As the United States struggles to emerge from recession, India and China's continued robust growth is the subject of much interest and concern. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Senior Fellow Adam Segal will talk about his new book Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge, analyzing Asia's technological rise, questioning assumptions about the United States inevitable decline, and explaining how America can preserve and improve its position in the global economy by optimizing its strength of moving ideas from the lab to the marketplace.

In his book, Segal argues that the emergence of India and China does not mean the end of American economic and technological power. Instead, the United States should now leverage its many advantages.

Through his research, Segal concludes the United States has an advantage over Asia in the realm of the software of innovation. “In America, your ideas can make you rich. Intellectual property is protected, and individual scientists are able to exploit their breakthroughs for commercial gains,” he writes. “It is time to realize that software in its most expansive sense offers the most opportunities for the United States to ensure its competitive place in the world.” The challenge is “to recover a culture of innovation that was driven underground, overshadowed by sexy credit default swaps and easy spending.”

Speaker

Adam Segal is the Ira A. Lipman senior fellow for counterterrorism and national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert on security issues, technology development, and Chinese domestic and foreign policy, Dr. Segal currently leads study groups on cybersecurity and cyber conflict as well as Asian innovation and technological entrepreneurship. His new book Advantage: How American Innovation Can Overcome the Asian Challenge (W.W. Norton, 2011) looks at the technological rise of Asia. Dr. Segal is a research associate of the National Asia Research Program and was the project director for a CFR-sponsored independent task force on Chinese military modernization.

Before coming to CFR, Dr. Segal was an arms control analyst for the China Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists. There, he wrote about missile defense, nuclear weapons, and Asian security issues. Dr. Segal has been a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, and Tsinghua University in Beijing. He has taught at Vassar College and Columbia University. Dr. Segal is the author of Digital Dragon: High-Technology Enterprises in China (Cornell University Press, 2003), as well as several articles and book chapters on Chinese technology policy. His work has recently appeared in the International Herald Tribune, Financial Times, Washington Quarterly, Los Angeles Times, and Foreign Affairs. Dr. Segal currently writes for the CFR blog, “Asia Unbound".

Dr. Segal has a BA and PhD in government from Cornell University, and an MA in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. He reads and speaks Chinese.

Conventional wisdom holds that the emigration of highly skilled workers depletes local human capital developing countries.  But when the very prospect of emigration induces people to invest more in their education, the effects might not be so negative.  We analyze a unique natural quasi-experiment in the Republic of Fiji Islands, where political shocks have provoked one of the largest recorded expoduses of skilled workers from a developing country.  We use rich census and administrative microdata to show that high rates of emigration by tertiary-educated Fiji Islanders not only raised investment in tertiary education in Fiji, but also raised the stock of tertiary-educated people in Fiji - net departures.

Michael Clemens is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development where he leads the Migration and Development initiatiave.  His research focuses on the effects of international migration from and in developing countries.  Michael joined the Center after completing his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard.  His past writings have focused on the effects of foreign aid, determinants of capital flows and effects of tariff policy in the 19th century and the historical determinants of school system expansion.  Michael has served as a consultant for the World Bank, Bain & Co., the Environmental Defense Fund, and the United Nations Development Program.

About the speaker:

Dr. Franz Cede is a retired Austrian diplomat who served as the Austrian Ambassador to Russia (1999-2003) and to NATO (2003-2007). He also was the Legal Advisor to the Austrian Foreign Ministry. He has a strong California connection dating back to the time when he was the Austrian Consul General in Los Angeles 20 years ago. Dr Cede holds the degree "Doctor of Law" from Innsbruck University. He received an M.A. in international affairs from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C., and is currently an associate professor at the Andrassy University in Budapest, Hungary. Dr. Cede has published several books and articles in the field of international relations, international law and diplomacy.

Jointly sponsored by The Europe Center at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.

Audio Synopsis:

In this talk, Dr. Cede details his views on Russia's evolving relationships with the EU, NATO, and the US, drawing on his experiences as Austrian ambassador to the Soviet Union from1999 to 2003. Cede first outlines his perceptions of present-day Russia-US and Russia-NATO relations. Russia, he explains, still thinks in Cold War terms of bilateral relations and considers the United States to be its primary strategic partner on global security issues, especially in light of the Obama administration's recent "reset" of relations and ratification of the new START treaty. In contrast, Russia views NATO as outdated and yet still a threat. Its expansion to the East is viewed with suspicion by Putin's administration, which considers these developments to be distinctly anti-Russian. Russia engages with NATO only to the extent that it believes it can influence the organization's behavior and policies toward Moscow.  Still, in Cede's experience, the NATO-US-Russia triangle continues to be at the forefront of Russian policymakers' dialogue. Russian leaders prefer to avoid dealing with the EU because it lacks a coherent foreign policy, and also because Russia prefers bilateral relations with countries that offer a strategic benefit. Dr. Cede quotes Timothy Garton Ash, who wrote in a recent op-ed that "much of the Russian foreign policy elite treats the European Union as a kind of transient, post-modern late 20th century anachronism: flawed in principle, and feeble in practice. What matters in the 21st century, as much as it did in the 19th century, is the...determination of great powers." Dr. Cede cites the Georgian military intervention and recent Ukrainian gas crisis as examples of Russia's renewed attempts to reestablish dominance in its neighborhood.  

In the second portion of his talk Dr. Cede traces the evolution of Russian views of the EU and NATO.  Ten years ago, the EU-Russia relationship was largely ignored in the Russian media. When Cede asked Russian citizens for their views on the EU, they "either didn't know or didn't care." As Ambassador, Dr. Cede found Russian officials better informed, but  disdainful of being given orders by EU donors and "treated like a developing country." Cede illustrates this dynamic by recounting the 2004 incident in which the EU forced the residents of Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast region to apply for EU Shengen visas, which then required special permits to travel throughout Russia.  Western assurances that EU expansion to the east was not an attack on Russia but rather an attempt to extend stability to the Eastern bloc fell on deaf ears. Cede believes that notwithstanding Russia's attitude, the country is too big to ever join the EU, or to be influenced by Europe in its policy decisions. Because Russia still views itself as "one of the poles in a multipolar world," Dr. Cede insists that any change must come from within the country. However, Cede views Russia's candidacy to the WTO, which would require a clearer commitment to democracy and open economic policies, as a glimmer of hope.

Finally, Dr. Cede outlines several "permanent" features of Russia's relationship with the world, including economic interdependence, lack of cooperation on security policy, and weak relations with stateless organizations like the EU and NATO. He lays out several recommendations, which are elaborated on during the Q&A session:

1. EU policymakers and other Western powers (notably the US) should strengthen their common Russia policy. Given the EU's dependence on Russia for oil and gas, it should also diversify its own energy sources to strengthen its bargaining position.
2. The EU should consider membership for "bridge countries" such as Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus.
3. Personal diplomacy between universities, civil society, and citizens is important.  This includes reevaluation of visa policy. Cede hopes that the advent of the internet will also help improve attitudes between Russia and the rest of the world.

Except for specialists working on the period, the Korean Empire's (1897–1910) project to develop Pyongyang as the "Western Capital" (Sŏgyŏng) is not all that well known even among Korea historians. From the perspective of international relations, there can be no doubt that the Russo-Japanese War sealed independent Korea’s fate. All the same, in the last two decades or so, Korea’s own effort toward modernization has received more attention among historians who no longer dismiss the history of the Korean Empire as the tail end of the Chosŏn Dynasty. For sure, the official rhetoric that empires old and new have had two capitals conceals imperial Korea’s self-perceptions about its place in the civilized world of the past, the present, and the future. Moreover, scrutiny of the circumstances in which the government undertook the project before it came to a halt allows insight into the Korean Empire’s understanding of geopolitical realities at the time.

Eugene Y. Park is the Korea Foundation Associate Professor in History in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the director of Penn's Korean Studies Program. Dr. Park completed his doctorate in East Asian languages and civilizations at Harvard in 1999 and has received numerous research grants and fellowships, including: a 2007–08 Seoul National University Kyujanggak Institute for Korean Studies Fellowship; a 2003–04 Korea Foundation Advanced Research Grant; a 1999–2000 Yale University Council on East Asian Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship; a 1996–97 Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship; and a 1995–96 Fulbright Fellowship. His research interests focus on the sociopolitical history of early modern Korea, and his current work examines the chungin ("middle people") to address questions of modernity, identities, and agency. His book, Between Dreams and Reality: The Military Examination in Late Chosŏn Korea, 1600–1894, was published by the Harvard University Asia Center in 2007. He has published chapters and articles in venues such as Journal of Social History and Yŏksa wa hyŏnsil.