Stuart Kaufman

Professor, Political Science and International Relations University of Delaware

  • Newark DE

Prof. Kaufman specializes in U.S. national security and foreign policy, Russian foreign policy, the war in Ukraine and nuclear strategy.

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Expert warns: Political violence may escalate to civil war scale during 2024 election season

The violent January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is not the end of the story of contemporary political violence in the United States. Stuart J. Kaufman, professor of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware, projects that political violence will be worse during the 2024 election campaign season. He has found that there is a significant risk that such violence could reach a scale that qualifies as a civil war. Professor Kaufman can speak to how political rhetoric, from politicians and the media, is contributing to an atmosphere that makes political violence increasingly probable, and to the impact that legal charges against former President Donald Trump may have on that probability. Click on his icon to arrange an interview.

Stuart Kaufman

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Biography

Stuart Kaufman,PhD (University of Michigan, 1991) joined the Department as a Professor in 2004. He also serves annually as Professorial Lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna, Austria. Professor Kaufman previously taught at the University of Kentucky and served on the US National Security Council staff. He teaches courses in international security affairs, diplomacy, US foreign policy, ethnic conflict and Russian politics. Dr. Kaufman's research focuses on the question of why large groups of people get together to kill each other, based in part on field research in Georgia, Moldova, Philippines, Russia, South Africa and Tanzania. His books include Nationalist Passions (Cornell University Press, 2015) and the co-edited volume, The Balance of Power in World History (Palgrave, 2007). Dr. Kaufman was the winner of an Excellence in Scholarship Award from the University of Delaware College of Arts and Sciences in 2017 and a Fulbright scholarship in 2011. Nationalist Passions is the winner of the Robert E. Lane Award from the Political Psychology Section of the American Political Science Association, and the International Security Studies Book Award and the ENMISA Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association.

Industry Expertise

International Affairs

Areas of Expertise

U.S. National Security
U.S. Foreign Policy
Ethnic Conflict
War in Iraq
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
International Relations
Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs

Media Appearances

UD scholars discuss war in Ukraine | UDaily

University of Delaware  online

2022-03-10

“Eastern Europeans were proved right in their fear of Russia,” he said. He also took issue with the argument that the West is hypocritical in its condemnation of Russia because the West has been violating other nations’ sovereignty for years. “The West has a right to oppose aggression now even if it was wrong on other issues in the past,” said Kaufman.

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UD scholars lead panel discussion on Ukraine | UDaily

University of Delaware  online

2022-03-02

“We are in a new Cold War,” said Stuart Kaufman, a professor in the University of Delaware Department of Political Science and International Relations, speaking about the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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Front Page Café: Mark Bowden, Dr. Stuart Kaufman and a U.S.-North Korea summit

WDDE  online

2018-04-27

Two guests came to the Deer Park Tavern in Newark to discuss the proposed summit between North Korea and the United States, Mark Bowden and Dr. Stuart Kaufman.

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Articles

Integrative pluralism and security studies: The implications for International Relations theory

European Journal of International Security

2022

The idea of integrative pluralism offers a promising path for the development of theory in international security and international relations. Instead of either trying to shoehorn all theorising into a single, limited paradigm or giving up entirely on theoretical progress, the integrative pluralist approach calls for bringing diverse approaches together. More precisely, integrative pluralism involves explaining specific phenomena by linking causal processes across multiple layers of reality, and then using the findings to inform broader theoretical constructs such as IR theory paradigms.

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Is the US Heading for a Civil War? Scenarios for 2024-25

Studies in Conflict & Terrorism

2022

This article applies symbolic politics theory to assess the risk of a new civil war in the U.S., finding that all of the factors making civil war likely are currently present. Narratives promoting hostility toward the other party are prominent among Republicans and Democrats alike, as are hostile predispositions and hostile feelings toward the other party. The Republican Party’s rejection of Trump’s 2020 election loss and its links to the January 6 coup attempt and to militia groups position it to organize a more violent insurrection in a scenario in which Trump is again the unsuccessful presidential nominee in 2024.

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The Drug War as a Tragedy and a Crime

International Studies Review

2021

Horace Bartilow’s creative and important new book starts with a simple-seeming question: given that the United States’ war on drugs has failed, why do both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations continue to pursue it? The failure is clear, as widespread drug abuse and the attendant crime remain rampant in the United States and beyond. The reason for the failure is equally clear: the United States persists with a heavy-handed and militarized “supply-reduction” approach to addressing the problem of drug addiction rather than a more humane “demandreduction” strategy focused on drug treatment, despite repeated studies showing the latter to be the more effective approach (pp. 21–22, 28).

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Education

University of Michigan

PhD

Political Science

1991

University of Michigan

MA

Political Science

1985

Harvard University

AB

Government

1983

Languages

  • English
  • Russian

Event Appearances

“Bringing Agents Back In: Critical Realism, Constructivism and the Symbolic Politics Synthesis"

(2019) International Studies Association Conference  Toronto, CA

“Emotion, Prejudice, and the Symbolic Politics of Trump”

(2018) Presented at ISA/FLASCO Conference  Quito, Ecuador

“A Symbolic Politics Theory of International Relations”

(2017) International Studies Association Conference  Baltimore, MD

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