FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.
FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.
Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.
Senator McCain Gives CISAC Students a Master Class in Foreign Policy
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U.S. Senator John McCain told a select group of Stanford undergraduate students that technological innovation had created both unparalleled opportunities for the United States as well as new national security risks, during a visit to Silicon Valley this week.
“This has changed the world,” Senator McCain told the students as he held up his smart phone.
“This is the biggest change in our ability to inform and educate than any invention since the printing press.”
However, McCain told students that he believed the United States needed to develop a clearer policy for responding to cyber attacks from foreign nations.
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“The people who are doing these cyber attacks have to realize that the costs will be higher than the benefits of the attack. Everybody has to know that there will be a price to pay for it.”
McCain called on the students, who included several computer science majors, to step up and defend the United States in cyber space.
“I would call on the people here to help us develop defensive capabilities, and frankly, offensive capabilities,” McCain said.
In the wide-ranging conversation, McCain fielded questions from students and shared his views on the conflict in Syria, the Iran nuclear deal, Russia’s imperial ambitions and the pullout of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
“I study international security, and I feel that his dedication to national security and to veterans have been fundamental, and it was an honor to meet him and hear him talk about these issues,” said Chelsea Green.
The forty students who met with McCain were selected for their special interest in international affairs and politics, and included representatives from the Center for International Security and Cooperation’s honors program, Hoover Institution National Security Mentees and Stanford in Government student group.
International relations major Kayla Bonstrom said she was excited to meet the Senator from her home state of Arizona.
“He was very easy to talk to,” she said.
Bonstrom said McCain’s casual style, which included the occasional joke, helped put the students at ease.
“It was nice to see him in a different setting.”
Mathematical and computation science major Varun Gupta said he was touched by the empathy McCain showed when he shared his experiences visiting refugee camps in war zones.
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“It was really great to see the more human side.”
Other students were also impressed by McCain’s sincerity.
“He seems to sincerely believe in all of his views,” said Alexa Andaya, a political science major.
“You can tell when he says something he’s genuine about it.”
Matt Nussbaum, another political science major, said that while he disagreed with many of McCain’s hawkish positions on national security, he welcomed the opportunity to hear the opinions of such a seasoned veteran of foreign policy.
“A lot of times, we’re looking at the academic side of things, and I think that’s very interesting, but Senator McCain and other policy makers use the theory to create policy, so it’s useful to see what they think, how they think and why they think that way,” Nussbaum said.
McCain ended his talk by urging the students to get more involved in politics, whether they were “Democrat or Republican, libertarian or vegetarian.”
He told them that he believed the next presidential election was going to be the most important decision point for the country since 1980, when Republican Ronald Regan defeated Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter.
“Pick the cause that you want to support, pick the candidate you want to support, and be engaged,” he said.
“It’s your future. You’re the ones that are going to live with the person that you choose to be president of the United States.”
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Catching Up, Forging Ahead, and Falling Behind in Southeast Asia: The Abramovitz Hypothesis Revisited
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Co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for International Development
In 1986 then-Stanford professor Moses Abramovitz argued in a seminal article that all countries that are relatively backward in their levels of productivity had the potential for rapid advance, and indeed could quickly catch up with the leading economies if they could realize that potential. Their ability to catch up was to a large extent determined by their “social capability.” Although a number of European economies and Japan had narrowed the productivity gap with the USA in the post-1950 era, few low or middle income economies had managed to do this. Prof. Booth will examine the record inside Southeast Asia, where the gap in per capita GDP between Singapore and Malaysia compared with the region’s other economies has not narrowed much since 1960, and compared with some of them has actually widened. A particular puzzle concerns the Philippines, which was well ahead on most economic and social indicators in 1960 compared with Thailand and Indonesia, but fell behind over the ensuing 50+ years. Prof. Booth will explore the reasons for this.
Anne Booth has been an Asia-focused professor of economics in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, since 1991. She studies the modern economic history of Southeast Asia with emphasis on the 20th century. Her many writings in this field include Colonial Legacies: Economic and Social Development in East and Southeast Asia. Her latest book, Economic Change in Modern Indonesia, is due from Cambridge University Press in April. Before coming to SOAS, she held research and teaching positions in Singapore and Australia. Her degrees are from Victoria University of Wellington (BA) and the Australian National University (PhD). Before 1991 she held research and teaching positions in Singapore and Australia. She grew up in New Zealand.Image
Anne Booth
2015-16 NUS-Stanford Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Fellow on Southeast Asia, Stanford University
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What Explains ASEAN’s Centrality, and Will Disunity Derail ASEAN’s Success?
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For more than two decades the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has been at the center of multilateral arrangements for security in the Asia-Pacific. That keystone role has gained global support. In 2010 Secretary of State Clinton called ASEAN “the fulcrum of regional architecture”; in 2014 her successor said, “We must continue to support ASEAN’s centrality.” The governments of China, Japan, India, and Australia, among many others, have joined the chorus of support for ASEAN’s linchpin role. What explains ASEAN’s success?
Prof. Vuving’s answer is threefold: In the first place, ASEAN’s hard power weakness is a diplomatic strength, captured in the legitimacy of cooperative norms such as “open regionalism” and the “ASEAN Way.” Second, ASEAN’s location and character as an autonomous but inoffensive actor between Northeast and South Asia, between China and the United States, and between the Pacific and Indian Oceans allows it to play a “bridging” role between different geopolitical zones and potentially rival players. Third, this bridging position has proven useful in managing changes in the relative power and status of major Asian-Pacific states. Prof. Vuving will also suggest that the unity of ASEAN’s own member states is less critical to ASEAN centrality than commonly thought.
Alexander L. Vuving’s teaching, research, and consulting encompass topics such as Asian security, the rise of China, Chinese strategy, Vietnamese politics and foreign policy, Southeast Asia’s international relations, the South China Sea dispute, and the concept of soft power. He has published widely on these subjects and is a frequent media interviewee. He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Asian Politics and Policy and Global Discourse. He received his PhD in political science from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany and has been a post-doctorate fellow and research associate at Harvard University.Image
Alexander L. Vuving
Professor, Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu
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Maneuvering The China-U.S. Relationship in Cyberspace
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The article examines the impact of the summit between President Obama and President Xi on future cybersecurity relations between the two countries, and the changing nature of cyber cooperation and confrontation.
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Stanford researcher analyzes anti-Americanism in South Korea
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In a new book, David Straub explains why massive anti-American protests erupted across South Korea in 2002 and considers whether it could happen again.
South Korea is often seen as a pro-American ally, a model country that went from a poor, postwar nation into a maturing democracy in just four short decades.
But despite a historic alliance between South Korea and the United States, anti-Americanism flared throughout the Asian nation between 1999-2002 when a series of events and longstanding tensions aligned, according to Stanford researcher David Straub.
“It was a sort of venting of steam,” said Straub, an associate director at Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
“Many Koreans at the time were grossly overinterpreting issues and incidents involving the United States. And this was because they were viewing the U.S.-Korea relationship through a lens of historic victimization by other nations, including the United States,” he added.
Straub, who held a thirty-year diplomatic career in the State Department, headed the political section of the American embassy in Seoul during those years and was deeply involved in managing problems in the bilateral relationship.
Boiling point
Since the end of the Korean War, the United States Forces Korea (USFK) has been stationed in Seoul – now about 28,500 uniformed personnel.
In June 2002, a USFK vehicle struck two Korean students in a tragic accident. In December of that same year, after a U.S. court martial found the drivers of the vehicle not guilty of wrongdoing, hundreds of thousands of people protested in Seoul and other major Korean cities. Not only did activists partake but ordinary citizens too, he said.
Straub said the South Korean public had been “unintentionally primed” for such a reaction to the USFK traffic accident; it was the “spark that lit the firestorm” after years of escalation. A series of events led-up to the mass protests, they included:
- A few months before the USFK traffic accident, a Korean athlete was disqualified at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City during a speed skating competition. American athlete Apolo Anton Ohno instead won gold after a disputed call.
- A non-governmental organization in May 2000 revealed that USFK personnel dumped formaldehyde into a drain that ran into the Han River in Seoul.
- In Sept. 1999, the Associated Press published its first investigative story examining the Nogun-ri incident of 1950, when hundreds of Korean refugees were killed in an alleged massacre by U.S. service members.
Asymmetry of attention
Straub said the shaping of Koreans’ views of Americans and fanning of tensions could be attributed in part to an “asymmetry of attention” on the part of the Korean and American publics to the U.S.-Korean relationship.
While the Korean public put tremendous focus on U.S.-Korean relations and the presence of U.S. military personnel in Korea, the American public was unaware of Korean attitudes and feelings, he said.
Similarly during the 1999-2002 period, Korean media reported hypercritical views of the United States and USFK, while the American media paid far less attention.
In negotiating with U.S. officials, South Korean officials would often allude to strong Korean public opinion and demand U.S. concessions. With no American public opinion on Korea issues to point to, U.S. officials were at a major disadvantage, Straub said.
U.S. officials would sometimes note opinions shared by members of Congress, he said, “however, for Korean officials, those claims weren’t as powerful as having a social movement literally on the front doorstep.”
In plain terms, the United States is much larger than South Korea. This very imbalance – which translates to military and economic power – added to Koreans’ assumption that they were “getting the worse end of the bargain,” he added.
“Most Koreans saw Korea as a victim of great powers,” Straub said. “It’s not just the media. It’s more than that, it was – and still is – a shared national narrative.”
Koreans’ sense of national vulnerability is magnified by their historic victimization to neighbors. South Koreans do not want to become a de facto tributary state of China or a colony of Japan again, he said.
Will anti-Americanism return?
USFK incidents were a main focus of Korean attention during the 1999-2002 period, and while there is always a possibility of problems arising, the intensity is gone now, Straub said.
“Some steam is under the lid again,” Straub said. “But I don’t think it’s nearly at the level like it was back then. I’m doubtful that we’d see an exact repeat.”
The media landscape in South Korea has improved and shifted away from its earlier position of “criticize the United States first and ask questions later,” Straub said.
Today, South Korea and the United States are in good standing at the government-level and among the people. President Obama and Korean President Park Geun-hye have an established rapport.
What troubles Koreans now is North Korea, a Japan focused on collective defense, and the strategic rivalry between the United States and China and its possible implications for Korea, he said.
“South Korea being sandwiched between the United States and China – based on a perception that China is going to be the world’s dominant power – is a real worry for many Koreans,” Straub said, and a large number of Koreans – albeit still a minority – feel that their country must find a more equidistant ground between the two.
Most Koreans, however, still believe in the need for the continued presence of USFK personnel, at least for the time being, said Straub, and must be reassured of their strategic alliance with the United States.
Obama and Park are expected to meet in Washington in mid-October, and Straub said it will be used as an opportunity for both sides to reinforce the importance they attach to the alliance and to pressing North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs.
Links to related articles
NK News: South Korean anti-Americanism dwindles, but roots remain: diplomat
NK News: South Korean anti-Americanism: a thing of the past?
Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea, July 2015
Asia Times: American faces Seoul court over infamous unsolved murder
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A South Korean protestor holds an American flag on which protesters left their footprints at a Seoul rally in June 2003.
Reuters/Lee Jae-Won
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The International Atomic Energy Agency and Nuclear Safeguards, 1953-1971
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Abstract: The nuclear negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran moved the International Atomic Energy Agency to the center of public attention. Based on multi-archival research and oral history interviews, this talk will look into the early history of the IAEA’s nuclear inspectorate. The foundations of today’s safeguards system were laid in the mid-1950s, when a group of twelve nations negotiated the Statute of the IAEA. In the mid-1960s, the Soviet Union abandoned its formerly critical stance on nuclear safeguards. Following the entry-into-force of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) comprehensive safeguards were introduced. The control of diversion was at the heart of the IAEA’s early safeguards system, while it neglected other aspects of the proliferation problem, such as the distribution of dual-use technology and related knowledge, or the development of clandestine nuclear programs. It was not lack of knowledge or imagination, but the complex technical, political, and legal background that was the reason for this limitation.
About the Speaker: Elisabeth Roehrlich is a senior researcher and project director at the University of Vienna’s Department of Contemporary History, and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C. She received her PhD. in History from the University of Tuebingen, Germany, and held fellowships at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C., and Monash South Africa. Her research focuses on the history of international relations and the evolution of the global nuclear order. She is the author of a prize-winning book about the former Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky (Kreisky’s Außenpolitik, Vienna University Press, 2009), and her work on the IAEA has been published or is forthcoming in journals such the IAEA Bulletin and the Journal of Cold War Studies. Roehrlich has been awarded funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and the Austrian Central Bank to support her research on the IAEA.
The International Atomic Energy Agency and Nuclear Safeguards, 1953-1971
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Elisabeth Roehrlich
Director
IAEA History Research Project, University of Vienna
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The US is meeting a "rising India," ambassador says
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The U.S.-India relationship has found new momentum in the midst of deepening strategic and economic cooperation, U.S. Ambassador to India Richard Verma told a Stanford audience on Friday.
“It’s not a hyberbole to say the relationship has soared over the past year,” Verma said to a crowded room in Encina Hall. The title of Verma’s talk was “Why India Matters.”
His visit to campus, organized by Stanford’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, was part of a multi-day trip to the United States.
Arriving from Washington, D.C., he attended the first-ever U.S.-India Strategic and Economic Dialogue earlier that week. The meeting of Indian and American delegations was “hugely successful,” said Verma, who assumed his diplomatic post in January, following Kathleen Stephens, who is now is at Stanford as a distinguished fellow.
Verma was also in the Bay Area to accompany Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi during his visit to Silicon Valley, the first Indian head of state to visit the area since 1978. Prime Minister Modi used his visit to promote a vision of “Digital India,” tying Indian growth to the spread of information technology to all levels of Indian society, driven in part by investment from the technology industry in the United States. Leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Modi unseated one of the longest-serving governments in a landmark May 2014 election. He has won high public approval ratings and is one of the most followed public figures on Twitter.
Modi and President Obama have been a driving force behind the two countries’ growing alignment toward combatting global challenges, Verma told the audience. The two leaders share a “certain level of chemistry,” he said.
Obama and Modi held two summits within a four-month time period. And that, Verma said, “drives the governments to come together in a way that they might not ordinarily do.”
Verma noted the strategic overlap between the U.S. “rebalance to Asia” policy and India’s “Act East” policy, both of which commit the two countries to focus defense and economic commitments on the Asia-Pacific region. He praised rapid progress in security cooperation between the two powers, including growing sales of American defense technology to India.
On the strategic side, summit outcomes have included the creation of a joint-vision of cooperation and set up phone hotlines between the heads of state and their national security advisors.
The United States now looks upon India as a “net security provider in South Asia” and supports an increased role for India in international institutions, Verma said.
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Asked about how Russia fits in, Verma acknowledged that historically there “has been a close relationship between New Delhi and Moscow. Not one or two or three years, but for decades.” But the U.S. envoy added “we don’t see that as somehow being inconsistent with a close relationship with the United States.”
On the economic side, the two leaders have committed two of the world’s largest economies to increase bilateral trade– from $100 to $500 billion – and meet for an annual economic dialogue.
Modi campaigned on a commitment to reform the economy and eradicate corruption.
However, the pace of economic reform in India has not gone as quickly as the United States would have hoped, and corruption remains an issue across India and South Asia, Verma said.
Answering a question from the audience, Verma pointed to anecdotal evidence of progress from American business in the removal of obstacles to growth from corruption. “There’s obviously a long way to go but my sense is it’s a big priority not only for the prime minister but for the people.”
Although India is modernizing, it still has a number of big-ticket development issues to tackle. Today, 300 million people don’t have access to electricity. And with over 1.2 billion people, India’s size makes it near impossible to implement sweeping change in a short period of time.
The scale of India, alone, motivates the United States to work with India, a nation that will play a “consequential role for decades to come,” Verma said. “When these two countries come together they can have a big impact on peace and prosperity across the world.”
Assessing the relationship potential for the longer-term, Verma said India and the United States’ are rooted in similar values and share diaspora communities. Support for a close U.S.-India relationship is widely expressed in the Congress, from both parties and the Ambassador anticipates the coming U.S. election will not bring any change in that commitment.
A growing number of Americans are choosing to study in India and a similar pattern is being seen in Indians coming to study in the United States. Last year, about 130,000 Indian students studied in the United States. In 2005, that number was only 30,000.
“Fundamentally, I’m optimistic because the people-to-people relationship is so strong,” Verma said.
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Richard Verma, the 25th U.S. ambassador to India, visited Stanford and delivered a talk titled "Why India Matters," on Sept. 25, 2015.
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