China’s rapid transition toward a downward trajectory will pose a unique set of national security challenges for the United States that could prove even more difficult than those posed by China’s rise.

Full Citation: Meisel, C. J., Moyer, J. D., Matthews, A. S., Kaplan, O., Byrnes, R., Benjumea, K., Cribb, P., & Van Son, C. (2024). Bearing witness: Introducing the Perceived Mass Atrocities Dataset (PMAD). Journal of Peace Research

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241249333

Led by Pardee's Associate Director of Geopolitical Analysis, Collin Meisel, and commissioned by the US State Department to support the Elie Weisel Act, this coding framework is a prime example of the Institute's goal to bridge the gap between academic work and policy-making communities. Congratulations to all of the hard-working Korbel students who contributed to this impressive research and all the co-authors on this outstanding accomplishment.

Abstract:

The risk factors and consequences of atrocities are deeply interconnected with questions of intra- and interstate stability and conflict, economic development, colonialism, and gender equality, as well as atrocity crime monitoring and prevention. However, there is no globally comparable measure of lethal and less-lethal atrocities. The Perceived Mass Atrocities Dataset (PMAD) is a country-year measure of atrocities with accompanying narratives. Built to support the US Congress’s Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018, PMAD enables the systematic comparison of the occurrence and magnitude of seven atrocity types, in addition to group-perpetrated violence against women and LGBTQIA+ groups, with aggregate atrocities indices for 196 countries from 2018 to 2022. PMAD offers a foundation for quantitative studies of atrocities as well as more qualitative, process-focused research of lethal and less-lethal violence with its single, divisible framework. The PMAD data highlight several regions where analysis of atrocities using data on only lethal atrocities would be inadequate, especially Central and Eastern Asia. The data can also facilitate research into the relationships between mass atrocities and gender discrimination, neopatrimonialism, and political polarization.

Full Citation: In brief: China’s third plenum. War on the Rocks (July 24, 2024) Collin Meisel, Bonny Lin, Sheena Chestnut Greitens, and Thomas Shugart https://warontherocks.com/2024/ 07/in-brief-chinas-third-plenum

Last week, the Chinese Communist Party held its third plenum, a closed door meeting of high-level party officials that has historically indicated the country’s policy direction on major issues, such as the economy. This was the first third plenum held since 2018 and was hotly anticipated, especially considering China’s faltering economic growth. We asked four experts to tell us more about the outcomes of the meeting and what this might indicate about China’s strategy in the coming months and years.

Full Citation: Meisel, C., Studeman, M., Sun, Y., & Daniels, R. (2024, May 8). In Brief: U.S-Chinese Relationship. War on the Rocks. https://warontherocks.com/2024/05/in-brief-the-u-s-chinese-relationship/

Collin Meisel was featured iin a War on the Rocks newsletter, In Brief: The U.S.-Chinese Relationship, as one four experts asked to evaluate the state of the U.S.-Chinese relationship and whether it's headed for a detente or escalation in tensions.

Full Citation: Meisel, C. (2024, April 9). Opinion: There is more to NATO burden sharing than the 2% spending dogma. Defense News. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/2024/04/09/there-is-more-to-nato-burden-sharing-than-the-2-spending-dogma

As the NATO alliance prepares to gather this summer to celebrate its 75th birthday, rhetoric around “burden sharing” – specifically whether member countries are paying enough, where “enough” is typically defined as military spending equal to 2% of GDP – is likely to heat up. With a war raging just off NATO’s eastern flank as Ukraine defends itself against an aggressor that has become NATO’s raison d’etre, it’s a fair question: Are NATO member countries doing enough?

Full Citation: Forecasting the future of war. In Tim Sweijs and Jeffrey H. Michaels (Eds.), Beyond Ukraine: Debating the future of war, (pp. 287–303). Oxford University Press (July 2024)

Full Citation: Meisel, C. (2024, February 20). Accelerating Change But Not Necessarily an Inflection Point. Stimson. https://www.stimson.org/2024/accelerating-change-but-not-necessarily-an-inflection-point/

The overuse of terms like “inflection point” clouds strategic thinking and the application of past lessons

By: Meisel, C., & Petry, C. (2024, January 8). Scanning The Horizon: If The Future Is Unknowable, Why Bother WIth Forecasting? Modern War Institute. https://mwi.westpoint.edu/scanning-the-horizon-if-the-future-is-unknowable-why-bother-with-forecasting/

As we rounded the corner into the new year, our media feeds were once again bombarded by that annual tradition: retrospectives on the past year, its lessons learned, and predictions of what’s to come in the year that follows. The latter category is sure to come with cautionary caveats—namely, that “prediction is difficult, especially about the future.” It’s an old saw—variously attributed to Neils Bohr, Yogi Berra, Mark Twain, and others—often trotted out by analysts when asked to opine what the future holds. And as the dramatic events in Ukraine have illustrated over the past two years, it’s especially applicable to forecasts of war.

The future is fundamentally unknowable, so why bother making forecasts about war or any other phenomena?

Full Citation: Meisel, C. (2024, January 2). The War Party Has Champagne Tastes On A Beer Budget. Responsible Statecraft. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-military-budget/

Undaunted by the challenges posed by providing historic levels of aid to Ukraine while also supporting Israel’s campaign against Hamas, U.S. President Joe Biden defiantly declared recently on 60 Minutes: “We’re the United States of America for God’s sake, the most powerful nation in the history — not in the world, in the history of the world.”

True. But to pretend that U.S. capabilities aren’t being strained is to ignore reality. Forecasts of relative material capabilities point to a reality that will become even harsher. America’s relative geopolitical advantage is shrinking. As such, the affordability of maintaining U.S. dominance the world over will increasingly come into question.

Unfortunately, President Biden’s assertion is reflective of a broadly held attitude. Many in the U.S. national security community on both sides of the political aisle have beer money and champagne tastes.

Full Citation: Meisel, C. (2023, December 7). Rewind and Reconnoiter China's Slowing Economy with Collin Meisel. War on the Rocks.

In 2019, Collin Meisel and Jonathan D. Moyer wrote “Preparing for China’s Rapid Rise and Decline” for War on the Rocks, looking at how “China’s rapid transition toward a downward trajectory will pose a unique set of national security challenges for the United States that could prove even more difficult than those posed by China’s rise.” In light of China’s economic slowdown, we asked Collin to look back on the piece and its recommendations. Read more by clicking on the link.