Walter Clemens

Biography

Clemens studied at the University of Vienna, 1952–53, before graduating from Notre Dame University Magna Cum Laude in 1955. Under a Ford Foundation fellowship Clemens studied at Columbia University, 1955–1961. He did research for his dissertation on Soviet disarmament policy under Lenin at Moscow State University (1958–59), and at the Hoover Institution (1959). At Columbia, he received a master's degree and Certificate of the Russian Institute in 1957 and a Ph.D. in International Relations in 1961. Clemens grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, graduating first in his class in 1951 from Purcell High School, where he also played tackle on the state champion football team.

Professional career

Since the 1960s, Clemens has taught at a number of academic institutions, including Iolani School in Honolulu, Hawaii, the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Boston University, where, since 2012, he is Professor Emeritus of Political Science. Since 1963, Clemens has been an Associate at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. He was also an Associate at the Harvard University Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 1986–2003. Clemens’s papers are housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. His work has been supported by four major grants from the Ford Foundation and two from the Rockefeller Foundation. His research was supported also by the University of California, MIT, Columbia, Harvard, Boston University, and the East-West Center in Honolulu, and by several government agencies including NASA, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the U.S. State Department, the Fulbright-Hayes program, and NATO.

Arms control and security studies

Clemens has also made contributions to the study of arms control in U.S. relations with the USSR, China, and North Korea. As Executive Officer of the White House Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament for International Cooperation Year 1965, Clemens drafted the Committee’s proposal, “3-Year Moratorium urged on Antimissile Missiles.” In the 1980s, Clemens conducted surveys showing that most Americans erroneously believed that their country was protected by an effective missile defense shield. Clemens treated this as a dangerous illusion.

Soviet and post-Soviet studies

Having participated in the first exchange of U.S. and Soviet graduate students in 1958-59, Clemens became one of the first specialists to study Soviet arms control policies and, later, one of the few scholars to anticipate the demise of the Soviet system. As the Soviet system entered its final years, he wrote Can Russia Change? The USSR Confronts Global Interdependence (1990) and Baltic Independence and Russian Empire (1991). In reviewing Can Russia Change? for Foreign Affairs, John C. Campbell wrote "the main argument for relations of 'complex interdependence' is clear and convincing." In Baltic Independence, Clemens argued that the Singing Revolution of the three Baltic nations gave a coup de grâce to the Soviet system. The Foreign Affairs review of Baltic Interdependence expressed: "[t]his book, better than any other, tells how the local communist parties tried and failed to adapt to the growing popular demands for national self-determination." A review in Lituanus described Baltic Interdependence as "the only current scholarly work which succinctly summarizes the troubled histories of the Baltic nations, including the complicated negotiations for independence during the years 1917–1920" Later analyzing a decade of post-Soviet development, Clemens wrote The Baltic Transformed: Complexity Theory and European Security (2001).

Scholarship on North and South Korea

Clemens is also an authority on North Korea. He has written many articles on North Korea and on China for the Journal of East Asian Studies, Global Asia and The Diplomat (on-line). His book North Korea and the World: Human Rights, Arms Control, and Strategies for Negotiation was published by the University Press of Kentucky in 2016. Clemens is on the editorial board of Asian Perspective where he writes a book review essay for each issue. Analyzing events at the eastern edge of the former Soviet sphere, Clemens asked what lessons, if any, from the U.S.-Soviet experience might apply to arms control negotiations with North Korea. He published Getting to Yes in Korea (with a foreword by Gov. Bill Richardson) in 2010, followed by several articles in Global Asia, The New York Times, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Getting to Yes in Korea was the first book to systematically apply international relations, complexity and negotiation theories to the tensions on stemming from North Korea's nuclear program, and the book has been received praise from Graham Allison and Terence Roehrig. Asking whether and how the West should negotiate with a brutal dictatorship, Clemens on February 3, 2011 gave the Glasmacher Lecture in Ottawa, Canada, at the Symposium on Conflict Resolution. The lecture title was “Can–Should–Must We Negotiate with Evil?"

Complexity science

In 2004, Clemens published the second edition of Dynamics of International Relations (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). The book presents a new approach to the study of international relations and has become an increasingly popular alternative to more traditional international relations course texts. Dynamics of International Relations has received professional praise from a wide spectrum of scholars and practitioners, including Governor Bill Richardson, Zbigniew Brzezinski, J. Ann Tickner, Michael W. Doyle and David Singer.

His most recent work is Complexity Science and World Affairs (State University of New York Press, 2013). This book, according to S. Fredrick Starr at the School for Advanced International Studies, “offers a fresh, even startling, paradigm and process for analyzing the seemingly unpredictable relations within and among human societies. With impressive clarity he proposes that ‘the capacity to cope with complexity’ has become a key determinant of success in our intricately interrelated world.” In a similar vein, Jacek Kugler (professor at Claremont Graduate University and former president of the International Studies Association) wrote that “this breakthrough book provides a new, promising general paradigm exploring and explaining the complexity of world politics. For scholars and analysts pushing the boundaries of our field, this is a must-read volume.”

Honors, awards and professional leadership

Books, chapters and edited volumes