China has experienced rapid political and economic growth, especially in the past decade, and increasing attention is paid to the question of China’s "rise," a topic frequently in the media during President Barack Obama's November 2010 visit to Asia. Thomas Fingar, Oksenberg/Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies, examined China's growing global significance in a talk at Claremont McKenna College on October 25, 2010. He addressed implications for the United States and spoke to commonly expressed perceptions and concerns about China's growth. Focusing on facts, Fingar looked retrospectively at events that have occurred during China's period of rapid growth and used them as a basis for an examination of the future.

Understanding the emotional connection that people have to products inspires the innovative research and work of current Corporate Affiliates Program Fellow Yuichi Moronaga.

Moronaga engaged in policy-related work for Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) for nearly a decade, and he most recently served as a deputy manager for the Prime Minister's Cabinet Secretariat. As a student, Moronaga, who holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in biomedical engineering from Keio University in Yokohama, studied universal design--the design of making products, such as drinking fountains, and spaces, such as public parks, accessible to all. Moronaga took universal design one-step further by considering the emotional aspect of design, factoring positive feeling into accessibility.

In his work for METI, Moronaga applied his creativity and knowledge of universal design to numerous projects, including a child-focused policy agenda. Moronaga and his colleagues considered the psychology and physique of children when developing the agenda, noting the curiosity of children for exploring places considered dangerous by adults--those that are high, dark, and enclosed--and the broad range of variations in children's physiques. Mean data is not appropriate for child-focused design, says Moronaga, and so he and his team measured approximately 50 different body parts in order to provide a broad data set for designers to work from. After five years, child-focused design is catching on in Japan. A Kids Design award is now in place and the Kids Design Association, a non-profit organization, monitors products, businesses, and public spaces for child safety. Nearly 80 businesses in Japan are now dedicated to child-focused design. At the recent APEC Forum held in Japan, METI sponsored a booth displaying child-friendly products. Moronaga hopes that the trend will spread to other countries.

At the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC), Moronaga is now engaging in research about essential value, which he describes as the "background story" behind companies and their products. Marketing based on essential value focuses on such things as a tradition of excellence, quality materials, and careful craftsmanship behind a company or product, which causes consumers to feel good about their purchase. The online shoe retailer Zappos, which emphasizes its customer service, is an example of a company that markets essential value. Moronaga is currently studying how social media enhances essential value, such as the way that positive consumer recommendations raise the value of a product. Already widespread in the United States-especially California, Moronaga says consumer reviews are catching on more in Japan.

Moronaga values the opportunity to speak with people at Stanford University and in local companies about his research and work experience, and about topics ranging from the environment to politics. Amidst the prevalence of hybrid cars and exciting green technology research in California, he was surprised to find that energy-saving technologies, such as solar panels, are not as widespread as in Japan. On the other hand, he appreciates discussions and hearing American perspectives on political topics, such as security issues, that he feels are less commonly discussed in Japan.

Moronaga views the connections with people that he and his family are making while at Shorenstein APARC this year as long term and he hopes that his son, who is four years old, will have a happy adjustment to living in the United States and remember the experience for the rest of his life.

 

What can possibly explain the transformation that sometimes happens from non-violent civilian to combatant to criminal? Pulitzer Prize winning author and CISAC affiliate Richard Rhodes tackled this bedeviling question head-on in a recent lecture for Stanford's Ethics & War series, co-sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation. Drawing heavily upon the work of Lonnie H. Athens, a Seton Hall University criminology professor, about whom Rhodes wrote a 1999 book entitled Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist, Rhodes argued that all violent criminals go through a process that Athens called "violentization." The first stage, "brutalization," consists of witnessing abusive or violent behavior, often at a young age, and receiving encouragement to act in a similar way to resolve disputes. In the second stage, "belligerency," the individual takes stock of what has happened, examines his or her situation, and decides to begin to move to the third stage: using serious violence, if provoked, as a means of protection.

In Rhodes' view, this process is essentially identical to the training a military recruit undergoes. Both, he says, go through a period of re-socialization during which even lethal violence become acceptable, expected, and rewarded. Military recruits are "deliberately and systematically rebuked, scorned and punished for civilian behavior  and coached and rewarded for military behavior including the controlled use of violence," he observes. "Violent domination, personal horrification and violent coaching are fundamental to basic military training." There is, however, a fundamental difference. The violent criminal moves on to a fourth stage, "virulence," in which the individual becomes willing to commit serious violence without provocation and embraces the sense of confidence and power created by the successful completion of these acts. The soldier, by contrast, is constrained within the third stage of violentization by the rule of law, by ethics, by codes of honor, and "implicitly," says Rhodes, "support from military leaders up the chain of command," who "are expected to limit their demands of violent action to appropriately defensive campaigns."

Within these constraints, the limitations of violence are clear. Self-defense is justifiable, and by extension so is the killing of an enemy combatant. Even the strategic bombing during World War II (and presumably more recently) can be justified with such arguments, Rhodes argues, "although that logic grew increasingly thin as the bombing expanded from military targets to military industrial targets and finally to the homes and neighborhoods of enemy civilians."

What, then, to make of My Lai, in which American soldiers killed babies and children, the Einsatzgruppen, who shot hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews with horrific efficiency, or the heinous war crimes committed in conflicts around the world? In these cases, the perpetrators have found themselves moving into virulence. The constraints that circumscribed their violent actions have broken down. Authorities in the chain of command either overlooked or ignored the need to enforce the limitations required to prevent criminal violence. In the eyes of the perpetrators, and in some cases those making the direct orders, the enemy became an omnipotent and ubiquitous presence, and the power that came with committing lethal violence was overwhelming. The line between self-defense and murder became so attenuated that it was essentially meaningless. Virtually the only possible outcome: unrestrained lethal violence.

Rhodes argues that the need to understand this dynamic has become increasingly urgent. The nuclear deterrent has largely foreclosed the prospect of conventional war, and "modern combat has strained the traditional limitations of violence on war to the breaking point and beyond." Modern weapons make it possible to do more lethal violence than the old days of single-shot rifles and hand grenades, he says, and the line between combatants and civilians can become difficult to define.

The quandary now is how to ensure that the process of violentization among members of the military does not extend to the fourth category. Even Heinrich Himmler, commander of the Einsatzgruppen, understood this on some level. He was horrified, Rhodes says, that members of his elite fighting squad had become such enthusiastic killers that they would take it upon themselves to find and shoot Jews. Others, in other wartime situations, unable to deal with the consequences of their actions as they meandered toward that fourth stage, killed themselves, suffered serious psychological problems, or committed acts of violence back at home. Now we are seeing similar consequences among the men and women who are forced to draw distinctions every day between civilian and enemy combatants. Indeed, he says, only the ethical and legal limitations put on soldiers, and enforced by their superiors in the chain of command, can protect them from becoming malevolently violent. Failing to maintain these restrictions has dire consequences. As Rhodes and many others before him have said, "as we sow, so shall we reap."

October 15, 2010 was the 100th anniversary of the birthday of Edwin O. Reischauer, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan and a key leader in establishing the field of East Asian studies. George R. Packard, president of the United States-Japan Foundation, worked with Reischauer in the 1960s and recently published a biography about him entitled Edwin O. Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan. Packard spoke at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center on October 28 to share his perspective on Reischauer's life and career.

Reischauer was born to missionary parents in Japan, where he spent the first part of his life. According to Packard, Reischauer had a lifelong appreciation for Japan that deepened with time, but he also recognized that the more time he spent living in and studying Japan, the more that there was for him still to learn. Reischauer attended Oberlin College as an undergraduate and Harvard University as a doctoral student. During World War II, he worked for the U.S. State Department translating intercepted messages.

The Pearl Harbor-era view of Japan in the United States was that of a "treacherous" country-one that still surfaces from time to time, according to Packard. Reischauer's life's work was to improve American education and understanding about Japan. While teaching at Harvard University, Reischauer, along with China studies pioneer John King Fairbank, helped to build the field of East Asian studies in the United States. Packard credits their efforts for changing the British imperial-era designation of the "Far East" to "East Asia." In addition to his works such as Japan, Past and Present and A History of East Asian Civilization, Reischauer was committed to writing about Japan in popular publications like Reader's Digest.

Reischauer served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan from 1961-1966. While there, he helped to diminish the "Occupation mentality" of Americans in Japan and planted the seeds for the eventual return of Okinawa, said Packard. During his time as ambassador, Reischauer suffered many professional and personal setbacks, including the death of President Kennedy, a supporter of his efforts; the escalation of the Vietnam War, for which he drew criticism although he was not a proponent of it; and being stabbed by a deranged student. According to Packard, after the stabbing incident Reischauer was deeply concerned about generating negative sentiment toward Japan, and thus intentionally kept quiet about it to the media. After returning to Harvard University in the late 1960s, Reischauer continued to draw criticism for the Vietnam War and in later decades was labeled as a "Japan apologist."

Despite his critics, the wisdom of Reischauer's work in academia and government rings true today, as evidenced by Japan's place as a global economic power and the successful and significant role that the U.S.-Japan relationship plays in the peace and economic stability of East Asia. 

 

In a recent interview with the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Michael H. Armacost, Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow, reflected on his distinguished career in academia and government. Armacost, who received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1958, discussed about serving as United States Ambassador to the Philippines (1982-1984) and to Japan (1989-1993), and spoke with optimism about China’s growing economic and political influence as a positive "wake-up call" to the United States.