Michael McFaul, a Stanford political scientist and former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has been selected as the next director of the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

The announcement was made Wednesday by Stanford Provost John Etchemendy and Ann Arvin, the university’s vice provost and dean of research. McFaul will succeed Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, who was nominated in July as an associate justice of the California Supreme Court and elected Tuesday.

McFaul takes the helm of FSI in January.

"Stanford has long been a home for scholars who connect academia to policy and public service, and Professor McFaul is the embodiment of that model," Etchemendy said. "We are grateful for Mike's service and confident he will be a strong leader for FSI."

Arvin said McFaul is a strong fit for the position.

“Professor McFaul’s background as an outstanding scholar and his service as an influential ambassador give him a vital perspective to lead FSI, which is Stanford’s hub for studying and understanding international policy issues,” she said. “His scholarship, experience and energy will keep FSI and Stanford at the forefront of international studies as well as some of the most pressing global policy debates."

McFaul has been a faculty member in the department of political science at Stanford since 1994.  He joined the Obama administration in January 2009, serving for three years as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House. He then served as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation from 2012 to 2014.

McFaul already has a deep affiliation with FSI. Before joining the government, he served as FSI deputy director from 2006 to 2009.  He also directed FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) from 2005 to 2009.

During his four years leading CDDRL, McFaul launched the Draper Hills Summer Fellowship program for mid-career lawyers, politicians, advocates and business leaders working to shore up democratic institutions in their home countries. He also established CDDRL’s senior honors program.  From 1992-1994, McFaul also worked as a Senior Research Fellow at FSI’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

“I am thrilled to be assuming a leadership role again at FSI,” McFaul said.  “FSI has become one of the premier institutions in the country for policy-relevant research on international affairs.  I look forward to using my recent government experience to deepen further FSI’s impact on policy debates in Washington and around the world.”

Arvin said McFaul’s previous positions at FSI and CDDRL will make for a smooth transition in the institute’s leadership.

“His familiarity with FSI’s history and infrastructure will allow him to start this new position with an immediate focus on the institute’s academic mission,” she said.

McFaul is also the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and plans to build on his long affiliations with both Hoover and FSI to deepen cooperation between these two premier public policy institutions on campus.

He has written and co-authored dozens of books including Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; Transitions To Democracy: A Comparative Perspective (with Kathryn Stoner); Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (with James Goldgeier); and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

“In so many ways, Mike represents the best of FSI,” said Cuéllar, who has held leadership positions at FSI since 2004 and begins his term on the California Supreme Court in January. “He knows the worlds of academia and policy extremely well, and will bring unique experience and sound judgment to his new role at FSI.”

McFaul currently serves as a news analyst for NBC News, appearing frequently on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC as a commentator on international affairs. He also appears frequently on The Charlie Rose Show and The Newshour, as well as PBS and BBC radio programs. He has recently published essays in Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Politico, and Time. 

McFaul was one of the first U.S. ambassadors to actively use social media for public diplomacy. He still maintains an active presence on Facebook at amb.mcfaul and on Twitter at @McFaul.

McFaul received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986.  As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991.

“Since coming here in 1981 as 17-year-old kid from Montana, Stanford has provided me with tremendous opportunities to grow as a student, scholar, and policymaker,” McFaul said. “I now look forward to giving back to Stanford by contributing to the development of one of the most vital and innovative institutions on campus.” 

The North Korean regime has adjusted to international sanctions by shifting that economic pain away from cities to the countryside, new Stanford research using satellite night lights data shows.

U.S. policy toward North Korea has been based on the expectation that economic sanctions could deter North Korea from developing nuclear weapons or change the behavior of the regime, according to Yong Suk Lee, a Stanford economist at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Since 1950, both the United States and the global community have adopted a series of economic sanctions against North Korea. The latest came in 2013 when the United Nations approved restrictions on banking, travel and trade in response to North Korea's underground nuclear test and threat to launch nuclear strikes against the United States and South Korea.

In a working paper, Lee examined how North Korea's Communist rulers have adapted to the increasingly tougher sanctions through the years.

"North Korea is one of many autocratic regimes that refuse to yield to sanctions, and its isolation and hereditary dictatorship make it a particularly good example to study the impact of economic sanctions in autocratic regimes," said Lee, the SK Center Fellow and a faculty member of the Korea Program at Stanford's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

North Korea is one of the poorest countries in the world, Lee noted. Its leaders follow an economic model based on a centrally planned economy and self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world.

Satellite data

Lee's research was based on nighttime views of lights from data collected by the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. The researcher created "average luminosity" measures of lights across North Korea based on a 1-mile-by-1-mile grid for the years 1992 through 2010. Light usage was examined for brightness on one-minute intervals.

To predict the impact of sanctions on economic activity in North Korea, Lee used a formula that transformed the luminosity measures into GDP measures. For example, a 10 percent change in the satellite lights is associated with about a 3 percent change in GDP.

According to Lee, satellite data is of greatest utility in assessing the economies of cities and regions in the developing world. In a country like North Korea, a large part of economic activity happens during the evening and night and involves light. For example, lights at night are generated by peoples' consumption of goods and services as well as transportation. And some production activities happen during the evening hours.

"Economists have found that how bright night lights are can predict national and sub-national GDP quite well, especially in countries where GDP data is not reliable," he said.

Lee found that economic sanctions decreased luminosity in the hinterlands, but increased luminosity in urban areas, especially toward the centers. As for whether additional sanctions affected luminosity, he found they increased the urban-rural luminosity gap by about 1 percent. When he examined the more central urban areas, the gap increased by about 2.6 percent.

"The results suggest that the dictatorship countered the effects of sanctions by reallocating resources to the urban areas," Lee said. One could surmise that the economic sanctions do not affect the country's leadership much, he said.

The hinterlands responded to declining economic fortunes by relying more on trade with China near those border areas, Lee added. In fact, the sanctions generated more North Korean migration to China and reliance on Chinese merchants and goods. North Korea's border with China is relatively porous as opposed to its heavily militarized border with South Korea.

'Increasing inequality'

The upshot, Lee said, is that sanctions that fail to change the behavior of an autocratic regime may eventually increase urban-rural inequality.

"Sanctions will likely be inefficient as long as North Korea can maintain powerful centralized control and oppress any discontent that arises due to increasing inequality," he said.

Lee added that sanctions will most likely not deter North Korea's nuclear weapons activities. They have not done so yet, and at this point, North Korea's leaders view sanctions as inconveniences, but not regime-threatening. Plus, even the harshest sanctions would be unlikely to stem the flow of all goods, energy and money into North Korea. Not all countries would go along with draconian trade restrictions that hurt the poorest people the hardest, he said.

"Even if sanctions were imposed to full capacity, the marginalized population would suffer the most," said Lee, adding that he was actually surprised about his project's findings.

"One can always hypothesize a story but to actually find such effect in the data was quite exciting. Frankly, I pursued this project expecting that I wouldn't find any impact of sanctions on lights," he said.

Clifton Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.