Sponsorships:
The Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, The Europe Center, Department of History, School of Humanities and Sciences, and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies

Over the last dozen years, Taiwan’s democracy has deepened in important ways. Executive power has rotated twice, from the DPP’s Chen Shui-bian to the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou in 2008, and from Ma to the DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen in 2016. The majority in the legislature also changed for the first time in 2016, from the KMT to the DPP. Taiwan’s most recent overall Freedom House ranking is 93/100, significantly higher than the United States. Its freedom of the press ranking is the highest in all of Asia, ahead of Korea and even Japan, and its rule of law and anti-corruption scores are trending in a positive direction as well.

To be sure, serious concerns remain about the practice of democracy in Taiwan, including a poorly institutionalized and often chaotic lawmaking process, incomplete legislative oversight of executive branch actions, and a partisan and increasingly fragmented media environment. Nevertheless, the greatest threat to Taiwan’s continued place among the world’s liberal democracies now appears to be external, not internal. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has always posed an existential threat to Taiwan, but its growing economic influence, rapid military modernization, assertive territorial claims in the region, and aggressive global efforts to isolate Taiwan have accelerated in recent years. Put simply, Taiwan’s long-term future as a democracy is imperiled by China’s rise.

The PRC’s growing power presents difficult security challenges for most of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region, not just for Taiwan. But these challenges are rarely considered from a multi-lateral perspective—most analyses of regional security issues instead tend to focus on bilateral or trilateral (US-China-Country X) relationships. This pattern is particularly common in discussions of Taiwan’s security, where the dominant focus is on Cross-Strait and US-Taiwan relations to the neglect of Taiwan’s other relationships in the region.

The goals of this workshop, then, are to place Taiwan’s security challenges in a broader, regional context, to consider possible obstacles to and opportunities for greater regional cooperation on security issues, and to devise a set of recommendations for Taiwan and its partners and allies. Workshop participants will include experts on a wide array of economic, diplomatic, and security topics from Taiwan, the United States, and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region.

Remarks are Off-the-Record.  Recording, reporting and citation of remarks is strictly prohibited.

AGENDA

Monday, March 5 - Koret-Taube Conference Center, John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building

9:00-9:30am CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

9:30-9:45am OPENING REMARKS
Larry Diamond, Senior Research Fellow, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
Karl Eikenberry, Director, U.S.-Asia Security Initiative, Asia-Pacific Research Center

9:45am – 11:30am: PANEL I.
Assessment of US Alliances and the Political and Military Situation in the Western Pacific
Chair: Tom Fingar (APARC, Stanford)
• Overview of Military Trends and US Strategy in Region. Karl Eikenberry (APARC, Stanford)
• US-Taiwan Relations. Robert Wang (Center for Strategic and International Studies)
• US-Japan Relations. TJ Pempel (UC Berkeley)
• US-Korea Relations. Kathy Stephens (APARC, Stanford)

11:30am-1:00pm LUNCH
Keynote Speaker: Robert Sutter (George Washington University) - "Will Trump administration advance support for Taiwan despite China's objections?"

1:15pm-3:00pm: PANEL II.
Trade and Economic Relations in the Western Pacific
Chair: Phillip Lipscy (APARC, Stanford)
• Regional Trade Agreements after TPP: RCEP vs TPP-11. Barbara Weisel (former Assistant US Trade Representative for SE Asia and the Pacific)
• China’s Institution-Building: OBOR, Maritime Silk Road, AIIB. Amy Searight (Center for Strategic and International Studies)
• Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy. Russell Hsiao (Global Taiwan Institute)

3:15-5:00pm: PANEL III.
Maritime Security Issues: The South and East China Seas
Chair: Karl Eikenberry (APARC, Stanford)
• Interpreting Chinese Maritime Strategy in the South China Sea, Don Emmerson (APARC, Stanford)
• China’s Maritime Militia. Andrew Erickson (Naval War College)
• Evolution of US Policy: FONOPS and Beyond. Dale Rielage (Captain, US Navy)
• Taiwan’s Role in Maritime Security Issues. Yeong-Kang Chen, (Admiral (Ret.), ROC Navy)

Tuesday, March 6 - McCaw Hall, Stanford Alumni Center

9:00-9:30am CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

9:30-11:15am: PANEL IV.
Taiwan’s Key Asian Relations
Chair: Kharis Templeman (APARC, Stanford)
• A Taiwanese Perspective on Asian Relations. Lai I-chung (Prospect Foundation)
• NE Asia, Yeh-chung Lu (National Chengchi University)
• SE Asia, Jiann-fa Yan (Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology)

11:30-1:15pm: PANEL V.
Cross-Strait Relations
Chair: Larry Diamond
• The Domestic Politics of Security in Taiwan. Kharis Templeman (APARC, Stanford)
• Beijing’s Taiwan Policy after the 19th Party Congress. Alice Miller (Hoover Institution)
• US Role in the Trilateral Relationship. Raymond Burghardt (former chairman, American Institute in Taiwan)

1:15am-2:15pm LUNCH

Sponsor:  Bill Lane Center for the American West and

Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law

Abstract:

John A. Lawrence will present about his book The Class of '74: Congress after Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship (forthcoming April 2018).

In November 1974, following the historic Watergate scandal, Americans went to the polls determined to cleanse American politics. Instead of producing the Republican majority foreshadowed by Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide, dozens of GOP legislators were swept out of the House, replaced by 76 reforming Democratic freshmen. In The Class of '74, John A. Lawrence examines how these newly elected representatives bucked the status quo in Washington, helping to effectuate unprecedented reforms. Lawrence’s long-standing work in Congress afforded him unique access to former members, staff, House officers, journalists, and others, enabling him to challenge the time-honored reputation of the Class as idealistic, narcissistic, and naïve "Watergate Babies." Their observations help reshape our understanding of the Class and of a changing Congress through frank, humorous, and insightful opinions.

These reformers provided the votes to disseminate power, elevate suppressed issues, and expand participation by junior legislators in congressional deliberations. But even as such innovations empowered progressive Democrats, the greater openness they created, combined with changing undercurrents in American politics in the mid-1970s, facilitated increasingly bitter battles between liberals and conservatives. These disputes foreshadowed contemporary legislative gridlock and a divided Congress.

Today, many observers point to gerrymandering, special-interest money, and a host of other developments to explain the current dysfunction of American politics. In The Class of '74, Lawrence argues that these explanations fail to recognize deep roots of partisanship. To fully understand the highly polarized political environment that now pervades the House and American politics, we must examine the complex politics, including a more open and contentious House, that emerged in the wake of Watergate.

Speaker Bio:

Image

Abstract:

In Navigation by Judgment (Oxford University Press, 2018) I argue that high-quality implementation of foreign aid programs often requires contextual information that cannot be seen by those in distant headquarters. Tight controls and a focus on reaching pre-set measurable targets often prevent front-line workers from using skill, local knowledge, and creativity to solve problems in ways that maximize the impact of foreign aid. Drawing on a novel database of over 14,000 discrete development projects across nine aid agencies and eight paired case studies of development projects, I argue that aid agencies will often benefit from giving field agents the authority to use their own judgments to guide aid delivery. This “navigation by judgment” is particularly valuable when environments are unpredictable and when accomplishing an aid program’s goals is hard to accurately measure.

Speaker Bio:

Image

This talk is co-sponsored by the Precourt Institute for Energy and will take place in the Engineering Quad (see address above) from 4:30 - 5:20 PM

Abstract: The U.S. nuclear waste management program is stymied on multiple fronts – from the disposal of the high-level and transuranic wastes of defense programs, to the spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants, and even, the disposition of fissile material from dismantled nuclear weapons. In 2002, Congress approved President George W. Bush’s decision that the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada be selected as the nation’s repository for high-activity radioactive wastes. In 2008, the Department of Energy submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct that facility. Two years later, the administration concluded that developing a repository at Yucca Mountain was “unworkable.” Today a stalemate prevails between those who continue to maintain that the Yucca Mountain project is “unworkable“ and those who believe that the choice of the site is the “law.“

Against this background, the Precourt Institute for Energy and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies sponsored a series of five meetings to identify the critical issues that must be addressed in ordert to move the U.S. program forward. The issues identified, which will be discussed in the presentation, include:

• New nuclear waste management organization
• Consent-based sitting process
• Integration of the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle
• Revision of regulations and a new approach to the assessment of safety
• Analysis of the risk of a status quo approach for the United States

Speaker bio: Rod Ewing is the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. Rod has written extensively on issues related to nuclear waste and is a co-editor of Radioactive Waste Forms for the Future (1988) and Uncertainty Underground – Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste (2006).  He received the Lomonosov Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2006 for his work on issues of the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is a Principal Editor for Nano LIFE, an interdisciplinary journal focused on collaboration between physical and medical scientists and is a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In 2012, he was appointed by President Obama to chair the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which provides scientific and technical reviews of the U.S. Department of the Energy’s programs for the management and disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. He stepped down in 2017.