FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.
Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions.
In this fifteenth session of the Strategic Forum, former senior American and South Korean government officials and other leading experts will discuss current developments in the Korean Peninsula and North Korea policy, the future of the U.S.-South Korean alliance, and a strategic vision for Northeast Asia. The session is hosted by the Korea Program in association with The Sejong Institute, a top South Korean think tank.
Note: This event is open to Stanford community members only.
Stanford ID required for entry.
Remarks are off the record. Recording, reporting and citation of remarks is strictly prohibited.
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rior to his confirmation in July 2014, Mr. Shear served for 32 years in the Foreign Service, most recently as the United States Ambassador to Vietnam. He has also been posted to Sapporo, Beijing, Tokyo, and Kuala Lumpur. In Washington, he has served in the Offices of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Affairs and as the Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs. He was Director of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs in 2008-2009 and Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs in 2009-2011.
Mr. Shear was a Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University’s institute for the Study of Diplomacy 1998-99. He is the recipient of the State Department’s Superior Honor Award and the Defense Department’s Civilian Meritorious Service Award for his work in U.S.-Japan defense relations.
Mr. Shear graduated from Earlham College and has a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He also attended Waseda University, Taiwan National University, and Nanjing University.
David B. Shear
U.S. Department of Defense, <i>Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs</i>
North Korea claimed it successfully tested a hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6, according to a broadcast from the nation’s Korean Central Television. Experts at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies offered their analyses to media.
In a Q&A, Siegfried Hecker answered nine questions, offering perspective on the situation and how the United States should respond. Hecker, a CISAC senior fellow, is a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and has visited North Korea seven times since 2004.
David Straub, associate director of the Korea Program, commented on the North Korean nuclear program in an NK News article. He said the timing of the nuclear test, now the nation’s fourth, was likely only marginally influenced by external factors such as Kim Jong-un’s birthday. The primary factor is technical, he said. Straub also spoke with Yonhap News on Feb. 12. In the interview, Straub said "although the United States and the People's Republic of China certainly have differences [in dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue], they pale in comparison to U.S.-Soviet differences."
Straub also offered, in an extended interview with South Korea's Segye Ilbo newspaper, his thoughts on Pyongyang's motivations for pursuing nuclear weapons. He argued that the appropriate policy response is to continue to increase pressure on the regime. Pressure applied by Washington is meant to convince Pyongyang that nuclear weapons will bring more cost than benefit, while holding open the door to good-faith negotiations to resolve peninsular issues.
Shorenstein APARC Associate Director for Research Daniel Sneider talked with Al Jazeera America and Slateabout the developments. He said the nuclear test signified North Korea’s uneasiness and was largely an accommodation of domestic politics.
In early February, South Korea announced temporary closure of Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), a jointly held project with North Korea. In Chosun Ilbo newspaper, Straub argued that South Korea's closure of KIC was a necessary response to North Korea's fourth nuclear test and latest satellite rocket launch. Two articles were published in Korean; the first is available here and the second here.
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides field guidance at the newly built National Space Development General Satellite Control and Command Centre in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang, May 3, 2015.
Henry S. Rowen, a Stanford economist and professor emeritus of public policy and management, died in Palo Alto on Nov. 12, 2015. He was 90. Rowen, known affectionately as “Harry” to colleagues and friends, led a long, notable career in academia and public service. Having served in three U.S. administrations, he shaped the construction of American policy on a range of issues from entrepreneurship to intelligence. He was the Edward B. Rust Professor of Public Policy and Management, emeritus, at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a senior fellow, emeritus, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a director emeritus of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC).
Over the course of his career, Rowen twice held positions at the RAND Corporation, first as an economist, and later as its president for five years from 1967 to 1972.
In Washington, he held several prominent positions in the Kennedy, Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. From 1981 to 1983, he was the chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC), and the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1989 to 1991.
Rowen’s interdisciplinary experiences yielded a deep knowledge of the social and political factors in nations struggling with a sustainable peace, weighing nuclear proliferation issues, and considering new forms of governance.
Please join us for a special celebration of Professor Rowen’s life with remarks and memories shared by a distinguished group of Harry’s professional colleagues and personal friends, including:
William Perry, 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense, Director of the Preventive Defense Project,CISAC, Stanford University
Francis Fukuyama, Director, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Senior Fellow FSI, Stanford University
Thomas Fingar, Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow, Stanford University
Alain Enthoven, Professor of Public and Private Management, Emeritus, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University
William Miller, Professor of Public and Private Management, Emeritus, Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus, School of Engineering, Senior Fellow Emeritus, FSI, Stanford University
Kenneth Arrow, Professor of Economics and Professor of Operations Research, Emeritus
Michael Armacost, (moderator) Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow, Stanford University
Taiwan’s domestic politics, particularly presidential elections, has been the main driver of the island’s relations with China for two decades. The 2016 elections, in which the Democratic Progressive Party, led by Dr. Tsai Ing-wen, won both the presidency and majority control of the Legislative elections, promises to be no exception. Although PRC intentions under President Xi Jinping are far from certain, some change from the state of play under the current Ma Ying-jeou administration seems fairly certain, with implications for U.S. policy.
Bio
Richard Bush is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, and the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies. He came to Brookings in July 2002 after nineteen years working in the US government, including five years as the Chairman and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan. 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, published in March 2004 by M. E. Sharpe. In the spring of 2005, Brookings published his study on cross-Strait relations, entitled Untying the Knot: Making Peace in the Taiwan Strait. In 2013, Brookings published his Uncharted Strait: The Future of China-Taiwan Relations.
Booseung Chang joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow for the 2015-16 year. His research interests span comparative foreign policy and policymaking process.
Currently, he is working on two projects. One deals with application of game-theoretic approaches to the inter-Korean relations. Specifically, he is interested in how the tools of the game theory can contribute to the improvement of the cooperation as well as the security in the Korean peninsula. The topic of the other article will be the change of Japanese foreign policy. The goal of this article is to shed light on the implications of the recent change in Japanese security-related laws and to measure its domestic, regional, and global impact.
His dissertation, which he seeks to build upon, is titled “The Sources of Japanese Conduct: Asymmetric Security Dependence, Role Conceptions, and the Reactive Behavior in response to U.S. Demands.” It is a qualitative comparative case study of how key U.S. allies in Asia – namely Japan and South Korea – and major powers in Europe - the United Kingdom and France - responded to the U.S.-led Persian Gulf War and the Iraq War.
Chang completed his doctorate in political science from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University in 2014.
Before joining the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, he worked for the South Korean Foreign Service for 15 years between 2000 and 2015. During the service, he mostly worked on Northeast Asian affairs including the North Korean nuclear issue. He spent three years in the embassy in Beijing and two and a half years in the consulate general in Vladivostok.
The fifteenth session of the Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum, held in Korea on November 17, 2015, convened senior South Korean and American policymakers, scholars and regional experts to discuss North Korea policy and recent developments on the Korean Peninsula. Hosted by the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University, the Forum is also supported by the Sejong Institute.
Senior Military Fellow John Chu was promoted to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army at Stanford last Friday, a position selectively afforded for distinguished service and leadership. Colleagues and Stanford affiliates attended the afternoon ceremony marking the occasion.
“We look over the course of John’s life and where he’s been, and it says so much good about him and the strengths of the United States of America,” Eikenberry said.
“As threats have changed, doctrine has changed and our national security has changed, John has continued to adapt. It says a great deal about him, our services and our country that he has been able to steadily make those shifts over the course of his career.”
Chu was born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the United States. He attended West Point and later achieved advanced degrees in environmental engineering and national security. Chu has had three tours of duty in Korea and served in Iraq as staff at the highest strategic level, among other posts.
At Stanford, Chu has been studying U.S. policy toward North Korea and strategic deterrence on the Korea Peninsula as a fellow at FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center during the current academic year.
The fellowship program, supported by the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, provides military officers an opportunity for self-directed study under the tutelage of Stanford scholars. The program started under former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry. Five fellows came to campus this year; their brief bios can be found here.
Chu thanked his wife of eighteen years, Tina, and expressed gratitude to everyone who guided him over the years.
“You are the real heroes – the people I’ve worked with throughout my career,” Chu said, addressing the audience. “It is you that really deserves all the recognition, for I would not be here today without the support of many.”
Chu expects to deploy to Afghanistan as his follow-on assignment.
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Senior Military Fellow John Chu (right) is promoted to colonel in the U.S. Army in a ceremony at Stanford on Dec. 11, 2015. Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Karl Eikenberry (left) led the proceedings.
In the wake of the recent historic meeting of the leaders of China and Taiwan, the Stanford News Service asked two of the university's Asia experts about the aftermath of that meeting and its possible effects on political relations between the two countries, the military situation and Taiwan's Jan. 16 presidential and parliamentary elections.
The first presidential meeting between the leaders of the communist mainland and the democratic island, split by civil war in 1949, was held in early November on neutral territory in Singapore.
Do you anticipate any lasting effects from the face-to-face meeting of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou?
Thomas Fingar: At a minimum, the meeting appears intended by both sides to validate and lock in the much-improved cross-Taiwan Strait relationship that has evolved over the past several years.
Kharis Templeman: I do think the Ma-Xi meeting itself will have one lasting legacy: it has created a precedent for treating the directly elected president of the Republic of China as an equal and as the rightful representative of Taiwanese interests in cross-strait relations. From now on, leaders in Beijing are going to have a hard time arguing that a non-KMT (the Kuomintang, Taiwan's governing party,) president is illegitimate, as they did during the [former Taiwanese president] Chen Shui-Bian era, or to continue to insist on referring to Taiwan’s leaders as provincial-level officials. So, the next president will come into office somewhat strengthened by that precedent.
Will the meeting have any effect on the January elections in Taiwan?
Templeman: I don’t think it will make much, if any, difference. Taiwanese public opinion is deeply divided about Ma Ying-Jeou’s meeting with Xi. Ma himself remains quite unpopular, the economy is barely growing, and the KMT presidential candidate remains at least 20 points behind in the polls. There’s little indication that this meeting has shaken up what has been a large and steady lead for DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-Wen, and I would be shocked if she didn’t win a comfortable victory in January.
Fingar: Probably not. Beijing seems to have learned that its past attempts to influence elections on Taiwan have been ineffectual or counterproductive, and the meeting is unlikely to change minds or votes on the island.
How might the elections affect military spending on either sides, or China's aggressive island-building for military bases?
Fingar: The meeting will not have any effect on military spending or the building of artificial islands in the South China Sea, but Beijing may have hoped that agreeing to meet with Ma to demonstrate how "good" the relationship is might persuade Washington not to approve another round of arms sales to Taiwan. Regardless of who wins the election on Taiwan, the next administration is likely to seek another round of U.S. arms sales in order to prove that it has the support of the United States.
Templeman:The meeting will have no impact on the security balance in the region. Ma reportedly raised the issue of PRC (People's Republic of China) missiles within easy range of Taiwan, but Xi claimed, implausibly, that they were not targeted at Taiwan, and that was the end of it. The broader trends are unchanged: the PRC’s military budget is growing annually by double-digit rates while Taiwan’s remains essentially flat. The consequence is that the PRC’s capacity to take coercive measures against Taiwan continues to expand, even as cross-strait cooperation has been improved and institutionalized.
Dan Stober is at the Stanford News Service.
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Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore on Nov. 7, 2015.
Flickr/Office of the President Republic of China (Taiwan)
Negotiators from 12 Pacific Rim countries recently reached an agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a sweeping trade pact that has been promoted by the Obama administration as a high-quality, next-generation deal that will set standards for international trade for years to come. While noting the agreement still requires ratification by each member state, Stanford scholars believe that the TPP will be approved and reshape not only trade but also security relations in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
The TPP negotiations originally began as an expansion of the Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership Agreement signed by Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore in 2005, and then took on broader significance in 2008 when the United States expressed interest. The number of members eventually grew to include the other North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) economies of Canada and Mexico, as well as Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia and Japan. Even before the agreement was finalized, leaders of many other Asia-Pacific countries expressed interest in joining the next round of negotiations, including South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Colombia, Thailand and most recently, Indonesia.
A summit with leaders of the member states of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP). Pictured, from left, are Naoto Kan (Japan), Nguyễn Minh Triết (Vietnam), Julia Gillard (Australia), Sebastián Piñera (Chile), Lee Hsien Loong (Singapore), Barack Obama (United States), John Key (New Zealand), Hassanal Bolkiah (Brunei), Alan García (Peru), and Muhyiddin Yassin (Malaysia). Six of these leaders represent countries that are currently negotiating to join the group.
The appeal of the TPP in the region is twofold. First, the repeated failure of new trade talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) has forced countries seeking greater trade liberalization to pursue it through other bilateral or regional multilateral negotiations. Second, in the Asia-Pacific region, the number of these agreements has rapidly multiplied, creating myriad different standards, procedures and tariff rates that raise the costs of doing business across state borders and inhibit international trade and investment.
The TPP offers the prospect of a common set of rules governing investment, production and exchange across all member states, with significant improvements in economic efficiency. In addition, the danger of being excluded from a new trade regime that includes a huge share of the region’s economic activity has created a sense of urgency to seek membership from those countries not in the initial round of negotiations. By far the most conspicuous absence among the TPP members is China, which is now the world’s second-largest economy and a significant trading partner of all current member states.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been a research focus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has organized several eventsexploring aspects of the TPP, and the Taiwan Democracy Project in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law held a conference in 2013 that examined the TPP from a Taiwanese perspective. The conference produced a comprehensive report on the topic, and an audio recording of an earlier Shorenstein APARC panel event was made available online. Now that negotiations have concluded, the Taiwan Democracy Project will revisit the topic in an upcoming conference on Feb. 9.
With the public release of the agreement in early October, three noted experts from Stanford University, Thomas Fingar, Michael Armacost, and Donald Emmerson, offered their analysis of the TPP’s prospects for ratification and its impact on the Asia-Pacific region.
Now that the agreement has been published, what is significant about the TPP? What does it mean for China?
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The TPP is a big deal for many reasons, perhaps the most important of which is that it will provide the impetus and the template for concluding the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and myriad other regional and mini-lateral trade negotiations initiated in response to the failure of the Doha Round of WTO reform. As with all trade agreements, there will be winners and losers, pain will be local and benefits diffuse, and critics will find much to criticize. But the agreement is likely to be ratified and its provisions will affect corporate strategies, investment decisions and globalized production chains. The fact that North America (the United States, Canada and Mexico) are parties to the TPP virtually assures that the globally important NAFTA group will not accept terms in TTIP or other negotiations that are incompatible with the TPP because NAFTA governments and companies do not want to cope with multiple standards, requirements, and procedures. The same is true of other major trading states and international firms, so the TPP will quickly become the new standard for “everyone” wishing to take advantage of opportunities in a globalized world.
This means that the TPP will serve as a—the—decisive building block for beyond-WTO trade arrangements. Without success in the TPP (or TTIP, which also has the size and importance to have become the new global standard if it had been concluded before the TPP) negotiations, there was a danger that the advantages of an integrated global trading system would be degraded by adoption of multiple and partially incompatible sub-regional agreements. Now those negotiating bilateral and mini-lateral agreements are likely to strive for consistency with the requirements adopted by key trading nations and the firms based in them.
The TPP is often but erroneously described as part of a U.S. effort to contain or constrain China. It isn’t. The United States should and will seek to bring China into the TPP, not to exclude it. I anticipate that Beijing will join together with South Korea, Indonesia, and possibly other states that are not yet members.
Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Distinguished in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, principal deputy assistant secretary, deputy assistant secretary for analysis, director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific, and chief of the China Division.
Does the TPP carry security benefits? What are possible consequences for the U.S.-Japan relationship?
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The TPP is a trade agreement, not a security pact. Security is generally a predicate for growth and trade. It does not thrive amidst turmoil, let alone conflict. But with greater economic interdependence, the incentives for avoiding conflict increase. And fortuitously Asia remains an unusually peaceful region despite some growing tensions between China and its neighbors.
The TPP agreement is certainly an integral feature of the Obama administration’s effort to “rebalance” toward the Asia-Pacific region. It embeds the United States in a new institution whose membership, I believe, is destined to grow. America’s engagement in the region is a source of reassurance to our friends and allies there. The United States has been bolstering its alliance with Japan, and this agreement will add a broader framework to the U.S. alliance, which was established through the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, and which contains a specific clause encouraging expanded economic collaboration.
I regret that selling the agreement publicly has included some explicitly anti-Chinese features such as the claim that if the United States and others don’t write the rules of trade, China will. The TPP is and should be open to new members who are prepared to live up to its requirements and that includes China.
Michael H. Armacost is a Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He held a 24-year career in the public service, including having served as U.S. ambassador to Japan and the Philippines.
How does the TPP fit into the context of Southeast Asia and its possible alternative arrangements for economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region?
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In strictly economic terms, there is no exact alternative to the distinctively comprehensive and intrusive TPP. In loosely economic but mainly geopolitical terms, however, a competitor does exist: the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The United States is in the TPP. China is not. In the RCEP, the reverse is true. The United States has propelled the TPP. China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are driving the formation of RCEP by all ten ASEAN states plus Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
Compared with the TPP, RCEP is far less robust. RCEP is mainly about straightening the overlapping and sometimes inconsistent free trade agreements that already complicate Asian regionalism—the tangled contents of Asia’s “noodle bowl” of overlapping FTAs. (Trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific have burgeoned from around 60 ten years ago to some 300 today.) Under pressure from the more detailed and thoroughgoing TPP, RCEP’s would-be progenitors have been trying to expand their agenda to include more intrusive proposals. Partly for that reason, observers are pessimistic that RCEP’s negotiators will be able to proclaim its successful completion before the end of 2015.
ASEAN is divided. Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, and Thailand are inside RCEP but outside the TPP. The other four ASEAN members—Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam—enjoy the advantage of sitting at both negotiating tables. If only one of the two projected partnerships fails, these four states would still have the other arrangement to fall back on, and so much the better for them if both schemes succeed. It is partly for this reason that varying degrees of interest in joining the TPP have been expressed by five of the six non-TPP states in Southeast Asia. The exception is Myanmar, but once the structure and character of its new government have been clarified, its leaders too may wish to consider the TPP. Even China’s initially hostile view of the TPP has softened.
Given the market-favoring and regulation stipulations of the TPP, new entrants may be unwilling to accept its detailed, full-spectrum rules. But the Doha Round is dead, and the proposal to replace it with a scaled-down “Global Recovery Round” has gone nowhere. For the time being, the best one can hope for in the Asia-Pacific region is a successful TPP that China could eventually join, or a successful RCEP that could someday welcome the United States, or the birth of both arrangements followed by effective steps to render them complementary rather than competitive.
Donald K. Emmerson is director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he is also affiliated with the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.
Interested in joining the conversation? The Taiwan Democracy Project will revisit this topic on Feb. 9. The one-day symposium will bring together scholars and practitioners to reconsider Taiwan's prospects for entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. RSVP here today.
President Barack Obama participates in a trilateral meeting with Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, right, at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Center, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, Nov. 16, 2014.
Booseung Chang joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center as Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow for the 2015-16 year. His research interests span comparative foreign policy and policymaking process.
A summit with leaders of the member states of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP). Pictured, from left, are Naoto Kan (Japan), Nguyễn Minh Triết (Vietnam), Julia Gillard (Australia), Sebastián Piñera (Chile), Lee Hsien Loong (Singapore), Barack Obama (United States), John Key (New Zealand), Hassanal Bolkiah (Brunei), Alan García (Peru), and Muhyiddin Yassin (Malaysia). Six of these leaders represent countries that are currently negotiating to join the group.
