Creating a New Europe
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Professor Hedlund explores a shift in focus in Europe away from the 'Brussels vs. Moscow' attitude by proposing strategic interaction in what he calls the 'corridor countries.' He discusses why there is a variety of outcomes in terms of economic success in these countries, in particular the strain of rapid deregulation in 1991 in the Soviet Union. Professor Hedlund also examines the challenges for these countries in Europe now.
Synopsis
In 'Creating a New Europe,' Professor Hedlund begins by discussing the choice the European Union had when they met in the Netherlands in 1991. He argues policymakers could have widened the concept of European integration through free trade and economic cooperation which would have led to unlimited expansion options towards the East. However, Prof. Hedlund argues they decided instead to deepen this notion of 'the United States of Europe' through a currency, flag, and constitution leading to an exclusionary approach. Now, in 2008, there is new opportunity with new members in the EU. Problems such as Russia's interaction with its neighbors which were formerly seen as external issues are now internal issues affecting Brussels. Rather than being 'grateful children' as Jacques Chirac infamously put it, these 'corridor states' are decentralising the game between Brussels and Moscow. Prof. Hedlund argues we must look for more substantial success in internal dynamics in these 'corridor states,' states which were formerly part of the U.S.S.R. and are now part of the EU or are hoping to be in the near future. To Prof. Hedlund, these states are in a good position to act as credible brokers for strategic interaction between the EU and Russia, as well as between each other, such as Lithuania's intervention during the Orange Revolution.
Prof. Hedlund explains how these ‘corridor countries’ were seen as homogenous in 1991 but now have a great diversity in economic outcomes. Much of this can be attributed to the over eager embracement of a market economy by Russia in 1991 and the hardship it caused. In addition, Prof. Hedlund identifies the corrupted markets which exploited the natural resources available following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moreover, Prof. Hedlund cites that the ‘rent seeking’ attitude of the Russian government was not reciprocated in all former Soviet states. Some were arguably lured by the prospect of EU membership while others might have drawn in by the examples of the successful and democratic Western countries.
To Prof. Hedlund, the challenge now is to develop forward movement in the areas of the ‘corridor countries’ that have become stalled. In addition, some of the markets in those areas must be developed away from their, as he puts it, ‘3rd world’ manners of operating. Accountability is crucial to a functioning economy to Prof. Hedlund. Finally, these ‘corridor countries’ can help in democracy building.
In taking questions, Prof. Hedlund further reiterates his belief in the necessity of accountability. In addition, he touches on his sense that European education is waning, and that this is setting back innovation. Moreover, Prof. Hedlund addresses the merits of a variety of diplomatic approaches.
About the speaker
Stefan Hedlund is an Anna Lindh Research Fellow at the Stanford Forum on Contemporary Europe. He is professor of Soviet and East European Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. Before 1991, his research was centered on the Soviet economic system. Since then, he has been focusing on Russia's adaptation to post-Soviet realities. This has included research on the multiple challenges of economic transition as well as the importance of Russia's historical legacy for the reforms. With a background in economics, he has a long-standing interest in problems related to the Soviet economic system, and the attempted transition that followed in the wake of the Soviet collapse. More recently, his research has revolved around neo-institutional theory, and problems of path dependence. Among sixteen authored and coauthored titles in English and Swedish, he is the author of Russian Path Dependence (2005), and the forthcoming co-edited volume Russia Since 1980: Wrestling with Westernization (Cambridge, 2009.) Professor Hedlund has received numerous awards including fellowships at the Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University; the Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University; and at the Kennan Institute, Washington DC.
Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room
Stefan Hedlund
Department of East European Studies
Uppsala University
Gamla Torget 3, III
Box 514, 751 20 UPPSALA
Sweden
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stefan.hedlund@ucrs.uu.se
Professor of East European Studies, Uppsala University
Visiting Scholar, Forum on Contemporary Europe (December 2008)
Stefan Hedlund is Professor of East European Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. A long-standing specialist on Russia, and on the Former Soviet Union more broadly, his current research interest is aimed at economic theories of institutional change. He also has a devouring interest in Russian history, which he has sought to blend with more standard theories of economic change. He has been a frequent contributor to the media, and has published extensively on matters relating to Russian economic reform and to the attempted transition to democracy and market economy more generally. His scholarly publications include some 20 books and close to 200 journal and magazine articles. His most recent monographs are Russian Path Dependence (Routledge, 2005), and Russia since 1980: Wrestling with Westernization (Cambridge University Press, 2008), the latter co-authored with Steven Rosefielde.
Seminars
Putting a face to the EU
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The failure of Irish voters to ratify the Lisbon Treaty points to a problem for Europe that goes far beyond that specific referendum, writes Stanford lecturer and FSI advisory board member Richard Morningstar.
The failure of Irish voters to ratify the Lisbon Treaty points to a problem for Europe that goes far beyond that specific referendum. The vote in Ireland, coupled with the rejection by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005 of the now failed European Constitution, provides indisputable proof that many European citizens are strongly suspicious of the European Union and that European leaders must take strong action to remedy the misperceptions of those citizens. There are a variety of reasons why voters rejected the Constitution and now the Lisbon Treaty that have been commented on extensively. But as an outsider, I would submit that the most significant underlying reasons for rejection were a lack of understanding of the EU as an institution, the perception of its "unaccountability" and a resulting lack of loyalty to the EU as an entity. Speaking as a friend of Europe and as a strong proponent of transatlantic relations, I believe that these are the major issues that European leaders must address. The EU must have a "face" to which Europeans can relate. The chickens have finally come home to roost. If the EU is to move forward and deal with the challenges of the future, it can afford no longer to be viewed by much of the public, albeit unfairly, as a "mindless" bureaucracy running people's lives from Brussels.
European leaders must think about and be able to provide understandable answers to the most basic questions. What is the EU? How many Europeans can answer that question? Is the EU the equivalent of a nation-state with full sovereignty? Clearly not. Is it some kind of supra-national organisation where members have agreed to share sovereignty in agreed upon areas? That is a start but can it be articulated in a simple understandable way? Do Europeans have any idea as to how decisions are made within the EU? How many Europeans understand the "qualified majority" voting system? It would take a mathematics major to understand how votes are calculated, let alone the multiple layers of decision-making. Is there a simple way to explain how the EU is accountable to European citizenry? How does the EU serve the common good? If the EU remains a mystery to many Europeans, there should be little mystery as to why voters are uncomfortable expanding its powers. It is no wonder that when voters think that they are facing a choice between "national sovereignty" and surrendering sovereignty to a little-understood institution that may impinge on their perceived security, they will vote for "national sovereignty".
If the EU is so little understood in Europe, one can only imagine the lack of understanding among Americans. When I was nominated in 1999 by President Clinton to be the United States Ambassador to the European Union, the most common questions that were asked by my friends were: What is the EU? Isn't that the economic organisation in Europe? Or are you our first ambassador to the EU?
One can also understand why American policymakers, whichever party is in power, have often been reluctant to deal with the EU as an entity and retreat to working through member states. Over recent years US administrations have better recognised the need to work with the EU, and the US and EU have accomplished much working together. But still too often policymakers have become befuddled and frustrated in dealing with the EU. So, for example, even with the ups and downs of the US-French relationship, some US policymakers are more comfortable dealing with France than with the EU because there is a history to the relationship. We have been working with France for over 200 years. There is a texture to the relationship that does not exist with the EU. Until that texture begins to develop, policymakers will often tend to look first to the member states.
Ironically, the Lisbon Treaty would begin to put a face on the EU. The EU would have a president with a set term and a single person responsible for the implementation of EU foreign policy. The treaties upon which the EU is based would be incorporated into a single document. More efficient procedures to deal with an enlarged EU would be put in place. From an American standpoint the treaty should enhance US-European co-operation in areas of vital common interest.
But for the Lisbon Treaty to be ultimately ratified in Ireland and to be accepted by citizens in the other member states even though a referendum is not required in those states, Europe needs to get back to the basics and leaders must be able to explain what the EU is, how the EU is accountable to Europe's citizens and why the Treaty is in the interests of all Europeans.
Ambassador Richard L. Morningstar served as Ambassador to the European Union from 1999-2001. He is a Senior Director at Stonebridge International, a global strategy firm, a Lecturer at Stanford Law School, and an Adjunct Lecturer at the Kennedy School at Harvard University.
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Waka Takahashi Brown
616 Jane Stanford Way
Encina Hall, E005
Stanford, CA 94305-6060
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waka@stanford.edu
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Waka Brown is a Curriculum Specialist for the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). She has also served as the Coordinator and Instructor of the Reischauer Scholars Program from 2003 to 2005. Prior to joining SPICE in 2000, she was a Japanese language teacher at Silver Creek High School in San Jose, CA, and a Coordinator for International Relations for the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program.
Waka’s academic interests lie in curriculum and instruction. She received a B.A. in International Relations from Stanford University as well as teaching credentials and M.Ed. through the Stanford Teacher Education Program.
In addition to curricular publications for SPICE, Waka has also produced teacher guides for films such as A Whisper to a Roar, a film about democracy activists in Egypt, Malaysia, Ukraine, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, and Can’t Go Native?, a film that chronicles Professor Emeritus Keith Brown’s relationship with the community in Mizusawa, an area in Japan largely bypassed by world media.
She has presented teacher seminars nationally for the National Council for the Social Studies in Seattle; the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia in both Denver and Los Angeles; the National Council for the Social Studies, Phoenix; Symposium on Asia in the Curriculum, Lexington; Japan Information Center, Embassy of Japan, Washington. D.C., and the Hawaii International Conference on the Humanities. She has also presented teacher seminars internationally for the East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools in Tokyo, Japan, and for the European Council of International Schools in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
In 2004 and 2008, Waka received the Franklin Buchanan Prize, which is awarded annually to honor an outstanding curriculum publication on Asia at any educational level, elementary through university. In 2019, Waka received the U.S.-Japan Foundation and EngageAsia’s national Elgin Heinz Outstanding Teacher Award, Humanities category.
Instructor and Manager, Stanford e-Japan
Curriculum Specialist
Savings, Sustainability and Equity
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Kirsten finished her PhD at Stanford’s Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources in 2007. Her dissertation was entitled: Sustainability of Comprehensive Wealth – A practical and normative assessment. In a truely interdisciplinary manner, she combined economics, ethics, and engineering to improve and assess a macroeconomic sustainability indicator. She is currently a Teaching Fellow with Stanford’s Public Policy Program and a Research Associate at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. She teaches classes at the intersection of policy analysis and ethics, leads a seminar on comparative research design, and convenes a weekly environmental ethics working group. Her research interests lie in combining quantitative data with normative argument, to this end, she is co-Investigator on a Woods Institute for Environment grant working with PIs Kenneth Arrow and Debra Satz.
Prior to entering Stanford’s Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources in 2003 Kirsten worked at the World Bank for five years. Her work at the World Bank focused on the environmental impacts of infrastructure projects, remediation of industrial sites, carbon finance, compliance of projects with the World Bank’s environmental and social policies and corporate environmental strategy development. Her projects spanned the globe, including India, Kazakhstan, Dominican Republic, Peru, Colombia and Brazil. She is comfortable holding conversations over a beer or two in French, Spanish and Dutch. For two years, she served as an elected official of the World Bank’s Staff Association board, representing 8,500 staff to management on myriad issues. She won numerous awards at the World Bank and from community groups for her professional achievements and volunteer work.
Kirsten is an environmental engineer trained first at the University of Virginia (BS ‘96) and the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands (MS ’98). More recently, she completed an MS in Applied Environmental Economics from Imperial College of London (’05).
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Kirsten Oleson
Public Policy
Speaker
Stanford University
Workshops
Asian Alternatives: What the West Can Learn - 2008 Shorenstein Journalism Award
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This annual award, which carries a cash prize of $10,000, honors a journalist not only for a distinguished body of work, but also for the particular way that work has helped American readers to understand the complexities of Asia. It is awarded jointly by the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University, and the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. This year’s recipient is Ian Buruma.
Ian Buruma was born in the Netherlands, and educated at Leyden University and Nihon University, Tokyo. He is a journalist, author, and Luce Professor at Bard College, New York. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and many publications in Europe and the US. His latest books are Occidentalism (with Avishai Margalit) and Murder in Amsterdam.
Buruma’s talk will explore how for many centuries Westerners have looked East for answers to the problems in their own societies. How valid were these answers? What are people looking for today, when China and Japan look like attractive models? Is there anything we can learn?
Related panel discussion:
Death of the Foreign Correspondent: An Exaggerated Demise?
Bechtel Conference Center
Ian Buruma
Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism
Speaker
Bard College
Conferences
International trade in meat - The tip of the pork chop
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This paper provides an original account of global land, water and nitrogen use in support of industrialized livestock production and trade, with emphasis on two of the fastest growing sectors, pork and poultry. Our analysis focuses on trade in feed and animal products, using a new model that calculates the amount of "virtual" nitrogen, water and land used in production but not embedded in the product. We show how key meat importing countries, such as Japan, benefit from "virtual" trade in land, water and nitrogen, and how key meat exporting countries, such as Brazil, provide these resources without accounting for their true environmental cost. Results show that Japan's pig and chicken meat imports embody the virtual equivalent of 50% of Japan's total arable land, and half of Japan's virtual nitrogen total is lost in the US. Trade links with China are responsible for 15% of the virtual nitrogen left behind in Brazil due to feed and meat exports, and 20% of Brazil's area is used to grow soybean exports. The complexity of trade in meat, feed, water and nitrogen, is illustrated by the dual roles of the US and the Netherlands as both importers and exporters of meat. Mitigating environmental damage from industrialized livestock production and trade depends on a combination of direct pricing strategies, regulatory approaches and use of best management practices. Our analysis indicates that increased water and nitrogen use efficiency and land conservation resulting from these measures could significantly reduce resource costs.
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Buying Insurance in the Post-Cold War World: Constructing a New Nuclear Security Regime
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The events of September 11, 2001 have heightened concerns about the potential for terrorist actions involving nuclear or radioactive materials and facilities. Questions about the vulnerability of such materials and facilities have forced governments to implement new security measures at the national level; however, such measures are of limited value in addressing influential factors in play beyond national boundaries. The existing nuclear weapons among states, is insufficient to address this new threat. A new, broader international nuclear security regime needs to be constructed. This regime must also take into account the growing influence of sub-state, trans-national actors. A key element in this new nuclear security regime is the important role international organizations can play in shoring up the weakness of the nation-state in a chaotic, post-Cold War international environment.
Ron Stansfield is current Coordinator of International Programmes at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) in Ottawa. Mr. Stansfield has over a quarter century of experience in international security issues, including non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament. Prior to joining the CNSC in 1991 as Senior Advisor on Non-proliferation, he served as Director Parliamentary Affairs at the Canadian Department of National Defence from 1988-1989. From 1975-1988, he held several positions at the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), including Head of the Conventional and Nuclear Arms Control Section of DFAIT's Defence Relations Division (1986-1988) and diplomatic assignments in the Netherlands (1981-1985) and South Korea (1977-1979). From 1998-2001, Mr. Stansfield was seconded to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna as a Senior Policy Office for nuclear non-proliferation and safeguards issues in the Agency's Office of External Relations and Policy Coordination. Mr. Stansfield is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan and the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
Ron Stansfield
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Speaker
Seminars
To Be Announced
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Hendrik M.J. Maier received traditional training in philology and textual criticism of the languages of Indonesia at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, where he held the chair of Malay and Indonesian Language and Literature before moving to UC Riverside in 2003. His major interests are the languages and literatures of Indonesia and Malaysia, which he now tries to understand within wider networks, in particular the socio-political and cultural interactions within the Southeast Asian region. Some of his secondary interests include so-called "colonial literature."
Philippines Conference Room
Hendrik M.J. Maier
Professor, Literature of Southeast Asia and Indonesia
Speaker
University of California, Riverside
Seminars
Laurence Ma
P.O. Box 14873
Fremont, CA 94539
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PhD
Laurence J. C. Ma is an urban geographer with an interest in the development of Chinese cities, past and present. He was born in China and received his B.A. from National Taiwan University and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He taught for 29 years at the Department of Geography and Planning, University of Akron, Akron, Ohio before taking early retirement in 2000. He has edited and written nine books, published a number of articles in various journals and edited two special journal issues on Chinese cities. He has been on the editorial board of nine journals published in the U.S., U.K., the Netherlands, China and Taiwan and has served as a consultant to the United Nations Development Programme in China. He resides in Fremont, CA.