North Korea’s nuclear weapon test in October 2006 and the subsequent “debate” in Japan about whether or not to ponder its own nuclear future brought renewed attention to the subject of Japan and nuclear weapons.  Pundits and policy makers in both the United States and Japan contemplated the implications of Pyongyang’s nuclear breakout, and many wondered if this marked the beginning of fundamental change in Japanese thinking on these issues.  Just as North Korea’s long-range missile test over Japanese airspace in 1998 was a major catalyst leading to Japan’s full-fledged embrace of America’s missile defense (MD) development program a few years later, might the 2006 nuclear test eventually prove to be a similar watershed moment in Japanese defense policy?  Would there be a rising tide of Japanese sentiment in favor of reexamining the three non-nuclear principles of non-possession, non-manufacture, and non-introduction? 

In pursuit of answers to these questions, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA) conducted an extended research effort over the past two years to examine not only Japan’s propensity and capacity to “go nuclear,” but also to explore the overarching issue of how deterrence is functioning and changing in the context of the U.S.-Japan alliance.  It is these latter questions in particular regarding deterrence and extended deterrence that proved most interesting and, we think, particularly important to U.S. policy makers, given the dramatic changes underway in the regional security environment in East Asia and relevant proposals in the areas of non-proliferation and arms control.  Mr. Schoff's presentation will describe the results of IFPA's study and offer steps that the allies can take to reshape extended deterrence for the twenty-first century in ways that strengthen and diversify the bilateral relationship, and ultimately contribute to regional stability and prosperity.

About the Speaker:

James L. Schoff is the Associate Director of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA) in Cambridge, MA, where he specializes in East Asian security issues, U.S. alliance relations, international crisis management cooperation, and regional efforts to stem WMD proliferation. He also contributes to IFPA’s U.S. government and military contract work relating to East Asia. Some of his recent publications include Realigning Priorities: The U.S.-Japan Alliance and the Future of Extended Deterrence (IFPA 2009); Nuclear Matters in North Korea: Building a Multilateral Response for Future Stability in Northeast Asia (Potomac Books 2008) (co-author); In Times of Crisis: Global and Local Civil-Military Disaster Relief Coordination in the United States and Japan (IFPA, 2007); “Transformation of the U.S.-Japan Alliance,” in The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs (Winter 2007); Political Fences and Bad Neighbors: North Korea Policy Making in Japan and Implications for the United States (IFPA, 2006); and Tools for Trilateralism: Improving U.S.-Japan-Korea Cooperation to Manage Complex Contingencies (Potomac Books, 2005).

Mr. Schoff joined IFPA in 2003, after serving as the program officer in charge of policy studies at the United States-Japan Foundation. Prior to that he was the business manager for Bovis Japan and Bovis Asia Pacific, and international construction and project management firm. Mr. Schoff graduated from Duke University and earned an M.A. in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He also studied for one year at International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Japan, and he lectured at Boston University in 2007.

Major change seems virtually certain to occur eventually in North Korea. The regime, already under great stress from the collapse of its economy and continuing international isolation, is being further tested by the apparently serious medical condition of top leader Kim Jong Il. North Korea’s neighbors, the PRC and South Korea, are concerned about the possibility of instability in North Korea resulting from the succession issue and other issues. The United States fears that chaos in North Korea could endanger the security of nuclear materials and technology that North Korea possesses. ROK General (RET) Byung Kwan Kim will analyze patterns of possible change in North Korea and how its neighbors and the United States are likely to respond.

General (RET) Byung Kwan Kim is the inaugural Koret Fellow for 2008-09 academic year. He was the Deputy Commander of the ROK-US Combined Forces Command and the Commander of the Ground Component Command.

The Koret Fellowship was established with generous support from the Koret Foundation to bring leading professionals in Asia and the United States to Stanford to study United States-Korea relations. Fellows conduct their own research on the bilateral relationship, with an emphasis on contemporary relations, with the broad aim of fostering greater understanding and closer ties between the two countries.

This event is supported by a generous grant from the Koret Foundation.

In recent decades, nationalism has become a bad word among many liberal Western scholars, who have highlighted the political agendas and usages of nationalist discourse, frequently associating it with fascism, patriarchy, conservatism and protectionism. Unlike many Western countries in which right-wing groups have attempted to monopolize nationalism, in the Koreas, it has been associated primarily with the ‘left’: in South Korea, with anti-authoritarian democratic movements, and in North Korea, where nationalism has been one of the founding principles of the Communist Party. Dennis Hart argues, however, that there are multiple nationalisms on the Korean peninsula that cannot necessarily be subsumed under simple left-right rubric: some are more open and inclusive, some more grassroots-based and self-affirming, and others more aggressive, exclusive, state-driven, and exceptionalist. What both Koreas have shared in their respective official nationalist discourses, however, has been the state-led effort to show their citizens that they are the only legitimate representative of ‘true’ Korean identity, and that the other Korea is a pretender or puppet state. Needless to say, both sides have targeted history in their attempts to compete for hegemony over Korean nationalist discourse. In this lecture, Dennis Hart juxtaposes North and South Korean state narratives to show how the same historical moments and events are remembered (in other words, appropriated and mobilized) by each state in different ways. Also discussed are how people of North and South Korea respond to or protest against the state narratives of the nation, and how they struggle to articulate alternative memories and by extension alternative nationalisms.

Dennis Hart is the associate director of the Asian Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh, and an affiliate professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He received his PhD in political science from the University of Washington. Professor Hart’s research and teaching interests include nationalism, culture and identity, and politics in North and South Korea.

He is currently working on a pair of book projects: Politics and Culture in North and South Korea, which will be published by Routledge Press, and Letters from the Empire, a collection of political essays.