FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.
Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions.
We consider the vulnerability of nuclear power plants to a disaster like the one that occurred at Fukushima Daiichi. Examination of Japanese nuclear plants affected by the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 shows that three variables were crucial at the early stages of the crisis: plant elevation, sea wall elevation, and location and status of backup generators. Higher elevations for these variables, or waterproof protection of backup generators, could have mitigated or prevented the disaster. We collected information on these variables, along with historical data on run-up heights, for 89 coastal nuclear power plants in the world. The data shows that 1. Japanese plants were relatively unprotected against potential inundation in international comparison, but there was considerable variation for power plants within and outside of Japan; 2. Older power plants and plants owned by the largest utility companies appear to have been particularly unprotected.
The Europe Center, through its Program on Sweden, Scandinavia, and the Baltic Region, has forged partnerships with those who bring visionary solutions to the challenge of diversity and reconciliation in our increasingly globalized world. “Harbor of Hope: a special evening celebrating Sweden’s diverse cultures” held on May 6th is the latest effort by the Europe Center to disseminate this new way of thinking. The participation of Sweden’s leading documentary filmmaker Magnus Gertten, and Sweden’s cultural entrepreneur Ozan Sunar, resulted in an unprecedented pairing and an evening of motivating insight for a large public audience. The program included the screening of Gertten’s documentary “Harbour of Hope”, a multi-media presentation by Sunar and an opportunity for the audience to engage in discussion with both of these special guests.
The evening opened with a welcome by the Europe Center’s director, Professor Amir Eshel, who highlighted the support of the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation for making possible the Europe Center’s Sweden Program and this research. The center’s Associate Director, Dr. Roland Hsu then framed the thinking behind inviting these particular two guest speakers, Gertten and Sunar.
“This evening”, said Hsu, “we gather for a special look at the challenge to meet and embrace difference. In today’s globalized world, market economies, and educational opportunities, but also war and persecution send unprecedented numbers of peoples across borders, away from home cultures, and into new host neighborhoods.
In the US and in Europe we share the concern and opportunity to learn what drives people far from home. Tonight, we focus our gaze on the city of Malmo, a city whose neighborhoods contain extraordinary diversity. Such diversity has a history, which we shall see on film, and it has a future, thanks in large part to the cultural programing we will learn about after the film.
Our challenge is to learn from the experience of families, fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters, and children, displaced from the familiar, and replaced in new settings. e will look at this challenge through the eyes of two visionary artists who have touched us with their works, and who are bridging divides across competing memories, and across growing diversity of today’s mobile and global West.”
Hsu’s introduction of Magnus Gertten and Gertten’s documentary film “Harbour of Hope” included a line from a NY Times review of Gertten’s art which he felt echoed throughout the evening’s program: “it seems as if the past is intruding on and sometimes overwhelming the present.” “Harbour of Hope” includes footage from the original archival film shot on April 28, 1945, the day that 30,000 survivors of German concentration camps arrived in Malmo, Sweden to begin their lives over again. This powerful and unforgettable film is about the life stories of 3 of the survivors seen on this footage: Irene Krausz-Fainman, Ewa Kabacinska Jansson and Joe Rozenberg.
Following the viewing of “Harbour of Hope”, Hsu introduced the next guest Ozan Sunar by saying “In Mr. Sunar’s cultural programming, we may see not the past overwhelming the present, but instead the present clearing the way for its future.” Sunar, with a long career in the fields of arts, media and integration politics, blazed a path for those seeking new ways to include artistic values from diverse origins into Sweden’s contemporary culture. He is currently the founding and artistic director of the international cultural house Moriska Paviljongen in Malmo. Sunar’s presentation and the subsequent discussion on his work uniting heretofore communities in conflict through culture were both inspiring and provocative.
Harbor of Hope: a special evening celebrating Sweden's diverses cultures; May 6, 2013, Stanford University:
The Europe Center was pleased to host Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission (HRVP), at Stanford University on May 7th. HRVP Ashton’s address to a capacity audience of Stanford senior scholars is part of the Europe Center’s program focused on European and EU regional and global relations. The event co-sponsors - the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Hoover Institution, and the - speaks to the esteem and the interest that multiple partners share in engaging the European Union’s highest foreign policy official.
The Europe Center’s director Amir Eshel opened the session, followed by President Gerhard Casper, director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, who delivered a formal introduction of Ashton. HRVP Ashton spoke at length and in considerable detail on the mission of the office of EU High Representative, and addressed a number of the critical foreign policy challenges that we face today.
Three pillars of EU foreign policy In her talk, Lady Ashton highlighted three pillars of EU foreign policy:
Europe assumes primary responsibility for bringing and safeguarding peace in its “neighborhood”. Ashton proposed that the European Union – in terms of its status as a foreign policy actor – should be judged by the record of its mission to foster post-conflict resolution, and promote long-term stability and growth throughout its own member states, and in neighboring regions of North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, and Eastern and Baltic regions of former Soviet societies.
European Union foreign policy should promote what Ashton termed “Deep Democracy”. This includes reformed and transparent judiciary, police, and representative governing institutions that safeguard the well-being and individual emancipation of citizens, and women’s and human rights.
European Union international relations prioritize effective and long-term cooperative missions with “strategic partners” beginning with the United States, as well as Russia and China. Ashton emphasized that the EU also prioritizes long-term relations and strategic missions with regional and supra-national institutions beginning with the United Nations, and including the African Union, ASEAN, and the Arab League.
“Deep Democracy”: the long-term challenge Of special note was Ashton’s significant elaboration on the priority for “deep democracy”. When asked about the case of Mali, and what the vision was for what comes after the current French and European military intervention, she emphasized the following points of policy and tactics.
The EU views the military engagement against Jihadist forces in Mali, within a larger regional view of the “Sahel Arc”. The EU is deeply engaged in the “Arab Awakening” movements – and the attendant security, political, and civil crises in each country of the region, and in terms of displaced populations across borders.
In the case of Mali, the office of the EU High Representative invited the country’s leadership to Brussels for close coordination of policy.
The EU foreign policy has been set to closely support the Malian government’s own road map for peace, territorial sovereignty, internal cohesion, and development.
In remote districts of northern Mali, residents have seen little evidence of the value of government. The EU foreign policy of engagement in Mali includes programs to deliver primary health care (i.e. immunization and women’s reproductive health) and infrastructure (i.e. transportation and employment in local economic initiatives) to demonstrate the efficacy and value of state institutions.
The decision to commit troops from Europe to foreign soil remains, Ashton emphatically stated, the responsibility of the individual sovereign states, and of their democratically elected representatives who, in making such commitments, are ultimately responsible to their citizens.
Individual European nations are invited to meet with the governments and civil society leaders of countries undergoing transformations, to tell their distinct histories of democratic development.
Ashton delivered her insights in response to questions from the audience on a number of topics, including the growing magnitude of displaced regional refugees, EU-US military cooperation, and the support and criticism of the EU within European nations.
Armed with only their cameras, Peabody and Emmy Award-winning conflict journalist Mike Boettcher and his son Carlos, provide unprecedented access into the longest war in U.S. history. Their journey took them to the highest mountains along the border with Pakistan to the deserts of the Helmand Province in the south, exposed to and sharing the same risks of the combat soldiers they were covering.
“The Hornet’s Nest”, unfolds as a true story of survival and heroism not only for the soldiers, but also for a father and son team who seek to re-connect under the most harrowing of circumstances. The unscripted, real and visceral scenes will leave one with the appreciation of the true nature of combat and for the Soldiers and Marines who fight for each other in the world’s most dangerous place: The Borderlands of Afghanistan.
The film will began after a brief introduction and stage setting by Dr. Perry and COL. J.B. Vowell. Following the film there will be a Q & A session with Mr. David Salzburg, the films producer, Mr. Boettcher, the ABC News journalist and COL. Vowell.
CEMEX Auditorium
Knight Management Center
Zambrano Building
William J. Perry
Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at FSI and Engineering and Co-Director of the Preventive Defense Project at CISAC; FSI Senior Fellow; CISAC Faculty Member
Host
J.B. Vowell
Visiting Scholar, CISAC
Commentator
David Salzburg
Producer, "The Hornet's Nest"
Commentator
Scott Sagan, in this piece for Foreign Policy, remembers his longtime friend and colleague Kenneth Waltz. Waltz passed away on May 13. Sagan praised his work, noting that the realist perspective on the stabilizing effects of nuclear weapons struck a chord with international experts and strategists, even though his views were not popular in the United States. Waltz's contributions to the debate about nuclear weapons have left an enguring legacy.
CDDRL Director Larry Diamond argues in The Atlantic that there is no greater imperative for American interests in the Middle East- and no higher act of friendship that the U.S. can perform for Israel - than to help it find a way to a two-state solution before the option disappears.
A unique, two-day symposium at which an international panel of leading medical and biological scientists, nuclear engineers, and policy experts will make presentations on and discuss the bio-medical and ecological consequences of the Fukushima disaster, will be held at The New York Academy of Medicine on March 11-12, 2013, the second anniversary of the accident.
A project of The Helen Caldicott Foundation, the symposium is being co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility.
Planners of United States postwar occupations in Japan and Korea anticipated the possibility of violence from overzealous Japanese who might refuse to accept their country’s defeat and revenge-seeking Koreans who might retaliate for colonial-era oppression. Though violence was evident in both Japan and Korea, it was far more intense on the peninsula than the archipelago. This paper examines this danger as one important dreg of Japanese colonial rule that divided the Korean people and disrupted their immediate post-liberation history. Its primary focus is on ramifications that these divisions and disruptions had on Korean politics and society in the period leading up to the Korean War.
