On November 15, 2007, FSI held its third annual international conference, Power and Prosperity: New Dynamics, New Dilemmas, examining seismic shifts in power, wealth, security, and risk in the global system. Acting FSI Director Michael A. McFaul, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry offered stagesetting remarks before a capacity crowd of business and civic leaders, diplomats, policymakers, faculty, and students. Interactive panel sessions encouraged exploration of contemporary issues with Stanford faculty and outside experts.

“For more than two centuries , a debate has raged in our country over whether the Congress or the president has the power to start, conduct, and terminate a war,” stated former Secretary of State Warren Christopher. The issue has been made urgent by what is called the “War on Terror,” regarded by many as almost unlimited in duration and geographic scope. “One frontier issue is whether the commander-in-chief authority gives the president the power to override the Constitution,” he said, specifically “whether or not the president can authorize torture that may offend the Constitution, wiretap American citizens, and suspend habeas corpus.”

Christopher and former Secretary of State Jim Baker are heading a new National War Powers Commission to study and resolve these issues. Planning to do something of a prospective nature, they will focus their recommendations on the 2009 Congress, seeking to bring to bear the collective judgment of both the president and a Congress traditionally reluctant to exercise the power it has under the Constitution.

“I spent most of my adult life under the dark cloud of a nuclear holocaust, a war that threatened no less than the annihilation of humanity,” said former Secretary of Defense William Perry. Now the Cold War is over, but its end did not bring about the end of history. “History is being written every day in the streets of Bagdad, in the deserts of Darfur, in the nuclear test range of North Korea, and in the nuclear laboratories of Iran.”

Perry identified four potential security threats: the danger of a nuclear terrorist attack, drifting into a new Cold War, drifting into an environmental disaster, and the danger that radical fundamentalists will gain ascendancy in the Islamic world. “There is a fundamental conflict between our need to keep nuclear bombs out of the hands of terrorists and our need to reduce carbon emissions,” he stated, for the global movement to increase nuclear power could increase terrorists’ ability to get fissile materials. “The solution must lie,” he advised, “in establishing international protocols for how nuclear plants are operated and nuclear fuel supplies are controlled.”

A complementary route is to work to reduce and then eliminate nuclear weapons. Getting to the political will to take those steps was a major objective of a January 4, 2007, Wall Street Journal op-ed, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” published by Perry, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, and conferences at Stanford. “This conference can teach us what to do,” Perry said, “what is needed is the political will to do it.”

Gi-Wook Shin, director of FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, chaired Plenary I, “Asia’s Triple Rise: How China, India, and Japan Will Shape our Future.” “While our policymakers are preoccupied with the Middle East, Asia is going to have much more impact on our future,” Shin said. Asia is experiencing a unique moment in Asian and world history. Can three great nations rise simultaneously, creating a regional architecture for stability and security? What role can the United States play?

“There are two defining characteristics of today’s world,” said J. Stapleton Roy, former U.S. ambassador to China, “America’s role as the sole superpower and China’s precipitous rise to power and influence.” Roy traced China’s resource demands, military development, and global economic impact and evaluated China’s influence on U.S. foreign policy. “While we see a more powerful and prosperous China as a security threat,” he stated, “the case could be made for a more optimistic scenario in which growth creates a sizable middle class, greater global dependence, and a more open society as the fifth generation of Chinese leaders takes over, the first to mature in a period of openness to the world and the power of modern democracies.”

“The only democracy in the world with which the United States had endemically bad relations during the Cold War was India. Happily that has changed,” said Robert Blackwill, former U.S. ambassador to India. He addressed our many areas of common interest: the fight against global terrorism, energy security, a healthy global economy, and shared democratic values. Analyzing the pending civil nuclear cooperation deal, he placed India’s need for 15–20 new nuclear reactors in the context of domestic growth. Some 450 million people make less than $1.50 per day; India will not tolerate outside direction to slow growth. “The United States and India are natural allies,” he concluded.

“The India entering its seventh decade as an independent country is one that is open to the contention of ideas and interests within it and outside … wedded to the democratic pluralism that is its greatest strength and determined to fulfill the creative energies of its people. Such an India truly enjoys soft power in today’s world.” former under secretary-general of the united nations shashi tharoor“Japan has resumed a solid growth track,” said Michael H. Armacost, Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow and former U.S. ambassador to Japan. The country seeks respect and wants a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, which it deserves. Japan’s economy is four times the size of China’s; Japan’s military budget is just 1 percent of GDP, yet it is the third largest in the world and the most sophisticated in Asia. Japan has the resources of a great power—huge financial reserves, modern science and technology, and enormous aid and investment flows. As Japan assumes a more robust international role, we should expect the Japanese to “hedge their bets,” he said, balancing strong U.S. ties with other nations and competing with China in pan-Asian community building efforts. Japan-U.S. relations should not be forgotten, he advised, as we focus on China and India.

Shashi Tharoor, diplomat, historian, and former U.N. under secretary-general, mused about “India’s Future as a Great Power.” Asking what makes a country a world leader, he acknowledged that India has the world’s second largest population, fourth largest military, status as a nuclear power, and the fifth largest economy. Yet a nation that cannot feed, educate, or employ its people cannot be termed a “great power,” Tharoor noted. He suggested that India’s greatest asset is its “soft power”— its liberal democracy, social and cultural diversity, and enormously popular culture. All hold important lessons. “The India entering its seventh decade as an independent country,” he said, “is open to the contentions of ideas and interests within it and outside … wedded to the democratic pluralism that is its greatest strength and determined to liberate and fulfill the creative energies of its people. Such an India truly enjoys soft power in today’s world.”

Lynn Eden, associate director for research at CISAC, chaired Plenary II, “Critical Connections: Faces of Security in the 21st Century,” examining security risks posed by Iraq, nuclear weapons, and food security and the environment—issues, she noted, “that are also central themes of the Stanford International Initiative: improving governance, pursuing security, and advancing human well-being.”

“There are now multiple indications that conditions on the ground in Iraq have improved quite substantially,” said Hoover Institution denior fellow and CDDRL faculty member Larry Diamond. Violence is down and there is a return to something approaching normalcy, as a result of the 30,000 “surge” in U.S. troops and a more effective counterinsurgency strategy adopted by General David Petraeus. The new military-sized force and strategy come at a propitious moment, when the Sunni Arab heartland has turned against Al Qaeda. As Al Qaeda has been weakened, fear, fatal bombings, and Iraqi and U.S. fatalities have declined significantly. The problem is that strategic military gains have not been matched with requisite political progress: enacting an oil revenue sharing bill, reversing de-Baathification, and scheduling provincial elections. “The harsh fact is that military progress on the ground is not sustainable,” warned Diamond, “without political progress toward reconciliation in Bagdad and the provinces.”

“As Americans, we have not thought systematically about what it means when we use the phrase ‘Islamic fundamentalism.’ We tend to treat it holistically. If we are going to understand this threat, we have to disaggregate that big thing called ‘the Muslim world’—we have to know the difference between Islamic fundamentalist, Islamist, and liberal Muslims.” acting fsi director and political science professor michael a. mcfaulAssessing nuclear proliferation, CISAC Co-Director Scott D. Sagan said, “In 1963, John F. Kennedy famously relayed his nuclear nightmare that by the 1970s there might be 15–20 nuclear weapons states. Was Kennedy’s fear inaccurate or only premature?” Today there are nine nuclear states, but the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is cracked and challenges abound. The A.Q. Khan network in Pakistan exported nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea, and Iran. North Korea withdrew from the NPT and conducted a 2006 test, before agreeing to dismantle its nuclear program. Iran has rejected international demands to suspend uranium enrichment. The United States has not lived up to its NPT commitment to work toward eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. For Sagan, keys to nonproliferation include a successful U.N. 2010 NPT Review Conference, peaceful resolution of the North Korean and Iranian crises, developing control of the international fuel cycle, and American ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Turning to human security, Rosamond L. Naylor, the Julie Wrigley Senior Fellow at FSI and the Woods Institute for the Environment, reported that 1 billion people face acute risks every day from hunger, infectious disease, resource depletion, climate change, and civil conflict. Incredibly, 15 percent of the world’s population lives on less than $1 per day and 50 percent live on less than $2 a day. Three billion people are vulnerable to disruptions in food prices because of competing biofuels and climate change. While terrorism kills 3,000 people each year and battle deaths claim 20,000, more than 6–8 million people die every year from hunger and malnutrition. “What can be done?” asked Naylor. We urgently need to conserve our genetic crop resources and invest in rural development, agriculture, and education.

Gilles Kepel, professor and chair, Middle East and Mediterranean Studies, at Sciences Po, delivered the dinner keynote, “Islamic Fundamentalism: On the Rise or the Decline?” “As Americans we have not thought systematically about what it means when we use the phrase ‘Islamic fundamentalism,’” said Acting FSI Director Michael McFaul. “If we are going to understand this threat, we have to disaggregate that big thing called ‘the Muslim world’—we have to know the difference between Islamic fundamentalist, Islamist, and liberal Muslims.” Gilles Kepel, a leading author and scholar of the Middle East, who has “invested tremendously in the study of Islam,” was invited to fill that void. “When it comes to understanding Islamic fundamentalism, Paris is the 21st century,” said McFaul. “I see it as a real challenge to all of us to learn from our French colleagues, and tonight I promise you, you will learn from one of our French colleagues.”

In a December 2001 manifesto, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s mentor and Al Qaeda ideologue, admitted Islamic jihadists had failed to mobilize the masses to overthrow their corrupt rulers, “the nearby enemy,” and establish Islamic states, Kepel began. By inflicting a massive blow on 9/11 on “the far enemy,” the United States, they would demonstrate that America was weak, Islamic militants were strong, and the masses could revolt against their leaders without fear. The Muslim world and then the whole world would become ruled by Shariah under Islamist aegis. Kepel then asked, “Have they succeeded in what they set out to do?”

“After 9/11, we had a clash of two grand narratives: ‘jihad and martyrdom’ where the apostate regimes of the West and the Middle East were about to fall and ‘the War on Terror’ in which the roots of terrorism would be eradicated and autocratic regimes would tumble, bringing about democracy and a transformation of the Middle East.” professor gilles kepel, institute of political studies, parisKepel’s answer was no. Since 9/11, he said, “There have been two grand narratives: the narrative of jihad and martyrdom preached by Zawahiri and bin Laden, arguing that the rotten regimes of the West and the Middle East would fall, as jihadists waged copy-cat bombings in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, suicide operations, and so forth” and “the narrative of the American-led War on Terror,” hammering that the roots of terrorism would be eradicated and autocratic regimes would tumble, bringing about democracy and the transformation of the Middle East.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq opened a new area for radical Islamic mobilization. But the two clashing narratives gave ground to something unexpected: the rise of Iranian influence in the region and “a golden opportunity not for Sunni Islamic fundamentalists but for the radical Shia in Iran,” who after the 2005 election of President Ahmadinejad found they could engage in nuclear blackmail with the world and threaten the United States with the activation of Shiite militias in Iraq, where American forces would be at a disadvantage fighting two enemies at the same time.

While Zawahiri continues to paint the “triumphal march of Sunni fundamentalism,” Kepel stated, “the discrepancy between his world view and reality is growing bigger and bigger.” To date, the bigger winner from 9/11 is not Al Qaeda but the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran and Hezbollah have become the heroes and champions of the Muslim world. This fragmentation in the Muslim world, pitting Shia against Sunni, has weakened the Sunni radical movements’ ability to mobilize. How the confrontation plays out, he concluded, will determine the future of the Middle East.

POWER AND PROSPERITY: NEW DYNAMICS, NEW DILEMAS

INTERACTIVE PANEL DISCUSSIONS ON CRITICAL ISSUES
In an FSI conference highlight, participants engaged in spirited debate on leading issues with Stanford faculty and outside experts. Audio recordings of the plenary and panel discussions are available below.

IS DEMOCRACY GOOD FOR HEALTH?
Alan M. Garber, Grant Miller, Douglas K. Owens, and Paul H. Wise

NUCLEAR POWER WITHOUT NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION?
Scott D. Sagan, David G. Victor, Robert Rosner, and Siegfried S. Hecker

A CHANGING CONTINENT? OPPERTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR EUROPEAN UNION EXPANSION
Katherine Jolluck, Mark Leonard, Monica Macovei, and Wolfgang Münchau

GROWING PAINS - GROWTH AND TENISIONS IN CHINA
Andrew G. Walder, Jean C. Oi, Scott Rozelle, and Xueguang Zhou

AUTOCRATIC HEGEMONS AND THE NATIONAL INTEREST: DEALING WITH CHINA, IRAN, AND RUSSIA
Kathryn Stoner, Larry Diamond, Michael A. McFaul, and Abbas Milani

FOOD SECURITY, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND CIVIL CONFLICTf
Rosamond L. Naylor, David Lobell, and Edward A. Miguel

FACES OF ENGERY SECURITY
David G. Victor, Bryan J. Hannegan, and Chris Mottershead

OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO CONFLICT RESOLUTION: THE MIDDLE EAST
Allen S. Weiner, Byron Bland, Bruce Jones, and Lee D. Ross

The 70th anniversary of the 1937 Japanese attack on the Chinese capital of Nanjing, and the mass atrocities that followed, were marked in relatively low-key fashion in China. At a time when the Chinese government is anxious to improve its ties with Japan, it sent only junior officials to the commemoration ceremony unveiling a refurbished museum that attempts to document an event that has become emblematic, for the Chinese at least, of the war with Japan.

Despite the decision to downplay the anniversary, a wave of films, many of them backed by the Chinese government, had already been set in motion, begun at a time when Sino-Japanese tensions were high. Almost a dozen new movies on the “Nanjing Massacre,” including some supported by U.S. and European money, are in production. In Japan, a documentary supported by a group of conservative lawmakers and academics that claims there is no evidence of a Japanese massacre is also slated for release.

This is the latest indication of how Asia’s wartime past bedevils its present. From relations between governments to the interactions of ordinary citizens, disputes over past wrongs continue to occupy newspapers, cinema screens, and school textbooks. All nations in the region, rather than taking responsibility, have some sense of victimization and often blame others. Anti-Japanese sentiments seem undiminished in China and Korea, even among the younger generation with no experience of war or colonialism. The Japanese suffer from “apology fatigue,” questioning why they must continue to repent for events that took place six or seven decades ago.

The failure to address historical injustice and to reconcile differing views of the past has strained Sino-Japanese relations and friction between Japan and South Korea about Japan’s colonial past remains intense. Even South Korea and China are sparring over the history of the ancient kingdom of Koguryo . Taiwan as well is immersed in a re-examination of the historical past. The history question touches upon the most sensitive issues of national identity and now fuels the fires of nationalism in Northeast Asia.

There is widespread recognition of the need for reconciliation and the final resolution of historical injustices. But the existence of divided, even conflicting, historical memories is a fundamental obstacle to such reconciliation. All of the nations involved are bound by distinct, often contradictory perceptions of history and separated by different accounts of past events. These perceptions are deeply imbedded in public consciousness, transmitted by education, popular culture, and the mass media.

At the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, we have embarked on the “Divided Memories and Reconciliation” project that seeks to tackle the history issue from a comparative perspective. Rather than trying to forge a common historical account or to reach a consensus among scholars on specific events, we believe that a more fruitful approach lies in understanding how historical memory is formed in each country. Recognizing how each country engages in the selective creation of its own, divided memory can lead to mutual understanding. Ironically, the very realization that there is no absolute historical truth on which everyone can agree creates a path to reconciliation.

These divided memories are a foundation of national identity—and the formation of national myths that have a powerful role to this day. Whether it is Japanese atrocities in China or the decision to drop atomic weapons on Japan, no nation is immune from the charge that they have formed a less than complete view of the past. All share a reluctance to fully confront the complexity of that past and tend to blame others.

The United States is no less guilty of forming its own divided memory of these historical events—witness the response to the controversy surrounding the Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution. And the United States had a key role to play in shaping the failure to confront these historical issues in a timely fashion, through its handling of the postwar justice issues for example and the troubling legacy of the problems left unresolved by the 1951 San Francisco Treaty.

Our research project compares the formation of these divided memories in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. The project has begun with a comparative examination of high school history textbooks in those five places, focusing on the period from the beginning of the Sino-Japanese war in 1931 until the formal conclusion of the Pacific war with the San Francisco Peace Treaty. This will be followed by a second comparative study of popular cinema dealing with historical subjects from roughly the same period. In parallel with these two comparative studies, Shorenstein APARC plans to design and carry out a comprehensive survey of the views of elite opinion-makers in all five countries on these historical issues. The project has garnered important support from donors in Asia and the United States, among them Korea’s Northeast Asia History Foundation, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, and the U.S.-Japan Foundation.

The translations of the most widely circulated high school history textbooks— both national and world history textbooks—have been completed. In February 2008, Shorenstein APARC will convene an international conference of historians and other scholars to conduct a comparative analysis of the textbooks and to discuss, from personal experience, the process of textbook writing and revision. Stanford historians Peter Duus and Mark Peattie, the authors of numerous volumes on this historical period, will lead the comparative analysis. Textbook authors from all five countries will also offer their views.

Textbooks have been a subject of particular controversy in Asia since the 1950s, though focused almost entirely on the content of Japanese textbooks and complaints from China, Korea, and elsewhere that they offer a distorted account of wartime events. One approach to solving this problem has been to form joint committees to study history and to create jointly written textbooks. These efforts are ongoing but they have proved so far to be a very difficult path to reconciliation. A Japan-South Korea joint committee to create a shared history was launched in 2001 but has made little real headway. A similar Sino-Japanese joint committee of 20 prominent historians was formed in October 2006 but it also quickly bogged down in disagreements over what to include in a joint history.

These official efforts only reinforce the value of the “Divided Memories and Reconciliation” project. As an effort by scholars, without official involvement, and as the first attempt to treat this issue comparatively, with the inclusion of the United States, it breaks new ground. The February conference will produce not only a book but also will be reproduced in workshops in all the participating Asian countries, held in collaboration with scholarly institutions. Together with our partners, Shorenstein APARC hopes to generate a public dialogue, not only with scholars but also with the general public through media and other venues. The project is also intended to provide policymakers in Northeast Asia and the United States with data and analysis that will aid their own efforts at easing tensions over the history issue.

Suicide bomb ers are not all alike . Palestinians prepare elaborate martyr videos before their killings and become celebrities afterward, while Iraqi Sunnis kill their fellow citizens in obscurity. In Afghanistan, the suicide bombers have their own distinction: They are known for their ineptness, often blowing themselves up without killing anyone else.

“They’re not efficient,” said Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. She arrived at Stanford this summer, after several decades of studying terrorism as a professor of government at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

Afghan suicide bombers tend to be poorer, younger and less educated than suicide bombers elsewhere, Crenshaw said during a recent CISAC seminar. She cited a United Nations report that accused the Taliban of strapping explosives to boys, despite a commitment not to recruit those too young to have facial hair. Promises of motorcycles and cell phones have been used as inducements.

One boy whose mission failed was interviewed by U.N. workers. “He somehow thought he would survive the attack and get to spend the money they had promised him, not quite understanding that he would not be there,” Crenshaw said in an interview following her talk.

In Afghanistan, as elsewhere, the person wearing the explosives belt or driving the car bomb is the least valuable person in the terror group, Crenshaw said. The key people are the bomb maker and the organizer: “They never send the bomb maker with the bomb.” In Israel, security officials target the bomb makers for assassination.

“It’s the organization that decides who’s going to be attacked and when and where and why,” Crenshaw said. “Then they recruit somebody to carry it out. So the person carrying the bomb really is just a foot soldier.”

Afghanistan’s most famous suicide attack happened in 2001, just two days before the 9/11 assault on the United States. Al-Qaida operatives masquerading as journalists preemptively blew up tribal warlord Ahmad Shah Massoud in anticipation that he might aid U.S. troops if they eventually invaded Afghanistan in search of Osama bin Laden.

Today, al-Qaida, the Taliban and Hizb-i-Islami (the group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar) aim their suicide attacks at U.S. and Afghan government forces, but the victims are overwhelmingly civilian bystanders, often large numbers of children. Many of the bombers, Crenshaw said, are recruited from religious schools across the border in Pakistan.

The predominant motivation for terrorists to employ suicide attacks is strategic, not religious, according to Crenshaw. One suicide bomber kills many people, a perfect example of what the U.S. military calls asymmetric warfare. According to the United Nations, since the 1980s suicide bombers have been involved in only 4 percent of the world’s terror attacks, but have caused 29 percent of the deaths.

Crenshaw gave her CISAC talk the day of the bloody suicide-bomber attack on Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. With some 140 deaths and 500 injuries, it was the deadliest of more than 50 suicide attacks in Pakistan in recent years. Bhutto survived without injury, but if she had died, the volatile country could have come unglued, according to Crenshaw. “It shows you how one major suicide bombing could make a big difference,” she said.

Her interest in terrorism began in graduate school in the late 1960s. Her first book, Revolutionary Terrorism (Hoover Institution Press, 1978), was on guerilla warfare against the French during the Algerian war for independence from 1954 to 1962. It still sells on Amazon, for $100.

How does one research suicide bombers, since most of them, by definition, are dead? “We don’t have very many studies that are based on extensive interviews,” Crenshaw said. The one well-known body of work based on interviews involves failed Palestinian suicide bombers held in Israeli prisons. But the prisoners have told their stories so often that it is difficult to separate truth from imagination, according to Crenshaw.

Scholars of terrorism in general can turn to trial transcripts, databases of newspaper stories or the “Harmony Project” documents captured from al-Qaida and posted online by the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

But less has been written specifically about suicide bombers. “In Iraq, it’s very difficult to know who they were, even. They’re dead and they’re blown to bits, too,” Crenshaw said. “You might not have a hand with fingerprints, for example. Surprisingly enough, often they do seem to find heads. But still, how do you identify someone in Iraq, where you don’t have a record of who the population is to begin with? There are no identity cards, no nothing. Really, we’re just guessing.”

The predominant motivation for terrorists to employ suicide attacks is strategic, not religious, according to Martha Crenshaw.

Crenshaw’s most recent paper, “Explaining Suicide Terrorism: A Review Essay” (Security Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, January 2007), relied on the bookstore: She bought and read 13 books about suicide bombers, then produced a review of them all as a guide to other researchers.

CRENSHAW'S RESEARCH AGENDA
Why is the United States the target of terrorism? Crenshaw is answering this question, as a lead investigator with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. Her research focuses on groups that have targeted the United States or its interests since the mid-1960s, placing incidents in context by comparing them with instances in which groups displayed similar anti-American ideas but did not resort to terrorism.
"Contrary to popular belief, only about 10 percent of active terrorist groups have targeted the United States," she says. "You have to get into the local politics to see what's going on" with anti-U.S. terrorism abroad. Such attacks can be aimed at the local regime, she explained.
Crenshaw is also editing a book tentatively titled The Consequences of Counterterrorist Policies in Democracies, to be published by the Russell Sage Foundation which supported the research.
And "The Debate over ‘New' versus ‘Old' Terrorism," a paper Crenshaw presented at the 2007 American Political Science Association meeting, is set to appear in an edited volume. Crenshaw questions common claims that terrorism in recent years has taken on a completely new character, more religious and lethal.
"Terrorism has changed over time, but there is no fundamental difference between ‘old' and ‘new' terrorism," she said. Researchers and policymakers should "ask why some groups cause large numbers of civilian casualties and others do not," she said, "rather than assuming that religious beliefs are the explanation for lethality."