Students and faculty gathered in Persson Hall to hear a lecture from two members of the Brookings Institution, Michael O’Hanlon and Vanda Felbab-Brown, on Tuesday, April 8. O’Hanlon is a Lampert Institute non-resident fellow, as well as the director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. Felbab-Brown, the director of the initiative on non-state armed actors and co-director of the African Security Initiative at the Brookings Institution, is an expert in non-traditional security threats.
Organized by the Lampert Institute, which often hosts events surrounding both national and international security issues, the discussion addressed topics from transnational criminal networks to the fentanyl crisis in America. Beginning the discussion, O’Hanlon recognized Felbab-Brown’s work on ongoing issues on both the global and national stage.
“This is one of the most courageous, brilliant and hardworking field researchers in the world, and I am in awe of her every day,” O’Hanlon said. “She works on some of the most important issues in our country, not least the fentanyl crisis.”
O’Hanlon discussed their shared travels to Afghanistan, noting Felbab-Brown’s brave excursions where she would often hire a taxi driver as her translator to conduct interviews to understand the driving forces behind the Taliban’s movements on site.
During her undergraduate years at Harvard University, Felbab-Brown won a grant to interview policymakers in the European Union to understand the contrasting approaches versus the U.S. on issues of Islamist extremism in Algeria during the 1990s. During her time there, she found that she wanted to inquire further into conflict zones and areas of high criminality.
Today, Felbab-Brown notes that the U.S. approach to Afghanistan was far from perfect.
“A fundamental challenge that the United States has encountered is not being able to change the incentives and behavior of the government element,” Felbab-Brown said.
The Taliban’s insurgency was enormously successful, and though Felbab-Brown noted that they have been relatively cooperative, they are heavily and blatantly supporting anti-Pakistan initiatives.
“There are these deep resentments by the Taliban, especially the southern branches, against Pakistan,” Felbab-Brown said. “There is a tremendous frustration of power.”
O’Hanlon further explained the strained relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan.
“When we killed Osama Bin Laden in May of 2011 right in the middle of Pakistan, we didn’t tell the Pakistanis we were doing it,” O’Hanlon said. “We didn’t trust them not to tip off Bin Laden. We did the whole mission secretly vis-à-vis the Pakistani government.”
Furthermore, the U.S. was driving supplies through Pakistan for the war in Afghanistan.
“If I were Pakistani, I would be telling the story differently,” O’Hanlon said.
According to O’Hanlon, in the 1980s, the U.S. had asked Pakistan to help defeat the Soviets, yet the minute the U.S. succeeded, they left Pakistan with a mess that soon came back to bite them in Afghanistan.
“It’s a two-way street of betrayal,” O’Hanlon said.
Sophomore Gillian Lustenberger, who is concentrating in peace and conflict studies, noted her interest in the discussion of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
“I found it interesting when O’Hanlon made a claim that the Taliban were not going to risk supporting terrorism on an international scale because of the threat the U.S. poses,” Lustenberger said. “He said that they are sitting in offices they know we could strike, and that they don’t want to risk giving that up.”
Lustenberger questioned the continuous renewal of Taliban leaders, comparing the leadership growth to a hydra.
“Is that enough of a threat? Will that rationale supersede the ideological motivation of the Taliban? I guess we will see,” Lustenberger said.
Diving into the issue of the pandemic, O’Hanlon asked how likely it is that we will have another pandemic in the next few decades. Felbab-Brown felt it was very likely.
“We are really living through the chance of the bird flu mutating into human transmission and potential fatality rates that would make COVID-19 look like a sneeze,” Felbab-Brown said.
Recently, zoonotic diseases have become an increasingly dangerous issue, where diseases found in animals have the ability to jump to humans. According to Felbab-Brown, this issue is extremely preventable and even predictable.
“Every three to five years, they spread into very dangerous human transmissions,” Felbab-Brown said. “In the past two years, [bird flu] has spread from birds to a critical amount of mammals. […] The response of the U.S. government has been deeply inadequate and enormously concerning.”
A further issue is the spreading of the flu to livestock such as cattle, putting agricultural workers at risk — particularly those who are undocumented. Neuroscience major and first-year Cenjing Wang commented on Felbab-Brown’s discussion of diseases.
“One of the things that caught my attention was her prediction of another pandemic due to the lack of policy making and concern,” Wang said. “It highlights yet another example of how the government is failing to take the necessary steps to protect its people.”
Lustenberger agreed with Felbab-Brown’s discussion of epidemic diseases.
“To hear her say that she expects there will be another, even more devastating pandemic was quite scary,” Lustenberger said. “I had never thought about pandemics in the context of national security. The medical and defense spheres seemed separate for me, but it makes so much sense. Why is a country so focused on its defense in other areas so lacking on a different front?”
Felbab-Brown explained that the government should begin making bird flu vaccines as soon as possible, investing specifically in testing and protection.
Moreover, Felbab-Brown specializes in tracking global drug markets, and with the rising lethality and prevalence of fentanyl usage in the U.S., her knowledge is particularly important.
“The fentanyl crisis is the most lethal drug crisis ever in history,” Felbab-Brown said. “The big change taking place in drug markets around the world, and really in all crime markets around the world, is the global synthetic drugs revolution.”
