Part II: Asia in the World Series

The causes and moral implications of genocidal mass killings have, in the past couple of decades, become a major area of scholarly as well as popular debate and political contention. But in the process questions of definition, guilt, compensation, and of reconciliation have become muddled and been subject to political and ideological bias. While many of these issues remain controversial and even unresolvable, a clearer exposition of causes, consequences, and debates about major examples can help us reach more objective judgments and improve our understanding of these terrible events. Many, though not all of the examples used to discuss this will come from an edited book due to appear in March 2014 entitled Confronting Memories of World War II.  This volume is a joint Stanford University Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and University of Washington Jackson School endeavor.  Discussing this topic with a broad set of historical examples is far from merely being an academic exercise as it directly touches important contemporary political controversies.

Dan Chirot has authored books about social change, ethnic and nationalist conflicts, Eastern Europe, and tyranny. He co-authored Why Not Kill Them All? (Princeton Univeristy Press), about political mass murder and most recently he wrote a completely new, very revised edition of his book How Societies Change (Sage Publications).  He has edited or co-edited books on Leninism’s decline, entrepreneurial ethnic minorities, ethnopolitical warfare, the economic history of Eastern Europe, and memories of World War II.  He founded the journal East European Politics and Societies and has received help from, among others, the John Simon Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Mellon Foundations and from the US State Department. He has consulted for the US Government, the Ford Foundation, CARE, and other NGOs. In 2004/05 he was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace working on African conflicts. He earned his BA from Harvard and his PhD from Columbia.

Part I: Asia in the World Series

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution the world economy has gone through a set of stages, or cycles, each defined by its leading centers, its major technologies, and its most critical political conflicts. While technologies have progressed immensely some of the same patterns have been repeated. Though most economists do not seem to believe that there have been long term more or less regular cycles, thinking in terms of repetitive and therefore somewhat predictable and explainable changes can help us better model the past and get some sense of possible futures. Until now the dominant economies have all been Western. Will this continue? Why has Asia lagged, and are contemporary developments going to fundamentally change the nature and causes of success in the world economy?

Dan Chirot has authored books about social change, ethnic and nationalist conflicts, Eastern Europe, and tyranny. He co-authored Why Not Kill Them All? (Princeton Univeristy Press), about political mass murder and most recently he wrote a completely new, very revised edition of his book How Societies Change (Sage Publications).  He has edited or co-edited books on Leninism’s decline, entrepreneurial ethnic minorities, ethnopolitical warfare, the economic history of Eastern Europe, and memories of World War II.  He founded the journal East European Politics and Societies and has received help from, among others, the John Simon Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Mellon Foundations and from the US State Department. He has consulted for the US Government, the Ford Foundation, CARE, and other NGOs. In 2004/05 he was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace working on African conflicts. He earned his BA from Harvard and his PhD from Columbia.

Maritime security has become an increasingly salient point of friction in China-Japan relations. The focus has been small islands called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese, islands that both countries claim but Japan controls. Besides the territorial claims, many issues are at play:  historical memory, geo-strategy, the quest for natural resources, domestic nationalisms, the capacity of governments to manage crises, and Tokyo’s and Beijing’s relationship with the United States. Richard Bush, author of The Perils of Proximity: China-Japan Security Relations will address the two countries growing rivalry in the maritime domain and the implications for the United States.

Richard C. Bush III is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, Director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, and holder of the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies.

Bush came to Brookings in July 2002, after serving almost five years as the Chairman and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the mechanism through which the United States Government conducts substantive relations with Taiwan in the absence of diplomatic relations.

Bush began his professional career in 1977 with the China Council of The Asia Society. From July 1983 to June 1995, we worked on the staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, first on the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs (chair, Steve Solarz), and then the full committee (chair, Lee Hamilton). In July 1995, he became National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and a member of the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates the analytic work of the intelligence committee. He left the NIC in September 1997 to become head of AIT.

Bush received his undergraduate education at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He did his graduate work in political science at Columbia University, getting an M.A. in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1978. He is the author of a number of articles on U.S. relations with China and Taiwan, and of At Cross Purposes, a book of essays on the history of America’s relations with Taiwan (M. E. Sharpe, 2004). In July 2005, Brookings published Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait. In March 2007, through Wylie Publishers, Richard Bush and his Brookings colleague Michael O’Hanlon released A War Like No Other: The Truth About China’s Challenge to America. In 2010, Brookings published his Perils of Proximity: China-Japan Security Relations, which focused on growing tensions in the East China Sea. In January 2013, Brookings published his Uncharted Strait: The Future of China-Taiwan Relations