The pace of China-U.S. strategic competition has accelerated in the Asia-Pacific, causing heightened concern among U.S. allies and partners in the region over China’s economic expansion, Belt and Road Initiative, and maritime ambitions that challenge U.S. dominance in the region.  Even U.S. allies as reliable as Australia are wondering openly about the capacity of the U.S. to balance Chinese influence.  The Trump administration’s isolationist rhetoric, abandonment of TPP, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords, and “flinch” during the recent trade war has increased this concern.  China meanwhile has demonstrated increased sophistication in diplomacy and in neutralizing historical U.S. advantages.  The new frontiers of cyber and space are the most likely domains in which these challenges will play out from a security perspective.  The choices that the U.S. makes in these realms in the next two years may establish a course for the region that cannot be corrected later.

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Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich is the former US ambassador to Australia and Special Counsel to President Obama in the White House.  He is currently a partner at Dentons and CEO of Dentons Diplomatic Solutions, where he focuses on privacy and data security, internal investigations, market access, and cross-border disputes involving the Indo-Pacific region.

As ambassador, his term was marked by the US "rebalance" to the Asia­ Pacific, with Australia being the focal point for that shift. His efforts included overseeing record growth in trade and investment between the US and Australia, bringing the Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty into force, establishing new alliance agreements for satellites and cybersecurity, executing a new space cooperation agreement that supported the Mars Curiosity rover landing, leading joint US-Australia efforts in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province, and promoting regional human rights efforts. For his federal service, Amb. Bleich has received numerous awards, including the highest civilian honors awarded by the Director of National Intelligence and the United States Navy. In 2014, he received the State Department's highest award for a non-career ambassador, the Sue Cobb Prize for Exemplary Diplomatic Service.

Amb. Bleich currently serves as Chair of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board (appointed by President Obama) and as a member of the East-West Center (appointed by Secretary Kerry). He also serves by appointment of the Governor on the Governor's 11-member International Trade and Investment Council. He was formerly the President of the State Bar of California, and the Chair of the California State University Board of Trustees, and currently serves on the Board of Stanford’s Center For the Advanced Study of Behavior Science, and the Board of Amherst College.  He has been elected as a life member to both the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations.  

Amb. Bleich received his B.A. from Amherst College (with high honors), M.P.P. from Harvard (with highest honors), and J.D. from U.C. Berkeley (with highest honors) where he also served as Editor-in-Chief of the California Law Review.  He clerked for Judge Abner Mikva of the DC Circuit, Chief Justice William Rehnquist of the U.S. Supreme Court, and Judge Howard Holtzmann of the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in the Hague, before becoming a partner at Munger Tolles & Olson.  Amb. Bleich has been regularly listed among the Daily Journal's Top 100 attorneys in California, honored as a California Lawyer Attorney of the Year and listed in Lawdragon 500 and in America's Best Lawyers as a top “Bet the Company” lawyer.

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This event is part of the China Program’s Colloquia Series entitled "A New Cold War?: Sharp Power, Strategic Competition, and the Future of U.S.-China Relations " sponsored by Shorenstein APARC's China Program.

A New Cold War?: Sharp Power, Strategic Competition, and the Future of U.S.-China Relations

Trade conflict has exploded. The media is rife with stories of China’s unfair trade practices, cyber theft, IP theft and forced technology transfers. Who will first scale the commanding heights of technological supremacy? Who will be the first mover in AI, robotics and biotechnology? What are the implications of Beijing’s ambitious infrastructure projects, including its Belt and Road Initiative? How is China’s “sharp power” deployed, and what are its implications for political and civic life in the U.S.? Can the Trump administration and Beijing’s leadership reach agreement on our trade disputes? Are these just the beginning salvos of an increasingly turbulent future? As U.S. policy towards China sharply veers away from “constructive engagement” to “strategic competition,” the Stanford China Program will host a series of talks by leading experts to explore the current state of our bilateral relations, its potential future, and their implications for the world order.

https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/china/research/new-cold-war-sharp-power-strategic-competition-and-future-us-china-relations

EMERGING ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY ASIA

A Special Seminar Series

RSVP required by February 8, 2019 to: https://goo.gl/forms/dht3i9iX06mGpNyC3

VALID STANFORD ID CARD MUST BE PRESENTED UPON ARRIVAL

ABSTRACT: Most North Korean refugees and defectors live in South Korea, but in the past decade a growing number have moved beyond the Korean peninsula to create exile communities in North America, Europe, and other locations around the world. These movements have contributed to the emergence of a new and more globally distributed North Korean diaspora. What factors have shaped the emergence of this diaspora, and what effect is it likely to have?  I find that contestation over conceptions of citizenship, at both the level of the individual and the level of government policy, have combined to shape the migration and resettlement of North Korean defectors and refugees over time and across geographic space. I then draw on a comparison with other authoritarian diasporas and extra-territorial opposition movements to show how changing North Korean resettlement patterns are likely to have significant geopolitical implications--not just for the individuals and families that migrate out of North Korea, but for American and international security and human rights policies toward North Korea.  

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EMERGING ISSUES IN CONTEMPORARY ASIA

A Special Seminar Series

RSVP required by January 29, 2019 to: https://goo.gl/forms/0bPqyoTQwub8WaRo2

VALID STANFORD ID CARD MUST BE PRESENTED UPON ARRIVAL

ABSTRACT: How does North Korea think about coercion—that is, threats and the use of force to achieve political goals? The answer affects not only the kinds of “sticks” to employ as part of North Korea policy, but the potential cost of using sticks or pressure at all. In this presentation, Jackson argues that part of North Korean strategic culture—specifically its beliefs about coercion—helps explain a durable pattern in its foreign policy and crisis bargaining history: generating deliberate friction with adversaries despite the risk of its own destruction. This presentation will explain the offensive and reputational underpinnings of how North Korea thinks about coercion, detail how this aspect of North Korean strategic culture helps us make sense of its foreign policy history, and explore the implication of this set of beliefs for recent North Korea policy. It will argue that the policy of “maximum pressure,” and its “strategic patience” antecedent, both contained implicit assumptions about North Korean behavior at odds with the historical record— assumptions that were blind to the risks of blowback they were generating.

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The 11th Annual Koret Workshop

A dramatic opening created by the unique strategic outlooks and personalities of Moon Jae-in, Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump instigated a series of highly symbolic summits in the early months of 2018. The process kicked off by those summits has bogged down, however, as the necessary compromises for an agreement between the United States and North Korea have proved elusive. This year's Koret Workshop will therefore invite experts from a variety of areas in order to reflect on what the stumbling blocks have been as well as prospects for overcoming them. Conference participants will work towards better understanding and supporting potential emerging solutions to the persistent conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

The workshop will consist of three sessions:

Session I: Assessments of Summit Diplomacy

Session II: Challenges and Opportunities in Media Coverage

Session III: Prospects and Pitfalls in the Near-Term

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The stories of North Korea and Myanmar (Burma) are two of Asia’s most difficult. For decades they were infamous as the region’s most militarized and repressed, self-isolated and under sanctions by the international community while, from Singapore to Japan, the rest of Asia saw historic wealth creation. Andray Abrahamian, author of the recent book North Korea and Myanmar: Divergent Paths (McFarland, 2018), examines and compares the recent histories of North Korea and Myanmar, asking how both became pariahs and why Myanmar has been able to find a path out of isolation while North Korea has not. 

Abrahamian finds that both countries were faced with severe security threats following decolonization. Myanmar was able to largely take care of its main threats in the 1990s and 2000s, allowing it the space to address the reasons for its pariah status. North Korea's response to its security threat has been to develop nuclear weapons, which in turn perpetuates and exacerbates its isolation and pariah status. In addition, Pyongyang has developed a state ideology and a coercive apparatus unmatched by Myanmar, insulating its decision makers from political pressures and issues of legitimacy to a greater degree.

Dr. Andray Abrahamian is currently the 2018-19 Koret Fellow in Korea Program at Stanford. He is a member of the US National Committee on North Korea and an Adjunct Fellow at Pacific Forum and at Griffith University. Working for a non-profit, Choson Exchange, has taken him to the DPRK nearly 30 times; he has also lived in Myanmar.