This study proposes a theoretical framework to understand how nations deal with collective memories of perpetration of severe human rights violations, which do not fit comfortably in any national master narrative but have become increasingly difficult to ignore. Building on studies of collective memory, the framework explicates how initial historical conditions of the nation, domestic social movements, and the degree of international pressures move the national discourse along two key dimensions – (a) acceptance of guilt and (b) international orientation of the discourse – which map out seven possible responses to collective trauma of perpetration. Through examination of the history of post-war Japan and content analyses of newspaper editorials and prime ministers’ speeches from 1945 to 2004, the empirical analysis applies the framework to the Japanese case and reveals

1. that arguments for apologies to Asian victims have gained ground due to the intensification of domestic social movements, international pressures from neighboring countries, and global human rights influence; and
   
2. that arguments that evade the ugly past have persisted because of the initial conditions immediately after 1945, overwhelming emphasis on Japanese victims in the first few decades, and recent appropriation of human rights language by proponents of the defensive arguments.

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan. His research interests lie in political/comparative sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights, and Japanese society. He has conducted cross-national statistical analyses on how human rights ideas and instruments have expanded globally and impacted local politics and qualitative case studies of the impact of global human rights on Japanese politics. His current projects examine (a) the evolution of transnational social movement organizations, (b) global expansion of corporate social responsibility, (c) changing conceptions of nationhood and minority rights in national constitutions, (d) dynamics of political identities in contemporary Europe, (e) global human rights and three ethnic minority social movements in Japan, and (f) changing discourse around the Asia-Pacific War in Japan.

What is the role of apologies in international reconciliation? Jennifer Lind finds that while denying or glorifying past violence is indeed inimical to reconciliation, apologies that prove to be domestically polarizing may be diplomatically counterproductive.  Moreover, apologies were not necessary in many cases of successful reconciliation.  What then is the relationship between historical memory and international reconciliation?

Jennifer Lind is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government, Dartmouth College. She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Master's in Pacific International Affairs from the University of California, San Diego, and a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Lind is the author of Sorry States: Apologies in International Politics, a book that examines the effect of war memory on international reconciliation (Cornell University Press, 2008). She has also authored scholarly articles in International Security and Security Studies, and has written for wider audiences within the Atlantic and Foreign Policy. Professor Lind has worked as a consultant for RAND and for the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense, and has lived and worked in Japan. Her current research interests include the resilience of the North Korean regime, planning for U.S. military missions in the event of North Korean collapse, energy competition and its security implications for East Asia, and democratization and stability in East Asia.

The U.S. financial crisis has spread around the globe. Financial globalization means that most countries and regions are not immune to the contagious effects of a financial crisis that originates in one country.

East Asian countries had already experienced the contagious effects of a financial crisis in 1997. That year, a financial crisis that broke out in Thailand and Indonesia reached Malaysia and then South Korea. Each of these countries reacted differently to the crisis. South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand accepted International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditionalities that required neoliberal economic restructuring in return for emergency loans, while Malaysia rejected the IMF offer and instead encouraged the inflow of speculative financial capital, while reforming the banking and financial system. In the aftermath of the East Asian financial crisis, regional economic, financial and security cooperation were discussed among East Asian countries. These efforts resulted in the Chiang Mai Initiative, the Bond Initiative, the East Asian Summit, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Six Party Talks.

Thus, regionalism in East Asia was revived in response to external shocks, such as global financial volatility, endogenous opportunities such as East Asian market compatibility (Pempel, 2008), endogenous security threats such as the North Korean nuclear development, and exogenous opportunities such as "bringing in the U.S." (Pempel, 2008).

Nonetheless, East Asian regionalism is still at a low level of institutionalization compared to Europe. East Asian regionalism is still basically "bottom-up, corporate (market)-driven regionalism" (Pempel, 2005). 

I will discuss the obstacles and the opportunities that Northeast Asian countries are facing since the end of the Cold War and the advent of globalization.

Hyug Baeg Im is Professor at the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Korea University, Seoul, South Korea. He is Dean at the Graduate School of Policy Studies and Director at Institute for Peace Studies. He received B.A. in political science from Seoul National University, M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He was visiting professor at Georgetown University (1995-1996), Duke University (1997), Stanford University (2002-2003) and visiting fellow at International Forum for Democratic Studies, National Endowment for Democracy, Washington DC (1995-1996). He served as a presidential adviser of both Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun presidency. His current research focuses on the impact of IT revolution and globalization on Korean democracy. His publications include “The Rise of Bureaucratic Authoritarianism in South Korea,” World Politics, Vol. 34, No. 2 (1987), “South Korean Democratic Consolidation in Comparative Perspective” in Consolidating Democracy in South Korea (Lynne Rienner, 2000) and “’Crony Capitalism’ in South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan: Myth and Reality,” (co-authored with Kim, Byung Kook) Journal of East Asian Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2001), “Faltering Democratic Consolidation in South Korea: Democracy at the End of Three Kims Era” Democratization, Vol. 11, No. 5(2004), “Christian Churches and Democratization in South Korea” in Tun-jen Cheng and Deborah A. Brown (eds.), Religious Organizations and Democratization: Comparative Case Studies in Contemporary Asia (M.E. Sharpe, 2006) and “The US Role in Korean Democracy and Security since Cold War Era,” International Relations of the Asia Pacific, Vol. 6, No.2 (2006).

As the new year begins, the administration of ROK President Lee Myung-bak faces an unusually complex and rapidly evolving regional security landscape as he seeks to craft a strategy that simultaneously deepens ties with the U.S., protects South Korean equities in North Korea, continues to reduce tensions with neighboring countries and promotes economic objectives in Northeast Asia (including eastern Siberia). What are his options, considerations and prospects for success?

The past year witnessed an accelerated pace and apparent deepening in substance of the nascent security ties between and among the nations of Northeast Asia. A veritable whirlwind of diplomatic activity featured “upgraded” dialogue and symbolic steps. Meanwhile, as token of warming relations and impetus for even closer regional cooperation, China, Japan and the ROK met trilaterally on an array of issues. Ambitious proposals – and cutthroat bargaining – attended competition for a stake in Russian energy resources and potential infrastructure projects in the conjunction of eastern Siberia, Korea and China. Through the year all involved parties – the ROK, China, Russia, Japan, and the U.S. – met in the Six-Party talks context. Each party, excepting North Korea, paid public obeisance to the goal of “transforming” the talks into a new regional security mechanism.

But the year 2009 dawns against the backdrop of uncertainties that cast a cloud over the promise suggested by these developments: the global economic and financial crisis; battered, untested or unpopular political leaderships; competing nationalisms – and national interests; and the import and implications of China’s “rise.”

Mr. Keyser retired from the U.S. Department of State in September 2004 after a 32-year career. He had been a member of the Senior Foreign Service since 1990, and held Washington-based ambassadorial-level assignments 1998-2004. Throughout his career he focused on U.S. policy toward East Asia, particularly China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and the Korean Peninsula. Fluent in Chinese and professionally conversant in Japanese, Russian and French, he served three tours at the American Embassy in Beijing, two tours at the American Embassy in Tokyo, and almost a dozen years in relevant domestic assignments. In the course of his career, Keyser logged extensive domestic and foreign experience in senior management operations, conflict resolution, intelligence operations and analysis, and law enforcement programs and operations.

Marcus Mietzner is currently Lecturer in Indonesian Studies at the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University. Between 1998 and 2008, he lived, worked and researched in Indonesia. He has published extensively on Indonesian politics, among others in Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Southeast Asian Research and Contemporary Southeast Asia. His most recent book is Military Politics, Islam, and the State in Indonesia: From Turbulent Transition to Democratic Consolidation, published by ISEAS in Singapore in December 2008.

As China launches a new round of rural reforms after 2005 and associated initiatives, many questions arise regarding the nature of the institutions across the countryside through which leaders will attempt to implement their new rural development strategies. Has the political economy-one which was the foundation of the first round of rural reforms-changed since the early 1980s? How have the efforts of the mid-1990s to begin to create a new regulatory approach and reform the administrative apparatus in China's urban economy affected rural areas? Are institutions in rural China that allow the upper level government to implement its policies effective and are they facilitating the development of a local, sustaining system of governance?

 

This talk is part of the Stanford China Program Winter 2009 China Seminar Series titled "30 Years of Reform and Opening in China: How Far from the Cage?"

A central element of Deng Xiaoping's political reforms initiated during the 1980s was to reform the ways that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) related to other national institutions (the state and military), sectors of society, and the Party itself.  While there have been significant ups and downs over the past thirty years, many elements of Deng's original vision for Party reform have been carried out and continue to be pursued. As a result, today's Chinese Communist Party is a stronger institution that has survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist party-states worldwide. Yet, it faces new challenges, to which it must adapt. Professor Shambaugh's lecture will assess the CCP's adaptations and reforms over the past three decades.

David Shambaugh has been Professor of Political Science & International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University since 1996.  He directed the Elliott School's Sigur Center for Asian Studies from 1996-98, and since that time has been the founding Director of the China Policy Program.  He has also been a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program and Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution since 1998.  In 2008 he was also appointed an Honorary Research Professor at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Before joining the faculty at George Washington, he previously taught at the University of London's School of Oriental & African Studies (1987-1996), served as Editor of The China Quarterly (1991-1996), and directed the Asia Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1986-87).  He received his B.A. in East Asian Studies from the Elliott School at George Washington, an M.A. in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan.  Professor Shambaugh has published widely-having authored or edited 25 books, approximately 200 articles and book chapters, and 100 opinion-editorials and book reviews.  He is a frequent commentator on Chinese and Asian affairs in the international media, sits on the editorial boards of a number of scholarly journals, and has served as a consultant to various governments, research institutes, and private corporations. 

This talk is part of the Stanford China Program Winter 2009 China Seminar Series titled "30 Years of Reform in China: How Far from the Cage?"