William Brown (Bill) is an economist and senior research analyst with CENTRA Technology, Inc. of Northern Virginia, specializing in North Asia-area economics. He is also a member of the adjunct faculty of George Mason University's graduate school of public policy where he teaches courses on Asian economic development and international trade.

Bill has extensive experience as an economic analyst in the US government, having worked in the Chief Economist's Office of the Commerce Department, as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Economics in the National Intelligence Council, and as an eco-nomic analyst in the CIA's Office of Economic Research where he focused on his research on the North Korean and Chinese economies. He served for two years in the US Embassy in Seoul and has traveled extensively in the region, including a trip last summer across the DMZ into North Korea.

Mr. Brown writes occasionally for the Chosun Ilbo in Seoul and speaks on Korean and Chinese issues to a number of Asian and US audiences. He holds an M.A. in economics from Washington University, Missouri with most of his Ph.D. work completed, and a B.A. in International Studies from Rhodes College, Tennessee. He grew up in Kwangju, South Korea as the son and grandson of Presbyterian missionaries and speaks and reads some Korean and Chinese.

Hosted by the Walter H. Shorenstein Forum as part of its ongoing seminar series on North Korea.

About Mr. Chu

Yun-han Chu is Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica and Professor of Political Science at National Taiwan University. He serves concurrently as the president of Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Professor Chu received his Ph. D. in political science from the University of Minnesota and joined the faculty of National Taiwan University in 1987. He was a visiting associate professor at Columbia University in 1990-1991. Professor Chu specializes in politics of Greater China, East Asian political economy and democratization.

He currently serves on the editorial board of Journal of Democracy, International Studies Quarterly, Pacific Affairs, China Review, Journal of Contemporary China, and Journal of East Asian Studies. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of eleven books. Among his recent English publications are Crafting Democracy in Taiwan (Institute for National Policy Research, 1992), Consolidating Third-Wave Democracies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), China Under Jiang Zemin (Lynne Reinner, 2000), and The New Chinese Leadership: Challenges and Opportunities after the 16th Party Congress (Cambridge University Press 2004). His works also appeared in some leading journals including World Politics, International Organization, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, and many others.

Often those who report or analyze state repression emphasize its intensity without exploring its logic. Drawing on his latest book, Resisting Dictatorship: Repression and Protest in Southeast Asia (2004), Prof. Boudreau will treat state repression as a strategic activity designed to undercut threats, defeat rivals, and strengthen new regimes with reference to the dictatorships of Ne Win in Burma, Suharto in Indonesia, and Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. He will highlight state capacity, social challenges, and how they interact in struggles for power. By asking what state repressions seems designed to accomplish, Boudreau seeks to develop a more fully political understanding of state violence in relation to social resistance.

Vincent Boudreau heads the Department of Political Science and the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies at the City College of New York. His many publications include a unique study of the internal dynamics of anti-regime activism in the Philippines, Grassroots and Cadre in the Protest Movement (2001). He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1993.

Regional financial cooperation in East Asia is proceeding with unprecedented intensity. Latest developments include creation by the regional central bankers group of two Asian bond funds and the launching of an Asian Bond Market Initiative by the finance ministers of ASEAN + 3 (China, Japan, South Korea). Some observers continue to attribute such cooperation to sharpened antagonism between East Asia and the West since the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. But this view overlooks a key internal driver: China's remarkable shift toward a more proactive stance toward regional cooperation. Current 2005 East Asian financial cooperation is motivated by factors that differ considerably from those observed in the immediate aftermath of the Asian financial crisis and with implications that extend beyond East Asia.

Jennifer Amyx is a 2004-2005 Shorenstein Fellow at the Asia-Pacific Research Center. She is the author of Japan's Financial Crisis: Institutional Rigidity and Reluctant Change (2004), articles on East Asian financial cooperation, and a book-in-progress on the latter topic. Since earning a Stanford PhD in political science in 1998 she has held fellowships at Australian National University and been a visiting scholar at several Japanese financial policy and research institutions including the Bank of Japan.

After the end of the Cold War, the world's attention focused on the vast quantity of potentially unsecured nuclear material- weaponized and unweaponized- that resided in the former Soviet Union. The closed borders of the Soviet Union were thrown open and facilities containing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were no longer under the watchful eye of a ubiquitous KGB. Russian scientists possessing knowledge about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons were able to visit or immigrate to any country of their choice, including rogue nations with active WMD programs.

In response, a number of nonproliferation programs were established by Western nations to help stem the emigration of Russian weapons scientists to countries of concern. The key question is whether these nonproliferation programs are achieving their objectives. To answer this question, we conducted a survey of 600 Russian scientists (physicists, chemists and biologists). The data indicate that U.S. and Western nonproliferation programs are indeed effective. The programs significantly reduce the likelihood that Russian scientists would consider working in rogue countries. The data further suggest that continuation of the Western assistance programs is necessary in order to prevent scientists from going rogue.

Biography

Dr. Deborah Yarsike Ball is a political-military analyst specializing in Russian affairs in the Nonproliferation, Arms Control and International Security Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and has been a fellow at Harvard University's Center for Science and International Affairs, as well as Stanford's Center for International Security and Arms Control. Her work focuses on Russian civil-military relations, military doctrine and security issues, the prevention of theft of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material from the former Soviet Union, as well as the safety and security of Russia's nuclear arsenal. Dr. Ball has conducted analysis of various regime's internal and external political and social behavior and their holistic use of the elements of power and influence.

Ball's publications include: "How Safe Is Russia's Nuclear Arsenal?" in Jane's Intelligence Review (December 1999) and "The Social Crisis of the Russian Military," in "Russia's Torn Safety Nets" (Ed. by Mark G. Field and Judyth L. Twigg, St. Martins, 2000), and "The State of Russian Science" in Post-Soviet Affairs, (July-Sept. 2002, with Theodore Gerber). Among her committee assignments, Dr. Ball is currently serving on a US National Academy of Sciences Committee tasked to assess the indigenization of US programs to prevent leakage of plutonium and highly enriched uranium from Russia.

After the 51-48 defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the Senate, General John Shalikashvili (Former Chair, Joint Chiefs of Staff) commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to examine the following technical issues,* which will be summarized:

•  US capacity to maintain safety/reliability and design/evaluation of its nuclear stockpile without testing.
• International/US capability to monitor a nuclear test ban, including evasion scenarios.
• Ability of nations to increase nuclear capability with/without cheating and the potential effect of cheating on US security.

* Technical Issues Related to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, National Academy Press, 2003. D. Hafemeister, Physics of Societal Issues, Springer and AIP Press, 2005; Physics and Society 33, 4-7, July 2004; and VERTIC Verification Yearbook 2004.

David Hafemeister is an emeritus professor of physics at California Polytechnic State University.  He spent a dozen years in Washington as Professional Staff Member on the Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Governmental Affairs (1990-93 on arms control treaties at the end of the Cold War), Science Advisor to Senator John Glenn (1975-77), Special Assistant to Under Secretary of State Benson and Deputy-Under Secretary Nye (1977-78), Visiting Scientist in the State Department Office of Nuclear Proliferation Policy (1979) and Office of Strategic Nuclear Policy (1987), Foster Fellow in the ACDA Strategic Negotiations Division (1997-98), and Study Director at the National Academy of Sciences (2000-02).  He has led technical staffs on nuclear-testing with the State Department (1987), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1900-02) and the National Academy of Sciences (2000-02).

Since Vietnam, the US Army has focused an unprecedented degree of effort on capturing lessons learned in training and on the battlefield and communicating them to other affected units. The Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL), established after Operation URGENT FURY, is the prime example of the Army's efforts to institutionalize the process of learning during the Cold War. CALL continues to function and provide lessons learned in the current Global War on Terror, while other grassroots organizations have sprung up within the Army to target the learning needs of specific segments of the force. One such organization is CompanyCommand.com, an online professional forum of Army leaders dedicated to outstanding leadership at the small-unit level. This talk will discuss the evolution of organizational learning in the Army since Vietnam, and examine how organizations like CALL and CompanyCommand complement one other in the pursuit of excellence.

Captain Raymond A. Kimball is a native of Reading, Pennsylvania, and was commissioned through the United States Military Academy in 1995. After completing initial officer and flight training, he was assigned to the 1st Battalion (Attack), 10th Aviation Regiment, at Fort Drum, New York in November 1996. While assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, he served as an aeroscout platoon leader and logistics and support officer. In those positions, he participated in the full range of Army operations, from home station training to counter-drug operations along the Mexican border to peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In May of 2001, after completing further officer training, he reported to the 3rd Infantry Division, where he was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 7th U.S. Cavalry. He took command of F Troop, 3-7 Cavalry in July of 2001. The troop consisted of 88 soldiers and $6 million in equipment and was responsible for all aspects of support and maintenance for the squadron's sixteen scout helicopters. In January of 2003, the troop deployed as part of 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, to Kuwait in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. During combat operations the troop supported 870 flight hours over a period of twenty-one days while moving 700 kilometers through enemy territory without the loss of a single soldier. He gave up command of F Troop in June of 2003 and returned to the United States to begin graduate studies in history at Stanford. In addition to his coursework, he serves as a research assistant to the Preventive Defense Project in CISAC. For the past two years, he has also served as a Topic Lead and advisor to CompanyCommand.com. His next assignment will be as an Associate Professor of History at the United States Military Academy. His awards include the Bronze Star, the Army Commendation Medal, the Army Achievement Medal, and the Humanitarian Service Medal. He is married to the former Mindy Hynds of Vacaville, California; they have one son, Daniel.

The presentation examines the practical problems of reducing the danger of accidental launch and suggests that the current approach to the problem should be reconsidered. First, the U.S. launch-on-warning posture may represent a bigger problem than that of Russia. Second, the efforts to repair or augment the Russian early-warning system should not be pursued as part of the de-alerting agenda, since they probably increase risk of an accidental launch. Finally, the notion of transparency in de-alerting should be reconsidered, for verification prevents de-alerting from being effective. (A short summary of the presentation can be found at russian forces).

Pavel Podvig joined CISAC as a research associate in 2004. Before that he was a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He spent several years as a visiting researcher with the Security Studies Program at MIT and with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and he taught physics in MIPT's General Physics Department for more than ten years. At the Center for Arms Control Studies, he worked on various technical and political issues of missile defense; U.S.-Russian arms control negotiations, and structure and history of the Russian strategic forces. During that time he was a principal investigator of a Russian Nuclear Forces research project, which produced a book, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. Podvig graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1988, with a degree in physics. In 2004 he received a PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

Tex Abe, President and CEO of Sumisho Electronics Co., Ltd., has lead the Company since June 2002. During his tenure, he carried out management reforms including several M&As and board structure change. Prior to joining the Company, he was president and CEO of Presidio Venture Partners, LLC, a leading corporate venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, where he made his mark in new-venture funding and management. Presidio is a vehicle for early to mid stage IT investment, backed by a major Japanese trading company, Sumitomo Corporation.

Abe has more than 20 years of experience in Sumitomo, where he developed his career on the information technology, utility, and independent power industries. Through assignments in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angels, Houston, and Tokyo, he has gained expertise in project development and management, project finance, corporate management, full turnkey contracting, and major equipment sales and marketing.