The designation of a new lead official to oversee U.S. relations with Pyongyang and the resumption of nuclear diplomacy in Geneva in late October yet again prompt attention to the open-ended nuclear impasse with North Korea. But any assessment of U.S. strategy requires an understanding of the history of nuclear weapons development in the DPRK—a history that long antedates U.S. negotiations with North Korea of the past two decades. How has North Korea defied, stymied, deferred, and circumvented the efforts of allies, adversaries, and the International Atomic Energy Agency to inhibit its development of nuclear weapons, all amidst international isolation and acute economic privation? What does the North’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons imply for security in Northeast Asia and for global non-proliferation policy? Drawing on Cold War archival materials, interviews with those with deep experience in North Korea, and assessments of technical development in the DPRK, this seminar will delve into the extraordinary history of this profoundly idiosyncratic system, and of its ability to shape security in a pivotal geostrategic region.

Jonathan D. Pollack is a senior fellow with the John L. Thornton China Center in the Foreign Policy Program of the Brookings Institution. He is the author, most recently, of No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and International Security (Routledge/IISS, 2011), on which his seminar will draw.

Edmund J. Malesky will argue that openness to foreign investment can have differential effects on corruption, even within the same country and under the same domestic institutions over time. Rather than interpreting bribes solely as a coercive “tax” imposed on business activities, he allows for the possibility that firms may themselves be complicit in using bribes to enter protected sectors or gain access to lucrative procurement contracts.  The propensity to bribe across sectors should vary with expected profitability related to investment restrictions. Thus, the linkage of foreign investment to corruption should increase dramatically as firms seek to enter restricted and uncompetitive sectors that offer higher rents. Malesky demonstrates this effect using a nationally representative survey of 10,000 foreign and domestic businesses in Vietnam. He also shows how the impact of domestic reforms and economic openness is affected by policies that restrict competition by limiting entry into a given sector.

Edmund Malesky is an associate professor of political science at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He has published in leading political science and economic journals, including the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Politics, and has been awarded the Harvard Academy Fellowship and Gabriel Almond Award for best dissertation in comparative politics. Malesky serves as the lead researcher for the Vietnam Provincial Competitiveness Index and Cambodian Business Environment Scorecard.

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The 11^th Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam was significant in several respects. It placed diplomacy in the forefront of Vietnam’s efforts to maintain peace, stability, and national security, including naming more diplomats as full members of the Central Standing Committee. For the first time, the Party officially identified protecting national interest as the top priority of Vietnam’s foreign policy. The Party continued to push for broader horizons in policymaking to facilitate Vietnam’s integration in the larger world. The Party also agreed that Vietnam should anchor itself to ASEAN and promote its relations with China and the United States. Prof. Tuan will discuss these and other aspects and implications of Vietnam’s foreign policy.

Ta Minh Tuan is a member of Vietnam’s Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP Vietnam), CSCAP’s Study Group on Countering the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Asia Pacific, and Pacific Forum CSIS’s Young Leaders Program. He has been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and the University of South Carolina. His degrees are from the Polish Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Political Studies (PhD), Mahatma Gandhi University’s School of International Relations (MA), and the Hanoi University of Foreign Studies (BA).

In September 2011 the U.S. bilateral alliance system in the Asia-Pacific—the “San Francisco System” (SFS)—turned 60 years old. Against the expectations of theorists who argue that alliances cannot be sustained in the absence of a commonly perceived mutual external threat, the SFS remains operative and viable. It remains so even as multilateral approaches to regional order-building in the Asia-Pacific have proliferated. Although the identity and functions of the SFS have evolved, the speakers will argue that it remains—and will remain—a critical security mechanism in the likely absence of a comprehensive and consensual regional security arrangement that could supersede it. Their remarks will convey the findings and projections of a recent study of Asia-Pacific security undertaken by  Australian National University (ANU) and supported by the MacArthur Foundation’s Asia Security Initiative.

John Ravenhill returned to ANU in 2004, after holding the chair of politics at the University of Edinburgh from 2000. He currently directs the School of Political Science and International Relations at ANU’s College of Arts and Social Sciences. Before joining ANU in 1990, he was an associate professor at the University of Sydney, and assistant professor at the University of Virginia, after completing his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley.  He has held visiting professorships at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies; Nanyang Technology University, Singapore; the University of Geneva; the International University of Japan; and the University of California, Berkeley. His many articles have appeared in leading journals including World Politics, International Organization, Review of International Political Economy, Review of International Studies, New Political Economy, World Policy Journal, World Development, and International Affairs. His research interests include global political economy, especially the fields of trade and production, and Australian foreign policy.

William T. Tow came to ANU in early 2005, having been a professor of international relations (IR) at the University of Queensland and at Griffith University, and an assistant professor of IR at the University of Southern California. His visiting-scholar positions have included APARC (1999) and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. Among his many writings are Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional–Global Nexus? (edited, Cambridge University Press, 2009); Asia Pacific Strategic Relations: Seeking Convergent Security (Cambridge University Press, 2001); and articles in the China Journal, Review of International Studies, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, China Quarterly, International Affairs, Survival, and Asian Survey. He also heads the ANU IR component of the Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, was editor of the Australian Journal of International Affairs, has held positions with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian Fulbright Commission, and received an Australian Award for University Teaching in the Social Sciences Category.

Brendan Taylor’s writings include Sanctions as Grand Strategy (2010); American Sanctions in the Asia-Pacific (2010); and articles in Asian Security, the Australian Journal of International Affairs, International Affairs, and Survival.  In addition to leading the ANU-MacArthur Asia Security Initiative Focus Group (since 2009), he has served as associate investigator, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security; graduate studies convenor, Political Science and International Relations, ANU; and lecturer and post-doctoral fellow, SDSC.

David Envall is a Japan specialist with an interest in how foreign policy is made. He edits the ANU-MacArthur Project’s policy papers. His essays will appear in the Asian Journal of Political Science and in volumes on Australian-Japanese politico-security relations and on strategic and structural changes in the Asia-Pacific security environment.

**Due to space restrictions, this event has reached capacity and we will no longer be taking RSVPs. Please plan to arrive early as seating is on a first come, first serve basis.**

Since 2008 China's banks have made loans that approach 30% of GDP each year. The central bank has used a broader measure of credit, total societal financing, that suggests credit extended in 2011 may exceed 40% of the country's GDP. It is inevitable that such profligate lending will result in significant amounts of problem loans.  The international market is well aware of this and Chinese bank shares have been hit hard for most of this year. How will these bad loans be managed? More importantly, why has the government once again used China's ostensibly commercial banks as if they were policy banks and what are the implications of this for China's economy going forward?

Carl E. Walter worked in China and its financial sector for the past 20 years and actively participated in many of the country’s financial reform efforts. While at Credit Suisse First Boston he played a major role in China’s groundbreaking first overseas IPO in 1992, as well as the first primary listing of a state-owned enterprise on the New York Stock Exchange in 1994. He was a member of senior management at China International Capital Corporation, China’s first and most successful joint venture investment bank where he supported a number of significant domestic and international stock and bond underwritings for major Chinese corporations. More recently at JPMorgan he was China Chief Operating Officer and Chief Executive Officer of its banking subsidiary. During this time Carl helped build a pioneering domestic security, risk and currency trading operation.

A long time resident of Beijing before his recent return to the United States, Carl is fluent in Mandarin and holds a PhD from Stanford University and a graduate certificate from Peking University. He is the co-author of Red Capitalism: the fragile financial foundations of China’s extraordinary rise as well as Privatizing China: inside China’s stock markets. 

This event is part of the China's Looming Challenges series. 

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has challenged itself is to become a single integrated community by 2015.  The prospect has raised high hopes inside the region.  Will they be met?  Efforts to build the community have intensified, yet the clock ticks and the deadline looms.  Although the result will not match what local enthusiasts of regional unification want to see, but it will likely exceed the expectations of skeptical outsiders.  ASEAN is the linchpin of East Asian regionalism, by design and by default.  What happens to the Association over the next several years has far-reaching implications for the United States, China, and not least for the states and peoples of Southeast Asia.  In his talk, Prof. Pongsudhirak will tease out these dynamics, assess their significance, and explore possible futures beyond 2015.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak heads the Institute of Security and International Studies and teaches international political economy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.  In 2010 he was an FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor at Stanford and, in spring 2011, a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.  He has written many articles, chapters, and books on ASEAN and East Asian affairs, and on Thai politics, political economy, and foreign policy.  He has worked for The Nation newspaper (Bangkok), The Economist Intelligence Unit, and Independent Economic Analysis (London).  He currently serves on the editorial boards of Asian Politics & Policy, Contemporary Southeast Asia, the Journal of Current Southeast Asian Studies, and South East Asia Research.  His degrees are from the London School of Economics (PhD), Johns Hopkins University (School of Advanced International Studies, MA), and the University of California, Santa Barbara (BA).