Stanford University

International Relations

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.

The United Nations and a World in Transition

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United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presented a free public talk at Stanford on Thursday, Jan. 17.

Ban, who is the eighth secretary-general of the UN, will speak about the UN's role in creating opportunities out of the challenges posed by today's rapidly transitioning world.

"Times of transition are times of profound opportunity," he recently said during his acceptance speech for the Seoul Peace Prize. "The decisions we make in this period will have an impact for generations to come.”

Ban's initiatives as UN secretary-general have focused on promoting sustainable development; empowering women; supporting countries in crisis or instability; generating new momentum on disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation; and strengthening the UN. Among his many activities as secretary-general, he has successfully raised major pledges and financing packages for aid and crisis response, established the agency UN Women, and introduced new measures to promote UN transparency and efficiency.

Ban was born in the Republic of Korea in 1944, and he served for 37 years with the ROK Foreign Ministry, in roles including that of minister of foreign affairs and trade, foreign policy adviser to the president, and chief national security adviser to the president. He took office as UN secretary-general in January 2007, and was re-elected for a second term by the UN General Assembly in June 2011. Ban will serve as secretary-general until December 2016.

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies are co-sponsoring the event. Ban's talk, part of the Asia-Pacific Leaders Forum, will kick off a series of activities commemorating Shorenstein APARC's thirtieth anniversary.

Founded in 2005, Shorenstein APARC's Asia-Pacific Leaders Forum regularly convenes senior leaders from across Asia and the Pacific to exchange ideas on current political, economic, and social dynamics in the region.

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Speech transcript

Stanford News Service

San Jose Mercury News

Stanford Daily

U.N. News Centre

 

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Ban Ki-moon Secretary-General of the United Nations Speaker
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Asia-Pacific Leaders Forum

India's Energy [In]Security and Growing Competition from China

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There is considerable optimism that India will continue to grow economically, address the crippling poverty that the majority of the population still faces and become a great nation. Dr. Gupta will first analyze India's energy security by examining the different energy sectors and evaluate to what extent it can meet its energy needs. Dr. Gupta will then analyze the economic, geographical and technology advantage that China holds over India and what India must do to address these challenges.

Dr. Rajan Gupta is a theoretical physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and a Laboratory fellow. He currently serves as Program Manager of the High Energy Physics Program an LANL and previously served as Group Leader of Elementary Particles and Field Theory. He obtained his Masters in Physics from Delhi University, India, and earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from The California Institute of Technology in 1982. The main thrust of his research is to understand the fundamental theories of elementary particle interactions. Dr. Gupta has also worked extensively on a project related to the mapping of global energy systems. He has published over 125 research papers and is a fellow of the American Physical Society. During 2007 he served as the chair of the LANL energy council, helped create a strategic plan for LANL's investment in energy R&D and advocated for energy security to be made a part of the core LANL mission.

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Spooks, Incorporated

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Foreign Policy blogger and CISAC Faculty Member Amy Zegart explains how major private companies are increasingly developing their own intelligence that conduct surveillance and analyze information that places the reputation, personnel or business interests of their company. These units look and act like government intelligence agencies, and are staffed with former CIA, FBI, and military professionals that maintain their government ties. Companies operating globally cannot afford to ignore political events, natural disasters, and other risks. 

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Foreign Policy
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Amy Zegart
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Focus on Officers, Not the Media

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CISAC Faculty Member Amy Zegart explains the politics behind leading the CIA: winning trust and support within the organization and with outsiders. David Petraeus excelled at maintaining outside support for the CIA, but could not win over the intelligence community. 

Thee next CIA director will need to address major problems such as the military's increasing influence over the "spying business" and the agency's role in the tactical operations, all while the DoD increases its own intelligence activity.  

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The New York Times
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The Ninth Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum

In the ninth session of the Strategic Forum, former senior American and South Korean government officials and leading experts focused on leadership changes on and around the Korean Peninsula and the possible implications for North Korea policy, the U.S.-South Korea alliance, and Northeast Asia. They analyzed North Korean behavior under its new leader Kim Jong-un and the likelihood his regime would continue nuclear and missile development. Participants also compared and contrasted the North Korea and alliance policies of South Korea’s leading candidates in the December 19 presidential election. The session was hosted by the Sejong Institute, a top South Korean think tank, in Seoul, in association with the Korean Studies Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

 

PARTICIPANTS

Republic of Korea:

Chul Hyun Kwon, Chairman of the Board, The Sejong Foundation

Dae Sung Song, President, The Sejong Institute

Sang Woo Rhee, President, New Asia Research Institite

Jae Chang Kim, Co-Chairman, Council on US-Korea Security Studies

Myung Hwan Yu, Former Minister, Foreign Affairs & Trade Ministry

Yong Ok Park, Governor, PyungAn Nam-do Province (North Korea territory)

Se Hee Yoo, Chairman, Daily NK; Hanyang University

Ho Sup Kim, Professor, Chung-ang University; Chairman, KPSA (2012)

Young Sun Ha, Chairman, East Asia Institute

Jung Hoon Lee, Professor, Yonsei University

Seong Whun Cheon, Chief, North Korea Studies Center, KINU

Chol Ho Chong, Research Fellow, The Sejong Institute

United States:

Gi-Wook Shin, Director, Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University

Michael Armacost, Distinguished Fellow, Shorenstein APARC

Bruce Bennett, Senior Research Fellow, RAND Cooperation

Karl Eikenberry, Distinguished Fellow, Shorenstein APARC

Thomas Fingar, Distinguished Fellow, Shorenstein APARC

David Kang, Director, Korean Studies Institute, University of Southern California

T.J. Pempel, Professor, Political Science Dept., University of California, Berkeley

Daniel C. Sneider, Associate Director for Research, Shorenstein APARC

David Straub, Associate Director, Korean Studies Program, Shorenstein APARC

Joyce Lee, Research Associate, Korean Studies Program, Shorenstein APARC 

Seoul, Korea

Workshops
Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum

Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue 2012 final report available

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Education, fundamental to economic growth and development, has become an arena for global competition in the digital information age. As in the United States, many Asian policymakers are now pushing for higher education reform in the belief that strong, innovative higher education systems will pave the way for their countries’ future economic and political strength.

Looking comparatively at situations across Asia and in the United States, the fourth annual Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue considered possible solutions to the challenges of reforming higher education today.

Scholars and top-level administrators from Stanford and universities across Asia, as well as policymakers, journalists, and business professionals, met in Kyoto on September 6 and 7, 2012. In the discussion sessions following the presentations, participants raised a number of key, policy-relevant points, which are highlighted in the Dialogue’s final report. These include:

All countries face the challenge of preparing students to find meaningful employment, yet there is a lack of clarity in educational goals. Several participants felt the political expediency of government funding aiming for world university rankings must be balanced with the less politically attractive but potentially more critical vocational needs of economic development.

University administrators and government policymakers need to define their goals for “globalization” or “internationalization” as they launch new initiatives and policies. Participants noted that, while few are opposed to the principle of internationalization, without a sense of concrete and realistic goals, the cost-benefit of various measures may not make sense.

Online education promises great potential innovation in education, but it is still at a very early stage. While potentially valuable in enhancing traditional learning and research, serious challenges remain. There was a sense that far more needs to be done than simply taking existing forms of education and putting them online in order to truly harness the potential offered by online education.

The Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue series is made possible through the generosity of the City of Kyoto, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and Yumi and Yasunori Kaneko. The final report from the 2012 Dialogue, and previous years, is available for download from the Shorenstein APARC website.

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Institutions and supply chains help shape Brazil’s soybean boom

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Rachael Garrett
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News
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Soybean production has become a significant force for economic development in Brazil, but has come at the cost of expansion into non-protected forests in the Amazon and native savanna in the Cerrado. Over the past fifty years, production has increased from 26 million to 260 million tons. Area planted to soybeans has increased from roughly 1 million hectares in 1970 to more than 23 million hectares in 2010, second only to the United States.

A new study out of Stanford University examines the role of institutions and supply chain conditions in Brazil’s booming soybean industry and the relationship between soy yields and planted area. With the demand for soybeans projected to increase far into the future a better understanding of the economic and institutional factors influencing production can help policymakers better manage land use change.

Using county level data the researchers found that soy area and yields are higher in areas with high cooperative membership and credit levels, and where cheap credit sources are more accessible. Cooperatives help producers secure lower prices for inputs or higher prices for outputs through group purchases and sales. They also enable producers to store their grain past the harvesting period and sell it when prices are higher.

“This suggests that soybean production and profitability will increase as supply chain infrastructure improves in the Cerrado and Amazon,” said lead author Rachael Garrett, a PhD student in Stanford’s Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources.

The authors did not find a significant relationship between land tenure and planted area or land tenure and yields. But found that yields decline and planted area actually increases as transportation costs increase. More importantly, the study showed counties with higher yields have a higher proportion of land planted in soy.

“Policies intending to spare land through technological yield improvements could actually lead to land expansion in the absence of strong land use regulations if demand and per hectare profits are high,” said co-author Rosamond L. Naylor, director of Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.

The current Forest Code requires rural land users in the Amazon to conserve 80% of their property in a ‘Legal Reserve’, and landowners in the Cerrado to conserve 20%. Historically, illegal clearings have been common and enforcement of the Legal Reserve requirements remains poor.

While this study focuses on Brazil, the results underscore the importance of understanding how supply chains influence land use associated with cash crops in other countries. Future demand for soybeans, as well as for cash crops like Indonesian palm oil, will continue to grow as demand for cooking oil, livestock feed, and biodiesel increase with income growth and changing dietary preferences in emerging economies. 

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