This is a Special Edition of the Asian Leaders Forum.

Alejandro Toledo was democratically-elected president of Peru in July 2001, and held that post until July 2006. He was also the first democratically elected Peruvian president of indigenous descent in 500 years. Raised in extreme poverty in the remote Peruvian Andes, Toledo first appeared on the international political scene in 1996 when he formed and led a broad democratic coalition in the streets of Peru to bring down the autocratic regime of Alberto Fujimori. This coalition had the support of the international democratic community.

Before becoming president, Dr. Toledo worked for the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, and the United Nations in New York. During his academic years, Professor Toledo was a visiting scholar and a research associate at Harvard University and Waseda University in Tokyo. He is currently an economics professor (on leave) at the University of ESAN in Peru. He received his PhD at Stanford University in economics.

Kantathi Suphamongkhon served as Thailand’s 39th minister of foreign affairs. He also served as Thailand’s trade representative, which was an equivalent position to Trade Minister in the cabinet. Dr. Kantathi was twice elected as a member of the Thai House of Representatives. He has also served as foreign affairs adviser to the prime minister of Thailand as well as foreign affairs adviser to the president of the Thai parliament.

During his diplomatic career, he represented Thailand at the United Nations for four years. He has also served as chairman of Human Security Network. Currently, Dr. Kantathi is University of California Regents’ Professor at UCLA, as well as senior fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA.

Michael Armacost was the United States ambassador to the Philippines and to Japan. From 1982 to 1984, he served as U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, and was a key force in helping the country undergo a nonviolent transition to democracy. In 1989, President George Bush tapped him to become ambassador to Japan, considered one of the most important and sensitive U.S. diplomatic posts abroad.

Armacost began his career in academia, as a professor of government at Pomona College. Following a stint on the State Department policy planning and coordination staff, he became a special assistant to the U.S. ambassador in Tokyo from 1972-74, his first foreign diplomatic post. Thereafter, he held senior Asian affairs and international security posts in the State Department, Defense Department, and the National Security Council. From 1995 to 2002, Armacost served as president of Washington DC's Brookings Institution. Since 2002, he has been the Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. Dr. Armacost received his PhD from Columbia University in public law and government.

As the building blocks of a new approach, this presentation will focus on four themes: 1) re-examination of ways to accelerate regionalism, with attention to leadership, energy cooperation, and the role of Russia; 2) development of a more comprehensive outlook on values, with attention to shared modernity, gradualism, and the role of Japan; 3) discussion of the next phase in managing North Korea, attentive to Sino-U.S. accord and the role of South Korea; and 4) evaluation of U.S. priorities and how a new president may view Northeast Asia within an overall agenda.   The objective of this talk will be to stimulate thinking on a region at a crossroads in order to capitalize on recent currents of change.

Gil Rozman attended Princeton's Critical Languages Program, returning to Carleton College as an independent major in Chinese and Russian studies. He received his PhD in sociology at Princeton with a field on Chinese, Japanese, and Russian societies and a plan to concentrate on historical comparisons first and on the domestic roots of international relations later. His books have appeared in clusters, including: four on comparative pre-modern urban development and stages of modernization; three on debates in the Soviet Union, China, and Japan over bilateral relations and changes in socialism; two on regionalism; and four on strategic thinking in Northeast Asia. Although he is still learning about Korea, many recent writings have looked at Korea within a regional context.

During the Cold War, China was regarded in many corners of Southeast Asia as a sponsor of subversion and communist insurgency. Until the “four modernizations,” its anemic economy and limited ability to project power offered little incentive for Southeast Asian governments to cozy up to Beijing. Relations were often frosty or worse. Clearly, times have changed. Essentially all of the states in Southeast Asia have robust diplomatic and economic engagements with the PRC. Yet security concerns have not evaporated. Most Southeast Asian governments now embrace China, but “hedge” by setting up fall-back security options with the United States and other partners in case the PRC becomes more menacing.

This seminar will explore some of the nuances in Southeast Asian “hedging” strategies. How do various governments view China’s intentions and capabilities? How have they variously sought to engage the United States and others to gain and retain security without antagonizing Beijing? How do these strategies relate to multilateral diplomacy in ASEAN and related forums, and how do they affect the overall “balance of power” in the Asia-Pacific region? Lastly, what pitfalls might hedging entail? These questions are critical, because the reaction of Southeast Asian states to China’s rise will have a major effect on the shape and stability of regional security for years to come.

John D. Ciorciari is a 2007-08 Shorenstein Fellow and is currently completing a manuscript entitled Hedging: Southeast Asian Alignments with the Great Powers since the Fall of Saigon.  He has extensive work experience in Southeast Asia, both as an academic and as a U.S. government official.  He also served as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore in 2003-04.  He holds a JD from Harvard Law School and DPhil from the University of Oxford.

Takamichi Tam Mito is professor of International Political Economy in the Department of Japanese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. A graduate of International Christian University (B.A.), he studied also at the Universities of Keele, Toronto, London, and Tsukuba (M.I.A. & Ph.D. in Law). Prior to his current appointment, he taught at the Universities of Cambridge, London, and Toronto and at Monash and Kyushu Universities. At Kyushu he was Foundation Professor of International Japanese Studies and Study Abroad Program. He also worked as a manager in the Department of Financial Engineering at Citicorp Investment Bank Ltd in London.

His major publications include: State Power and Multinational Oil Corporations: a Study of Market Intervention in Canada and Japan (Fukuoka: Kyushu University Press, 2001); The Political Economy of the Oil Market: A Comparative Study of Japan and Canada (Fukuoka: Kyushu University Press, in Japanese 2006); Sengo Nihon Seiji to Heiwa Gaiko (Postwar Japanese Politics and Peace Diplomacy) (Kyoto: Horitsubunkasha, 2007). His 2001 publication received an award by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Currently, he is completing six books on Japanese studies in the Asia-Pacific Region as a co-editor and contributor (forthcoming in 2008 and 2009) and also a book length study of the impact of government policy on the industrial growth, structure, and performance of the oil industry in modern Japan as a single author. He is the recipient of many research grants from various prestigious bodies including the governments of Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan.

He has served for many professional and governmental bodies including Japan Agency for International Cooperation as a visiting professor of Japanese studies, Public Policy Studies Association in Japan, as the founding director; and the Japan Association of International Students' Education, as a founding vice president.

Some observers of Japan have pointed to a dangerous rise in Japanese nationalism. Advocates of that idea claim that this is evident in a number of events, such as, the visits of former Prime Minister Koizumi to the Yasukuni Shrine; former Prime Minister Abe's plan for constitutional reforms and his statements regarding the comfort women; the adoption of "revisionist" history textbooks; the territorial disputes with countries such as China and South Korea; and Japan's efforts to strengthen the Japan-U.S. security arrangements.

However, such observations invite the following questions:

• If there are such signs in Japan, do they reflect Japanese society as a whole? Japan has been strongly pacifistic since the war, avoiding any entanglement in military conflict. This seems to be deeply rooted in the minds of the Japanese people. Just what is the relationship between the purported rise in nationalism and these pacifistic tendencies?
• Most commentators who warn of rising nationalism in Japan fear a return of the extreme nationalism of prewar Japan. However, are not today's political regime, economic institutions and social conditions, all vastly different from those of prewar Japan?
• Even though a trend toward nationalism can be witnessed in some quarters of Japan, it doesn't necessarily mean that Japan has become a country that would take dangerous actions. Nationalistic emotions and movements are not directly linked to the actions of a country. Rather, are there not some intervening factors between them?

Mitsuru Kitano currently serves as minister for public affairs at the Embassy of Japan to the United States in Washington, D.C. where he is in charge of outreach to press/media, intellectual exchanges, art and cultural exchanges as well as support for Japanese language education. Kitano has written a number of op-ed articles, including ones analyzing U.S. opinions about Japan in such papers as the Washington Post, the Washington Times, and the International Herald Tribune.

Minister Kitano is a career diplomat and has been posted in Tokyo, France, Geneva, China and Vietnam since joining Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1980. He has been professionally engaged in Japan's bilateral relationship with the U.S., China and Southeast Asian countries, and Japan's policies regarding the United Nations and other international organizations. He was active also in such areas as economic cooperation and nuclear energy issues.

His academic achievements include being a lecturer at Sophia University (Tokyo) and a senior visiting fellow at RIETI (Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry) in Japan. In 2007, he co-authored a book, Paburikku Dipuromashi: Seron no Jidai no Gaiko Senryaku (Public Diplomacy: Diplomatic Strategy in the Age of Public Opinion) (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyujo).

Minister Kitano received a B.A. from the University of Tokyo in 1980 and a M.A. in international relations from the University of Geneva in 1996.