Political science professor James Fearon predicted ongoing war in Ukraine and promoted a balance of U.S. strategic ambiguity and military strength regarding Taiwan in a Friday talk.
Stanford in Government (SIG) hosted Fearon as part of its political conversations speaker series. During the talk, Fearon promoted his new book, “Worse than War: The Global Costs of Violence.”
A senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI), Fearon studies international conflicts through bargaining models, which posit that wars are costly and countries are incentivized to find a mutually beneficial settlement. War breaks out when either side sees no possibility of a settlement, according to his research.
Drawing on his bargaining model, Fearon argues that in the continued war in Ukraine, the two sides were unable to “cut a deal” because neither could make a credible commitment.
“[Avoiding war] would require Zelensky… to credibly promise not to develop militarily,” Fearon said. “But the Ukrainians, better than anyone, understood Putin’s revisionist goals with respect to their state, and so they had this really strong incentive to arm up.”
Fearon believes an end to the war is distant. “There’s just no indication that I’ve seen that Putin has really decided to back off his goal of controlling Kyiv,” he said.
Regarding the ongoing U.S.-China tensions over Taiwan, Fearon said increased U.S. military presence near the island is necessary to secure Taiwan in the event of a Chinese strike.
“You both strengthen deterrence to potential attack on Taiwan and also reduce the risk of inadvertent escalation by making conventional forces more robust to a first strike,” Fearon said, citing his June 2025 article in Foreign Affairs. The idea echoes what other Stanford international relations scholars, including political science professor Oriana Mastro, have proposed in past publications.
However, Fearon cautioned against the U.S. abandoning strategic ambiguity. “There’s no particular gain to it,” he said. Instead, he suggested that Washington should “speak quietly” while developing “a stronger stick.” That is, avoid provocative rhetoric while steadily strengthening its military capabilities and deterrent posture.
Fearon also discussed his forthcoming book on global violence, which argues that interpersonal violence — not war or terrorism — imposes the greatest social costs worldwide. Co-authored with German economist Anke Hoeffler, the book analyzes data from 2000 to 2022 and finds that homicide, intimate partner violence and severe child abuse are vastly more prevalent than injuries and deaths from civil wars or terrorism.
Despite this disparity, society often neglects the pervasive harms occurring in private spheres, he said. “Look at what the daily discussion in the media is about — it tends to be about collective violence.”
However, Fearon disagreed with the claim that focusing on war over interpersonal violence is a result of greater societal agency over collective violence.
“One reason we would focus more on wars is because we think we can do more about it,” attendee Justin Ahn ’28 told The Daily. “Whereas for an issue like crime, even domestically, there’s little that the federal government can do. It just takes a much bigger package of policy reforms.”
Fearon believes the opposite is true. “The elasticity for the marginal million dollars spent on trying to reduce collective violence is significantly less productive than the marginal million dollars spent trying to reduce various forms of interpersonal violence,” he said.
Following the talk, moderator Ben Marek ’28 told The Daily that SIG hopes to continue hosting small-scale conversations between faculty members and students.
“There’s a lot of interest right now,” Marek said, citing “China-related foreign policy” as a “primary driver.”