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.

Admissions Webinar for the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy

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Join Recruitment and Admissions Manager Meghan Moura to learn more about FSI's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy and how to apply. Please register in advance.

The Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy (MIP) is a two year, full-time, professional graduate degree program. The M.A. degree is earned through completion of core and elective coursework, an area of specialization – Cyber Policy and Security (CYBER); Energy, Natural Resources, and the Environment (ENRE); Governance and Development (GOVDEV); or International Security (ISEC) – and a capstone project. The program is interdisciplinary in nature, and students are encouraged to pursue coursework that spans academic fields at Stanford.

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Workshops

Reassessing China’s Capabilities and Goals for Strategic Competition

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Taiwan. Hypersonic missiles. The South China Sea. In the last few months, China’s activities have grabbed headlines and fueled speculation about its intentions. But how much of this action is posturing, and how much should U.S. policymakers and strategists take seriously?

To help explain what’s going on with our biggest competitor, FSI Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro, a specialist on China’s military and an active member of the United States Air Force Reserves, joins Michael McFaul on World Class to debunk some of the myths that persist about China’s capabilities and reframe how the U.S. needs to think about strategic competition with Beijing. Listen to their full episode and read highlights from the conversation below.

Click here for a transcript of “We Need To Rethink Our Assumptions about China’s Strategic Goals”

Where China Was in the 1990s


Twenty years ago, the Chinese-Taiwan invasion plan was to take a couple of fishing vessels and paddle their way across the strait. In the 1990s, China had very limited, and often no ability to fly over water, or at night, or in weather, and their ships had no defenses.

For many, many years we knew that China was willing to fight if Taiwan declared independence. Fighting a war in any country that is big and resolved is problematic. But it was never the case that the United States was going to lose that war; it was always a matter of, “How many days?” How many days is it going to take us to win?

Where China Is Now


In the intervening years, China's military has changed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Now they have the largest navy in the world, and those ships are some of the most advanced surface ships that can be comparable to those of the United States. Same with their fighters; they have fifth generation airplanes and the largest airforce in the region. They’ve put all these capabilities online, and at the same time, they [have also] started developing capabilities to reach out and touch the United States with.

They developed the capability to hit moving ships at sea, which is something the United States doesn’t have the capability to do. They have a huge cruise and ballistic missile program that basically can take out a U.S. base like Kadena  in the region in a matter of hours, should they ever be willing to make a direct hit on the U.S.

This doesn't mean that China is more powerful than the United States; China still can’t project power outside the Indo-Pacific region, and even there it’s mostly through space, cyber, and nuclear weapons. But most of the contingencies we're talking about are really close to China, so it doesn’t really matter that they can’t project power. So, on the conventional side, I’m very concerned.

Why Taiwan Matters


The whole goal of the Communist Party, since its founding in 1949, has been to resolve this Taiwan issue.

Now they have the ships, the aircraft, and they’ve reorganized their whole military so that they can do joint operations, so that the navy and the air force can do an invasion of Taiwan. And a lot of those efforts came to a successful conclusion at the end of 2020. And that's why people like myself, not because of  the capabilities, but because when I was in Beijing and talked to the Chinese military and government officials, they said, “We could do this now, and maybe we should think about it.”

We know from behavioral economics that countries and people are much more willing to take risks to not lose something that they think is theirs, versus when they are trying to get something which they don't think is theirs. In the Chinese mindset, Taiwan, the South China Sea, East China Sea, etc. is already theirs, and the United States is trying to take it from them. That makes the situation even more problematic. 

What the United States Should Do


The Biden administration is doing a lot of political maneuvering to show that the United States is willing to defend Taiwan. And I think it’s just upsetting Beijing, because they think we’re changing the political status quo. It also does nothing to enhance our deterrence, because it doesn't signal anything about our capability to defend Taiwan.

The Chinese basically assume the United States will intervene. Their big question is, can they still win? We need to show China that they cannot win, and that’s about showing out capabilities in the region. It’s about aggressively negotiating new host arrangements, more access for the U.S. military, and new international institutions and treaties that constrain the ways China leverages power.

I'm a military person, but I'm totally on board with leading with diplomacy. But I don't see those types of efforts coming out of the Biden administration. They seem to want to double down and do the same things, just with more allies and partners.  I'm supportive of it, but I just don't think it's enough.

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An Island that lies inside Taiwan's territory is seen with the Chinese city of Xiamen in the background.
Commentary

The Taiwan Temptation

Why Beijing Might Resort to Force
The Taiwan Temptation
Oriana Skylar Mastro testifies to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on Taiwan deterrence.
News

Oriana Skylar Mastro Testifies on Deterring PRC Aggression Toward Taiwan to Congressional Review Commission

China may now be able to prevail in cross-strait contingencies even if the United States intervenes in Taiwan’s defense, Chinese security expert Oriana Skylar Mastro tells the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Changes must be made to U.S. military capabilities, not U.S. policy, she argues.
Oriana Skylar Mastro Testifies on Deterring PRC Aggression Toward Taiwan to Congressional Review Commission
Taiwan Wall
Commentary

Would the United States Come to Taiwan's Defense?

On CNN's GPS with Fareed Zakaria, APARC Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro shares insights about China's aspirations to take Taiwan by force and the United States' role, should a forceful reunification come to pass.
Would the United States Come to Taiwan's Defense?
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Chinese military propaganda depicting the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1958.
Chinese military propaganda depicting the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1958.
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On the World Class podcast, Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that in order to set effective policy toward China, the United States needs to better understand how and why China is projecting power.

China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy

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On October 21, 2021, the APARC China Program had the opportunity to host Peter Martin, Defense Policy and Intelligence Reporter for Bloomberg News, for a program on Chinese displomacy. In honor of his recently released book, China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, Mr. Martin gave us a deep dive into the origins of this contentious diplomatic style and what it tells us about domestic politics in China. The panel was moderated by Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program.

As many who follow Chinese politics will be aware, Chinese diplomacy in the past several years has become increasingly assertive and its diplomats have used sharper language. Based on Chinese action movies of the same name, this pointed style of communication has earned these diplomats the title "wolf warriors." Some of the more stand-out examples of wolf warrior diplomacy include China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian's claim that COVID-19 was actually created by the United States, or the uncomfortable exchange between American and Chinese diplomats at the US-China Alaska summit in March, 2021.

In this program, Mr. Martin traced the roots of China's approach to diplomacy back to the communist revolution of 1949 and told the story of how it has evolved through social upheaval, famine, capitalist reforms, and China's rise to superpower status. His book draws on dozens of interviews and--for the first time--on the memoirs of more than 100 retired Chinese diplomats. The program was followed by a robust Q&A session between Mr. Martin and the audience. Watch now: 

For more information about China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy or to purchase a copy, please click here.

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Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations

Was the strategy of engagement with China worthwhile? Experts Mary Bullock, Thomas Fingar, David M. Lampton, and Anne Thurston discuss their recent release, "Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations."
Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations
Xi and Biden
Q&As

Biden, Xi Will Want To Diminish Exaggerated Characterizations of Bilateral Friction, Stanford Scholar Says

In this Q&A, Stanford scholar Thomas Fingar discusses what to expect when President Biden meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Biden, Xi Will Want To Diminish Exaggerated Characterizations of Bilateral Friction, Stanford Scholar Says
Taiwan
Commentary

America's Future in Taiwan

Intensifying threats of a military conflict over Taiwan have brought uncertainty to the stability of regional security for Southeast Asia, according to Center Fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro on radio show On Point.
America's Future in Taiwan
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Peter Martin discusses the advent of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy in Chinese politics — is it really such a new phenomenon after all?

'Xi Jinping '100 per cent' can be trusted': US warned over Taiwan independence

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Oriana Skylar Mastro
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China’s President Xi Jinping can “100 per cent” be trusted and warned western nations would be making a “big mistake” if they didn’t take the superpower’s threats to forcefully retake Taiwan seriously, says Stanford University’s Oriana Skylar Mastro.

The Belarus border crisis shows it’s getting easier to ‘weaponize’ refugees

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Thousands of refugees and migrants became pawns at the border between Belarus and Poland in recent weeks. Many had flown to Belarus anticipating a route into the European Union but couldn’t proceed farther because of Poland’s hard-line policies barring them entry. A number of stranded migrants died of cold and a lack of access to food and health care.

Read the rest at Monkey Cage

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Countries like Belarus are counting on E.U. governments to see refugees as a security threat.

Singapore Today: The Challenges of Race, Inequality, and U.S.-China Relations – A Conversation with Linda Lim

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Singapore’s typically robust economy and stable hegemonic-party polity today face arguably their most serious challenges in half a century. The hyper-global affluent nation-state is more vulnerable than most to de-globalization trends accelerated by the global pandemic and climate change, increased disallowance of international competition based on tax avoidance and state subsidies for multinationals, and pressures to unwind global supply-chains given the growing prioritization of resilience over efficiency, and rising geopolitical tensions, particularly in U.S.-China relations. These external developments coincide and interact with domestic social pressures over intertwined race, immigration, and inequality concerns that arguably give an edge to the previously weak political opposition. The PAP government’s responses to date include both promises of more “liberal” welfare policies and the enactment of more “authoritarian” restrictions on freedom of expression and association.
 
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Linda Lim is a Singaporean economist who is professor emerita of corporate strategy and international business at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where she formerly served as director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies.  She has studied and published extensively on the Singapore economy, edited the SG50 (50th anniversary) volume Singapore's Economic Development: Retrospection and Reflections (2016), and reprinted select articles in the collection, Business, Government and Labor: Essays on Economic Development in Singapore and Southeast Asia (2018), which includes her work on women workers, and on Overseas Chinese business in Southeast Asia.  Linda served from 1998-2016 on the boards of two U.S. public companies with tech manufacturing operations in China, including the sale of one to a Chinese company, and from 2015-2018 directed and taught in custom executive education programs for senior executives of Chinese financial SOEs, on international business, industrial policy and technology development.  In 2019 she co-founded AcademiaSG, a website that champions academic freedom and publishes commentaries by and organizes webinars featuring scholars of Singapore on salient social issues such as race, inequality, international relations, and the environment. Her latest article on "The American Economy and Business" appears in Tommy Koh and Daljit Singh, eds., America: A Singapore Perspective (2021).

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Linda Lim Professor Emerita of Corporate Strategy and International Business, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, the University of Michigan
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Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
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At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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Seminars

Madeleine Morlino

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Maddy Morlino is pursuing a Master’s in International Policy at Stanford University, specializing in international security, immigration, and human rights. At Stanford, she is a Hoover Veteran Fellowship Program research assistant focusing on trafficking in person prevention and response training for the Department of Defense. She is also a research assistant for Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, co-chair of her program’s Racial Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Task Force, co-vice president for social impact at DreamxAmerica, and a Knight-Hennessy scholar. Maddy obtained her B.S. in political science with a minor in philosophy from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 2020. Outside of the classroom, she enjoys running, watching movie trailers, scrapbooking, and traveling. Maddy will serve as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer after graduation.

Master's in International Policy Class of 2022

Daniel Gajardo

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Daniel Gajardo, from Santiago, Chile, graduated from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile with a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a diploma in hydraulic engineering. Daniel aspires to address environmental problems with an interdisciplinary approach, combining social and environmental sciences. He has worked as head of consulting in TriCiclos, a Latin American circular economy company, and he co-founded Engineers Without Borders Chile, a nonprofit seeking to improve the quality of life of underserved communities through the application of humanitarian engineering methodologies. He has been recognized with multiple awards, including Best Graduating Student by Pontificia’s School of Engineering, Best Graduate by Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile's alumni foundation, and for his leadership skills and social commitment by the Chilean Institute of Engineers.

Master's in International Policy Class of 2022

Chaeri Park

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Chaeri Park is pursuing a Master's degree in International Policy at Stanford, with a concentration in Cyber Policy and Security. She comes to Stanford after working as a foreign service officer for seven years in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Korea. She was involved in diverse areas of global cooperation from public diplomacy to economic affairs, where she focused on the Northeast Asian region. Chaeri was also posted to the Korean Embassy in Tokyo as a Second Secretary, and spent two years in Japan.

  At Stanford, Chaeri is expanding her area of interest to cybersecurity, propaganda, and emerging technologies. She successfully completed her position as a Student Fellow with the Japanese Diaspora project at the Hoover Institute and a summer internship with the Asia Society Policy Institute (APSI) in Washington D.C., where she worked on projects related to developments of Ethical Artificial Intelligence(AI) and privacy laws in Southeast Asia.   Chaeri graduated from Korea University in 2013 with a Bachelor's degree in Economics and Business Administration. Outside of class, she enjoys playing violin and golfing with her friends.
Master's in International Policy Class of 2022
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