How was it that Afghanistan, a country that was often conquered and ruled by outsiders before 1800, became seemingly impossible to conquer and rule in the 19th and 20th centuries? An historical examination of Afghan history reveals that premodern Central Asian rulers looked upon war and conquest as the business of displacing rival elites, a process having little or nothing to do with the inhabitants of the territory. During the 19th century, this pattern began to change in Afghanistan where governments found themselves dependent on raising tribal armies to repel foreign invaders, such as the British, at the cost of sharing power with them in the postwar period. This pattern continued into the 20th century when during each period of state collapse drew an ever-wider part of the population into the political struggle for power. The Soviet invasion drew the widest possible opposition but upon their withdrawal no faction was able to create a stable government. Afghanistan fell into ten years of civil war that opened it up to extreme movements such the Taliban and its exploitation by outsiders such as Osama bin Laden. Since war alone has now proved incapable of solving Afghanistan's problems the current conflict in Afghanistan can only be won by a wider policy that makes Afghanistan's economic and political reconstruction a priority in a way that can end its cycle of anarchy.

In recent years, Korea has seen remarkable developments in the broadband Internet access business. This presentation looks into what Korea's broadband Internet usage is like now in comparison with other countries, and explains the major factors contributing to such development from three viewpoints: government, private sector, and social backgrounds. The seminar will also include discussing challenges that the Korean broadband Internet industry is facing: how to convert high usage of Internet to e-business, and strategic issues from a broadband Internet service provider's standpoint. This program is free and open to the public. Lunch will be provided for those who **RSVP before noon on Wednesday, March 6th** to Okky Choi. Tel: (650) 724-8271 or Email: okkychoi@stanford.edu

The recent decades have witnessed the rise of new scholarship in Korea, which tries to "rewrite" the modern Korean history between the late 1940s and the early 1950s. It seeks to challenge and overcome the so-called "revisionist" approaches to the modern Korean history, but it is definitely far from endorsing or returning to the previous "traditional" viewpoints. Claiming itself to be a "third wave" in the study of modern Korean history, this presentation re-examines the postwar U.S.-Korean policy in general, discusses the American governing of South Korea from practical points of view, and puts forth the social history of the modern Korea under the U.S. occupation and during the Korean war.

High-level talks between the United States and North Korea began under the previous Bush administration, and continued throughout the 1990s. These negotiations succeeded in mothballing the North's nuclear reactor and, with immense help from President Kim Dae-Jung's "sunshine policy," were on the brink of another major breakthrough a year ago. Although little diplomacy movement has occurred since the new Bush administration took office, and much has changed elsewhere in the world since the terrorist attacks on September 11th, conditions remain conducive to a rapprochement between Washington and Pyongyang, and a final, formal end to the Korean War. This program is free and open to the public. Lunch will be provided for those who **RSVP before noon on Wednesday, January 16th** to Okky Choi. Tel: (650) 724-8271 or Email: okkychoi@stanford.edu

Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution and Professor of Political Science & Sociology, Stanford University. A specialist on democratic development, Professor Diamond is studying public opinion in Taiwan, where he will serve as an official observer of the parliamentary election. He is co-editor of Journal of Democracy. Phillip C. Saunders, Director, East Asia Nonproliferation Program, Monterey Institute of International Studies. Professor Saunders studies Sino-US relations and East Asian security issues. He is the author of Project Strait Talk: Security and Stability in the Taiwan Strait. Thomas Gold, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley A specialist on the democratic transition in Taiwan, Professor Gold is the author of "The Waning of the Kuomintang State on Taiwan," in State Capacity in East Asia. He will be an official observer of Taiwan's parliamentary elections. Taiwan politics were turned upside-down in March 2000, when the Kuomintang was defeated in the presidential election, ending 55 years of one-party rule. Now, polls show the KMT is likely to lose its parliamentary majority in the December 2001 elections, a development which would dismay Beijing, sideline one of Asia's oldest political movements, trigger profound realignments in Taiwan's internal politics, and transform relations between Taiwan, China, and the United States. The election results and their implications will be discussed in a roundtable discussion with the three panelists. A buffet lunch will be served.

Professor Wang Jisi is director and a senior researcher of the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing. He is concurrently director of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at the Party School of the Central Committee, the Communist Party of China, a guest professor of Peking University and Tsinghua University, and president of the Chinese Association for American Studies. He is also a member and advisor to many prestigious research institutions in the United States. He is now teaching a course on "China Under Reform" for the fall semester, 2001, as a Freeman Professor of Asian Studies at Claremont McKenna College in California. Wang Jisi's formal education was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution. In the ten years between 1968 and 1978 he did various sorts of labor as a herdsman, peasant, and factory worker in Inner Mongolia and central China. He entered Peking University in 1978 and obtained his MA degree in 1983. Professor Wang's scholarly interests cover international relations theory, U.S. foreign policy, Chinese foreign policy, and China-U.S. relations. He has published numerous works in these fields, including a recent volume in Chinese entitled "Lonely at the Top: U.S. Global Strategy and Position in the Post-Cold War World." His articles in English include "Building a Constructive Relationship between the United States, China, and Japan" (1998), "China's New Identity and Peace in Northeast Asia" (2000), "The Internet in China: A New Fantasy?" (2000), and "Hot Peace - Not a New Cold War - between China and the United States" (2001).

The emergence of global information society changes the nature of the relationship between society, knowledge, and technology. This affects in a fundamental way the role of ICTs (Information and Communication Technology) for the distribution of knowledge, the development of network economies, networks of social innovation and networks of co-development. Knowledge networking is seen here in terms of creating cross-cultural alliances among the university, enterprise, and the media, through creating symbiotic relationships between local and global knowledge resources. The focus is on promoting a culture of shared communication, values and knowledge, seeking cooperation through valorization of diversity, social cohesion and subsidiarity. This focus is informed by the human centered vision of Information Society, which moves the digital divide discourse beyond the technocentric agenda toward a human centered agenda that recognizes the purpose of ICT as promoter of social cohesion in which shared communication and shared knowledge drive cohesion, and cohesion generates shared communication and an increase in shared knowledge. The discussion will be illustrated by an example of the European - India Cross Cultural Innovation Network, a unique project of the European Commission that promotes cross-cultural cooperation, action research and knowledge networking.