigorated with new technology from Turkey, struck back at Armenia in the second Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and completely destroyed Armenian forces in just 44 days, eventually taking control of about 75% of the region. That is the status quo today. There are still border incursions and violent flare-ups, especially since Russia has been unable to secure its ceasefire, given the recent war in Ukraine. A little bit more background. What is the Armenian genocide and why does it matter today? So Armenia and ancient Christian kingdom had been part of the Ottoman Empire since the 15th century. The Ottoman Armenian minority had thrived in the empire and were often the most well-off and best educated, leading to some resentment and tension with the majority. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers, the Germany and Austria-Hungary, and this was correlated with the rise in the young Turks, which were nationalist contingent of Ottoman politicians that set out to Turkify the Ottoman Empire. So once the Ottoman Empire began incurring losses in World War I, the young Turks began blaming the treachery and disloyalty of the empire's Armenian populations. And in the spring of 1915, they rounded up and executed Armenian intellectuals and leaders throughout the empire. That was followed by a systematic and widespread deportation and death marching of Armenian villages into the Syrian desert. Experts today estimate that more than 1.5 million Armenians, more than 90% of the empire's pre-war Armenian population was killed in just one year in the Armenian genocide. Today, Turkey and Azerbaijan deny that the genocide happened and that they hold some responsibility for it. Turkish criminal code continues to ban any recognition of the genocide with numerous journalists including, this is a plaque for the Armenian-Turkish journalist, Rant Dink, who was murdered in 2007 by Turkish nationalists after writing about the genocide in a Turkish publication. And so it's completely banned in Turkey. And Turkish lobbyists even face off with the Armenian-American community here in the US. Roxanne Masjidat, who is the director of the Genocide Education Project, told me in an interview that the reason why we don't really teach our high school students about the Armenian genocide in US history textbooks is because of Turkish lobbying. So getting on to more of the content of my paper, what connects Turkey and Azerbaijan? Why is this connection relevant? In 2020, during Azerbaijan's renewed attack on Nagorno-Karabakh, Turkish President Erdogan claimed that Azerbaijan and Turkey were one nation, two states, and subsequently announced that it would help aid Azerbaijan tremendously in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Turkey trained Azerbaijani troops in joint military exercises and they supplied weapons, including advanced Jones and F-16 fighter jets. Turkey even reportedly sent up to 1,000 Syrian mercenaries to aid Azerbaijani fighters in the conflict. So why does this connection exist? Well, first, strong ethnic and cultural ties, both states are majority Muslim. Second, Azerbaijan is a leading energy consumer and investor and partner for Turkey, so economic ties. Third, many sites Turkey's desire to gain territory and influence some say that it desires to restore the Ottoman Empire, which is just one claim, definitely to grow their influence in the Caucasus region over the Russia-dominated OSCE. And some, especially Armenian scholars would say that Turkey and Azerbaijan are united in their joint denial of the Armenian genocide and their desire to delegitimize Armenian territory. So bearing in mind this background, my research on this topic led me to this thesis. The Armenian genocide of 1915 continues to have profound impacts on Turkish foreign policy and Armenian self-identity in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. This manifests itself in three ways. The first is the continued Turkish hostility towards Armenia. The second is extreme ethnic hatred of Armenians within Azerbaijan. And third is Armenian fear of the continuation of genocide. So to my first point, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has proliferated hostility towards Armenians within Turkey. Also disclaimer, when I talk about views or actions, I don't intend to generalize to entire populations. That's my disclaimer. But at the start of the 2020 war, anti-Armenian demonstrations did spread throughout Turkey. And they were heightened by Biden's recognition of the Armenian genocide in 2021, which was looked unfavorably by many Turks. Parades of cars waving Azerbaijani flags drove through the Armenian patriarch in Istanbul, which was where a lot of Armenians were first executed in the Armenian genocide. And some signs from this Turkish protest that I found say, you're all Armenians, you're all filthy. We will descend upon you in the night, death to Armenians. And so as these protests spread, so too did a rise in anti-Armenian hate crimes within Turkey, particularly by the Grey Wolves, which is a Turkish nationalist organization that has claimed responsibility for several of these anti-Armenian demonstrations, as well as an official hunt for Armenians in 2015 in France. Roxanne Maz-Judas also told me that Grey Wolves organizers lit a flame in the San Francisco Armenian Cultural Center and day school where she works in San Francisco. And aside from those, there's also evidence that Turkey has attempted to indoctrinate Armenians within the Gorno-Karabakh. The Grey Wolves have opened several schools in the region. They've also renamed Armenian buildings and streets to Turkish names. And they've even reportedly paid Syrians to resettle into the Gorno-Karabakh conflict zone following the recapture of the region by Azerbaijani forces. And all of this is really encapsulated in anti-Armenian rhetoric within Turkey in the past two years. In July 2020, for example, President Erdogan said that we will continue to fulfill the mission our grandfathers have carried out for centuries in the Caucasus, alluding obviously to the orchestration of crimes such as the Armenian genocide. And a former prime minister called for the deportation of Armenians from Turkey, obviously stroking Armenian fears that genocide rhetoric is back, really. On that same note, I found that in the Gorno-Karabakh conflict, extreme ethnic hatred of Armenians has proliferated through Azerbaijan. The first way that has manifested is in a state policy of cultural erasure, not unlike ISIS's cultural destruction that we've seen in Syria. This includes the intentional destruction during the 2020 war of Armenian churches, monuments, cultural heritage sites. Some archaeologists have called this the greatest cultural genocide of the 21st century. And my second point is that Azerbaijan has also known to glorify the violence against Armenians throughout the conflict. This is a theme park called Spoils of War that is in Baku. And one can see firsthand the dehumanization of Armenians as it features kind of grotesquely exaggerated wax models of Armenian soldiers, as you can see in the picture, as well as the displays of helmets of debt captured Armenian soldiers. Advertisements of this theme park are specifically for children. And so I think it just goes to show the dehumanization of Armenians in Azerbaijan. My last point is that throughout the Gorno-Karabakh conflict, the legacy of the Armenian genocide can be seen really through Armenia's narrative of victimization going from 1915 to the present day. One can find numerous examples of Armenian officials using the Armenian genocide as kind of a rallying cry to Armenians throughout the Gorno-Karabakh conflict. In 2016, President Sargasyan said, Azerbaijan's dream is to ethnically cleanse Artsakh from Armenians. We will not tolerate another Armenian genocide. For the sake of time, I'll skip this one. In 2020, President Sargasyan said, Turkey wants to repeat what happened 105 years ago, ethnic cleansing of Armenians from their homeland and create another genocide. And just two days ago, I found a statement from Armenia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs that says, with its aggressive discourse and actions, Azerbaijan makes preparations for subjecting the Armenians of Gorno-Karabakh to genocide. So clearly, genocide and its denial are very much still alive and have huge impacts on this modern conflict. And as a result of this widespread narrative, as you can see, Armenia views Turkey and Azerbaijan really as existential enemies that are kind of bent against the existence of their Armenian state. And in my paper, I argue that this makes Armenia too blind to its own injustices, such as Azerbaijanis point out to a massacre of 600 Azerbaijanis in 1992, that Armenia has failed to take responsibility for. And second, it also leads to an inability to trust any settlement attempt. And that has really stalled conflict resolution in Gorno-Karabakh. And so just for a few concluding words about the impact in my research and what I found, really without the recognition of this historical genocide or grievance, the overcoming of this ingrained animosity, the legacy of genocide really never ends and peace resolution especially in this case can be near impossible. Interestingly, in a speech given shortly before the Nazis invaded Poland, Hitler told his generals, after all, who today remembers the annihilation of the Armenians? As an Armenian student at Dartmouth told me, those who erase history are bound to repeat it. And so I hope that my research here goes to show that, well, history may not necessarily be a roadmap for the future, it can be a training manual. That is important that we study if we want to understand the current moment. Thank you very much for your time and listening to me. Today I will be presenting my paper on the Obama administration's response to Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential elections. I'll briefly give you an outline of how I will be going about this. I'll speak about my motivation behind writing this topic and then talk about what exactly Russia did and how the US responded followed by an in-depth analysis of the administration's response. And then I'll conclude by looking at the implications of the user's subversion as a tool of statecraft and US-Russia rivalry today. Great powers have been engaging in subversive activities like electoral interference for years now. But 2016 was markedly different. In the words of the intelligence community's assessment in 2017, Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represented a significant escalation in A, the directness, B, the level of activity and C, the scope of effort compared to previous operations against the United States. What intrigued me then was how Russia was able to do what it did in 2016 that is effectively paralyze the Obama administration without facing any serious consequences. The central questions I sought to answer in my research were what made subversion effective in this case, how to analyze the Obama administration's response and what are the implications of this case for the US-Russia rivalry at large. This led me to develop my main argument, mainly that the effectiveness of Russia's actions in 2016, as measured by the erosion of the Obama administration's power, ought to be attributed primarily to the flawed assessment of the situation and the narrow goals that the administration set for itself to begin with. So very briefly, what did Russia do in 2016? It hacked and dumped Hillary Clinton's emails at crucial moments in the election campaign in a manner that was prejudicial to Trump's electoral prospects. They established ties with the Trump campaign and also engaged in social media misinformation. All in all, they violated America's sovereignty. What was the motive behind Russia's actions? The intelligence community assessed that Russia sought to help win the elections and damaged Clinton's chances at a victory. However, the focus of my paper is more of Russia's goals to sow chaos and undermine American democracy that is more consistent with Russia's subversive activities against the United States over the years. Although the administration knew as early as 2015 that Russia was engaging in such activities, they did not set up a committee to deliberate countermeasures as late as 2016. When they did, a range of options were deliberated. However, there was disagreement about how and when to act. By late September, they had ruled out taking any action before the elections had concluded. When the elections did conclude, the administration took over actions like expelling Russian diplomats and imposing sanctions as well as covert actions, such as planting cyber weapons in Russia's critical infrastructure as a means of preventing future escalation between the two powers. However, the response was heavily criticized with many saying that not enough was done and whatever little was done was done too late. So why did the Obama administration struggle to mount a strong response to Russia? I argue that it was because of their flawed assessments and narrow goals. Obama had been a very deliberate and cautious president. He was generally averse to overreacting to Russia and viewed it as a weak power, a regional spoiler, and hence maintained a policy of strategic patience towards Russia. It is likely that the same tendencies guided his decision-making during 2016. The administration also believed that the most effective way for the US to stop Russia was through making private direct threats to Putin. However, this did not work. Finally, the administration believed that Russia possessed escalatory dominance in this situation. That is that they were afraid that they had not yet seen the worst of Russia's campaign. And if they provoked Russia, Russia could possibly edit photo data, giving Russia the upper hand in any ensuing escalation. However, it is not clear why exactly they believed this and I will delve into this in further detail later. The Obama administration also set certain goals for itself that highly constrained it. For example, they did not believe that by exposing Russia's actions, they would only be furthering Russia's goals of sowing chaos. They did not want to be perceived as being too partisan, is that that time Obama had been campaigning on Clinton's behalf. And lastly, they wanted to protect the integrity of the election. Thus, I argued that the administration tied its own hands. However, I do recognize that it can be argued that the administration faced significant domestic and systemic constraints. For example, there was a heightened degree of polarization in America at the time that prevented the administration from getting a bipartisan consensus for a statement condemning Russia and Congress. However, I would argue that this was a mere roadblock, not an absolute hindrance to taking stronger action. Moreover, some of the domestic strains seem to have been self-created. For example, the administration failed to get the states to agree to federal involvement in state-level elections because they didn't inform the states of Russia's activities in the first place. The intelligence agencies were also blamed for delaying reaching a consensus as the administration had requested on Russia's motives and Putin's personal involvement in what was happening. However, I would argue this is again a self-created constraint because the administration's heightened focus on achieving a consensus which led to a delay in mounting a response. Moving on to systemic-level factors, I recognize that realists would argue that any action the U.S. would have taken would have just exacerbated the security dilemma for Putin. However, I argue that such fears of escalation were highly exaggerated because escalation on Russia's part would have involved changing the actual voter registration systems to tamper with the actual vote counts. However, this would have constituted the highest level of electoral interference and would have constituted a clear violation of the United States' Westphalian sovereignty. Obama himself reportedly told Putin that international law, including the laws of armed conflict, applied to cyberspace and that the U.S. would hold Russia accountable to these standards, essentially applying that the United States would consider the alteration of votes an act of war. Thus, I believe that the United States far superior capabilities economically and militarily would have effectively deterred Russia from taking such an action in the first place. However, the administration was not just concerned about escalation, but they truly believed that Russia had escalatory dominance in any situation, meaning that Russia was superior across all rounds of the escalation ladder making escalation losing bet in the first place. However, these fears again seem to have been exaggerated because such fears guided Obama's decision-making with respect to Ukraine in 2014 as well when he refused to provide lethal weapons to Ukraine. However, Trump did the same thing and did not face serious escalation from Russia. Moreover, Obama himself gave a press conference where he said that the United States cyber capabilities remain unmasked in the world. And finally, the administration also expressed in extreme confidence throughout 2016 in the effectiveness of making direct and private threats to Russia. However, the only reason these threats would have worked in the first place would have been if Russia believed that the United States would have an upper hand in any escalation between the two powers. Hence, the administration's messaging on the conflict itself seemed contradictory. And lastly, the administration could have been deterred with the ambiguity in international law regarding non-forcible intervention in countries' foreign elections. However, the United States has never really been constrained by international law when it comes to taking actions in its own self-interest. And hence, I do not think that this was the primary factor in the weak response. I argue that this case has strong implications for the user subversion as a tool of statecraft. And that subversion is a tool of great power where I will raise here to stay because it remains cheap. It allows for plausible deniability and many of the conditions that made subversion easier to use in 2016, such as the heightened degree of polarization in America and the ease of disinformation that the internet age gives to the subverter today continue to exist. Moreover, the international, the intelligence community has assessed that Russia will continue electoral interference, not just in America, but in other parts of the world as well. However, it is important to remember that Russia's actions in 2016 were not just aimed at regime change, but more so at undermining democracy as a whole. And thus, it has ushered in a new era of election meddling. I would like to conclude by saying that Russia's actions in 2016 constituted a gross violation of America's Westphalian sovereignty. And it is a matter of great concern that Russia was able to intervene in America's elections and paralyze the Obama administration without facing any serious consequences. While some may argue that it was the myriad domestic and systemic constraints the administration faced that were responsible for the weak response, my analysis has shown that it was primarily the administration's flawed assessment of the situation to begin with, and the narrow goals that it set for itself moving forward that are to blame. Thank you. Thank you. And that concludes four presentations that gave us a lot to think about and to help us think through some of this. We have two faculty members here from the Department of History and Political Science who will offer their comments on these papers. At the end of the table there, we have Associate Professor of History, Professor Mary Kim, who also serves as the program coordinator for the Studies and War and Peace degree program here at Norwich. And to her left, we have Assistant Professor of Political Science, Michael Funberg, who also serves as Director of the Norwich Honors Program. Each will offer their comments on two of the previously presented papers. Professor Kim will be commenting first. Professor Sodergren, and thank you to all our panelists for their excellent papers. I have the privilege of giving some commentary notes for Sean's paper and Maddie's papers. I'll start with Sean's first. And these are, I think, sort of questions and notes to help you maybe push your thinking further and really think about maybe the implications of a lot of the things that you raise. The paper is really fascinating for being a very cold-hearted, cruel-hearted, very clear-eyed, I think, dissection of some of the things that really went wrong and still continues to be kind of an issue for folks who are affected by the end of direct U.S. presence in Afghanistan. So I think for this paper, some of the things that I think really it raises is a lot of folks think of the United States' strength as its military, and a lot of people think of the military strength as really logistics, right? That's really where the United States is unparalleled. And here, that great power came up very short in many respects, despite the heroic efforts of many individuals involved. So this actually begs the question, I think, of what about crises like these where maybe in the future we can see more displacement? We're already seeing a lot of this kind of migration movement uncertainty and maybe more a frequency of events, right? Or maybe situations where we will need to move a lot of people very quickly. So I think, you know, what are the lessons and how much of this kind of effort for evacuation or assisted migration, how much of this is really scalable, right? And instead of trying to solve this problem from this tail end, is there something more proactive on the other end, right? I think this is something that is really raised by your question or your essay on the conceptual level. And Professor Ogren, please stop me if I'm going over time. The other thing I think your essay really raises is despite the incredible difficulties that those who are both evacuating and people who are being evacuated faced and are facing, moving to the place you want to go is actually sometimes the easy part, believe it or not, right? The hard part is being accepted at the place you end up maintaining your dignity as a human person, as a refugee, of your stateless. And I think your paper really, I think, sort of raises these very deep issues, right? So thank you for your paper. Maddie's paper uses a really great framing device of sort of an online war over sports athletes using nationalistic music and people sort of getting into playmoors over who owns cultural identity and claiming your identity as Azerbaijani or Armenian and sort of the really dark history behind that. And so I think Maddie's question of, you know, what can we learn from these attempts to sort of mold history? And your paper, I think, has a lot to offer both for other areas of the world, other histories that have sort of similar questions of accountability for historical atrocities and attempts of reconciliation or lack thereof. In your paper, you mentioned Orhan Pamuk, who is a really well-regarded noble prize when they're a Turkish writer and others who have raised their voices despite the incredible obstacles put in front of them that deny their truth, right? Their attempts to bring light to a lot of these historical episodes of utter darkness. And this reminded me that Oye Kenzapuro, who is a Japanese writer who recently passed away just a few days ago, it was also one of noble prize and he was very well known for trying to bring those questions to light for Korean-Japan relations, right? So I think in terms of what we can try to understand about the Armenian genocide and maybe to sort of, despite this being a very grim topic and one that you see as becoming sort of intensifying, right, in really negative ways, that's what it takes to keep people hating each other, right? Lots of lots of history, educational systems, constant reinforcement in media and propaganda and that's how we build it up, right? And I think human beings are also, we're pretty good at breaking stuff too, right? And maybe hopefully we can break this kind of stuff, not the good type stuff. So those are some of my comments. I hope that they're useful for thinking about the possible scope of your papers outside of just your particular regions or disciplines and thank you so much. Thank you. First I wanna commend all of the students at Row Papers. It's really impressive to see this level of research, especially at your level and more importantly that you're putting yourselves out there and you're participating in something like this. So I think you're on a good path to engage with complex issues as you move forward and you're only gonna get better as you go. So good job on writing the papers in the first place. So I am gonna comment on August and John V's papers. So I'll start with August. You're hitting a good, talking about a couple of good things, these nuclear flashpoints and these hotspots, these are definitely things that we need to care about. Sorry, I'm getting some feedback here. Definitely things that we need to care about and I think the most important thing that you're tapping into is this idea that global nuclear politics is driven by domestic issues. So when we think about global or when we think about nuclear issues, we tend to think balancing, we tend to think security politics, we tend to think on the more macro scale and you're showing that domestic factors are really a driving instance for why states want nuclear weapons, especially Iran, North Korea and China. Especially in Iran where you have the most developed case study I think here. You're showing that historical context matters a lot and from the panels that I saw, those have been reoccurring themes, right? Domestic politics matters, historical context matters. You're in good company with some of those things that you're touching on. For both papers, one thing that I would ask you to think about is where you're making your contribution. What contribution are you making to the discipline? Because you're kind of giving these case studies and you're giving these overviews but you're not really grounding it in kind of the broader disciplinary discussions and you're touching on a lot of different themes and I think if you focused in on a single theme that might give your paper a little bit better structure and help it a little bit. So for August, you're really connecting domestic politics to international relations and there is a key and large developed literature on this that you can focus on. An important thing that you're trying to do here which I encourage you to continue to develop is taking the perspective of other nations, right? So when you talk about Iran, you're thinking, well, why would Iran want a nuclear weapon? Why would China want a nuclear weapon? And you're not just taking this US-centric approach. You're trying to understand where they're coming from which I think provides a really developed paper. So when we think about Iran wanting a nuclear weapon, it's for some regional superiority, some level of security and you're showing that there's a lot of domestic pressures that the Iranian leadership is facing that's driving that rhetoric. You're incorporating some economic issues and other case studies. So again, focusing on some of those domestic issues. So I would encourage you to think more deeply about those perspectives about how domestic pressures are shaping some of those key leaders. I think there's a lot of room to do this because your cases are a little unbalanced. You have a lot more on Iran than you do about China and North Korea, right? You show a lot more of the complexities of the nuclear issue in Iran, especially with the US approach. And that makes sense because we went through the Iran nuclear deal in Obama and then Trump revoked it and now we're trying to figure it out again, right? So there's been a lot of back and forth and there's been a lot of coverage in the United States so it makes a lot of sense that that's one that's had most of, dominates your paper, right? I would encourage you to try to develop that more for the China and North Korea case. You start off the paper and say, none of them are really a threat but North Korea might be a threat, right? And then, so I'm like reading Iran and that has the most developed and then I read China and then you're like, and then here's North Korea and then you kind of like go over pretty quickly. So if that's the one that's gonna be a threat, talk a little bit more about that. And is it that you think that it's a threat because we don't have as much information on it, right? Is that the reason why it might be a threat whereas we do have a lot more information about Iran? I think developing a clear structure for each of your case studies can help with developing them and connecting them to your broader contribution. For example, we can look at the Iran case, right? To say, here's how Obama and Iran interacted, here's how Trump and Iran interacted, here's how Biden and Iran interacted, right? And here's the Iranian response. And if you replicate that for each of the case studies, that could give you a little bit more structure that could help tap into how domestic politics affects global nuclear security decisions. One thing you bring up in the conclusion is that there's a lot of cases where countries like the United States are playing politics with nuclear proliferation, working to contain rogue states instead of opting for more peaceful methods. And your paper is about pursuing more peaceful methods. I think you need to work a little more to develop that claim, especially by sowing some of the domestic politics on the other side, Iran, North Korea and China. Clarifying, the U.S. clarifying these countries as rogue states, right? I think sends a signal to other countries as well to not give them the green light to further develop nuclear weapons, right? So if we say it's okay for Iran, it's okay for North Korea, there's gonna be more countries that are gonna see that as a green light to further develop their nuclear capabilities as well. So I think there might be something that you can work through to say, well, why is the United States trying to frame these as kind of bad actors and things that we don't wanna see proliferate in some way. But overall, I think you have a start to a really strong paper with these different case studies and if you develop them more, I think that you have a good paper there. John V, similarly, you have a paper that has a really good timeline of events. It's a much more narrow timeline of events because you have a more narrow timeframe. You're looking at the 2016 election. You lay out the Russian tactics in the 2016 election and the Obama administration's response, ultimately arguing that it wasn't enough of a response or it didn't come soon enough. So I'll leave it with the same comment that I had for August. Where are you kind of making your contribution into the broader literature? You tell a compelling story, but it's kind of a narrow case study. I would like to see it kind of grounded in the broader discipline. You cover a few different theoretical angles and I think picking one could give you some clear direction for your paper. For instance, one thing you bring up is the level of analysis. So you say the response is best explained through one level of analysis. Flood assessments made a narrow set of goals by the president and his administration. So I think that there's a couple levels there. So the individual decision maker being Obama, the bureaucratic level being the intelligence community and other bureaucratic agencies, the government level, legislative executive, and then you also bring up the systemic levels, international constraints and great power politics. So I think if you pick one, that could help give a little focus. I don't think you have to abandon them, right? You could say, all right, well, here's how Obama is interpreting systemic level constraints. And I think that that could maybe even be a way to organize the paper. I think there's a few major points in your criticisms of the Obama administration that need to be addressed a little more thoroughly. So you place a lot of blame on Obama and his administration. Why not more decisive action? Why not more aggressive? Why not more retaliation? This kind of suggests that the president makes decisions in a vacuum. And that's not really the case. There's competing bureaucratic recommendations, some of which you tap into with the intelligence community. There's congressional pressures, which you mentioned, and broader political implications and electoral integrity, right? So Hamilton argued we need an energetic president, but there are still limitations on the president because of the office. Second, the extent to which Russian meddling occurred in 2016, as you noted, was unprecedented. The misinformation campaigns and U.S. social media was incredibly new. And the extent of Russian interference wasn't fully known until after the election. So it's difficult, especially in retrospect, with complete information to say, well, this is how the president should have acted. I think especially at the time, then candidate Trump was saying, well, it's actually, it's not Russia that's doing this. It's China or it's North Korea. So there's a lot of competing narratives that are flying around that can make it difficult to respond. And then the idea of cyber warfare more generally is still pretty new, right? There isn't kind of a clear red line. And every time I talk to folks that are in this field, I'm like, what is the red line? Like, how do we respond to something because it isn't that one-for-one in the same way that kinetic warfare happens, right? So if you look at more poignant examples like the SolarWinds hack or the Colonial Pipeline, right? The response has been to like shore up cyber defenses, not necessarily to go out and attack in a retaliatory way. Two more comments and then I'm done, I promise. Because I know you all have questions too. So two more sets. You argue Russia's use of subversion in 2016 was effective as measured by erosion of the Obama administration's authority, right? So the political scientist in me is like, how are you measuring authority? Because that's a really difficult thing to measure and understand. So if you wanna make a claim, you have to be pretty clear about how you're measuring authority. Is it public approval rating, right? Is that what's influencing it? And then make sure your paper continues to connect to that measurement of the concept, right? So did Obama make decisions after the election because of his decrease in authority? Did Obama make lesser decisions because of a decrease in authority? I'm not entirely sure. And then lastly, you make two really good points. And you hit on this at the very beginning of your presentation, but at the very end of your paper, and I think it should be front and center. One is about the lack of international laws and norms about the type of intervention that Russia engaged in. And then secondly, and more importantly, this has created a new method of election interference with the goal of undermining democracy itself, not just picking a winner. And if you connect that to the 2020 election, I think Russia did a pretty good job, right? If we look at what the 2020 election looked like and how many people thought it was interfered with, even though the Department of Homeland Security came out and said it's been the most secure, right? But there's still people that have lost some level of faith in our democratic system, right? So I think you're using this 2016 case as a starting point, but I think connecting it to that idea of a Russian approach to undermine democracy more broadly, I think is really important and valuable that you can continue to build on. But thank you all for your papers, they're all excellent. Thank you, Professor Thunberg, that was loud. All right, I'll back off the microphones and speak softly, but now is your time. We had four interesting presenters. We have two microphones. I invite any or all of you, well, maybe not all, I invite any of you to step forward and offer any questions you have on any of the topics for specific presenters. So please, please feel free to step forward and offer a question. I will start us off here with a question that I have actually for Maddie. As somebody who studies historical memory, particularly in American history, when some of the things you showed regarding the perpetuation of stereotypes and historical fallacies regarding the genocide in Armenia, in Azerbaijan and Turkey, the theme park was horrifying. I see unfortunate parallels to perhaps American history and it perhaps it's treatment with indigenous peoples, but what, apart from historical memory, what politically is motivating this? As we saw in August's presentation, domestic politics tends to steer a lot. What domestically, politically, could you maybe comment more on is steering, why are they stoking this? Why are they continuing to dredge this up and perpetuate these stereotypes and fallacies? Of course, thank you for your question. Sorry. Well, I think a short answer is mainly, sorry, the rally around the flag effect. Like, as I said, all of the Armenian politicians that have used the Armenian genocide, it's not just kind of a personal reflection on maybe grandparents that have died. It's a true kind of ethos, or I guess in this case, pathos to rally Armenians to go all in on this conflict and really see Azerbaijan and Turkey as kind of existential enemies that are really bent against Armenia's existence. And I think the same applies in the other way. By kind of dehumanizing and picturing an enemy as not human, it's a lot easier for groups to obviously kill, commit war crimes, do things that if they truly saw the other side as human, they wouldn't do. And so I think on both sides, efforts to dehumanize or victimize oneself has kind of just played out into furthering the conflict. It's a tool really used by politicians and people who have interest in promoting the conflict. So I have that answer to your question. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. We have a question over here, sir. Please step forward. And I think you can, is the microphone on? Or can we activate it? It is, all right. Okay. So one of my main things is in like the Armenian genocide, are you familiar with someone by the name of Enver Pasha? Yes. Okay. What do you think there is trying to be like a new sort, not really from like Erdogan, because I know Erdogan is trying to be like a neo-Ottoman in his like foreign policy. But do you think that in like Azerbaijan or the other areas, they're still trying to make like a new Enver Pasha figure? And for the Armenians, there is this ideology, this fascist ideology called Segekanism, which is basically a reimagining of the Armenian people into this spiritual force against Turkification. I was wondering if you've looked into that as well. I haven't specifically studied the figures that you talked about, but thank you very much for bringing them up, because I think they're great additions. As you've seen in other states and throughout history, both Armenian Azerbaijan and Turkey, frankly, have been looking to the past as kind of like a Jeremiah to resurrect what they see as the future. So for example, I mentioned Turkey running to kind of reenact the Ottoman Empire in gaining influence in the Caucasus region. So I think latching onto those figures like Enver Pasha, whether or not they intend to touch on those connections with the Armenian genocide innately are kind of evoking a desire to bring back that time, that leadership, that legitimacy that they once had. And I would say the same goes for Armenia. There's a great Armenian nationalist push, as I said before and after the Armenian genocide and at the end of the Soviet Union. And so I think that by tapping into those figures, it's just, as I said for the previous question, like a way to kind of tug on those, that pathos of the Armenian population and kind of recruit and spread national sentiment in the conflict. Does that answer your question okay? Yeah, yeah. Perfect, thank you for bringing this up. You, thank you very much. Yes, sir, another question. Hi, also from Addie, sorry. I'm a researcher at the Peace and War Center here, focusing on information warfare. And you mentioned culture engineering via physical resettlement and education policy. And I wonder, based on your last couple of responses, I figured this is a yes. To what extent are these engineering efforts supported by a concerted information policy? And did you, was it in the scope of your research? Did you see any evidence of a proactive state-sponsored efforts through traditional or social media? Maybe to promote Turkish versions of events or denigrate Armenian versions of events or is most of the informational policy in this case focused on censoring and removing content rather than actively putting out persuasive content? Yeah, that's a great question and a great tip for the future. So thank you, I definitely will look into more information. I did gain some sources that I didn't mention my presentation from social media. There are a lot of journalists that cover this that have, for example, posted photos of kids that are in these gray wolf schools that I talked about in the region. So that's part of the kind of cultural indoctrination and then education and even cultural re-engineering. And so through gray wolves, that organization that I mentioned, propaganda is spread about what, there's definitely disinformation about, you know the group doesn't claim that it's like a nationalist, anti-Aremian group. It claims to be like an educational organization. And so by using photos of children and other kind of harmless things like that, I think maybe that's what your question is looking for. But I will look into that in the future and I think it's interesting. I will say actually with the offering of Syrians to move to Nagorno-Karabakh, there were online posts like offering, I think rewards for Syrians to move to Nagorno-Karabakh. So I think if you're interested in looking into that or maybe I will. It could be fascinating. If you looked at the narrative tactics or strategies there, it could be quite interesting. Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Thank you. I think, yes, next question please. So three quick questions. Sean, you emphasize the material side of preparation. What about the conceptual side? Because in particular, I was wondering if the concept of being highly prepared might conflict with the concept of presenting to the world that the Afghan government was very strong, right? If you're emphasizing your exit strategy, does that make people suspect when you try and say that the government that you're leaving behind is also strong? So I wonder if there's a conceptual side to it that you thought about. August, it seems like the U.S. JCPO. I'm sorry, there's someone behind me. So I'll say this last question and stop. It seems like the JCPO negotiations have either slowed or died right now. So I wonder if you see any other kind of diplomatic opportunities for the United States. Well, thank you for your question. So regarding the differential between having a prepared plan and then also maintaining at least a presence of stability for Afghanistan, I don't think they're necessarily mutually exclusive in the same way how, you know, you don't expect your house to burn down, but you still have a plan to get your family out and the event it burns down. So when creating this type of framework of in the event of how we plan a pullout from Afghanistan, we have, if we began planning perhaps in like when for the most part of the Afghan Republic was relatively stable as whatever that word means, we could still plan for worst case scenarios. I don't think that's a mutually exclusive concept. But when it comes to the issue of leaving, the process and knowledge that the conflict was drawing down happened well I would argue a year, two years into before the full on pullout in 2021. So at least from what I can look for in terms of like the discursive news reports, articles and so on and so forth. And so at that point, we knew relatively speaking the US wanted to get out. The Trump administration at the point had an idea that they wanted to get out as quickly as humanly possible. But a more responsible action in terms of getting out was not to say we will get out as soon as possible, negotiate with the Taliban, just get us out of there, boom. And then now in August, over a week or two period, we magically pulled everything we had out as best we could versus we have a rough idea that we don't want to continue the conflict of two decades. Let us begin negotiations and talk with both the Taliban and the Afghan Republic to begin to transition a power to the Taliban. I think that is fundamentally the true disconnect in terms of why we saw what happened versus what, what the power of hindsight should have happened. Is this working? Yes. Okay. So regarding the JCPOA and the slowness negotiations, I think we can obviously assume that that's as a result of the Biden administration having to focus the defense and foreign policy efforts elsewhere, especially because of if you didn't know there's an invasion in Ukraine. So focusing there has sort of detracted from the Biden administration's efforts to address foreign policy in other regions. I think we are able to focus a bit less on Ukraine so that we can, we have the resources to focus on other areas at the same time. That's why we have such a massive bureaucracy. That's why we have different commands of the Department of Defense. It allows us to divide and conquer regarding our options. If the Biden administration does not want to pick up negotiations again, the option is to either let them have their nuclear program or move on and attempt another regime change that we did with Iraq and Libya, which again, I don't believe went well. The occupations failed, so. Okay, thank you, August. Time for one more quick question. Yes, I thought your presentation was really good, August. You made a lot of good points. But I did wanna ask you, there's been a growing movement I've noticed in the last few years among citizen groups around the world, not necessarily governments, to abolish nuclear weapons. And I was wondering, do you think since the United States was the first to invent nuclear weapons and the only government to use them, so the United States lead the way in the abolition of nuclear weapons? I think that would be a fantastic thing for the US government to do. As Professor Thunberg covered, the American government on an international scale has who they, green light and red light, that determines how the rest of the international community feels towards that nation. If we decide to green light the scaling back of nuclear weapons or even total abolition, that would most likely cause a cascading effect across the international community. So if the US government decides to get off their high horse regarding nuclear weapons and finally admit that this is a problem that needs to be solved, we would be safer without them, that would, I believe, cause a cascading effect across the globe. Do you know what's holding that up? Sorry? Do you know what's holding that up by the US government? Not specifics within the US government, but I think just governments as a whole, there's always administration after administration across the entire world. As we've all covered, there's a certain level of jingoism present in every government that prevents peace from being possible if we take a moment, if everyone takes a moment to look at the perspective from the other side and figure out why the opposing nation feels the way they do, if we're willing to put aside our preconceived notions that I think that's what's standing in the way. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks to all of you. Thank you all for attending the student panel of Norch's Peace and War Summit 2023. I hope you have a wonderful evening, but just before you go, one last round of applause for our excellent students presented.