Stanford University

Experts debate key policy issues at FSI's fourth annual conference

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

"How grievous are the wounds the rule of law has sustained over the past seven and one-half years?" FSI Director Coit D. Blacker asked at the beginning of FSI's fourth annual conference, Transitions 2009. This year's conference, coming on the heels of the U.S. presidential election, focused on opportunities for change offered by historic transitions at home and abroad. The Nov. 13 invitation-only event was attended by 370 Stanford scholars, outside experts, policymakers, diplomats, and leaders from business, medicine, and law, bringing together some of the sharpest minds in the country to formulate and discuss recommendations for U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and other world leaders.

The day-long conference was structured around a morning and an afternoon plenary, with a luncheon address by Oxford professor and Hoover Institution senior fellow Timothy Garton Ash. In his address, "Beyond the West? New Administrations in the U.S. and Europe Face the Challenge of a Multipolar World," Garton Ash urged concerted action on four projects of visionary realism: global economic order; development, democracy, and the rule of law; energy and the environment; and banishing nuclear weapons. Garton Ash also called for relaunching a strategic partnership among the United States and the 27-member European Union, not as a partnership against other nations, but as an alliance that would reach beyond the West to develop new and effective communities of shared purpose.

The morning plenary, "U.S. Transition 2009: Where Have We Been? Where Are We Going?" brought FSI Director Blacker together with Stanford President Emeritus and constitutional law scholar Gerhard Casper, Center on Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research Director Alan M. Garber and FSI senior fellow and former State Department policy planning director Stephen D. Krasner. Their varying but esteemed backgrounds allowed for a truly interdisciplinary discussion of the policy challenges, priorities, and prospects facing the new American president. "We have just lived through the most extraordinary claims to unbound power since the days of Richard Nixon," said Casper. "This rejection of the rule of law, just like the images of Abu Graib, will be present in the minds of many with whom we have to deal the world over."

The afternoon plenary, "Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threat," featured Stephen J. Stedman, FSI senior fellow and director of the Ford Dorsey Program in International Studies; Bruce Jones, director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University; and Carlos Pascual, director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. The three discussed their ambitious new project, Managing Global Insecurity Project (MGI) (MGI), which aims to provide recommendations and generate momentum for the next American president, the United Nations, and key international partners to launch a strategic effort to build the global partnerships and international institutions needed to meet 21st century trans-border challenges and threats. One key recommendation is to expand the current G-8 to a G-16 of established and rising powers by including China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, and major Muslim nations such as Indonesia, Turkey, and Egypt.

Interactive breakout sessions in the morning and afternoon allowed participants to engage in debate with Stanford faculty and outside experts. Breakouts covered such diverse topics as combating HIV in low-resource countries, rethinking the war on terror, leveraging the EU to promote democracy and human rights, whether the U.S. should promote democracy, transitions in African society, working in a global economy, and overcoming barriers to nuclear disarmament.

Hero Image
FSI Transitions Conference
All News button
1

A Moment of Truth for Nuclear Energy

-

Drell Lecture Recording: NA

 

Drell Lecture Transcript: NA

 

Speaker's Biography: Ariel (Eli) Levite is a nonresident senior associate in the Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment. He is a member of the Israeli Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee on Arms Control and Regional Security and a member of the board of directors of the Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies.

Prior to joining the Carnegie Endowment, Levite was the Principal Deputy Director General for Policy at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. Levite also served as the deputy national security advisor for defense policy and was head of the Bureau of International Security and Arms Control in the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

In September 2000, Levite took a two year sabbatical from the Israeli civil service to work as a visiting fellow and project co-leader of the "Discriminate Force" Project as the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. 

Before his government service, Levite worked for five years as a senior research associate and head of the project on Israeli security at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Levite has taught courses on security studies and political science at Tel Aviv University, Cornell University, and the University of California, Davis.

Download pdf

Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center

Ariel Levite Speaker
Lectures
Drell Lecture

Rethinking Nuclear Latency: When is a State a Virtual Nuclear Weapons Power?

-

Abstract:  Scholars and policy-makers, when seeking to predict the future of nuclear proliferation, often refer to "nuclear capable states," or "latent nuclear weapons states," or "virtual nuclear powers."  There is consensus, however, about what such terms mean or how to measure a state's "nuclear latency," a condition that leads to widespread miscommunication and misunderstanding in the field.  This talk reviews alternative methods for measuring "nuclear latency" in the political science and technical literatures. It provides historical evidence of the wide range of time-lines for different states to move from one state of nuclear weapons development to more advanced states of development and identifies a set of political factors (including organizational competency, ambivalent political leadership, different arsenal size ambitions) that can influence the time-lags that states experience in their nuclear weapons programs. 

Scott Sagan is a professor of political science and co-director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is on sabbatical in 2008-09. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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: A Debate Renewed (W.W. Norton, 2002). He is the co-editor of Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James L. Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000). Sagan was the recipient of Stanford University's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and the 1998 Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching. As part of CISAC's mission of training the next generation of security specialists he and Stephen Stedman founded Stanford's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies in 2000.

His recent articles include "How to Keep the Bomb From Iran," in Foreign Affairs (September-October 2006); "The Madman Nuclear Alert: Secrecy, Signaling, and Safety in October 1969" co-written by Jeremi Suri and published in International Security in spring 2003; and "The Problem of Redundancy Problem: Will More Nuclear Security Forces Produce More Nuclear Security?" published in Risk Analysis in 2004. The first piece warns against "proliferation fatalism" and "deterrence optimism" to argue that the United States should work to prevent Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons by addressing the security concerns that are likely motivators for Iran's nuclear ambitions. The International Security piece looks into the events surrounding a secret nuclear alert ordered by President Nixon to determine how effective the alert was at achieving the president's goal of forcing negotiations for the end of the Vietnam War. It also questions many of the assumptions made about nuclear signaling and discusses the dangers of new nuclear powers using this technique. Sagan's article on redundancy in Risk Analysis won Columbia University's Institute for War and Peace Studies 2003 Best Paper in Political Violence prize. In this article, Sagan looks at how we should think about nuclear security and the emerging terrorist threat, specifically whether more nuclear facility security personnel increases our safety. His article, "Realism, Ethics, and Weapons of Mass Destruction" appears in Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, edited by Sohail Hashmi and Steven Lee. In addition to these works, Sagan is also finishing a collection of essays for a book tentatively entitled Inside Nuclear South Asia.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Scott D. Sagan

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

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
0
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
CV
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
Scott Sagan Co-Director of CISAC (on sabbatical 2008-09) and Professor of Political Science, Stanford University Speaker
Seminars

Barack Obama's missile defense challenge

Authors
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs
A new administration means a new opportunity to forge a U.S.-Russian missile defense cooperative in Europe. Getting there won't be easy, but it's not impossible.

What a difference eight years makes. Following the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered a new disarmament initiative that called for reducing U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,500 warheads apiece. Although that statement was basically ignored--at the time, Washington was embroiled in the recount saga--Putin's proposal remained the official Russian position on disarmament in subsequent years.

Fast-forward to this recent president election. Instead of calling for reductions in nuclear weapons in the aftermath of Barack Obama's victory, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened to move short-range ballistic missiles to the Kaliningrad region if Obama proceeds with installing missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Thus, he quickly presented Obama with his first major foreign policy test--how to handle the issue of missile defense in Europe, the biggest irritant in U.S.-Russian relations. He also seemed determined to demonstrate that Russia is going to be a difficult and capricious partner for the new U.S. administration.

So far, the Obama team has shown great care in dealing with the thorny issue of missile defense in Europe. During the campaign, they deliberately avoided making any critical statements on the European system to avoid alienating Polish voters in battleground states such as Pennsylvania. And now that the election is over, we're hearing that they're telling the eager Polish government that their general position on missile defense--it should be deployed only "when the technology is proved to be workable"--applies to the European part of the system as well. This isn't good news for missile defense in Europe, since its technology is "workable" only in a narrow sense, if at all.

Of course, this story is far from over. If the Obama administration decides not to deploy interceptors and radar in Europe, it opens itself to a charge of yielding to Russian pressure--especially from Republicans, for whom missile defense is a signature issue. The plan to deploy missile defense in Europe also has supporters in Poland and the Czech Republic; both governments seem to believe that the presence of U.S. personnel on their soil would provide them a security guarantee far stronger than NATO membership. Finally, Russia isn't exactly interested in seeing the issue disappear: The system presents no threat whatsoever, but the controversy allows the Kremlin to score lots of rhetorical points.

Finding a solution that calms the waters and satisfies everyone won't be easy. But it's not impossible either. One thing the new administration must avoid is getting into a discussion with Russia about whether Washington has the right to deploy its military facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic, or whether Russia should have the right to veto such a decision. While a legitimate discussion, we know that it's not going to get us anywhere.

Therefore, we need to take the dispute in a different direction. Instead of arguing about the terms and conditions of missile defense deployment, Washington should accept Moscow's standing offer to use its early warning radars in Armavir and Gabala to build elements of a joint monitoring system. The offer still seems to be on the table, although Russia has been far less enthusiastic about it since the United States made clear that this joint system wouldn't replace the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The problem with those sites might seem serious, but it can be solved. A year ago, Washington considered delaying the actual deployment of the interceptors until the ballistic missile threat from Iran (or maybe some other country) becomes evident. Moscow seemed interested, but the United States withdrew the offer. It certainly could be revived now. And I believe such a compromise would satisfy missile defense supporters and skeptics alike and also buy the necessary time to make the issue less sensitive politically. History shows us that once controversy dissipates, legitimate questions can be asked about effectiveness and cost--and on these counts, the current U.S. plan for missile defense in Europe fails in any sober, independent assessment.

What would remain then is a joint U.S.-Russian project in which both countries would work together to monitor missile tests and satellite launches. It's hard to think of a better legacy of the current missile defense dispute.

All News button
1

Obama administration will give diplomacy a chance to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem

News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs
David Straub, the acting director of Korean Studies Program, argues that Obama administration will finally give diplomacy a chance to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem. He stresses that Senator Obama understands the difficulties of dealing with North Korea and will proceed carefully. If North Korea does not respond to this more nuanced American approach, he concludes, the international community is likely to be more supportive of U.S. efforts to constrain North Korean behavior.

Among conservatives in Korea and other American allied countries, there seems to be some anxiety about the election of a relatively unknown, young African-American liberal as the next American president. Typically, when a new U.S. president is elected, American diplomats seek to reassure allies by telling them that the incoming president will pursue fundamentally the same policies as the outgoing president. However, President Obama clearly will adopt a significantly different foreign policy than President Bush, including toward North Korea.

Obama’s soaring rhetoric has led to a widespread (and correct) impression of him as idealistic, but the long presidential campaign also revealed him to be a disciplined politician and a skillful manager. His foreign policy will be much closer to the prudent realpolitik of President Bush’s father than it will be to the “neo-con” approach of President Bush himself.
And while it is true that Obama does not have deep experience in foreign affairs, his youthful years spent in Indonesia and Hawaii, taken together with his successful navigation of American society as a young African-American man, have given him a genuine empathy for different peoples and cultures. He has the self-confidence and intelligence to listen with an open mind to others and then carefully to make his own decisions.

President Obama’s policy toward North Korea will defy stereotypes of the past. In some ways he will be “softer” on North Korea than President Bush; in other ways, he will be “tougher.”  Like President Bush and his predecessors, President Obama will take the position that he can never accept a North Korea with nuclear weapons. On the other hand, Obama will not engage in bluster such as “all options are on the table,” which most South Koreans reject and which only plays into the DPRK’s hands.

Instead, Obama will finally give diplomacy a fighting chance. Even during the past couple of years, President Bush remained very reluctant to engage fully in negotiations with North Korea. President Obama will order that a policy review be conducted expeditiously, and he will probably appoint a very senior special envoy to take charge of negotiations with North Korea. While maintaining the framework of the Six-Party Talks and consulting very closely with the Republic of Korea and Japan, he will also authorize meaningful bilateral negotiations with North Korea. If those negotiations bear real fruit, he may even visit Pyongyang himself if he is confident that he will be able to strike a deal completely ending North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

President Obama will probably offer North Korea a “more for more” deal. In other words, compared to President Bush he will propose a much more detailed and concrete series of steps to be taken by North Korea, the United States, and other members of the Six-Party Talks. The aim will be agreement on an early end to North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs.

The North Koreans should not think that President Obama will be “easier” than President Bush. If, as may well be the case, the North Koreans reject President Obama’s approach or drag their feet in responding to it, he, unlike President Bush, will have the international credibility to work more effectively with other members of the Six-Party Talks and the international community to limit North Korea’s options.

Moreover, as a hardheaded domestic politician, President Obama will be careful to avoid situations in which the Republican opposition could credibly criticize him as being naïve about North Korea. Indeed, Obama’s team recognizes clearly that, having declared itself a nuclear weapons state and tested a nuclear device, North Korea may not be prepared to verifiably give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.

In formulating and conducting his policy toward North Korea, President Obama will have access to many trusted experts on North Korea, beginning with Vice President Biden and his staff. Obama is also advised by a number of experienced officials from the Clinton administration, from former Defense Secretary Bill Perry to former career diplomat Jeffrey Bader.

U.S. relations with the Republic of Korea are key to any successful American policy toward North Korea. Obama and his team fully appreciate the importance of U.S.-ROK relations and the security alliance. They will coordinate very closely with the Lee Myung-bak administration and never sacrifice the interests of the Republic of Korea, which is immeasurably more important to the United States than the DPRK is or ever will be.
 
President Obama will support the implementation of the agreements President Bush reached with the Republic of Korea on the realignment of U.S. Forces of Korea and the transfer of wartime operational control, as befits the ROK’s military and economic might.
 
Under President Obama, the United States will also aim to approve, with some adjustments, the U.S.-ROK Free Trade Agreement, although it may take a year or so to do so as he perforce deals first with the global financial and economic crises and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  President Obama must be cognizant of the viewpoint of leading congressional Democrats and the constituencies they represent. It may be counterproductive if the ROK pushes too hard, too fast for U.S. approval of the FTA.
 
Obama’s inauguration will also open up new possibilities for U.S.-ROK coordination and cooperation on global issues. Unlike President Bush, whose early unilateralist mindset and specific policies caused dismay among international friends and foes alike, President Obama begins with a vast reservoir of sympathy and respect throughout the world. That will make it easier, and more useful, for the Republic of Korea to cooperate globally more with the United States.
 
In short, South Koreans should be reassured, not that President Obama’s foreign policy will be like that of President Bush, but that it will be different. Perhaps South Koreans will even begin to feel that their alliance with the United States is not just one that they feel they must have for their country’s long-term interests – but also one of which they can feel proud.

All News button
1

Sarah Chayes discusses life in Taliban-resurgent Afghanistan

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Although Iraq dominates the headlines, the situation in Afghanistan may be more decisive to longterm international security, said Sarah Chayes, who has lived in the country since 2001 after covering the last stand of the Taliban for National Public Radio (NPR).

Chayes, an American who directs Arghand, a cooperative in Kandahar that produces soap from local plants and fruits as an alternative to opium production, spent Wednesday, Nov. 5, at Stanford. During several talks with CISAC faculty, staff, students and donors she discussed regional security, the future of democracy in Afghanistan and the stresses of everyday life in the ancient city of Kandahar, where she lives and where civilians must carry firearms to protect themselves. 

Chayes strongly criticized efforts to negotiate with the Taliban, which has fought a protracted guerilla war against the Afghan government since 2004. The extremist movement ruled the country from 1996 to 2001, when the Northern Alliance and NATO forces removed its leaders from power. "There is no intrinsic support from the population for the Taliban," Chayes said. "The Taliban want all, they understand they won't get all so they are trying to get what they can. Negotiating with the Taliban [offers] zero benefit."

Instead, according to Chayes, Afghanistan needs to experience the "real substance of democracy," not simply elections. It also needs a surge of non-military volunteers trained to mentor leaders working in civil society. "Thirty years of combat undoes a lot of structure" in society, she said. "People get things done as fast as possible because they might be shot in the next 50 seconds."

Chayes is the author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan after the Taliban. In 2006, she was awarded The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' inaugural Ruth Adams Award for her work explaining the impact of U.S. policy on Afghanistan after 9/11. The prize recognizes journalists who translate complex issues of peace and security into everyday language and images. Chayes left NPR in 2002 to help rebuild Afghanistan. Initially, she served as field director for Afghans for Civil Society, a non-profit founded by the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. She founded Arghand in May 2005.

All News button
1

Trilateral relations of U.S. and two Koreas under new Obama administration

News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs

"With the current affairs such as the financial crisis and the Iraq War," Gi-wook Shin says, "the new Obama administration may not have the North Korea issues on its priority list for a while.  Lee Myung-bak administration, meanwhile,  is urged to revisit the workable policies of the past as well as to initiate the pragmatic diplomacy towards the collaboration between South Korea and the U.S."

All News button
1

America and Europe After Bush

-

This program is sponsored jointly by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, International Law Society, and Stanford Law School.

José María Aznar was born in Madrid in 1953. He is:

  • Executive President of FAES Presidente Ejecutivo de FAES (The Foundation for Social Studies and Analysis).
  • Distinguished Scholar at the University of Georgetown where he has taught various seminars on contemporary European politics at the Edmund A. Walsh School since the year 2004.
  • Member of the Board of Directors of News Corporation.
  • Member of the Global Advisory Board of J.E. Robert Companies y Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Latin American division
  • Member of the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Council of the United Status.
  • Member of the Advisory Board of Centaurus Capital
  • Advisor of Falck SPA

He became Prime Minister of Spain in 1996, following the electoral victory of the Partido Popular. With the party's subsequent electoral victory in the year 2000, this time with an absolute majority, he led the country again for a new term. His time as Prime Minister lasted up until the elections of 2004, when he voluntarily chose not to run for office again.

Throughout his two terms as Prime Minister of the Government he led an important process of economic and social reform. Thanks to various liberalisation processes and the introduction of measures to promote competition, along with budgetary controls, rationalised public spending and tax reductions, almost 5 million jobs were created in Spain. The Spanish GDP figure grew each year by more than 2%, at an average of 3.4% in fact, featuring an aggregate increase of 64% over eight years. Throughout this period, Spain's average income increased from 78% to 87% of the average income of the European Union. The public deficit decreased from an alarming 6% of GDP to a balanced budget. Furthermore, the first two reductions in income tax that democratic Spain has ever known took place during his two terms in office.

One of José María Aznar's most serious concerns is the battle against terrorism. He is in favour of a firm policy, one that is against any kind of political concession, combined with close international cooperation between democratic countries. He is a strong supporter of the Atlantic Relationship and the European Union's commitment to freedoms and economic reform.

He is the Honorary Chairman of the Partido Popular, a party he chaired between 1990 and 2004. Until the year 2006 he was the President of the Centrist Democrat International (CDI) and Vice-President of the International Democrat Union (IDU), the two international organisations that bring together the parties of the Centre, along with Liberals, Christian Democrats and Conservatives throughout the world.

He forms part of the committees of various organisations, including the committee for the initiative known as "One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)" and the International Committee for Democracy in Cuba (ICDC).

José María Aznar began his political career in the political party known as Alianza Popular, in 1979. In 1982 he was elected a Member of Parliament for Ávila. He then went on to become the Regional Chairman of Alianza Popular in Castile-Leon and the Head of the Regional Government of Castile-Leon between 1987 and 1989. In 1989, following the re-founding of the Partido Popular, he was chosen as a party candidate for Prime Minister in the general elections of 1989. The following year he was elected Chairman of the Party. He led the Partido Popular in the elections of 1993, 1996 and the year 2000. Throughout these four legislatures, he served as a Member of Parliament for Madrid. Between 1989 and 1996 he was the Leader of the Opposition.

José María Aznar graduated in law at the Complutense University. He qualified as an Inspector of State Finances in 1975.

He has written the following books: Cartas a un Joven Español (2007), Retratos y Perfiles. De Fraga a Bush (2005) ("Portraits and Profiles: From Fraga to Bush"), Ocho años de Gobierno (2004) ("Eight Years in Government"), La España en que yo creo (1995) ("The Spain I Believe in"), España: la segunda transición (1994) ("Spain: The Second Transition") and Libertad y Solidaridad (1991) ("Freedom and Solidarity").

José María Aznar has been awarded honorary doctorates by Sophia University in Tokyo (1997), Florida International University (1998), Bar-Ilan University in Israel (2005) Ciencias Aplicadas University in Perú (2006), Andrés Belló University in Chile (2006), Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala (2006) and by Università Cattolica Sacro Cuore in Milán (2007).

He is married to Ana Botella, with whom he has three children and three grandchildren.

A video recording of this event can be viewed at: http://www.law.stanford.edu/calendar/details/2201/#related_information_and_recordings.

Download pdf

Stanford Law School
Room 290

José María Aznar Former Prime Minister, Spain Speaker
Lectures

Global financial reformers must heed Asia's clout

Authors
Phillip Lipscy
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs
Professor Phillip Lipscy discusses the current international financial crisis and provides insight for future reforms. "The IMF and World Bank should be reformed to better reflect the interests and concerns of rising economic powers. Voting shares need to be further redistributed to reflect underlying economic realities. Decision making rules should be modified to give greater weight or agenda-setting authority to regional actors -- the US may have a strong interest in loans to Mexico, but Japan may have a greater stake in Indonesia. Assignment of the top positions should be made truly competitive. Core functions should be decentralized -- both institutions are headquartered in Washington, impeding employment of top talent from Asia and limiting intellectual exchange."

Major international crises often produce tectonic shifts in international relations. Under pressure from key European counterparts, President Bush has agreed to a "new Bretton Woods" summit on Nov. 15.

It would be hard to overstate the potential significance of this meeting. The first Bretton Woods, in 1944, set the rules for monetary relations among nations, and it created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

While European leaders are pushing for greater regulation and a major overhaul of the international financial order, US policymakers have been lukewarm, emphasizing the preservation of free-market capitalism. This transatlantic drama has obscured the more fundamental problem—how to accommodate the historic shift of economic power away from the West toward Asia.

Including India, broader East Asia encompasses more than half of the world's population. The region already accounts for about one-third of global economic output, oil consumption, and CO2 emissions, and this is only likely to grow in the future. Over the course of the 21st century, Asia's economic and geopolitical weight in the world will, in all likelihood, come to rival that of Europe in the 19th century. Asian problems will become increasingly indistinguishable from global problems.

In the face of such dramatic change, the IMF and World Bank are becoming relics of a bygone era. At the time of their creation, by US and European negotiators, the major challenge was to get capital flowing from the US to war-ravaged Europe. The days of the US as creditor state are long gone—our massive current account deficit is financed by importing nearly $1 trillion in foreign capital every year. Major US banks are being rescued by sovereign wealth funds and financial institutions from the Middle East and East Asia. China and Japan alone held over $600 billion of securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, making the bailout of those institutions a major foreign policy issue.

Despite these changed realities, both Bretton Woods institutions remain dominated by the West. By convention, the IMF is led by a European, the World Bank by a US national. The US is the only country with veto power over important decisions in either body.

My analysis of voting shares in the IMF indicates that the Allied powers of World War II have been consistently overrepresented compared to Axis powers despite the passing of more than 60 years since the end of that war. Studies show that IMF lending is biased in favor of recipients with strong economic and diplomatic ties to the US and key European states at the expense of other members.

This unbalanced representation had real consequences during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, when the IMF, as part of its rescue operation, implemented policies widely viewed as contrary to Asian interests. During the crisis, Japanese financial authorities proposed an Asian Monetary Fund as a potential alternative source of liquidity. This proposal was rejected by US officials, who feared dilution of IMF authority. However, over the past decade, East Asian states have stockpiled foreign currency reserves and developed regional cooperation that may eventually develop into a credible alternative to the IMF.

The IMF and World Bank should be reformed to better reflect the interests and concerns of rising economic powers. Voting shares need to be further redistributed to reflect underlying economic realities. Decisionmaking rules should be modified to give greater weight or agenda-setting authority to regional actors—the US may have a strong interest in loans to Mexico, but Japan may have a greater stake in Indonesia. Assignment of the top positions should be made truly competitive. Core functions should be decentralized—both institutions are headquartered in Washington, impeding employment of top talent from Asia and limiting intellectual exchange.

An international financial architecture that fragments or remains centered on the West as Asia rises will probably prove grossly ineffective. Europe attempted much the same during the turbulent period between the two World Wars, resurrecting a system based on British hegemony even as Britain was in relative decline. Those were scary times, with free riding and beggar-thy-neighbor policies feeding mutual distrust and economic catastrophe.

This will not be the last financial crisis we face. Next time, ad hoc cooperation by the US and Europe may prove insufficient. Franklin Roosevelt had the foresight to include China on the United Nations Security Council long before that nation became a geopolitical heavyweight. Similar foresight should be brought to bear as world leaders debate the future of the international financial architecture.

All News button
1
Subscribe to Middle East and North Africa