An army officer turned social entrepreneur, Vivek Garg will share his transition from combat to economic development work and present three case studies on how he used economic tools to foster peace among hostile communities in conflict affected regions of Kashmir and Northeast India.

Vivek Garg is Founder and CEO of a social venture called BAPAR (Business Alternatives for Peace, Action and Reconstruction), which focuses on impact entrepreneur incubation and early stage investment for the economic reconstruction of conflict affected regions of India. Prior to BAPAR, Garg served as an infantry officer with the Indian Army for over 10 years, wherein he led combat operations in Kashmir and Siachen Glacier. He coordinated operations and deployment of a division size force of 10,000 troops and managed a development aid budget of US$ 2.5M in insurgency infested, tribal regions bordering China and Myanmar. Garg is currently pursuing a degree with the Sloan Master’s Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The world has undergone major drastic changes in the last two decades driven by several major factors, eg, explosion of human population and connectivity. Such changes seem further accelerated in recent years and it seems that our future becomes more uncertain and unpredictable. The Fukushima Nuclear Accident awakened us and led to creation of Independent Investigation Commission by the National Diet of Japan; The Commission Report revealed some of the fundamental issues of Japan’s nuclear policy. Meanwhile, multi-stakeholders’ engagement has become critical in various social affairs and in policy making domains within and across national boundaries, and has contributed in significant ways to affect the processes of addressing and impacting global agenda, such as climate change, food and water, energy, urbanization, biodiversity, human capital with shifting the balance of economy and power. In my view, the principles of our society may be changing quite fast heading somewhat differently from our conventional norm. The science community can and should contribute to these issues in nurturing future leaders, but in what way?

Kiyoshi Kurokawa is a graduate of University of Tokyo School of Medicine, trained in internal medicine and nephrology, in US 1969-84; Professor of Med, Dept Med ofUCLA Sch Med (79-84), Chair, Univ Tokyo Faculty of Med (89-96), Dean of Tokai Univ School of Med (96-02, President of Science Council of Japan (03-07), Science Advisor to Prime Minister (07-09), Board member of A*STAR (06-00), Bibliotheca Alexandria (04-08), Khalifa University (08- ), Okinawa Institute of Science and Tech (06- ), Global Science and Innovation Advisory Board of the Prime Minister of Malaysia (11-); President of Intl Soc Nephrology (97-99), Inst of Medicine of US Academies (92). Recently, chaired Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission by the National Diet of Japan (Dec 11-July 12). AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award (2012), ‘100 Top Global Thinkers 2012” of Foreign Policy.

In recent years, China has had several confrontations with Vietnam, the Philippines and most recently Japan, over maritime sovereignty issues in the South and East China Seas. The popular press and specialists alike often portray these disputes as a clear indication of Beijing's growing willingness to coerce or intimidate its neighbors and disregard international norms and laws in the pursuit of its national objectives. Some observers associate Chinese behavior with a long-term strategic plan to dominate the Asia-Pacific. Dr. Michael D. Swaine, a senior associate in the Asia Program and a China national security specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, will offer his interpretation of the interests, motives, and policies driving Chinese behavior in this potentially volatile area, and assess the implications for the United States and other Asian powers.

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Michael Swaine joined the Carnegie Endowment as a senior associate after twelve years at the RAND Corporation. He specializes in Chinese security and foreign policy, U.S.–China relations, and East Asian international relations. One of the most prominent U.S. analysts in Chinese security studies, he is the author of more than ten monographs on security policy in the region. At RAND, he was a senior political scientist in international studies and also research director of the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy.

Swaine was appointed as the first recipient of the RAND Center for Asia-Pacific Policy Chair in Northeast Asian Security in recognition of the exceptional contributions he has made in his field.

Prior to joining RAND in 1989, Swaine was a consultant with a private sector firm; a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California, Berkeley; and a research associate at Harvard University. He attended the Taipei and Tokyo Inter-University Centers for Language Study, administered by Stanford University, for training in Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.

Why do government policymakers and peace activists often come to radically different conclusions on issues pertaining to peace and security? Drawing on insights from the literature on contentious politics and international relations theory, I argue that the politics of peace extend from different views regarding the nature of existing power relations and the legitimacy and moral purpose of the state. To test my argument, I examine the conflict between state and civil societal actors over the construction of a South Korean naval base and use discourse and content analysis to assess different interpretations regarding peace and security in relation to the naval base. Although the hope is to see David defeat Goliath, my findings are less sanguine: activists are not only physically overpowered by the state, but at the ideological level, their frames and discourse are frequently drowned out by a powerful discursive structure embedded in the logic of realism. This research has implications not only for national security policy in South Korea, but for international relations in Northeast Asia more broadly as middle powers position themselves between Beijing’s rise and Washington’s strategic rebalance to Asia.

Professor Andrew Yeo’s broad research interests lie at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics. His first book, Activists, Alliances, and Anti-U.S. Base Protests (Cambridge University Press, 2011) explores the politics of overseas military bases, focusing on the impact of security alliances on social movements and state response to domestic anti-base pressure. His other works have appeared in Comparative Politics, International Studies Quarterly, and Journal of East Asian Studies. His research and teaching interests include international relations theory, international security, overseas U.S. military presence, social movements and transnational politics, East Asia, and North Korea. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2008.

The road to the 18th Party Congress was contentious, leading to its delayed convocation. Nevertheless, the processes of generational turnover in China’s leadership at the Chinese Communist Party’s 18th National Congress extended patterns of formal politics that trace their roots to Deng Xiaoping’s political reforms of the 1980s, that advanced in the Jiang Zemin era in the 1990s, and that matured under outgoing General Secretary Hu Jintao in the 2000s.  As such, the transition in the party leadership at the 18th Congress marked another step forward in the institutionalization of Chinese leadership politics.

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Alice Lyman Miller is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and teaches in the Departments of History and Political Science at Stanford. She is also a senior lecturer in the Department of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

Prior to coming to Stanford in 1999, Miller taught at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. from 1980–2000. From 1974–90, Miller worked in the Central Intelligence Agency as a senior analyst in Chinese foreign policy and domestic politics, and branch and division chief, supervising analysis on China, North Korea, Indochina, and Soviet policy in East Asia. Miller has lived and worked in Taiwan, Japan, and the PRC, and she speaks Mandarin Chinese.

Miller's research focuses on foreign policy and domestic politics issues in China and on the international relations of East Asia. She is editor and contributor to the Hoover Institution’s China Leadership Monitor, which has since 2001 offered online authoritative assessments of trends in Chinese leadership politics to American policymakers and the general public. Miller has published extensively on policy issues dealing with China, including several articles and book chapters, as well as two books: Science and Dissent in Post-Mao China: The Politics of Knowledge (University of Washington Press, 1996), and, with Richard Wich, Becoming Asia: Change and Continuity in Asian International Relations Since World War II (Stanford University Press, 2011). She is currently working on a new book, tentatively entitled The Evolution of Chinese Grand Strategy, 1550–Present, that brings a historical perspective to bear on China's rise in the contemporary international order.

Miller graduated from Princeton University in 1966, receiving a B.A. in Oriental Studies. She earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in history from George Washington University in 1969 and 1974.  Formerly H. Lyman Miller, she transitioned in 2006.