Ambassador Joon-woo Park, the 2011–12 Koret Fellow and a former senior diplomat from Korea, will give a historical review of Korea-Vietnam bilateral relations, including the effects of Korea's participation in the Vietnam War; bilateral relations today including diplomatic, economic and cultural exchanges; and prospects for future developments and cooperation for East Asian integration.

As a career diplomat, Ambassador Park served in numerous key posts, including those of Ambassador to the European Union and to Singapore and Presidential Advisor on Foreign Affairs. Park worked closely for over 20 years with Ban Ki-moon, the former Korean diplomat who is now the United Nations Secretary-General.

This event is made possible by the generous support from the Koret Foundation.

Ten years into the war in Afghanistan, Payne Distinguished Lecturer Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, the former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and the former Commander of the American-led Coalition Forces there, set out to examine the transition to Afghan sovereignty.   Eikenberry laid out  three broad sets of questions: How well are we doing in the campaign in Afghanistan, what are the significant challenges we’ll face in achieving our goals and objectives, and what are the implications for American power and influence in the 21^st century.

Watch the video below.

Abstract:

Issues about “good governance” and anti-corruption have become central in the development and democracy agenda. While it’s clear that low-quality government institutions have negative effects on the health and wealth of societies, the criteria for what should count as good governance remain far from clear. In his new book “The Quality of Government: Corruption, Social Trust and Inequality in International Perspective”, Bo Rothstein argues that the dominant theories in this field represent serious mischaracterizations of the problem and that the standard definitions of the problem used in research as well as by many leading policy organizations are not helpful. This, he argues, has led to anti-corruption policies that are, at best, ineffective. 

Speaker Bio: 

Bo Rothstein holds the August Röhss Chair in Political Science at University of Gothenburg in Sweden where he is head of the Quality of Government (QoG) Institute. The QoG Institute consists of about twenty researchers studying the importance of trustworthy, reliable, competent and non-corrupt government institutions.

Rothstein took is PhD at Lund University in 1986 and served as assistant and associate professor at Uppsala University 1986 to 1994. He has been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, Cornell University, Harvard University, Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study, the Australian National University and the University of Washington in Seattle. In 2006, he served as Visiting Professor at Harvard University.

His latest book, The Quality of Government: Corruption, Inequality and Social Trust in International Perspective is published by University of Chicago Press in 2011. Among his earlier books in English are Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, and Just Institutions Matters: The Moral and Political Logic of the Universal Welfare State (both Cambridge University Press 1998) and The Social Democratic State (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press 1996). His articles have appeared in scholarly journals such as World Politics, Governance, Comparative Politics, Scandinavian Political Studies, American Behavioral Scientist, European Journal of Political Research and Comparative Political Studies. He is also a regular contributor to the Swedish debate about public policy and has published more than 100 op-ed articles in all major Swedish daily newspapers.

Beginning in January 2012, Rothstein will be in residence at Stanford and affilliated with the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (SCANOCOR) and the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at Stanford. 

Abstract:  

Haber and Menaldo (2011) claim there is little evidence that oil is harmful to democracy, and that previous studies to the contrary were corrupted by omitted variable bias. Michael Ross professor of political science at UCLA will present findings from a paper co-authored with Jørgen Juel Andersen to show there is little evidence of the bias they allege, and point out that they decline to test the most credible version of the resource curse hypothesis.  The versions that they do test, moreover, are based on two implausible assumptions: that oil will effect a country’s regime type immediately, rather than over a period of several years; and that the relationship between oil wealth and political power did not change over the 200 year period covered by their data.  We argue that oil only had strong anti-democratic effects after the 1970s, when most oil-producing autocracies nationalized their industries; and show their main results are overturned when we add to their models a dummy variable for the post-1979 period, and allow the effects of oil to take place over a period of three, five, or seven years, instead of just one year.  

Speaker Bio: 

Michael L. Ross is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and Director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. 

He has published widely on the political and economic problems of resource-rich countries, civil war, democratization, and gender rights; his articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, International Organization, Journal of Confiict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Politics and Gender, and World Politics.  In 2009, he received the Heinz Eulau Award from the American Political Science Association for the best article published in the American Political Science Review. 

His work has also appeard in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harper's, The Los Angeles Times, and been featured in The Washington Post, Newsweek, and many other publications. 

Ross currently serves on the advisory boards of the Review Watch Institute, the Natural Resource Charter, and Clean Trade, and was previously a member of the Advisory Group for the World Bank's Extractive Industries Review.  He is also a member of the Political Instability Task Force and the APSA Task Force on Democracy Audits and Governmental Indicators.

Before appointment as Chief of Mission in Kabul, Ambassador Eikenberry had a thirty-five year career in the United States Army, retiring in April 2009 with the rank of Lieutenant General.  His military operational posts included commander and staff officer with mechanized, light, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the continental U.S., Hawaii, Korea, Italy, and Afghanistan as the Commander of the American-led Coalition forces from 2005-2007.

He has served in various policy and political-military positions, including Deputy Chairman of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium; Director for Strategic Planning and Policy for U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; U.S. Security Coordinator and Chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Kabul, Afghanistan; Assistant Army and later Defense Attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing, China; Senior Country Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and Deputy Director for Strategy, Plans, and Policy on the Army Staff.

He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, has master’s degrees from Harvard University in East Asian Studies and Stanford University in Political Science, and was a National Security Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. 

Ambassador Eikenberry earned an Interpreter’s Certificate in Mandarin Chinese from the British Foreign Commonwealth Office while studying at the  United Kingdom Ministry of Defense Chinese Language School in Hong Kong and has an Advanced Degree in Chinese History from Nanjing University in the People’s Republic of China.

His military awards include the Defense Distinguished and Superior Service Medals, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Ranger Tab, Combat and Expert Infantryman badges, and master parachutist wings.  He has received the Department of State Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards, Director of Central Intelligence Award, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Distinguished Civilian Service and Department of the Army Meritorious Civilian Service Awards.  His foreign and international decorations include the Canadian Meritorious Service Cross, French Legion of Honor, Czech Republic Meritorious Cross, Hungarian Alliance Medal, Afghanistan’s Ghazi Amir Amanullah Khan and Akbar Khan Medals, and NATO Meritorious Service Medal.

Ambassador Eikenberry serves as a Trustee for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relation, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the Council of American Ambassadors, and was previously the President of the Foreign Area Officers Association.  He has published numerous articles on U.S. military training, tactics, and strategy, and on Chinese ancient military history and Asia-Pacific security issues.  He has a commercial pilot’s license and instrument rating, and also enjoys sailing and scuba diving.  He is married to Ching Eikenberry.