FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT: Daniel C. Sneider; Lisa Griswold

STANFORD, California – Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) will convene a Track II dialogue of academic experts from Asia, the United States and Europe to discuss the issues of wartime history that continue to impact relations in the region. The dialogue, “Wartime History Issues in Asia: Pathways to Reconciliation,” is being held on May 11-13 on a closed-door and confidential basis with the goal of offering practical ideas to help resolve tensions surrounding those issues. Shorenstein APARC has been a leader in academic research on the formation of wartime historical memory through its Divided Memories and Reconciliation project, including a ground breaking comparative study of the treatment of the war in the high school history textbooks of China, Japan, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Taiwan and the United States.

The core participants in this dialogue will be scholars from China, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States, along with Stanford University scholars. Most of these participants have significant experience in previous efforts to foster dialogue and reconciliation on wartime history issues. In addition, select experts on the European experience in dealing with wartime historical memory will contribute.

The dialogue takes place under the co-sponsorship of the Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (TCS), based in Seoul. TCS is an international organization established by the governments of China, Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) in 2011 to promote peace and prosperity among the three countries. Through various initiatives, the TCS strives to serve as a vital hub for cooperation and integration in Northeast Asia.

TCS representatives will attend the dialogue as observers; any expression of opinions will be in their personal capacities. It is expected that the outcome of this dialogue will include a set of forward-looking recommendations to civil society, researchers, and governments. TCS may adopt them for consideration by the governments of China, Japan and the ROK.

“It is my sincere hope that through this joint scholarly endeavor, TCS will be provided with the necessary direction and guidance to follow-up on bilateral efforts at historical dialogue over the past years,” Mr. Iwatani Shigeo, Secretary-General of TCS said in his letter of invitation. “I look forward to your insight and wisdom on ways to promote peace and reconciliation in this region.”

The Stanford dialogue could launch a new effort to resolve wartime history issues in the region. “Our further hope is that this will be an ongoing process, building on previous efforts at bilateral dialogue on history issues that will go beyond this initial meeting,” Shorenstein APARC Director Professor Gi-Wook Shin said in his invitation to participants.

Former President George W. Bush met with Stanford students for an hourlong conversation that touched on many of the defining moments and policies of his presidency.

In a relaxed and sometimes self-deprecating exchange on May 5, Bush talked about the limits of congressional power and his relationships and personal diplomacy with other world leaders. His tone was more serious when discussing what he described as universal desires for freedom, his military strategies following 9/11, and his commitment to addressing Africa’s HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, director of the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, moderated the session. Stanford President John Hennessy and Condoleezza Rice – Bush’s secretary of state and national security adviser who has returned to teaching political science and business at Stanford – joined the conversation.

"FSI has a terrific track record of convening leaders at Stanford, from the head of the International Monetary Fund to prime ministers and presidents,” Cuéllar said. “On this occasion, we wanted our students to have an opportunity for a candid conversation with one of the key policymakers of the early 21^st century, and we think such experiences will further prepare them for leadership in a complex world."

About 30 students were invited to the session at Encina Hall, but they didn’t know they were meeting Bush until the 43^rd president walked into the room.

“I suspect he misses this sort of engagement,” said Gregory Schweizer, a second-year law school student who was part of the discussion that also covered immigration reform, national education policies and the Edward Snowden affair.

“The media always portrays him as being disengaged from current affairs,” Schweizer said. “But I’m impressed with how interested and engaged he still is.”

Along with representatives from Stanford Law School, other students were invited from the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies. Honors students from FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law also joined the conversation.

Bush’s visit was arranged with the help of  Brad Freeman, a former university trustee and Ronald Spogli, who is currently on Stanford's board of trustees. Freeman and Spogli are longtime friends of the former president and philanthropists who donated a naming gift to FSI in 2005. Bush appointed Spogli as ambassador to Italy in 2005 and as ambassador to San Marino a year later. 

Stanford has a tradition of hosting current and former heads of state, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev – both of whom visited in 2010.

Relations between China, Japan and South Korea are at one of their worst points in recent history. Stanford scholars at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute have been sought for insight on why negative public sentiment toward each nation has grown – providing commentary to both local and international media.

The territorial disputes in the East China Sea and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to Yasukuni Shrine have added to the growing friction. Reconciliation now seems a far prospect, and there is a real chance of an accidental spark setting off conflict. At the heart of the matter are propaganda or global ‘PR’ wars that those countries are waging, associate director for research Daniel C. Sneider says.

Shorenstein APARC director Gi-Wook Shin and Sneider lead the Divided Memories and Reconciliation project, an ongoing research initiative, that attempts to understand how historical memory of the World War II period came to exist, and in turn, informs people’s perspectives in Northeast Asia.

Shin and Sneider write in Foreign Affairs that wartime narratives cannot and will not easily change. They highlight urgent issues such as compensation for victims of forced labor in wartime Japan, and the coordination of public apologies.

On the Asan Forum, Shin says that the perception gap continues to widen between the countries. Historical memories are not only rooted in the colonial and wartime injustices, but more complex historical, cultural and political relations.

The United States may play a pivotal role in facilitating diplomacy and breaking through the stalemate of the reconciliation process. As U.S. President Barack Obama travels to Asia later this week, now is the time to confront the questions of history. Sneider makes a similar suggestion in the Washington Post, saying the United States should abandon its position of neutrality and step forward.

Research findings from the Divided Memories and Reconciliation project have been incorporated into a textbook and two volumes, one of which was co-edited with Daniel Chirot of the University of Washington. Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies (University of Washington Press, April 2014) compares the lasting influence of World War II in Asia and Europe. Sneider was interviewed upon the release of the book, covered by the Stanford Report.

From territorial disputes in the East China Sea to heated propaganda wars across the region, peace in northeast Asia seems increasingly tenuous. At the heart of rising tensions are unresolved historical issues related to World War II, which drive a wedge between the United States’ two main allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, and fuel a revived rivalry between Japan and China. As the main victor in World War II, the United States has some responsibility for these disputes. It constructed the postwar regional order and has been largely content since then to view the matter as settled, even though issues of territory, compensation, and historical justice were left unresolved. During the Cold War, when the region’s main players were cut off from each other, the United States’ approach worked well. But as the region democratizes and grows increasingly integrated, long-buried issues are coming to the surface. As U.S. President Barack Obama heads to Japan and South Korea this month, it is time for the United States to tackle wartime history in Asia head on.

American officials were confronted by the uncomfortable realities of wartime issues last year, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, without warning, made an official visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s war dead, including some who had been convicted and executed as Class-A war criminals. The Japanese leader certainly understood that his decision would irk China and South Korea, which see such visits as signals of Tokyo’s embrace of an unapologetic view of Japan’s wartime aggression. What was even more troubling was that the visit came only a few weeks after U.S. Vice President Joe Biden apparently received assurances from Abe that Tokyo would avoid any such provocations. Biden subsequently encouraged South Korean President Park Geun-hye to sit down with the Japanese leader, although Park questioned whether he could be trusted to hold his historical revisionism in check -- a concern that was clearly justified.

Japan and South Korea have made repeated efforts over the past two decades to resolve their wartime history issues, but progress has always proved short-lived. South Korean officials now openly plead for the United States to step in. That would be anathema to Japan, which fears being isolated. Obama managed to convene a brief meeting of the Japanese and South Korean leaders recently at the nuclear safety summit in Europe, but the agenda focused solely on North Korea. For its part, the United States simply urges restraint and dialogue, consistently refusing to intervene directly into disputes over the wartime past. American diplomats understandably argue that the subject is a minefield and that any U.S. involvement will be viewed with suspicion in China, Japan, and South Korea alike.

Even so, China’s bid for regional domination makes it nearly impossible for the United States to continue to stay out of the fray; Beijing has already started to position itself as sympathetic to South Korean fears about Japan and has embarked on a global propaganda campaign against Japanese “militarism,” pointing with undisguised glee at any evidence of Japanese nostalgia for its wartime past.  By taking a leading role in dealing with the wartime past, the United States could make it difficult for Beijing to use it for political gain.

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The first few paragraphs of this article have been reproduced with permission of Foreign Affairs. The complete version may be accessed on Foreign Affairs online.

Dominik Müller

As a visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC in 2013, Dominik Müller finished worked on revising his doctoral dissertation into publishable form. The manuscript was published in March 2014 as Islam, Politics and Youth in Malaysia: The Pop-Islamist Reinvention of PAS (Routledge). In its pages, Dr. Müller has insightful things to say about the intersections of Malaysian politics, pop culture, and transnationally manifested "post-Islamism," among other topics.  Rather than essentialize or overgeneralize "Islamism," with or without the prefix, he views the phenomenon dynamically in plural terms as a political ideology, a life philosophy, and a social phenomenon shaped by local contexts that are themselves diverse.

Southeast Asia Forum offers hearty congratulations to Dr. Müller, along with thanks for acknowledging in the book the hospitality of Shorenstein APARC's "extremely helpful" faculty and staff and the "excellent conditions for writing and research" that he recalls Shorenstein APARC having provided. SEAF director Donald K. Emmerson remembers with particular fondness his conversations with Dr. Müller, and is pleased to be mentioned for having contributed "ingenious thoughts and practical suggestions," although what stands out in Emmerson's recollection are the originality and cogency of Dr. Müller's ideas about Islam, politics and modernity in Southeast Asia.

Upon returning to Germany, Dr. Müller was awarded a prestigious four-year position (2013-17) in the Cluster of Excellence at Goethe-University Frankfurt that will enable him to pursue further scholarly research and writing.

In a new co-edited volume, Gi-Wook Shin and Daniel C. Sneider of FSI’s Shorenstein APARC and Daniel Chirot of the University of Washington compare the historical legacy of the Second World War in the Asian and European theaters. They provide unique, timely insight on the lasting influence of that wartime period, exploring the depth of its effects on contemporary attitudes and geopolitics.