Stanford University

Vietnam's Uniqueness in a Globalized World

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Ambassador Ton-Nu-Thi Ninh is a member of Viet Nam's law-making body, the National Assembly, representing the southern coastal province of Ba Ria Vung Tau. In her position as Vice-Chair of the National Assembly Foreign Affairs Committee, her mission has been to develop and enhance Viet Nam's relations with the countries of North America (particularly, the United States) and Western Europe. She travels frequently to the United States and Europe and regularly interacts with senior government and business leaders both abroad and in Viet Nam. She has also represented Viet Nam in international conferences among world leaders to discuss issues with global implications. She is widely recognized as an effective spokesperson for Viet Nam.

Prior to holding her current position, Mme Ninh served, for over two decades, as a diplomat in Viet Nam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, specializing in multilateral institutions (the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, Francophonie, The Association of South East Asian Nations) and global issues (international peace and security, development, environment, governance, human rights, etc.) As advisor to Viet Nam's Minister of Foreign Affairs, she was responsible for key international efforts on behalf of Viet Nam, such as the holding of the Summit of French-Speaking Countries in 1997 in Ha Noi. From 2000 to 2003, she was Viet Nam's Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and Head of the Mission to the European Union in Brussels.

Mme Ninh grew up in France, was educated at Sorbonne University and Cambridge University and started her career as an academic. She taught English and English literature at Paris University in the late 1960s and later at Saigon University until 1975.

Born in Hue, Central Viet Nam, into a traditional family, she developed her political commitment to the National Liberation Front for South Viet Nam early on during her student days in Paris. Since then, she has been consistently active in social issues, with a special interest on gender. She served a term on the Central Executive on the Viet Nam Women's Union.

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Bechtel Conference Center

Ton-Nu-Thi Ninh Vice-Chair of the National Assembly Foreign Affairs Committee for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Speaker
Lectures
Asia-Pacific Leaders Forum

Establishing a Peace Regime on the Korean Peninsula

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About Ambassador Kim

Aug. 1978 Joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA)

Feb. 1981 Second Secretary, Korean Embassy to the United States

Mar. 1984 Assistant Secretary, Office of the President

Apr. 1986 Second Secretary, Korean Embassy to the Republic of India

Dec. 1991 First Secretary, Korean Embassy to the United States of America

Feb. 1995 Director, North America Division I, American Affairs Bureau, MOFA

Aug. 1996 Assistant to the Foreign Minister

Dec. 1996 Deputy Consul-General, Korean Consulate General in San Francisco

Feb. 1999 Director for Personnel, Office of Planning and Management, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT)

Jul. 2000 Consul-General, Korean Consulate General in Toronto, Canada

Aug. 2003 Senior Research Officer, Department of American Studies, Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security(IFANS), MOFAT

Feb. 2004 Director-General, North American Affairs Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MOFAT)

Mar. 2006 Visiting Scholar, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center

Philippines Conference Room

Kim Sook Ambassador and former Director-General for the North American Affairs Bureau Speaker Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Republic of Korea
Seminars
Contemporary Asia Seminar Series
Date Label

The Politics of History: the Case of Japan and Korea

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About the series: The year 2005 marked the 60th anniversary of the end of Pacific War and Japan's unconditional surrender. Post-war Japan has embraced a new constitution that renounced war as a right of the nation and for the past six decades pursued economic growth under democratic government. Ironically, the years leading to this anniversary were filled with various disputes over territorial and historical issues with China and Korea and questions from neighboring countries whether Japanese society is shifting towards the right. Triggered by Prime Minister Koizumi's official visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines "A" class war criminals, anti-Japan sentiment is widely spreading among its neighboring countries, accompanied by strong nationalism, and is posing a potential threat to the political stability of the region.

This colloquium series will focus on Japan's relationship with China and Korea and the historical controversies that are central to their deteriorating political relationship. The series speakers will address the following questions: What are the historical roots of these controversies? How did post-war Japanese foreign policy effect and was effected by Japan's handling of its militaristic past? What is the nature of domestic politics of these three countries that politicizes these historical issues and influences their responses to one another?

Each of the speakers in this series has been asked to address a specific aspect of Japan's relations. Professor Kimura will address the post-war political relationship between Japan and Korea.

Philippines Conference Room

Kan Kimura Professor, Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies Speaker Kobe University
Seminars
Nationalism and Regionalism in Northeast Asia

The Failure of International Policy on Burma: History and Prospect

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For nearly twenty years, an array of mainly Western governments, NGOs, and international organizations including the UN have tried to promote democracy in Burma using sanctions and diplomacy. The net result has been an ever more entrenched military dictatorship, a looming humanitarian crisis, and a possible resumption of armed conflict. How are we to think about this failure in international policy? Thant Myint-U will identify at the core of this external impotence a singularly ahistorical analysis of Burma, its 44-year-old dictatorship, and its even longer-running civil wars. He will also ask: Could things have been handled differently? What does Burmese history tell us about what is and is not possible today? And what are the prospects for constructive change?

Thant Myint-U is a senior visiting fellow at the International Peace Academy in New York City. In 1994-99 he was a fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge University where he taught Indian and colonial history. He has also served for many years in the United Nations, first in three different peacekeeping operations (in Cambodia and ex-Yugoslavia) and then at the United Nations Secretariat in New York. In 2004-05 he was in charge of policy planning in the UN's Department of Political Affairs. He has written two books on Burma: and The River of Lost Footsteps (2006) and The Making of Modern Burma (2000). He was educated at Harvard and Cambridge Universities and completed a PhD in modern history at Cambridge in 1996.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Thant Myint-U Fellow, Centre for History and Economics Speaker King's College, Cambridge University
Seminars
Southeast Asia Program

The Survival of Girls in China and the New Care for Girls Program

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China's population management, with consideration of cultural values impacting the growing sex ratio imbalance in China. Professor Li, along with his collaborator, Professor Marcus Feldman of Stanford University, have been advising the PRC government on this matter for some years now.

Professor Li Shuzhuo is director of the Institute for Population and Development Studies at Xi'an Jiaotong University in China. His many publications include articles in Population Studies, Population Research and Policy Review, Journal of Biosocial Sciences, Social Biology, and the Journal of Comparative Family Studies. His most recent book is Uxorilocal Marriage in Contemporary Rural China (by S. Li, X. Jin, M.W. Feldman, N. Li, and C. Zhu; China Social Sciences Academy Press, in Chinese).

Since 1994, Dr. Li has been an associate and consultant with the Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies at Stanford University. Together with Professor Marcus Feldman and other members of Xi'an Jiaotong - Morrison cooperative projects, Dr. Li has been advising the PRC government on population related policy issues. Dr. Li earned his Ph.D. at Xi'an Jiaotong University in the People's Republic of China.

This seminar is part of the Taiwan/China Seminar Series hosted by Melissa Brown, Assistant Professor, Anthropological Sciences, Stanford University.

Philippines Conference Room

Li Shuzhuo Director, Population Research Institute Speaker Xi'an Jiaotong University, PRC
Seminars

Parallel Wars? Can "Lessons of Vietnam" Be Applied to Iraq?

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When the first President Bush swiftly crushed Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, he stated that America had "kicked the Vietnam syndrome." The strategic and regional context of the second President Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq appeared so far removed from the Cold War era and the specifics of the Vietnam War that there seemed to be little point in harking back to that decades-old conflict. Yet starting with the growth of the insurgency in Iraq and the resultant revival of concern with "counter insurgency," the focus on "Iraqification" (with echoes of "Vietnamization"), and even a possible revival of the Kissingerian concept of a "decent interval" before disengaging from Iraq, the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam have reemerged in public discussion. Can we derive any benefit from invoking these parallels, either in better understanding the Vietnam War or in clarifying contemporary challenges in Iraq? Or is the real "lesson of Vietnam" the idea that "lessons" themselves are dangerous and misleading?

David Elliott spent seven years in Vietnam, from 1963 to 1973, in the US Army and with the Rand Corporation. The experience ultimately led to his best-known work: a two-volume, 1500-page book, The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta (2002). The New York Review of Books called it "the most comprehensive and enlightening book on that war since June 1971, when The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers." An abridged paperback edition will be published this year. Elliott's PhD is from Cornell, his BA from Yale. His current research is on Vietnam's adaptation to the post-Cold War world.

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Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

David Elliott H. Russell Smith Professor of Government and International Relations Speaker Pomona College
Seminars
Southeast Asia Program

Indian Politics and International Relations Since the End of the Cold War

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About the speaker: Achin Vanaik, fellow and board member of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam is one of the most important analysts of contemporary Indian politics. The author of The Painful Transition: Bourgeois Democracy in India (1990), The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity and Secularization (1997) and Globalization and South Asia (2004.)

Vanaik has served on the board of directors of GreenPeace (India), and as an assistant editor for The Times of India. He writes regularly for the Economic and Political Weekly, The Times and The Telegraph and has written extensively on the nuclear question in south Asia.

Dr. Vanaik's lecture is co-sponsored with the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Achin Vanaik Professor of International Relations and Global Politics, Political Science Department Speaker Delhi University
Seminars

Shaping Japan's Post-War Foreign Policy Under the Influence of Domestic Politics

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About the series: The year 2005 marked the 60th anniversary of the end of Pacific War and Japan's unconditional surrender. Post-war Japan has embraced a new constitution that renounced war as a right of the nation and for the past six decades pursued economic growth under democratic government. Ironically, the years leading to this anniversary were filled with various disputes over territorial and historical issues with China and Korea and questions from neighboring countries whether Japanese society is shifting towards the right. Triggered by Prime Minister Koizumi's official visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines "A" class war criminals, anti-Japan sentiment is widely spreading among its neighboring countries, accompanied by strong nationalism, and is posing a potential threat to the political stability of the region.

This colloquium series will focus on Japan's relationship with China and Korea and the historical controversies that are central to their deteriorating political relationship. The series speakers will address the following questions: What are the historical roots of these controversies? How did post-war Japanese foreign policy effect and was effected by Japan's handling of its militaristic past? What is the nature of domestic politics of these three countries that politicizes these historical issues and influences their responses to one another?

Each of the speakers in this series has been asked to address a specific aspect of Japan's relations. Professor Iokibe will address Japan's Post-War foreign policy under the pressures of the domestic agenda.

Makoto Iokibe, Professor of History in the Department of Law at Kobe University, is a specialist in Japanese diplomatic history and U.S.-Japan relations. Dr. Iokibe has also taught at Hiroshima University and was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and an academic visitor at the London School of Economics. He was a member of the Prime Minister's Commission on "Japan's Goals in the 21st Century," which submitted its report in January 2000. He is the author of several award-winning books, including Japan and the Changing World Order; The Occupation Era: The Prime Ministers and Rebuilding of Postwar Japan, 1945-1952; and Diplomatic History of Postwar Japan, 1945-1999. He received his BA, MA and PhD in Law from Kyoto University.

Philippines Conference Room

Makoto Iokibe Professor of History, Deparment of Law Speaker Kobe University, Japan
Seminars
Nationalism and Regionalism in Northeast Asia

Explaining Policy Outcomes in the Philippines: Is the President Too Strong, or Is Congress?

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Who influences policy outcomes in the Philippines? While most analysts agree that the quality of policymaking has been poor, they offer two very different explanations. Some blame a too-strong presidency: Presidents keep personal control over policy, so policies change when one president succeeds another. Discontinuity undermines performance. Other observers blame the power of congress: Legislators have stymied presidential agendas for reform, while presidents have been powerless to stop congress from failing to act or from acting to undermine reform. Takeshi Kawanaka takes a different approach. He argues that while presidents have control of fiscal policy, congress is dominant when it comes to ordinary legislation. It is the allocation not the concentration of power that facilitates short-sighted pork-barrel politics and inhibits the growth of cohesive and disciplined political parties.

Takeshi Kawanaka, a visiting scholar in the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, has written mainly on Philippine politics. After two years of field work on local governance and political machines, he wrote Power in a Philippine City (2002). More recently he edited The Philippines in the Post EDSA Period (2005, in Japanese), which deals with the interaction between democratic consolidation and economic liberalization. His current research is on the role of political institutions in shaping policy outcomes in new democracies. He received his PhD in political science from Kobe University, and his MA and BA from Waseda University.

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Takeshi Kawanaka

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-9741 (650) 723-6530
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Visiting Scholar
T_Kawanaka.jpg PhD

Takeshi Kawanaka is a 2005-06 visiting scholar at Shorenstein APARC, and a senior research fellow at the Institute of Developing Economies (IDE), Japan. He was a visiting research associate at the University of the Philippines from 1996 to 1998.

Since Kawanaka joined IDE in 1993, he has been working on politics in developing countries. He did field research mainly in the Philippines. He wrote a book on local politics, Power in a Philippine City (Chiba: IDE) and edited a book on post-democratization politics, The Philippines in the Post EDSA Period (in Japanese, Chiba: IDE). Now, he works on political institutions and policy outcomes in new democracies.

Kawanaka received BA and MA in Law from Waseda University and a PhD in political science from Kobe University. He taught courses on Southeast Asian Politics at Komazawa University and Seijo University. Aside from Japanese and English, he speaks Tagalog.

Takeshi Kawanaka Speaker
Seminars
Southeast Asia Program
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