Featured News Stories
In a recent conversation with CISSM, Dr. Gustavo Flores-Macías reflected on how his research on Latin American politics—shaped by growing up during Mexico’s economic crises and democratic transition—informs his leadership as Dean of the School of Public Policy. His scholarship examines how states raise revenue, provide public safety, and manage democratic trade-offs under pressure. The new dean discussed how these dynamics are increasingly relevant in the United States, amid debates over deploying the National Guard domestically and the unilateral use of force internationally in places like Venezuela.
Flores-Macías emphasized why connecting domestic and international perspectives is more important than ever. He sees the School of Public Policy—and intellectual hubs like CISSM—as uniquely positioned to convene scholars and practitioners around complex global challenges. His message for this moment is both urgent and optimistic: “The world is on fire. People want to understand what’s happening—and they want to act. It is critical for schools of public policy to step up. If not now, when?”
CISSM Research Fellow Dr. Alec Worsnop recently joined General (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal on the Irregular Warfare Podcast to discuss what determines success in guerrilla warfare—and why conventional explanations often miss the mark. The conversation draws on Worsnop’s recent book, Rebels in the Field: Cadres and the Development of Insurgent Military Power, and explores how insurgent organizations develop genuine battlefield effectiveness.
In the episode, titled “What Determines Success in Guerrilla Warfare?”, Worsnop and McChrystal challenge the assumption that ideology, social cohesion, or material resources alone explain insurgent success. Instead, they argue that effectiveness hinges on professionalization, particularly the recruitment, training, and empowerment of skilled small-unit combat leaders. Drawing on historical cases and a detailed analysis of the Taliban’s evolution in Afghanistan, the discussion highlights how organizational development—rather than motivation alone—shapes battlefield performance.
Last fall, we welcomed the arrival of Samantha Custer, the seventh recipient of the Kelleher Fellowship for International Security Studies. Custer’s research examines how development finance, public diplomacy, and security cooperation shape influence dynamics in the Global South. This spring, CISSM will host Dr. Liz Sherwood-Randall as the featured speaker for our 2026 Kelleher Forum on March 5. A former White House Homeland Security Advisor and Deputy National Security Advisor, Sherwood-Randall led U.S. crisis management efforts spanning terrorism, climate-driven disasters, infrastructure disruptions, and biological threats, exemplifying the scholar-practitioner model the Forum was created to celebrate. Her talk will draw on this experience to highlight leadership challenges of biosecurity, emerging technologies, and resilience.
Together, the fellowship and forum honor the legacy of Dr. Catherine M. Kelleher—founding director of CISSM and Women in International Security (WIIS). Kelleher was a champion of mentorship, collaboration, and cooperative approaches to reducing global risks, values that continue to shape CISSM’s work today.
In a new journal article published in Security Studies, CISSM Senior Fellow Dr. Steve Fetter, with co-author Sébastien Philippe, reexamines the United Kingdom’s Cold War shift from population-based to leadership-focused nuclear targeting—and challenges claims that the change reduced civilian harm. Drawing on archival sources and nuclear effects modeling, the study finds that UK strikes against Soviet leadership targets would still have caused millions of civilian deaths and rendered large areas uninhabitable for decades, calling into question official assertions that such strategies were more ethical or legally defensible. Extending the analysis to contemporary Russia and the current UK nuclear arsenal, the authors conclude that the core findings remain relevant today—raising enduring questions about the humanitarian and legal implications of nuclear deterrence policies.
The University of Maryland has launched a new Bachelor of Arts in Global and Foreign Policy, anchored in the School of Public Policy and directed by CISSM Research Fellow Dr. Catherine Worsnop. The interdisciplinary major prepares students to address interconnected challenges such as war, migration, climate change, pandemics, and development.
The program’s three thematic tracks—Security, Conflict and Diplomacy; Human Security and Migration; and Development and Sustainability—closely align with CISSM’s research themes. Students will complete experiential learning through internships, study abroad, or a senior capstone working with external policy clients. With Washington, D.C., and Annapolis nearby, the major offers students unparalleled access to policymaking communities and professional networks.
CISSM has launched a new initiative, the Complexity Solutions Lab, to develop practical tools for understanding and navigating complex policy challenges—from democratic erosion and climate change to asymmetric threats and technological disruption. The lab will be led by CISSM Senior Research Associate, Dr. Bob Lamb, Associate Research Scientist at UMD and a nationally recognized expert on social complexity, simulation, and decision-making.
Lamb recently completed a study for the Department of Defense that found experts often use linear methods to analyze and navigate complex social dynamics such as asymmetric conflict, climate inaction, proliferation networks, and disinformation campaigns, with predictably poor results. Many methods exist for understanding and navigating social complexity—participatory simulations, computational models, network analysis—but the most powerful tools are primarily used by academic specialists and large corporations, not policy makers, movement leaders, funders, or applied researchers. Different tools can provide unique types of insights, but they are not readily compatible, so people working on a multidimensional problem cannot easily build on each other’s insights.
“The human brain is bad at complexity but good at tools, so we want to give people access to appropriate tools and build infrastructure for connecting them so they can solve complex problems more effectively," Lamb says. The lab will start by applying findings from Lamb’s recent report, Navigating Social Complexity with the Tools We Have to ongoing research projects at CISSM. It will also leverage ICONS, UMD’s simulation and interaction platform, to provide researchers and policy professionals a testing ground for experimental and interactive research.
CISSM's most recent nationally representative survey explored how the 2025 Twelve-Day War impacted Iranian public attitudes toward government officials, security strategy, nuclear policy, and relations with the United States. The forthcoming report, which will be published shortly, finds a pronounced rally-around-the-flag effect. Large majorities of Iranians say their country defended itself effectively and imposed meaningful costs on Israel. It also finds serious political and economic discontent, but those problems are long-standing. Attitudes to not appear to be significantly more negative than before, and should not be viewed as proximate, triggering causes for the massive protests of December 2025-January 2026.
Survey respondents indicate rising support for a more assertive security posture, including continued missile development and rebuilding—and expanding—Iran’s nuclear program. At the same time, CISSM Director Nancy Gallagher notes the possibility for diplomacy under specific conditions. Many Iranians remain open to a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)–style agreement with credible sanctions relief and a step-for-step structure. They also favored regional cooperative solutions like a Middle East and North Africa consortium that would ban nuclear weapons while allowing shared civilian nuclear development.
