Diplomatic maneuvering in response to the North Korean nuclear crisis has presented the United States, South Korea, and China each with strategic dilemmas that go beyond the issue of how to address the prospect of a nuclear North Korea. In response to the immediate question of how to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, a complicated triangular relationship between China, South Korea, and the United States has emerged that reflects longer-term strategic anxieties about the future of a revamped security order in Northeast Asia following the resolution of the North Korean nuclear crisis.

Increasingly, these three countries perceive that how the crisis is resolved, and the policies that each member of the triangle is likely to pursue as steps toward resolving the crisis, may influence their relative positions and regional influence after the immediate issue of North Korea's denuclearization--or North Korea's future--has been resolved. Strategic anxieties about the future of Northeast Asia may be emerging as an obstacle that is as serious as apparent North Korean intransigence in explaining the lack of progress in diplomatic efforts thus far. Based on interviews with foreign policy analysts representing each actor in the triangle, the presentation will attempt to explain how each country in the triangle perceives its respective foreign policy choices and how those choices might influence the interests of its neighbors in Northeast Asia.

Scott Snyder is a Pantech Fellow at Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center during 2005-2006 and is concurrently a senior associate in the International Relations program of The Asia Foundation and Pacific Forum CSIS. He spent four years in Seoul as Korea Representative of The Asia Foundation during 2000-2004. Previously, he has served as a program officer in the Research and Studies Program of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and as acting director of The Asia Society's Contemporary Affairs Program. Past publications include Paved With Good Intentions: The NGO Experience in North Korea (2003), (co-editor with L. Gordon Flake) and Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior (1999). Mr. Snyder received his B.A. from Rice University

Meeting the world's energy needs and at the same time reducing emissions of greenhouse gases is one of the grand challenges humans must face in this century. China's situation illustrates the magnitude of the challenge as well as any place in the world. Its economy is growing rapidly, energy shortages abound, and a primary source of energy is coal. This talk reviews China's current and projected future emissions of carbon dioxide, examines alternatives for meeting the combined goals of increasing energy supply and reducing emissions, and describes research underway to provide more options to meet the challenges China faces.

Lynn Orr focuses his research activities on the interactions of fluid phase behavior with multiphase flow in porous media, the design of gas injection processes for enhanced oil recovery, and C0₂ sequestration in subsurface porous media. In August 2005, Dr. Orr and the Global Climate and Energy Project hosted an international conference at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, to explore opportunities for collaborative research to integrate advanced coal technologies with CO₂ capture and storage in China.

This series is co-sponsored with the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University.

Ambassador Hubbard served from 2001 to 2004 as U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea, completing a 39-year career in the Foreign Service in which he focused primarily on economic, political and military relations with key nations of East Asia. Immediately prior to his appointment to Korea he was principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, a position he also held from 1993 to 1996. Ambassador Hubbard previously served concurrently as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and to the Republic of Palau from August 1996 to August 2000.

After entering the Foreign Service in 1965, Ambassador Hubbard was assigned as a political-economic officer in the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He subsequently embarked upon intensive Japanese language study, which prepared him for two assignments to Japan totaling seven years and several assignments dealing with Japanese affairs in Washington. His other overseas assignments included the U.S. Mission to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, where he advised U.S. representatives to the International Energy Agency, and the U.S. embassies in Kuala Lumpur and Manila, where he was deputy chief of mission. Ambassador Hubbard also spent one year (1981-82) as legislative assistant to Congressman Jim Leach of Iowa.

Occupying senior State Department positions beginning in the mid-1980s, Ambassador Hubbard played a leading role in policies toward Japan, the Korean Peninsula and the ASEAN nations of Southeast Asia. As Philippines desk officer, country director for Japan and deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, he helped manage security ties with leading allies and addressed issues arising from trade with some of the world's most successful economies. Increasingly involved in Korean Peninsula affairs in the 1990s, Ambassador Hubbard was a principal negotiator of the 1994 Agreed Framework aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program. He became the first senior official to lead a U.S. government delegation to North Korea in 1994 when he was dispatched by President Clinton to secure the release of a U.S. Army pilot captured after his helicopter was shot down over North Korea. In addition to this successful trouble-shooting mission, Ambassador Hubbard was tapped the same year as presidential envoy to promote human rights and democracy in Burma.

Born in Kentucky in 1943, Ambassador Hubbard was raised in Tennessee and South Carolina. He received his B.A. in political science in 1965 from the University of Alabama, where he was selected for Phi Beta Kappa. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Maryland and the University of Alabama. Ambassador Hubbard's professional awards include the State Department's Superior Honor Award and the Secretary of Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service.

About the series: The year 2005 marks 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?

In December 2005 leaders from 16 Asia-Pacific nations gathered in Kuala Lumpur for the first East Asia Summit (EAS). The US was conspicuous by its absence. Should Washington be concerned about being excluded from the process of building an East Asia community? Serious questions remain about the prospects for such a community and the intentions of its creators. Will the EAS and the Asian-only ASEAN Plus Three rival or complement broader frameworks that include the US, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation? How does one create avenues of interaction between East Asian and Asia-Pacific mechanisms to make them mutually supporting rather than mutually exclusive? Ralph Cossa will address these questions and draw the implications for US policy.

Ralph A. Cossa, in addition to running the Pacific Forum CSIS in Honolulu - a non-profit foreign-policy research institute affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC - is senior editor of its quarterly electronic journal, Comparative Connections. He is also a founding member of the Steering Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP), co-chairs the CSCAP International Study Group on Countering the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Asia Pacific, and belongs to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) Experts and Eminent Persons Group.