A version of this paper, "Security Challenges in a Turbulent World: Fewer Enemies, More Challenges, and Greater Anxiety," delivered at the International Areas Studies Symposium at the University of Okalhoma, on Feb. 26, 2015, is also available in English by clicking here.
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Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University
Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, imprisoned since February, is the focus of a pledge signed by 40 scholars and public figures lamenting his mistreatment and urging his immediate release.
The “Global Call for the Release of Anwar Ibrahim” condemns Anwar’s persecution by the Malaysian authorities and their ongoing repression of freedom of speech and assembly.
Anwar is serving a five-year prison sentence on a sodomy charge that virtually all observers believe was politically motivated. The pledge, released by Anwar’s family on Monday, marks his 68th birthday and almost a half-year spent in jail.
Stanford professor Donald Emmerson, who has known Anwar since the 1980s, welcomed the circulation of the pledge. “Even if the Malaysian government ignores the petition,” Emmerson said, “it is important for the international community to show that Anwar is not alone.”
Anwar’s ordeal dates back to 1998 when, as deputy prime minister, he had a falling out with then-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, who drove him from office for apparently political reasons.
Malaysia’s current prime minister, Najib Razak, has continued this record of political persecution despite protests from around the world. Amnesty International has designated Anwar “a prisoner of conscience.”
Following that event, Anwar traveled back to Malaysia despite signs pointing toward his possible arrest.
“Anwar’s courage in the face of adversity is inspiring,” Emmerson said. “He could have chosen not to return from Stanford to Malaysia, thereby avoiding the risk of imprisonment. He could have gone into exile. Or asked for asylum outside Malaysia. Instead, he went home. How many of us, in his shoes, would have done the same?”
The pledge is attached below. Remarks and video from the CDDRL event with Anwar, Emmerson and Stanford’s Larry Diamond and Francis Fukuyama can be accessed here.
Writing recently for the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), Stanford scholar Donald Emmerson analyzed China’s stance on the South China Sea in the context of remarks given by Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi at a bilateral dialogue in Washington, D.C. on June 24.
In the past year, China has unsettled many countries with its island-building campaign in the disputed South China Sea, an area that has multiple claimants and whose waters are heavily used for international trade and commerce. Johnson South Reef, for example, is being enlarged and turned into what could be a military base. At the same time, China’s leaders continue to disregard rising demands to clarify their intentions in the South China Sea.
In the CSIS article, Emmerson offered an “edited" version of Yang’s statement to provide one reading of its “useful ambiguity” for China.
Emmerson said China’s participation is inevitably required to resolve the maritime disputes. But his reading of Yang’s remarks is not encouraging in that respect, as China behaves more and more as if it were part of the problem not the solution.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry listens as Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi delivers remarks at the Strategic Track Oceans Meeting in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2015.
Drawing on twenty-four years of experience in government, Michael H. Armacost explores how the contours of the U.S. presidential election system influence the content and conduct of American foreign policy. He examines how the nomination battle impels candidates to express deference to the foreign policy DNA of their party and may force an incumbent to make wholesale policy adjustments to fend off an intra-party challenge for the nomination. He describes the way reelection campaigns can prod a chief executive to fix long-neglected problems, kick intractable policy dilemmas down the road, settle for modest course corrections, or scapegoat others for policies gone awry.
Armacost begins his book with the quest for the presidential nomination and then moves through the general election campaign, the ten-week transition period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, and the early months of a new administration. He notes that campaigns rarely illuminate the tough foreign policy choices that the leader of the nation must make, and he offers rare insight into the challenge of aligning the roles of an outgoing incumbent (who performs official duties despite ebbing power) and the incoming successor (who has no official role but possesses a fresh political mandate). He pays particular attention to the pressure for new presidents to act boldly abroad in the early months of his tenure, even before a national security team is in place, decision-making procedures are set, or policy priorities are firmly established. He concludes with an appraisal of the virtues and liabilities of the system, including suggestions for modestly adjusting some of its features while preserving its distinct character.
Stanford sociologist Andrew Walder spoke with Ian Johnson of the New York Times about his new book, China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed. Featured in a Q&A, Walder argues that Mao Zedong led Communist China based more on a simplistic understanding of Stalinist ideology than on a new vision. Walder also compares Mao and current president Xi Jinping.
Of Xi, "He’s adopting some of the symbolism of Mao in the Cultural Revolution," Walder said.
"What Xi is about is unity and stability and economic development, and that’s not what Mao was about. Mao was willing to throw things to the wind. He was willing to gamble. He never thought things could happen if it was orderly. He thought disorder was the midwife of progress. Xi is completely different."
China's Communist Party academies are drawing upon new ideas from formerly taboo places like business schools in the United States and Europe and sending delegations to absorb lessons from around the world, a Stanford scholar writes in a new book.
Once viewed as inflexible, China's party-managed training academies, or "party schools," are using many of the strategies found in China's hybrid, state-run private sector, said Charlotte Lee, associate director of the China Program at Stanford's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
"As communist parties fell from power in the 1980s and 1990s, there were many predictions of the Chinese Communist Party's demise," Lee said in an interview.
A perception exists, she said, that the party was too rigid to remain relevant and in power, given huge economic changes in China and throughout a more globalized world. But adapting is one way that it has managed to dominate for so long.
The Chinese Communist Party has now ruled China for more than six decades.
Signs of change
"It is true that if you were to look at official party organization charts, many parts of the Chinese Communist Party are unchanged from the party's early years in power," Lee said. "Yet it is clear that the party has embraced new ideas and opened up to the world in recent decades."
The party schools are important, Lee explained, because they are a key set of organizations that exert political control over the knowledge, skills and careers of leaders throughout Chinese society.
In her new book, Training the Party: Party Adaptation and Elite Training in Reform-era China, Lee concludes that those seemingly static parts of the party have adjusted and that it is no longer "revolutionary," but has become, in its own words, a "learning party."
Lee's 264-page work draws on field research, datasets and trips to the party-run academies where party recruits and elites are trained.
Through conversations with people at the academy campuses she visited around the country Lee discovered the extent to which the schools, and the party, were changing.
For example, the schools are using as one of their core teaching methods the case method approach pioneered by Harvard Business School, which Lee described as a "force of inspiration" for the students.
As a sign of another change, Lee noted that the schools, once almost shrouded in secrecy from the rest of society, are now renting out their office parks to other organizations as a way to raise revenue.
"They are opening up in more than one way," Lee said, adding that the overall process began in the 1980s and accelerated in 2005 when China established state-of-the-art executive leadership academies that required a more legitimate educational approach.
Organizational machinery
The success of the Chinese economy and market, as well as the rush for revenue and status by many people and organizations in the country, spurred the academies to change. Lee said the party schools are dynamic and entrepreneurial in the way they seek out new student populations and craft new programs, both educational and political.
"This shows how the party's organizational machinery has been more nimble than some would have predicted," she said.
Yet to be seen is whether the revised party-school approach is enough to turn around the larger Chinese Communist Party or deal with the problem of rampant political corruption in the country.
"There's some evidence of new organizational thinking in the party schools, but it is unclear whether this will help with resolving China's corruption problem or spark genuine democratic reform," Lee said.
While eight other political parties technically exist in China, there is no true opposition to the Chinese Communist Party.
Lee began her book while a political science doctoral student at Stanford.
Looking ahead, she is studying how China's education landscape is evolving and how China is constructing new international organizations, like the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, that reflect its long-term global ambitions.
She asks, "To what degree might these organizations challenge or supplement the existing global order and how might the U.S. respond intelligently?"
Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.
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China's national emblem sits atop the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
Scholar and senior journalist Kim Hakjoon provides a timely analysis of the rise of the Kim Il Sung family dynasty and the politics of leadership succession in Pyongyang, including Kim Jong Il’s death and the advent of his son Kim Jong Un. Drawing on official North Korean statements and leaked confidential documents, journalistic accounts, and defector reports, the book synthesizes virtually all that is known about the secretive family and how it operates within a bizarre governing system. Particularly valuable for a Western audience is the author’s extensive use of South Korean studies of the Kim family, many of which have not been translated into English. Dynasty is insightful reading for officials, journalists, scholars, and students interested in the Korean Peninsula and its prospects.
Kim Hakjoon is president of the Northeast Asian History Foundation, a state-sponsored research institute on international relations and historical issues among the two Koreas, China, Japan, Mongolia, Russia, and the United States. Kim previously served as the president of the University of Incheon and president of the Korean Political Science Association. He has written extensively on North Korea and South Korean politics. He is currently on leave as the endowed chair professor of Korean studies at DanKook University, South Korea.
Charlotte P. Lee considers organizational changes taking place within the contemporary Chinese Communist Party (CCP), examining the party's renewed emphasis on an understudied but core set of organizations: party-managed training academies or 'party schools'. This national network of organizations enables party authorities to exert political control over the knowledge, skills, and careers of officials. Drawing on in-depth field research and novel datasets, Lee finds that the party school system has not been immune to broader market-based reforms but instead has incorporated many of the same strategies as actors in China's hybrid, state-led private sector. In the search for revenue and status, schools have updated training content and become more entrepreneurial as they compete and collaborate with domestic and international actors. This book draws attention to surprising dynamism located within the party, in political organizations thought immune to change, and the transformative effect of the market on China's political system.
As people around the world look to support earthquake relief efforts in Nepal, scholars from Stanford and the London School of Economics and Political Science offer new research that can help donors make better decisions about where and how to contribute their money.
“NGO reports tend to focus on quantity in delivery, such as numbers of homes and people served—but not on quality,” write Yong Suk Lee (Stanford) and J. Vernon Henderson (LSE).
In a forthcoming paper, the coauthors evaluate reconstruction efforts in Indonesia following the 2004 earthquake and tsunami, and find two trends: aid agencies that directly execute their services—point-to-point—perform the highest quality work. And, when agencies contract their services, higher quality work is performed when a global, not domestic, implementer completes the work.
Knowing this reality, and with improved disclosure of outcomes, the coauthors hope that donors would be able to make more informed choices.
Fishing village survey
Figure 1. A map details the survival rate of the population and flood damage within northern Indonesia in 2004. Darker shaded areas show a higher survival rate, lighter shaded areas show a lower survival rate. Striped areas denote flooding, largely on the northeastern border. Boundaries marked with thicker lines are ‘kabupaten,’ or county divisions, and lightly colored lines are ‘kecamatan,’ or sub-county units larger than a village alone. (Courtesy of Yong Lee).
Through fieldwork and three rounds of surveys – in 2005, 2007 and 2009 – Henderson and Lee investigated aid work in Aceh, an area of coastal villages in northern Indonesia (Figure 1).
Humanitarian efforts there focused on “hard aid” such as construction of houses and fishing boats. Total aid delivered amounted to $7.7 billion and was implemented by international and domestic aid agencies—some directly and some as contractors—as well as the Indonesian government.
First, Henderson and Lee conducted a pilot survey, and then with a cohort of surveyors from the University of Indonesia, held interviews with village leaders and fishing families. Participants were asked to rate their housing accommodation, and if applicable, how their fishing activity compared to before the disaster.
“Mostly, we sat with villagers to see how willing they were to talk about aspects of aid,” Lee said. “Since it was several years after the tsunami hit, people were pretty open throughout the process.”
Data from those surveys was combined with information from the Recovery Aceh-Nias relief project database maintained by the government and the U.N., as well as demographic information provided by participants.
Delivering aid: Global v. local
Empirical analysis revealed that aid agencies such as the Red Cross and Catholic Relief Services reflected higher quality aid delivery (at a mean quality near 3.00), while agencies such as Save the Children and Concern Worldwide reflected lower quality (at a mean quality between 1.0-1.5).
“What’s surprising is that reputation didn’t really line up with what was expected,” Lee said, citing a few renowned agencies that didn’t receive high marks.
Lee said this could be explained by the fact that aid agencies that specialize in disaster recovery are better equipped, while a learning curve might exist for agencies with wider missions.
Global aid agencies are more likely to have logistical experience given their reach across multiple disaster situations. And while all NGOs face reputational costs for their results, global aid agencies are greater exposed to criticism because, by size, they’re more visible.
Yet, while global aid agencies and implementers may have the raw skills, local implementers have the cultural know-how.
“Local implementers might not have the most experience – like how to construct a house or manufacture a fishing boat – but they will likely know what’s actually desired,” Lee said. “So, there are obvious tradeoffs at play.”
For example, villagers reported bad ventilation in houses. This was because some aid agencies used small windows and concrete instead of wood material more traditionally used in Indonesia. Some boats were impossible to use because of improper design; they sank upon first use or fell apart after a few months.
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Collection of photos from fieldwork in Aceh, Indonesia, provided courtesy of Yong Lee. Upper left: A house built in an aid project village shows windows retrofitted after initial construction. Upper right: Boats constructed by aid agencies for fishing activity are refashioned to serve as water taxis for people and cars. Lower: Fishing boats sit unused on the side of the road many of them impossible to use, according to villagers surveyed.
Upper left: A house built in an aid project village shows windows retrofitted after initial construction. Upper right: Boats constructed by aid agencies for fishing activity are refashioned to taxi people and cars. Lower: Fishing boats sit unused on the side of the road many of them impossible to operate, according to villagers surveyed. (Courtesy of Yong Lee).
Logistics and oversight
Aid delivery depends in many ways on the location and scale of the disaster. But, a few main aspects can determine if an aid agency doing its own work or operating as an implementer meets or exceeds expectations.
Henderson and Lee suggest that agencies that were highly supervisory had greater positive outcomes from their workers. In the case of Aceh, better monitoring and insistence on quality by leadership is a likely corollary between construction of better quality homes and boats.
“Rather than just give money, NGOs need to really oversee the projects. Organization and management are essential facets,” Lee said. “And that requires a lot of additional effort on their part.”
Oversight is especially relevant in disaster situations because of the often-overwhelming need for reconstruction. A flood of less-skilled workers enters the market to fill this gap, and on average the quality of work degrades.
“It’s much more difficult to impose quality control at this point,” Lee said. “So the implication that comes out of it is how does the implementer effectively utilize less-skilled workers.”
Getting to know the implementers and evaluating their work in-progress would help ensure quality on behalf of the aid agency. And, better dissemination of information about aid outcomes would help assure donors that their monies are being applied in the best possible way.
Future study
Most “hard aid” delivered to Aceh’s villages had finished by 2010, but “soft aid” such as democracy promotion and women’s empowerment stayed longer.
Henderson and Lee conducted one final survey in 2011. The data has been offered as open source material for researchers along with the larger data set.
Noting this, Lee said, “We’re thrilled that people are looking into the data further. It’s exactly what we wanted.”
Research projects applying the data include the impact of the tsunami on Aceh’s local economies and health effects on the population, among other areas.
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A United Nations Humanitarian Air Service helicopter offloads relief supplies from the World Food Programme in Gorkha District, Nepal. Villagers help distribute tents and food.
Ban Ki-moon, the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations, will deliver a public speech at Stanford University on Friday, June 26.
Ban’s visit will highlight the 70th anniversary of the founding of the U.N., part of a larger trip to the Bay Area to commemorate the San Francisco Conference, where the charter establishing the U.N. was signed in 1945. After his speech, he will participate in a question and answer session with Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, the U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Korea (2008-11).
The Stanford event will take place at 3 p.m. RSVP is required by June 24; seating is first come, first served. Media must pre-register by 9 a.m. on June 25.
It is Ban’s second visit to Stanford in under three years. In Jan. 2013, he delivered a speech to mark the occasion of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC)’s thirtieth anniversary.
“I believe we face a unique opportunity,” Ban said in Dinkelspiel Auditorium. “Because the changes we face are so profound – the decisions we make will have a deeper and more lasting impact than perhaps any other set of decisions in recent decades.”
Calling on students to be ‘global citizens,’ he spoke about the ongoing crisis in Syria, the mandate to act on climate change, and the need for a sustainable peace worldwide.
“Growing up, the U.N. was a beacon of hope for me and my country,” he said. “I urge you to harness that same spirit and make a difference.”
Ban was born in the Republic of Korea in 1944. As a youth, more than fifty years ago, Ban visited California during his first trip to the United States with a Red Cross, saying “my trip here opened my eyes to the world.” He has since held a 37-year career in public service in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, including the role of minister of foreign affairs and trade, foreign policy advisor and chief national security advisor to the president.
“It’s truly our pleasure to host Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the seventieth anniversary of the U.N.,” said Gi-Wook Shin, a Stanford professor and director of Shorenstein APARC. “The U.N. has had a profound impact on the shaping of global order in the postwar era. And Ban’s leadership has steered the organization toward the world’s most pressing aims.”
Ban is reaching the end of his term as secretary-general. He assumed office in Jan. 2007 and was reelected for a second term in June 2011. Over his tenure, Ban has led a major push toward peace and non-proliferation activities, youth, women’s rights and the environment. He has urged leaders of China, Japan and South Korea to work harder on reconciliation over the wartime past to ensure long-term stability in the region.
The June 26 event, which can be followed at #UNatStanford, is co-sponsored by Shorenstein APARC and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University; with promotional co-sponsors Asia Society, Asia Foundation and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
CONTACT: Event inquires may be directed to Debbie Warren, dawarren@stanford.edu or (650) 723-8387; Media inquires may be directed to Lisa Griswold, lisagris@stanford.edu or (650) 736-0656
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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon talks with professor Gi-Wook Shin following a public lecture at Stanford in Jan. 2013.
Figure 1. A map details the survival rate of the population and flood damage within northern Indonesia in 2004. Darker shaded areas show a higher survival rate, lighter shaded areas show a lower survival rate. Striped areas denote flooding, largely on the northeastern border. Boundaries marked with thicker lines are ‘kabupaten,’ or county divisions, and lightly colored lines are ‘kecamatan,’ or sub-county units larger than a village alone. (Courtesy of Yong Lee).
Collection of photos from fieldwork in Aceh, Indonesia, provided courtesy of Yong Lee. Upper left: A house built in an aid project village shows windows retrofitted after initial construction. Upper right: Boats constructed by aid agencies for fishing activity are refashioned to serve as water taxis for people and cars. Lower: Fishing boats sit unused on the side of the road many of them impossible to use, according to villagers surveyed.
