The Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination held a Crisis Diplomacy lunch seminar on Thursday, February 21, 2013, at 12:00 p.m. in 012 Bendheim Hall. Featured speakers werre Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, LISD Director; Sam Gardiner, United States Air Force (Ret.); and Walter Posch, Iran Specialist at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP)/German Institute for International and Security Affairs (via Skype). 

Wolfgang Danspeckgruber is the Founding Director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University and has been teaching on issues of state, security, self-determination, diplomacy, and crisis diplomacy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Politics since 1988. He is also founder and chair of the Liechtenstein Colloquium on European and International Affairs, LCM, a private diplomacy forum in Liechtenstein. Danspeckgruber researches, writes and teaches on security and state building issues in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the wider Middle East; on theory and practice of international diplomacy, private, and crisis diplomacy; the International Criminal Court; and issues concerning Religion and Diplomacy. Since 2001 he has visited Afghanistan, China, Georgia, India (Kashmir), Israel, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and has been involved in related private diplomacy. Until 2000, Danspeckgruber was involved in private diplomacy in Southeastern Europe and the Caucasus, and has also worked with the Ahtisaari Team and the EU Special Representative on the status of Kosovo. He conducted fact-finding missions to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Yugoslavia/Serbia.

Col. Sam Gardiner, US Air Force (retired), works on strategic issues. He has taught a course on strategy at the National War College for 20 years. He has taught strategy at the Air War College, Army War College and Naval War College. In addition, he was a visiting scholar at the Swedish Defense College. He has been involved with and facilitated State Department strategy reviews on Burma, Kosovo, Haiti, Bangladesh, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Nepal, Sudan and Afghanistan. He designs and conducts war games. He has conducted games for the Air Force, Navy, Army, CIA, and Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department. He has conducted numerous war games on the military options for Iran and written extensively about the issue. He recently conducted a war game focused on Syria.

Walter Posch is an Iran expert at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP)/German Institute for International and Security Affairs. In previous assignments he worked as a Middle East Expert at the European Union Institute for Security Studies in Paris and for the National Defence Academy (LVAK) in Vienna, Austria. He publishes regularly on Iranian domestic and foreign policies.