South Korea's decision to end its military agreement with Japan will damage the prospect of continued close security ties among Seoul, Washington and Tokyo because the pact has been a symbol of smooth trilateral military cooperation between them and regarded as a key deterrent against North Korea.

"It is a big mistake," Shin Gi-wook, a Korea studies expert at Stanford University, said in a recent interview adding Seoul's withdrawal from the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) puts the "trilateral security framework at risk."

"The Japan-South Korea relationship may not have hit rock bottom, but it could further deteriorate in the coming months," Shin said. "This is all the more important with the continuing threat of North Korean WMD and the escalating conflict between the U.S. and China in the region. I am concerned that South Korea could be further isolated in the Northeast Asian region—the Moon administration should see the big picture," the professor said…

Read the full article in The Korea Times.

In the past six weeks, I have been in mainland China, Hong Kong (three times), and Washington. From these trips and recent developments, I have concluded that Hong Kong is a huge tragedy in the making. Proactive and positive moves by all parties to this rapidly deteriorating situation are required.

Though Washington is not a principal party in these developments, it should be a constructive force rather than irrelevant or counterproductive...

The elements of the current crisis are many. In Hong Kong, there is a leaderless movement on the ground. There are rising levels of political and socio-economic frustration among many Hong Kong citizens stemming from mobility and economic considerations, as well as perceptions of political retrogression in the special administrative region.

There is a tone-deaf, neutered local leadership that is prideful and unwilling to admit that it made a huge strategic misstep pushing forward with an ill-conceived extradition bill. And there are local tycoons who curry favour with Beijing rather than protecting the rule of law that is in their own long-term interests...

Read the full article on South China Morning Post.

For more by Okseberg-Rohlen Fellow David M. Lampton, read our recently posted Q&A in which he analyzes the escalating U.S.-China conflict.

The Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center is pleased to welcome Robert R. King and Victor Cha as Koret fellows in Korean studies during the 2019-20 academic year. Supported by the Koret Foundation, the Koret Fellowship brings leading professionals to Stanford to conduct research on contemporary Korean affairs with the broad aim of strengthening ties between the United States and Korea.​

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Robert R. King will join the Korea Program as Koret Fellow during the fall quarter of 2019. King served as special envoy for North Korean human rights Issues, an ambassadorial ranked position at the Department of State (2009-2017). The role was established by Congress in the North Korea Human Rights Act with a mandate to “coordinate and promote efforts to improve respect for the fundamental human rights of the people of North Korea.” Since leaving the Department of State, Ambassador King has been senior advisor to the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a senior fellow at the Korea Economic Institute (KEI), and a board member of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK).

Earlier, Ambassador King served for 25 years (1983-2008) on Capitol Hill as chief of staff to Congressman Tom Lantos (D-California), and as staff director and minority staff director of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (2001-2008). King received a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University and a B.A. from Brigham Young University.

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Victor Cha, professor of government and international affairs at Georgetown University, will join the Korea Program as the Koret Fellow through the winter quarter of 2020. He is the author of five books, including The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future (Haper Collins, 2012) and Powerplay: Origins of the American Alliance System in Asia (Princeton University Press, 2016). He holds Georgetown's Dean's Award for teaching for 2010, the Distinguished Research Award for 2011, and a Distinguished Principal Investigator Award for 2016.

Professor Cha left the White House in 2007 after serving since 2004 as Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, where he was responsible for Japan, the Korean peninsula, Australia/New Zealand, and Pacific Island affairs. He serves as Senior Advisor at CSIS, and is a non-resident Fellow in Human Freedom at the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, Texas. He received a Ph.D. from Columbia University, M.A. from the University of Oxford, and MIA and B.A. from Columbia University.

James Green, former Minister Counselor for Trade Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, gave a talk titled “U.S.-China Diplomacy: 40 Years of What’s Worked and What has Not” before a Stanford China Program audience on May 6. Green is currently Senior Research Fellow at Georgetown University and is the creator of the new U.S.-China Dialogue Podcast, which features in-depth interviews with approximately two dozen former U.S. ambassadors, cabinet-level secretaries and other senior officials who were at the forefront of U.S.-China negotiations.

He recounts salient takeaways from these conversations regarding pivotal moments in U.S.-China relations, including normalization of relations, anti-Soviet cooperation in the 1980s, Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995-1996, WTO accession in 2001, Belgrade bombing and EP-3 incident in 1999 and 2001, respectively; global financial crisis of 2008, the Beijing Olympics and the current U.S.-China trade tensions.  Among his many motivations for beginning this podcast series include his desire to question the notion circulating among U.S. foreign policy experts today that U.S. policy of engagement towards China had somehow failed. To Green, who has been active in U.S.-China relations since the mid-1990’s, U.S. policy had never been about transforming China from a one-Party, authoritarian system into a liberal democracy. In order to more accurately pinpoint what U.S. goals have been, Green stated, he undertook the project and interviewed those who had played key roles during pivotal moments in U.S.-China bilateral relations.

His interviewees have included, among others, such luminaries as Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy, who in 1978 participated in secret negotiations that led to the establishment of U.S.-P.R.C. diplomatic relations; John Negroponte, first director of national intelligence and deputy secretary of state in the late 2000s during China’s rise; and Ambassador Michael Froman, former U.S. Trade Representative under President Obama. His talk at the Stanford China Program includes key lessons he has derived from these interviews even as we enter into one of the most volatile times in U.S.-China bilateral relations.

The recording and transcript are available below.  

Formed in 1979, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) works to provide policymakers with the U.S. intelligence community’s best judgments on crucial international issues. As a locus for coordinated intelligence analysis, the NIC’s work reflects the coordinated judgments of multiple agencies and departments in the broader intelligence community. But while it may be less shrouded in secrecy than many other intelligence offices, in some respects it is less well known.

In Truth to Power, published by Oxford University Press, editors Robert Hitchings and Gregory Treverton shed light on this little-understood intelligence agency. The volume provides the first-ever history of the NIC as recounted through the reflections of its eight chairs in the period from the end of the Cold War until 2017. APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar, who chaired the NIC from 2005 to 2008, is one of the contributors to the book.

In his chapter “New Mission, New Challenges”, Fingar discusses some of the challenges during his service with the agency. In particular, he reflects on two specific obstacles he faced during his tenure: executing the intelligence reforms drafted in the wake of 9/11, and repairing damage done to the NIC’s credibility by the failures of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

During his tenure, Fingar wore not one but two hats; along with the NIC chairmanship, he concurrently served as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis (DDNI/A). He describes actions taken not only to restore confidence in the intelligence community, but also to effectively execute its expanded brief. For instance, having national intelligence officers take the DDNI’s seat at meetings afforded senior officials the opportunity to perceive their value and thereby rebuild confidence in the broader intelligence community.

The Council’s reforms would soon be put to the test by way of the production of an NIE on Iranian WMD. Fingar recognized that the estimate would be a strong indicator of whether the NIC had learned its lessons following the flawed 2002 Iraq WMD estimate, and that policymakers were certain to finely examine the end product for flaws (whether made unintentionally or with political purposes in mind). As such, Fingar needed to produce an NIE that was accurate, timely, and non-political, all while handling and incorporating newly received intelligence. Through the Iran NIE, Fingar found an opportunity to redress the often-fraught relationship between Congress and the intelligence community.

Fingar closes with a review of the NIC’s pathbreaking work in the area of climate change. At the behest of a U.S. senator, the NIC took on the task of producing an NIE on the strategic implications of climate change. The resulting study categorized countries according to both their vulnerabilities and ability to manage impacts, as well as the broader implications it had for U.S. national security over the next twenty years. And while policymakers ultimately did not use the report as Fingar had hoped, he takes justified comfort in pointing out how it laid the groundwork for additional reports that followed, such as the National Research Council’s 2013 report Climate Change and Social Stress: Implications for Security Analysis.

Read Fingar's Chapter

Karl Eikenberry, director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative, spoke with "Bloomberg Markets: Asia" about the ongoing trade disputes between the U.S. and China. Video of his interview—conducted on the sidelines of the Morgan Stanley China Summit in Beijing—is posted below.