In early February, I traveled to Beijing as part of an American delegation led by former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair for the China-US Dialogue on Strategic Nuclear Dynamics, the highest-level dialogue the two countries currently have about the implications of nuclear weapons for their relationship. While in Beijing, I also gave a talk at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, on the implications of growing Chinese nuclear-armed submarine capabilities.
In mid-February, I presented two papers at the International Studies Association Annual Convention, the biggest international relations conference in the world, held in New Orleans this year. One of those papers was an ongoing, co-authored research project on improvised chemical weapons threats, a collaboration with recent MIIS grad Navindra Gunawardena that began as a short memo Navindra wrote for one of my seminars. Navindra now works at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
In late February, I traveling to Istanbul as part of an American delegation for a US-Turkey Strategic Dialogue, where I was able to draw on my experience staffing an interagency group focused on Syria’s chemical weapons while on leave from MIIS during 2012-13 to serve in the Pentagon.