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Donald K. Emmerson: U.S. Focus on Terrorism Ignores Asia's Wider Needs

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President Bush's week-long swing through six Asian nations is long overdue. Despite being home to half the world's population and the globe's most dynamic economies, Asia has received scant attention from this administration. Unfortunately the president has only one subject on his agenda -- the war on terrorism. The president is touching lightly, if at all, on the other issues that matter most to this region -- economic globalization, China's growing presence, and political instability fed by economic disparities. This is not surprising. The Bush administration doesn't seem to think much about global economic issues. And when it does speak, as it has recently on the issue of currency manipulation by China and Japan, the administration's policy is confusing and contradictory. In Asia, the single-minded focus on terrorism leaves an opening for others -- China first of all -- who are more in tune with the region's concerns. "I've never seen a time when the U.S. has been so distracted and China has been so focused,'' Ernest Bower, the head of the U.S. business council for Southeast Asia, told a business magazine.

Regional economic bloc

Faced with multiple challenges, the countries of Southeast Asia have accelerated plans to create a regional economic bloc like the European Union. The Chinese, followed closely by India and Japan, are embracing the idea, proposing the creation of a vast East Asian free trade area that would encompass nearly 2 billion people, but notably not include the United States. When national security adviser Condoleezza Rice briefed reporters on the president's trip, the focus was almost entirely on security issues. Bush's itinerary is designed to highlight the nations working closely with the United States to combat Al-Qaida-linked Islamist terror groups in Southeast Asia -- Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. Or to reward those who are backing the war in Iraq -- Japan and Australia. Even at the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok, Bush plans to `"stress the need to put security at the heart of APEC's mission because prosperity and security are inseparable,'' Rice said. No one can argue with that basic proposition. The example she cited was the terrorist bombing a year ago in Bali, Indonesia, which shut down tourism, a vital source of income for Indonesians. But let's not look at that link through the wrong end of the telescope. We need to grapple with the poverty and income inequality in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-populated nation, which feeds growing Islamic radicalism.

China drives growth

East Asia has largely emerged from the financial crisis that swept through this region in 1997-98 and sent countries such as Indonesia into economic collapse. Economic growth should pick up to almost 6 percent next year, the World Bank has predicted. But much of this is driven by China's rapid growth, which is in turn sparking a sharp rise in trade within the region, much of it between countries in the region and China. These countries look warily on this rising giant. China is sucking away foreign investment from places like Silicon Valley that used to flow to them, and with it, jobs. At the same time, progress toward a global free market that ensures fair competition has stalled. The world trade talks in Cancun last month collapsed in rancor, and the United States seems content now to pursue its own bilateral trade deals with favored countries such as Singapore and Australia.

10-nation association

This has encouraged the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations to accelerate plans to create a European Union-style economic community. The Chinese sent a huge, high-powered delegation led by their premier to their recent meeting, signed a friendship treaty with the group and pledged to negotiate a free-trade zone with the group. "The Chinese are moving in in a big way,'' says Stanford University expert Donald K. Emmerson. Where is the United States in all this? "We're outside, and our businesses are going to be outside,'' says Brookings Institution global economic expert Lael Brainard. "The Bush administration needs to get a handle on this.'' If it doesn't, the United States will wake up one day from its infatuation with unilateralism and return to Asia to find that the furniture has been rearranged and the locks have been changed.

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Global Shared Services

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The seminar will focus on how HP leverages ?Global Shared Services? to address its cost management issues throughout its operations. It will cover practical issues such as internal office review for deciding how to outsource, how to manage migration, risks as anticipated by HP measured against actual experience. It will evaluate challenges of creating global shared services and how to meet them. It will illustrate how shared services add value to HP and provide metrics on speed, proportion of the work can be offshored. Sanjay Singh is a director of Business Operations for HP?s Business Process Delivery organization. His responsibilities include operations strategy, business development, including alliances, marketing operations as well as quality and operations risk management. Currently, he is the program manager for HP?s BPO initiative. Prior to HP, Sanjay was an engagement manager within Accenture?s Strategy group, where he led and managed a number of projects related to business strategy and market entry into new spaces for clients in the High Technology and Telecommunications industry. His work experience also includes working for IBM Corporation within their PC group.

Philippines Conference Room

Sanjay Singh Director, Business Operations, Business Process Delivery Hewlett Packard
Seminars

Kick-Off Event for the Silicon Valley Global Knowledge Network

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The Global Knowledge Network is a new initiative rooted in one of the most significant technological and economic trends of the past decade, globalization. The Network will study these trends and their effect on Silicon Valley, at the same time leveraging relationships between technology leaders in our Valley and other regions around the globe. The Network will also create a cross-boundary "network of networks" spanning our region's many diverse entrepreneurship organizations. More detailed information about the Global Knowledge Network can be found at http://www.jointventure.org.

The kick-off event will feature a panel addressing Silicon Valley's emerging knowledge networks and the future of IT as well as time for networking. The keynote speaker will be William F. Miller, Co-Director, SPRIE and Professor Emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Joining him as panelists on the program will be Simon Cao, founder of both Arasor and Avanex, with 20 years experience in optics and communications and Ajay Shah, who founded of SMART Modular Technologies, and served until recently as President and CEO of the Technology Solutions Business Unit at Solectron.

William F. Miller is the Herbert Hoover Professor Emeritus, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and President Emeritus of SRI International. He also chairs the board of Borland Software Corporation, and has previously sat on the boards of Wells Fargo and the Fireman's Fund. He currently serves on the boards of Sentius Corporation, Data Digest Inc., and Handysoft USA.

Simon (Xiaofan) Cao is Founder, President and CEO of Arasor Corporation, and has twenty years of experience in optics, communications, and signal processing. He was the founder of both Avanex Corporation and Oplink Communications, Inc.

Ajay Shah founded SMART Modular Technologies in 1988. Until recently he served as President and CEO of the Technology Solutions Business Unit at the Solectron Corporation.

Schwab Residential Center, 680 Serra Street, Stanford University Campus

William F. Miller Professor Emeritus Stanford GSB
Simon Cao Founder and CEO Panelist Arasor, Inc.
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Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE)

Outsourcing the Technical Support Function: A Way to Retain and Grow Customers for Technology Product Companies

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Technology product companies are characterized by rapid product introductions and the need to stay ahead in each product generation. If a company stumbles and loses its lead in one generation of product, it can be fatal. Technical support is as important as unique product features to win and retain customers. Yet this function is often an afterthought for many companies. While developmental engineering and product creation are exciting, providing strong support for such products is critical for a company's success in the market place.

With an overall shortage of engineers in the United States, companies can work with specialized, dual-shore based technical support companies to provide this very critical function to customers on an ongoing basis.

Somshankar Das brings twenty-nine years of experience in public and private management, high technology, and venture capital businesses to his role of president and chief executive officer of e4e. Prior to joining e4e, Som was a general partner with Walden International, where he specialized in semiconductor, software, IT service, and Internet infrastructure markets. While at Walden, he created a portfolio of service companies including Mind Tree Consulting, Techspan, Sierra Atlantic and WebEx. He also established the Walden India Nikko Fund in 1996, the first technology focused VC fund in India. Som currently serves on the boards of directors of two public companies, Aztec and WebEx. He has over twelve years of management experience in the U.S. semiconductor industry, and was actively involved in establishing Malaysia's first commercial silicon wafer foundry, Siltera. Prior to joining Walden, he was director for Worldwide Business Development at VLSI Technology, Inc. and was previously an officer in the Indian Administrative Service in India. Som holds an MBA from the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University and an M.S. in physics and mathematics from Calcutta University.

This seminar is part of SPRIE's Fall 2003 series on "High-Tech Regions and the Globalization of Value Chains."

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Somshankar Das President and CEO e4e, Inc.
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Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE)

North Korea's nukes

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Gi-Wook Shin
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A panel of five foreign policy experts, including CISAC Co-director %people1% and SIIS Senior Fellow %people2%, debated issues of North Korea and nuclear weapons on October 17, 2003 in a discussion titled "It's a Mad, Mad World: Prospects for Security, Diplomacy, and Peace on the Korean Peninsula." Moderated by %people3%, of SIIS and an associate professor of law and former State Department lawyer, the panelists examined the implications to U.S.-South Korea relations in light of continuing hostilities between North Korea and the United States.

There are "no good options" for the United States to confront or contain North Korea's nuclear weapons proliferation, according to political science Professor Scott Sagan.

Sagan, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for International Studies, was one of five foreign policy experts who joined a panel discussion Friday titled "It's a Mad, Mad World: Prospects for Security, Diplomacy and Peace on the Korean Peninsula." Presented by the Law School, the event took place in Dinkelspiel Auditorium as part of Reunion Homecoming Weekend.

Panelists Mi-Hyung Kim, Bernard S. Black, Gi-Wook Shin and Scott D. Sagan took turns weighing in on the difficulties of U.S. diplomatic relations with North Korea during a law school-sponsored discussion. Photo: L.A. Cicero

What makes the situation even more vexing is that the objectives of neither North Korea nor the United States are entirely clear, said law Associate Professor Allen Weiner, a former State Department lawyer and diplomat who moderated the panel.

"Is the United States intent on a regime change? Or putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle?" Weiner asked.

"North Korea feels threatened by the United States and believes nuclear weapons are the only way to protect its national sovereignty," said sociology Associate Professor Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Korean Studies Program in the Asia/Pacific Research Center.

The talk came one day after North Korea announced that it is prepared to "physically unveil" its nuclear program. By Sunday, President George W. Bush announced that he would provide written assurances not to attack North Korea if the country takes steps to halt its proliferation and if other Asian leaders signed, too. Bush, who counted North Korea as part of an "axis of evil," stopped short of offering a formal, Senate-approved nonaggression treaty.

Earlier this month, North Korea claimed to have finished reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods to produce enough weapons-grade plutonium to build a half-dozen nuclear bombs. Faced with a collapsed economy and the legacy of 1.5 million deaths from starvation in the late 1990s, the North Korean government, led by Kim Jong Il, has overtly threatened to use its small arsenal as deterrence against U.S. aggression. Although it has been difficult to verify North Korea's capabilities, international experts have asserted that its main nuclear facility in Yongbyon could produce one or two bombs a year.

Tension first heated up last October when North Korea admitted to having abandoned the 1994 Framework Agreement brokered by the Clinton administration to shut down its nuclear reprocessing facilities.

Confirming U.S. intelligence reports that North Korea possesses nuclear weapons capabilities, the former director of the CIA under the Clinton administration, Jim Woolsey, said from the audience that in 1994 the CIA was confident North Korea had enough plutonium to make one or two bombs. Estimating that its current capabilities hover somewhere around six bombs, Woolsey explained North Korea doesn't have good delivery technology. The greater concern, he said, is that it would produce enough plutonium to sell to al-Qaida.

The amount of plutonium it takes to build a bomb is the "size of a grapefruit" -- making it difficult to monitor and stop weapons material shipments, Sagan said.

Believing North Korea is posturing for economic aid and bilateral security guarantees, the United States has sidestepped direct talks and instead joined South Korea, China, Japan and Russia in a round of six-party talks with North Korea last August. Bush's announcement is seen as an effort to jump-start the next round of regional talks that were expected by the end of the year.

The crisis has taken its toll on the longstanding alliance between the United States and South Korea. Panelist Mi-Hyung Kim, a founding member of South Korea's Millennium Democratic Party and general counsel and executive vice president of the Kumho Business Group, the ninth largest Korean conglomerate, said the relationship between the United States and South Korea is the "rockiest" it has ever been because of "Bush's hard-line policy on North Korea" and the fact that wartime control of the South Korean military reverts to U.S. hands. Bilateral talks would further alienate South Korea, which fears that Seoul will become a "sea of fire," she said.

"South Korea thinks Bush is a bigger threat than nuclear weapons 35 miles to the north," Kim explained, pointing out that South Korea will bear the brunt of a military conflict. "South Korea wants to avoid war and economic burdens it can't afford," she said.

Part of the problem has been the failure of the United States to explain its policy to the South Korean people. "The United States is bad at selling its policies to publics abroad," Weiner noted. We're used to dealing bilaterally with government officials; public diplomacy is a skill we've had to learn over the past 15 years."

"A PR campaign by the United States is not going to solve this," Kim countered.

"If North Korea collapses, how will South Korea survive?" asked law Professor Bernard Black, a panelist who served as an economic policy adviser to the South Korean government. "South Korea would have to devote 30 percent of its GDP to bring North Korea up to its standard of living and that's not sustainable.

"South Korea has lived under North Korean guns for the last 50 years. North Korea can destroy Seoul at any time. South Koreans are saying, 'What's changed?' The last thing South Korea wants is to provoke North Korea to attack."

China, North Korea's closest ally, may have the most leverage through trade sanctions and has a vested interest in halting regional proliferation, Kim said. "China does not need another nuclear neighbor. ... It has enough problems with India and Pakistan." North Korea's proliferation could lead to a nuclear Japan, South Korea and "its worst fear, a nuclear Taiwan."

Predicting that nothing would come of the next round of talks until after the next U.S. presidential election, Kim said ironically, "North Korea is expecting a regime change in the United States to an administration that is more reasonable."

"North Korea is not a crazy rogue state but a dangerously desperate state," said Sagan. "When you play poker with someone who's cheated in the past, you can expect them to cheat again."

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It's a MAD, Mad World: Prospects for Security, Diplomacy, and Peace on the Korean Peninsula

North Korea claims to have produced enough plutonium to build half a dozen nuclear bombs. U.S. intelligence indicates North Korea may indeed possess one or two nuclear weapons. The North Korean government has overtly threatened to use their arsenal against the United States. How credible is the threat? Is North Korea becoming the next Iraq? The U.S., China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea are pushing for another six-party talk. Can diplomacy, international aid, and security guarantees curb North Korea's nuclear proliferation? Can we negotiate with a regime devoid of a rule of law? What are our other options?

Panel discussion moderated by Warren Christopher, Professor in the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy, Stanford Law School, and including:

A panel discussion featuring:

  • Bernard S. Black, JD '82
  • George E. Osborne, Professor of Law and Director of the LLM Program in Corporate Governance and Practice, Stanford Law School
  • Mi-Hyung Kim, JD '89 General Counsel and Executive Vice President , Kumho Business Group

Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford Law School, Stanford University Campus

Gi-Wook Shin

Shorenstein APARC
Encina Hall E301
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
(650) 724-8480 (650) 723-6530
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Sociology
William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea
Professor, by Courtesy, of East Asian Languages & Cultures
Gi-Wook Shin_0.jpg PhD

Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea in the Department of Sociology, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the founding director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) since 2001, all at Stanford University. In May 2024, Shin also launched the Taiwan Program at APARC. He served as director of APARC for two decades (2005-2025). As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, democracy, migration, and international relations.

In Summer 2023, Shin launched the Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL), which is a new research initiative committed to addressing emergent social, cultural, economic, and political challenges in Asia. Across four research themes– “Talent Flows and Development,” “Nationalism and Racism,” “U.S.-Asia Relations,” and “Democratic Crisis and Reform”–the lab brings scholars and students to produce interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, policy-relevant, and comparative studies and publications. Shin’s latest book, The Four Talent Giants, a comparative study of talent strategies of Japan, Australia, China, and India to be published by Stanford University Press in the summer of 2025, is an outcome of SNAPL.

Shin is also the author/editor of twenty-seven books and numerous articles. His books include The Four Talent Giants: National Strategies for Human Resource Development Across Japan, Australia, China, and India (2025); Korean Democracy in Crisis: The Threat of Illiberalism, Populism, and Polarization (2022); The North Korean Conundrum: Balancing Human Rights and Nuclear Security (2021); Superficial Korea (2017); Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War (2016); Global Talent: Skilled Labor as Social Capital in Korea (2015); Criminality, Collaboration, and Reconciliation: Europe and Asia Confronts the Memory of World War II (2014); New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (2014); History Textbooks and the Wars in Asia: Divided Memories (2011); South Korean Social Movements: From Democracy to Civil Society (2011); One Alliance, Two Lenses: U.S.-Korea Relations in a New Era (2010); Cross Currents: Regionalism and Nationalism in Northeast Asia (2007);  and Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy (2006). Due to the wide popularity of his publications, many have been translated and distributed to Korean audiences. His articles have appeared in academic and policy journals, including American Journal of Sociology, World Development, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Political Science Quarterly, Journal of Asian Studies, Comparative Education, International Sociology, Nations and Nationalism, Pacific Affairs, Asian Survey, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs.

Shin is not only the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, but also continues to actively raise funds for Korean/Asian studies at Stanford. He gives frequent lectures and seminars on topics ranging from Korean nationalism and politics to Korea's foreign relations, historical reconciliation in Northeast Asia, and talent strategies. He serves on councils and advisory boards in the United States and South Korea and promotes policy dialogue between the two allies. He regularly writes op-eds and gives interviews to the media in both Korean and English.

Before joining Stanford in 2001, Shin taught at the University of Iowa (1991-94) and the University of California, Los Angeles (1994-2001). After receiving his BA from Yonsei University in Korea, he was awarded his MA and PhD from the University of Washington in 1991.

Stanford Next Asia Policy Lab (SNAPL)

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Shin's Reflections on Korea

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Reengaging North Korea

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Director of the Korea Program and the Taiwan Program, Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
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Scott D. Sagan

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus: Ethics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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