Five visiting scholars with expertise on Southeast Asia will spend varying portions of the academic year 2008-09 in residence at Stanford. Shorenstein APARC and the Southeast Asia Forum will host four of them: three were selected under the Lee Kong Chian NUS-Stanford Initiative on Southeast Asia. and one is a recipient of a 2008-09 Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellowship. A fifth scholar will be on campus as a National Fellow of the Hoover Institution.

The five are John Ciorciari, Joel S. Kahn, Mark Thompson, Angie Ngoc Tran, and Christian von Luebke.

John Ciorciari spent the 2007-08 academic year at Stanford as a Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow at Shorenstein APARC. He finished a book that examines how Southeast Asian states have "hedged" their relations with the United States and China.

Dr. Ciorciari will spend upcoming academic year at Stanford as a Hoover Institution National Fellow. In that capacity he plans to expand his research to include the international relations of India.

Joel S. Kahn is a professor of anthropology (emeritus) in the School of Social Sciences at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia. He will be at Stanford for the first half of October 2008 as the 2008 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Lecturer.

While at Stanford Professor Kahn will give three public lectures. Their tentative titles are: "A Southeast Asian Modernity?"; "Empires, States, and Political Identities in (Pen)insular Southeast Asia"; and "Religion, Reform, Science, and Secularity." Details including dates, times, and venues will be posted as they become known.

Mark Thompson is a professor of political science at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. He will be in residence at Stanford in Winter and Spring 2009 as the 2009 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellow.

While at Stanford, Prof. Thompson will pursue a book project on "Late Democratization in Pacific Asia." The book will question the claim that democratization in Pacific Asia (including Southeast Asia) has been driven by economic growth and offer an alternative perspective. He will present the results of his project in a public lecture in the spring of 2009. Date, time, venue, and other details will be posted when known.

Angie Ngoc Trần is a professor in the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences and Global Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB). She will be in residence at Stanford for the second half of November 2008 as the 2008 Lee Kong Chian National University of Singapore-Stanford University Distinguished Fellow.

In a public lecture on November 17, 2008 (Mobilized Workers vs. Morphing Capital: Challenging Global Supply Chains in Vietnam), Professor Tran will present the results of her study of labor-capital relations in Vietnam and how the different national origins of investors and owners affect workers' conditions, consciousness, and activism. Details including time and venue will be posted as they become known.

Christian von Luebke was a research fellow in Tokyo at Waseda University's Institute for Global Political Economy in 2007-08 following receipt of his 2007 PhD in public policy and governance at the Australian National University. He will be at Stanford for the 2008-09 academic year as a Walter H. Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellow.

During his residence Dr. von Luebke will pursue a research and writing project on "Good Governance in Transition: Explaining Local Policy Variations in Indonesia, China, and the Philippines." He will give a public lecture on the results of his project in winter or spring 2009. The date, time, venue, and other details will be posted when known.

As a 2007-08 Shorenstein Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, John D. Ciorciari pursued a full and varied agenda of research and writing on Southeast Asia.

Fellowships are more often won on the promise of completing a book than books are finished before the fellowships end. Dr. John Ciorciari broke this “rule” by completing his book manuscript in Spring 2008 and submitting it to a university press for possible publication.

Based on his Oxford dissertation, the work is provisionally entitled “Hedging: Using Southeast Asian States as Case Studies.” In it, he examines the range of options that secondary states possess between outright alignment with and neutrality toward the great powers. He argues that secondary states normally seek to "hedge" by limiting their alignments. They do so to avoid the risks of tight security cooperation with the great powers, including diminished autonomy and entrapment, while reaping sufficient rewards in the form of protection. He presented his findings at a Southeast Asia Forum seminar on May 28, 2008 titled “Dating but Not Married: Southeast Asian Security Responses to the Rise of China.” See the link below for an audio file of the seminar.

In addition to finishing his book on hedging, Ciorciari used his fellowship period to pursue his research interest in Asian financial cooperation, which is increasingly central to broader political relations in the region. He focused on the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI), an effort by China, Japan, South Korea, and the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to develop economic resilience by establishing regional mechanisms for balance-of-payments support.

Ciorciari collaborated on this study with Jennifer Amyx, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and herself a former Shorenstein Fellow and speaker for the Southeast Asian Forum (SEAF) at Shorenstein APARC. Ciorciari and Amyx acknowledge that establishing an effective financing mechanism under the CMI has proven to be a challenging task. Nevertheless, by fostering regular interaction among Asian central bankers and finance ministry officials, the CMI has begun to yield a range of spillover benefits conducive to regional financial resilience. (Schedules permitting, Ciorciari and Amyx may present some of their findings at a SEAF seminar at Stanford in the upcoming academic year.)

As a Shorenstein Fellow in 2007-08 Ciorciari also worked on two projects on Cambodia: a book chapter on the international politics surrounding the long-delayed and finally ongoing Khmer Rouge Tribunal, and an article on China’s relations with the Khmer Rouge regime during the late 1970s. The article argues that the Pol Pot regime effectively punched above its weight in an otherwise asymmetrical relationship by exploiting China's rigid conception of its security interest in Indochina. In studying the Sino-Cambodian alliance, Ciorciari was able to test and illustrate some of the arguments in his book manuscript as to how small states pursue leverage and autonomy in their relations with major powers.

In 2007 Shorenstein APARC and The Asia Foundation chose Dennis Arroyo to be the first Shorenstein APARC/Asia Foundation Visiting Fellow.  Arroyo spent the 2007-08 academic year researching and completing a monograph on "The Political Economy of Successful Reform:  Asian Stratagems."  An edited abstract follows:

Major economic reforms are often politically difficult, causing pain to voters and provoking unrest.  They may be opposed by politicians with short time horizons. They may collide with the established ideology and an entrenched ruling party.  They may be resisted by bureaucrats and by vested interests.  Obstacles to major economic reform can be daunting in democratic and autocratic polities alike.
 
And yet, somehow, past leaders of today's Asian dragons did implement vital economic reforms. "The Political Economy of Successful Reform:  Asian Stratagems" recounts the political maneuvers used by Asian leaders of economic reform in these countries at these pivotal times:  Thailand under General Prem Tinsulanonda; Vietnam during Doi Moi (or Renovation); Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew; China under Deng Xiaoping; India in the 1990s; and South Korea under Park Chung Hee.

The paper classifies these maneuvers as responses to the main political barriers to reform and develops a "playbook" of tactics for economic reformers.  To overcome ideological obstacles, for example, the reformers packaged and presented reforms as ways of strengthening the party in power. Reformers proceeded gradually.  Initially they sought win-win compromises. They blessed pro-market violations as pilot projects. They even created new provinces in order to dilute the anti-reform vote.

The full text of Arroyo's monograph has been published by the Stanford Center for International Development in its working paper series.

Arroyo came to Stanford well qualified to study economic reform techniques.  In 2005 he was named director for national planning and policy at the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) of the Philippines.  His duties included building public support for the economic reforms championed by NEDA.  He has consulted for the World Bank, the United Nations, and the survey research firm Social Weather Stations, and has written widely on socioeconomic topics.  His critique of the Philippine development plan won a mass media award for "best analysis."  He has degrees in economics from the University of the Philippines.

In May 2008 Arroyo presented his findings in a SEAF lecture entitled "The Foxy Art of Herding Dragons: How Sly Asian Leaders Pulled off Politically Difficult Economic Reforms."

In 2008 an Indonesian economist, Sudarno Sumarto, was chosen to become the second Shorenstein APARC/Asia Foundation Visiting Fellow. He will be in residence at Stanford during the 2009-2010 academic year.  

An edited summary of Dr. Sumarto's proposed research and writing at Stanford follows:

Facing the major damage wreaked by the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 on already poor and/or vulnerable Indonesians, the government in Jakarta was forced to launch a series of emergency social safety nets.  These programs targeted multiple sectors:  employment, education, health, food security, and community empowerment.  

Now that a decade has gone by since these measures were undertaken, it is time to draw policy lessons from the experience.  Special attention will be paid in this project to the dynamics of the process of deciding and delivering social protection, the difficulty of enlisting or creating appropriate targeting and implementation mechanisms, institutional enablers and impediments, the role of civil society, the impact of commodity subsidy reforms, and the relevance of good (and bad) governance.  

The study will also draw comparisons between Indonesia's record of targeted social protection and the experiences of other developing countries.  

Dr. Sumarto heads the SMERU Research Institute (Jakarta).  He also lectures at the Bandung Institute of Technology, Universitas Nusa Bangsa (Bogor), and the University of Indonesia (Jakarta).  

Dr. Sumarto has contributed to more than sixty co-authored articles, chapters, reports, and working papers, including "Agricultural Growth and Poverty Reduction in Indonesia," in Beyond Food Production (2007); "Reducing Unemployment in Indonesia," SMERU Working Paper, 2007; and "Improving Student Performance in Public Primary Schools in Developing Countries:  Evidence from Indonesia," Education Economics, December 2006.

Dr. Sumarto has spoken on poverty and development issues in Australia, Chile, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Japan, Morocco, Thailand, and the United Kingdom, among other countries.  He has a PhD and an MA from Vanderbilt University and a BSc Cum Laude from Satya Wacana Christian University (Salatiga), all in economics.  He and his wife Wiwik Widowati have three children.  

The Stanford Program on International and Cross-cultural Education (SPICE) has just announced a major new interdisciplinary, interactive initiative for middle school and high school students on the road to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. “The Road to Beijing” initiative includes a new documentary featuring world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, a new documentary developed by NBC that features Olympians who will participate in the Beijing Olympics, curriculum materials addressing Beijing and issues raised by the Olympics, an interactive website, and teacher professional development. SPICE serves as a bridge between the interdisciplinary work of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and K–14 schools in the United States and independent schools abroad by developing multidisciplinary curriculum materials on important international themes.

“Learning about other cultures and about the migration of ideas among communities is vital in today’s world. In presenting a full range of perspectives, SPICE curricula broaden students’ views of the world and deepen their understanding of their own lives.” Yo-Yo Ma

The Road to Beijing initiative has four major educational components. First is a four-lesson curriculum unit, geared to middle and high school students, that (1) introduces students to the modern city of Beijing through its history, geography, and major attractions and sights; (2) explores some economic, environmental, political, and social issues of modern China and the challenges of hosting the Olympics; (3) introduces some of the Olympians participating in the 2008 Beijing Olympics through a documentary by NBC; and (4) examines musicians’ reflections on Beijing and China through a documentary produced by Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. Stanford scholars, such as Andrew G. Walder, the Denise O’Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology, served as advisors of the curriculum unit.

A second component focuses on two documentaries that are available through the SPICE website. The documentary, The Road to Beijing, produced by the Silk Road Project and narrated by Yo-Yo Ma and featuring music of the Silk Road Ensemble, is available with the Road to Beijing curriculum unit as well as through the SPICE and Silk Road Project websites. An accompanying teacher’s guide is available as well. Olympics broadcaster NBC joined the collaboration with SPICE and has produced a short documentary that features U.S. and Chinese Olympians. The first interview features Stanford alumnus and U.S. gymnast David Durante. The NBC documentary and an accompanying teacher’s guide is also available on the SPICE website.

Third, a new Road to Beijing website showcases many of SPICE’s curriculum units on China, along with new interactive features on the modern city of Beijing and the historic Silk Road. In 2007, SPICE completed a curriculum unit called Along the Silk Road in collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project. A new Silk Road game, designed by David Cohn, Cammy Huang, Gary Mukai, and Johanna Wee, will now allow students to walk and explore the historic Silk Road. Yo-Yo Ma commented, “The wonderful work SPICE is doing to educate young people about the historic Silk Road trading route is significant on many levels. Learning about other cultures and about the migration of ideas among communities is vital in today’s world. In presenting a full range of perspectives, SPICE curricula broaden students’ views of the world and deepen their understanding of their own lives.” Other China-focused curriculum units that have been produced by SPICE include Chinese Dynasties Part One: The Shang Dynasty through the Tang Dynasty, 1600 BCE to 907 CE; Chinese Dynasties Part Two: The Song Dynasty through the Qing Dynasty, 960 to 1911 CE; China's Cultural Revolution; Ethnic Minority Groups in China; Hong Kong in Transition: A Look at Economic Interdependence; Religions and Philosophies in China: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism; and 10,000 Shovels: China's Urbanization and Economic Development.

As a fourth component, the Road to Beijing initiative offers teacher professional development seminars, another hallmark of SPICE’s work over the past three decades. Many seminars have already been held at Stanford and for the East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Schools, the European Council of Independent Schools, and the Chicago Public Schools. Most recently, the SPICE staff and Albert Dien, professor emeritus of Asian Languages, gave four seminars for the Chicago Public Schools in May 2008. Each seminar featured a lecture by Albert Dien and interactive demonstrations of SPICE curricula by the SPICE staff. In October 2008, SPICE and the Silk Road Project will work with the New York City Public Schools.

In collaboration with organizations such as NBC and the Silk Road Project, SPICE will continue to channel its interdisciplinary work on key international issues (and their historical and cultural underpinnings) — political economy, security, the environment, and health — to schools in our nation and the world. SPICE invites interested teachers to visit its new website, show their students the new documentaries, and engage their students in a study of historic topics concerning China, such as the Silk Road, as well as contemporary topics concerning China, such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“We are delighted that SPICE is once again sending the university’s path-breaking, interdisciplinary scholarship and research out into the world, educating a new generation of students and scholars about contemporary issues occasioned by the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and China’s historic rise,” said FSI Director Coit D. Blacker.

Gary Mukai personally introduced the new Road to Beijing initiative to Stanford alumni in Chicago on June 16, 2008, at a Leadership Circle Event.

As oil prices surge through $140/barrel at the time of writing, surely one can at least count on the invisible hand of the market to drive further exploration and production and ultimately bring more supplies on line, right? Or perhaps, more ominously, high oil prices presage a darker future of shortage and conflict as global oil fields pass their geological “peak”? In fact, both positions miss a crucial point about the dynamics of the world oil market — that it is increasingly animated by the counterintuitive behavior of the state-owned oil and gas giants that now control the vast majority of the world’s hydrocarbon resources.

“On average national oil companies (NOCs) extract resources at a far lower rate than international oil companies (IOCs), leaving about 700 billion barrels of oil effectively ‘dead’ to the world market.”So-called “national oil companies,” or NOCs, own about 80 percent of the world’s proven reserves of oil, a percentage that has been on the rise as the persistent high price environment encourages countries to assert even tighter control over the rent streams flowing from their resources. NOCs are curious and variegated beasts, and, contrary to the popular imagination, some are highly capable both technically and organizationally. Brazil’s Petrobras is an acknowledged world leader in deepwater drilling, while Norway’s StatoilHydro is highly regarded for its competence and transparent business practices. Saudi Arabia’s national champion, SaudiAramco, is secretive to the outside world but generally considered to be a well-run, technically capable organization. At the other end of the continuum, government infighting and micromanagement hobble Mexico’s Pemex and Kuwait’s KPC. Once-independent PDVSA in Venezuela has been remade by President Hugo Chávez into a government puppet that spends liberally on social programs but consistently undershoots its production targets. And indeed some national oil companies are hardly oil companies at all — Nigeria’s NNPC, for example, is mostly a rent-seeking bureaucracy.

What NOCs do share in common as distinct from the familiar international oil companies (IOCs) is being answerable to a host government, which inevitably brings with it some focus on objectives other than simple profit maximization. Typically, an NOC arises originally from the desire of resource-rich governments (“principals”) to gain more effective control over resource extractors (“agents”) by creating an oil champion owned by the state. Prior to NOC formation, governments are frequently (and often justifiably) wary of exploitation by the foreign oil operators providing hydrocarbon extraction services. Lacking a deep understanding of the costs of production, states are simply unable to be sure they are taxing their agents appropriately. In addition to enhancing control over the hydrocarbon sector and the revenue it brings, states may hope for other benefits from the NOC: cheap energy to fuel a growing economy, employment and development of local industry to support the hydrocarbon sector, or even foreign policy leverage derived from control of key resources.

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A detailed study of NOC performance and strategy at the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at FSI suggests a useful way of thinking about the effects of NOC resource domination on world oil and gas markets. Price versus quantity supply curves from classical economics assume that increased price will spur efforts to expand supply. Unfortunately, the counterintuitive reality for NOCs is that, when it comes to expanding supply in the current high-price environment, most either 1) can but don’t want to or 2) want to but can’t. The end result is what one could call a “backward-bending” supply curve — additional price increases do little or nothing to boost supply.

“The world has plentiful hydrocarbons in the ground, but that’s where many of them are going to stay due to the unique organizational and political dynamics of the NOCs.”In the “can but don’t want to” category are resourcerich governments that have decided they cannot assimilate any more money. Already, their investments are running into political resistance around the globe — witness Dubai’s failed attempt to purchase U.S. port management contracts, CNOOC’s failed bid for Unocal, or the increasing calls for curbs on the activities of sovereign wealth funds. Nations may decide they have enough cash and are better off leaving resources in the ground where they safely await monetization at a later date.

In the “want to but can’t” camp are countries and their NOCs that are simply unable to provide the stable political and regulatory climate to support additional build-out of expensive production and transport infrastructure. This situation is particularly common for natural gas, where long investor time horizons are needed to bankroll the multibilliondollar capital costs of pipelines or liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals.

Meanwhile, international oil companies are left on the sidelines salivating helplessly over the vast reserves in NOC hands. Venezuela’s Orinoco region could yield hundreds of billions of barrels of heavy crude, but the government and a nowpliant PDVSA invite favored countries and their NOCs to explore rather than selecting the operators most capable of extracting the challenging but plentiful resource. Technical expertise and massive investment are required to fully develop vast Russian gas fields including Kovykta, Shtokman, and Yamal, but IOCs already burned by nationalizations and shifting rules in these and other Russian ventures are unlikely to be in a position to supply enough of either. In the face of dwindling resources they can tap, IOCs will need to diversify their business models, perhaps tackling technologically challenging options like oil sands or liquids from coal in conjunction with the carbon storage techniques that could make these palatable from a climate change perspective. Ironically, the only “easy” oil for IOCs has become oil that is geologically and technologically difficult.

While oil price is dependent on many factors (including global economic health) and is impossible to forecast with certainty, one can confidently predict continued tight supply of oil and gas, especially given global demand that will be propped up indefinitely by rising consumption in China and India. The world has plentiful hydrocarbons in the ground, but that’s where many of them are going to stay due to the unique organizational and political dynamics of the NOCs. Leverage over the market is weak; measures to reduce demand for oil and gas (though politically unpopular) or to spur development of alternative fuels and associated infrastructure (though slow to develop at scale) may be all that we have.

One of the more remarkable underreported stories of 2008 was a speech in which the State department’s legal adviser John Bellinger admitted that there “are also realities about the International Criminal Court that the United States must accept.” He also stated that the Bush administration would work with the Court to maximize its chances of success in Darfur. Bellinger did not say that the United States might actually join the Court, but acknowledged that it enjoyed widespread international support and legitimacy, and that the United States could fruitfully cooperate with it on areas of mutual benefit.

Neither mea culpa nor volte-face, the speech nonetheless indicates the distance the administration has traveled in seven years. While Bellinger’s oratory went largely unnoticed by foreign policy wonks and the attentive public alike, it did not escape the scrutiny of John Bolton, who dismissed it as Clinton-era “pabulum” and reflective of “the yearning the Rice State Department has for acceptance” by academics and foreign intellectuals. He added ominously, “the fight resumes after Jan. 20.”

Bolton has been a powerful influence on Republican foreign policy for the last twenty years. Before his appointment as ambassador to the United Nations in 2005—which was achieved without Senate confirmation—Bolton dominated arms-control policy in the first Bush term. He killed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, negotiations with North Korea, and the Biological Weapons Convention verification protocol. During the Clinton years, he campaigned tirelessly from his Heritage Foundation perch for missile defense and against global governance, which he seems to equate with global government. In 1998, when then-Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan released a report critical of both the United Nations secretariat and member states for the failure to prevent genocide in Srebrenica, Bolton chastized Annan for having the temerity to criticize governments for what they did or did not do in the former Yugoslavia. He added menacingly: “I think if he continues down this road, ultimately it means war, at least with the Republican Party.”

Bolton came of age politically during Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign. The future policy heavyweight was a high schooler in Baltimore at the time. He honed his conservatism at Yale College and Yale Law School, ducked Vietnam through a National Guard posting (“looking back, I am not terribly proud of this calculation”), and got his first taste of Washington as an intern to Spiro Agnew. During the Bush Sr. presidency, Bolton was Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs in James Baker’s State Department, and was one of the first people who Baker called when he needed a posse of chad-disputing lawyers in Florida in November 2000. Bolton’s name keeps showing up in various articles about the fight inside the Republican Party for the soul of John McCain’s foreign policy.

All of this makes it imperative to read his memoirs, which clarify the stakes in the forthcoming election. Although it is hard to imagine Bolton in a McCain administration—his memoirs offend so many within his party, across the aisle, and overseas, that Bolton could not win Senate confirmation for capitol dog-catcher—Bolton will be plotting, pressing, and pushing to force McCain’s foreign policy back to the unilateralism of George Bush’s first term, when the war on terror meant never having to say you’re sorry. And there are important national security posts that do not require Senate approval.

The memoir reads like an international relations primer done in the style of a modern morality tale—imagine Kenneth Waltz's classic Man, the State, and War as written by Ayn Rand.

To Bolton, the United Nations is a “target rich environment,” and I had a front row seat to watch his gunslinging. In 2005 I served as Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. I was responsible for developing member-state support for his efforts to overhaul the United Nations. In that capacity, I was in Brussels in March 2005 when President Bush nominated Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations. One high-ranking EU official recoiled in horror, and, to share his agita, repeated two of Bolton’s more famous lines: that “UN headquarters could lose ten floors and no one would know the difference,” and that “there was no United Nations.” How in the world, the official asked, could such a man be Ambassador to the United Nations?

Amidst nodding heads and shared pained looks, I offered that if I could pick the ten floors, I would agree with Bolton. Moreover, I said, any sentient being who spends time in Turtle Bay—the Manhattan site of the United Nations—will at some point in frustration say to themselves that there is no United Nations. Bolton’s sin was to say it publicly. Finally, I suggested that John Bolton was irrelevant: “If the President of the United States and the Secretary of State want a strong, effective United Nations, then Bolton will have to deliver. If they don’t, you could have John Kerry as the U.S. ambassador, and nothing will happen.”

Oh well; win some, lose some. Which is what Condoleeza Rice is rumored to have told a friend who asked how John Bolton could have possibly been nominated for the position under her watch.

Or more accurately, I was half right, half wrong. Reading this book, one can almost feel sorry for how unsuited Bolton was for his new job. For four years he had been the point man for breaking American commitments abroad, insulting allies and enemies alike, ditching the ABM Treaty, and unsigning the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (“my happiest moment at State”). In the heady days of the first Bush administration, when it believed the United States was so powerful it could get anything that it wanted without friends, partners, or institutions, Bolton was the “say no” guy, a job he performed with great brio. How could he know that in 2005 his big boss, the President, and his nominal boss, the Secretary of State, would actually decide that international cooperation was necessary, and that maybe we should start worrying about America’s free fall in world opinion? A pit bull in the first term, Bolton would be a yap dog in the second, grating on the Secretary of State, the President, and most American allies.

Almost sorry, for whatever else you say about John Bolton, he is not of the “we can disagree without being disagreeable” school of American politics. This is one of the nastiest, pettiest memoirs in the annals of American diplomatic history. Among the many targets of insults and catty remarks are former and present U.K. ambassadors to the United Nations Emyr Jones Parry, Adam Thomson (“I could never look at or listen to Thomson without immediately thinking of Harry [Potter] and all his little friends”), and John Sawers; recent U.K. foreign ministers; just about every UN civil servant mentioned; indeed, just about every U.S. civil servant mentioned, along with countless journalists and politicians.

The memoir reads like an international relations primer done in the style of a modern morality tale—imagine Kenneth Waltz’s classic Man, the State, and War as written by Ayn Rand. Bolton, usually singlehandedly, takes on what he calls the High Minded, the Normers (those who create international norms of behavior or try to “[whip] the United States into line with leftist views of the way the world should look”), the EAPeasers (career State Department officials who advocate negotiations with North Korea), the Risen Bureaucracy, the Crusaders of Compromise, the Arms Control True Believers, and the EUroids.

The book has the formulaic allegories typical of the genre—the young, innocent female (Kristen Silverberg, Assistant Secretary for International Organization Affairs) driven to tears after being berated by the cold-hearted career bureaucrat (Nicholas Burns); the noble knight (Bolton himself) fighting against the political higher ups who care only about “positioning themselves” (Rice) or their legacy (Colin Powell). And of course Bolton’s plaintive cries that the 2005-06 changes in administration policy occurred against the will of the President. One sees the peasants now: ‘If only the King knew what was happening, this would never go on.’

Now add a heaping dose of xenophobia. Foreigners, appeasing foreigners, foreigners claiming to know us better than we know ourselves: all loom large in Bolton’s memoirs. He insults the former Swedish foreign minister and President of the General Assembly Jan Eliasson as not only having “an ethereal Hammarskjöldian vision problem, but also a Gunnar Myrdal problem, yet another foreigner who ‘understood’ us better than we did ourselves.” (This is the Myrdal who shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with Friedrich Hayek, and whose classic book on race, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, was cited in Brown v. Board of Education.) At one point in his belittlement of a Bush political appointee, a special assistant to Condoleeza Rice, no less, Bolton adds that she was “a naturalized citizen originally from Pakistan,” in case we wondered why she could not possibly understand America’s real foreign policy interests. In Bolton’s worldview Zbigniew Brzezinski is probably a naturalized American citizen originally from Poland; Henry Kissinger, a naturalized American citizen originally from Germany.

In the Bolton universe, you want Iran and North Korea to be referred to the Security Council, so that when it fails to unite behind a resolute strategy, the United States is then free to take the tough action it needs to take. And in the case of North Korea, Bolton is clear about what that would be: “unilateralist, interventionist, and preemptive.” Is it any wonder that when it came to Iran and North Korea, our allies and adversaries were loathe to refer them anywhere near Bolton?

Richard Hofstadter’s 1964 article “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” was prompted by the supporters of the Goldwater campaign. Bolton strides right off the pages of Hofstadter’s essay:

He is always manning the barricades of civilization . . . he does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

According to Bolton, we do not need diplomats who negotiate, seek common ground, and strive for cooperative solutions. We need litigators who will go to the wall defending American interests, who will understand that when others say no, they mean no, and that therefore compromise is illusion. But in a world where the United States needs international cooperation for its own peace and prosperity, what comes next? Bolton’s answers are laughable—we stick with our “closest friends in the United Nations”—Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands. Or we forge a new alliance with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand to overcome the parasitic and paralytic EU. The road to global primacy runs through . . . Wellington?

There are, of course, some glaring contradictions in the memoirs. Bolton is known as a sovereignty hawk and he spells out the content of that doctrine as “greater independence and fewer unnecessary restraints.” The job of civil servants, politically appointed or career, is “to implement the president’s policies.” So it comes as a double shock when we find Bolton handing a draft Security Council resolution to the Israeli ambassador, in case the ambassador wants to ask his Prime Minister to appeal directly to Bush or Rice to change President Bush’s policy on Lebanon.

Another example concerns Bolton’s recurring beratement of UN officials for forgetting that they work for the member states. He then describes how one Under-Secretary-General, American appointee Christopher Burnham, surreptitiously showed him budget documents that put the United States at an advantage in budget negotiations. It is hard to see how you can have it both ways. Either UN officials serve all member states equally or the organization is up for grabs to the most powerful state.

But it is the big betrayal that is at the heart of the book. Facing a quagmire in Iraq, a faltering coalition in Afghanistan, a nuclear armed North Korea, the possibility of a nuclear Iran, and a war against terror that was creating more, not fewer, terrorists, Condoleeza Rice convinced President Bush that maybe they should stop digging a bigger hole for American foreign policy. And that meant actually trying diplomacy in North Korea, Iran, and the Middle East.

The losers were John Bolton and his acolytes; the winners were the professionals like Nicholas Burns and Christopher Hill. Faced with defeat and repudiation of the failed policies he advocated, Bolton’s response is familiar and tiresome: the professionals had secretly hijacked the president’s policy; the Secretary of State cares more about appeasing foreigners than protecting American interests.

The moment of reckoning for Bolton and for the President that nominated him is not described in the book, but it took place two months after Bolton left the administration. When the United States and North Korea reached a deal in February 2007 that holds the promise of denuclearizing the country, Bolton tried to scuttle it. Asked by reporters whether he was loyal to the President, Bolton answered, “I’m loyal to the original policy.”

What did Bolton achieve at the United Nations? Very little, which was fine by him and fine by the cast of nonaligned Ambassadors who oppose a more effective international organization. I asked one of them in December 2006 if he was happy that Bolton was leaving. He said, “No, we’ve learned how to deal with Mr. Bolton.” When I sought clarification, he said, “Look, Bolton comes in and asks for the sun, the moon, and the stars, and we say ‘no.’ He then says, ‘I told you so’ and leaves. Everybody is happy.”

Which returns us to the question of why anyone would want to wade through these 500 self-serving pages. The best answer: to remind yourself of the stakes of this upcoming election and why the United States needs more old-fashioned diplomacy and less paranoia and arrogance. A McCain presidency might not eschew diplomacy, but in the political free-for-all that is the Republican party, Bolton and his minions are always there, ready to denigrate any agreement or compromise, to sabotage and subvert real diplomacy.

Asked by reporters whether he was loyal to the President, Bolton answered, "I'm loyal to the original policy."

To understand the stakes, consider the little known and even less appreciated record of American negotiations with North Korea since 1994. Between what was called the “Agreed Framework” that brought North Korea back into the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1994 and the end of 2000, the United States and North Korea reached twenty agreements on a wide array of issues. Certain of these agreements foundered in implementation, but an objective assessment shows that some of the noncompliance stemmed from constraints placed by American domestic politics.

The Bolton strategy killed the Agreed Framework, hoping through threats, sanctions, and use of force to end the North Korean regime. Unfortunately for Bolton—fortunately for the rest of us—our ally South Korea and our necessary partner China did not want to deal with the consequences: either a war or a collapsed, deadly state on their borders. In the end, they did not have to because North Korea left the NPT, developed a nuclear bomb, and tested it, bankrupting the Bolton policy and producing the sharp change of strategy that has born fruit in recent North Korean steps to end its nuclear program.

Writing about the successes of American negotiators in bringing North Korea and the United States back together in February 2007, former State Department negotiator Robert Carlin and Stanford Professor Emeritus John Lewis have described why Bolton and his crowd loathe diplomacy is loathed by Bolton and his crowd, and why it is so necessary:

Diplomats strive to put down words all of them can swallow and hopefully their superiors in [the] capital can stomach. Written agreements are difficult to reach. The pain often comes not so much in dealing with the other side but in dealing with your own. Unless you are dictating terms to a defeated enemy, you are going to have to compromise on something, probably several somethings, that will make many people unhappy. That was done for the February 13th agreement, and there is no shame to it.

John Bolton did much damage to American interests in the first Bush administration, but he was implementing the president’s policy. President Bush deserves the blame for putting Bolton in a position to continue hardming American interests even when the overall direction of policy changed.

Given that many countries treated the United States as radioactive in 2005; given that trust and confidence in the United States were at all time lows; given that our record was one of a violator of international law and human rights; President Bush, had he truly wanted to start to move the United States out of the hole he had been so assiduously digging, would have had to send to the United Nations an ambassador with extraordinary listening skills, who could work across various international chasms, rebuild respect for American diplomacy, and, yes, advocate agreements that would make a lot of people unhappy. Someone, in fact, a lot like our present Ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, a naturalized citizen originally from Afghanistan. Instead he sent . . . Yosemite Sam.

So back to January 20. A new American president will take office with grinding wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a nuclear-armed North Korea, an Iran headed that way, and crises in Sudan, Israel and Palestine, Lebanon, and Pakistan. Our foreign policy is anathema; our reputation in tatters. Throw in big issues like global warming, non-proliferation, catastrophic terrorism, and a potential pandemic of a deadly new influenza. It is hard to see how any of these crises or issues can be solved without sustained international cooperation and strong international institutions. Take global warming: protecting Americans from its ravages will depend on exercising sovereignty to strike deals with other countries whose domestic behavior threatens us and whose security our domestic behavior threatens. A narrow view of sovereignty as the ability to do as we damned well please will be—quite literally—the death of us all.

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“Emerging democracies must demonstrate that they can solve governance problems and meet citizens’ expectations for freedom, justice, a better life, and a fairer society.”

If the big global story of the 1980s and 1990s was the remarkable expansion of democracy, the bad news of this decade is that democracy is slipping into recession. In the two decades following the Portuguese revolution in 1974, the number of democracies tripled (from 40 to 120) and the percentage of the world’s states that are at least electoral democracies more than doubled (to about 60 percent). Since the late 1990s however, there has been little if any net progress in democracy. To be sure, significant new transitions to democracy took place in countries like Mexico, Indonesia, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. But globally, the democratic wave has been neutralized and is now at risk of being overtaken by an authoritarian undertow, which has extinguished democracy in such states as Pakistan, Russia, Nigeria, Venezuela, Bangladesh and Kenya. In fact, two-thirds (15) of all the reversals of democracy (23) since 1974 have taken place just in the last eight years, since the October 1999 military coup in Pakistan.

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Two other negative trends are important to note. One is the implosion of democratic openings in the Arab world. Under pressure from the George W. Bush administration beginning in 2003, several authoritarian Arab regimes liberalized political life and held competitive, multiparty elections. Then, Islamist political forces made dramatic gains in Egypt and Lebanon and won a majority of seats in Palestine and Iraq — and suddenly the Bush Administration got cold feet. Arab democrats who had surfaced and mobilized felt abandoned and betrayed. The liberal secular politician Ayman Nour, who had the temerity to challenge President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt’s first contested presidential election, languishes in prison three years later. The country’s political opening is now frozen, while more than a billion dollars in American aid continues to flow to the regime.

The second negative trend is that authoritarian states have, unfortunately, learned some of the lessons of democratic breakthroughs of the past decade, particularly the color revolutions that brought down neocommunist autocracies in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. As a result, they have closed political space, swallowed up or arrested independent media, crushed independent political opposition, sabotaged or shut down innovative uses of the Internet, and sought to block or sever external flows of democratic assistance. Vladimir Putin’s Russia (with its sinister cabal of savvy Kremlin “political technologists”) has blazed the trail in this authoritarian pushback, but China, Belarus, Iran, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and other “post” communist and Middle Eastern dictatorships have followed suit. To make matters worse, China and Russia have drawn together with the Central Asian dictatorships in a new club, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, to formalize and advance their authoritarian pushback.

To renew democratic progress in the world, we must understand the reasons for the democratic recession. Authoritarian learning is one. Another has been the inconsistent and often unilateralist policies of the United States. Although President Bush has done much to put democracy promotion at the center of American foreign policy and has substantially increased funding for U.S. democracy assistance programs, he has also alienated potential allies in the effort to advance democracy globally by associating democracy promotion with the use of (largely unilateral) force, as in Iraq; by promoting democracy with a tone that was often self-righteous and a style that was too often poorly coordinated with our democratic allies; and then by failing to sustain pressure for democratic change when the going got rough in the Middle East.

Structural factors have also driven the recession of democracy. One has had to do with the global political economy. As the price of oil has gone up, the prospects for democracy have receded. Russia, Nigeria, and Venezuela have all seen their democracies slip back into authoritarianism as oil prices have skyrocketed, sending huge new infusions of discretionary revenue into the hands of autocratic leaders, which they have used to buy off opponents and strengthen their security apparatuses. In Iran and Azerbaijan, surging oil revenues have shored up authoritarian states that once seemed vulnerable.

A second and more pervasive factor has had to do with the performance of the new democracies. Some new democracies are holding their own (like Mali) and even making progress (like Brazil and Indonesia) in the face of enormous accumulated problems and challenges. But the general reality, even in these countries, is that democracy often does not work for average citizens. Rather, it is blighted by multiple forms of bad governance: abusive police and security forces, domineering local oligarchies, inept and indifferent state bureaucracies, corrupt and pliant judiciaries, and ruling elites who routinely shred the rule of law in the quest to get rich in office. As a result, citizens grow alienated from democracy and become susceptible to the patronage crumbs of corrupt political bosses and the demagogic appeals of authoritarian populists like Putin in Russia and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

“If democracies do not work better to contain crime and corruption, generate economic growth, relieve economic inequality, and secure freedom and a rule of law, people will eventually lose faith and turn to authoritarian alternatives.”Before democracy can spread further, it must take deeper root where it has already sprouted. Emerging democracies must demonstrate that they can solve governance problems and meet citizens’ expectations for freedom, justice, a better life, and a fairer society. If democracies do not work better to contain crime and corruption, generate economic growth, relieve economic inequality, and secure freedom and a rule of law, people will eventually lose faith and turn to authoritarian alternatives. Struggling democracies must be consolidated, so that all levels of society become enduringly committed to democracy as the best form of government and to the country’s constitutional norms and restraints. Western governments and international aid donors can assist in this process by making most foreign aid contingent on key principles of good governance: a free press, an independent judiciary, and vigorous, independently led institutions to control corruption. International donors also need to expand their efforts to assist these institutions of horizontal accountability as well as initiatives in civil society that monitor the conduct of government and press for institutional reform.

The only way to stem the democratic recession is to show that democracy really is the best form of government — that it can not only provide political freedom but also improve social justice and human welfare.

Leading matters is an inspirational stanford tour that reveals how the university is changing and reinventing itself. Designed exclusively for Stanford alumni, family, and friends, Leading Matters is being held in 17 locations that stretch from London to Hong Kong. Speakers include Stanford President John Hennessy, distinguished deans, and faculty. Each event features thought-provoking faculty panels, stimulating seminars, and a state-of-the-art media presentation.

Several FSI faculty members presented their research findings at Leading Matters events in Seattle, San Diego, and Hong Kong, which were sponsored by The Stanford Challenge and the Stanford Alumni Association.

In Seattle, on January 26, FSI faculty led the panel, “Emerging Superpowers: Influence and Supremacy in the 21st Century,” which addressed how the landscape of world power has evolved since the end of the Cold War and what factors contribute to the making of current superpowers.

The panel, moderated by Dean Robert Joss of the Graduate School of Business, included William J. Perry, Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor, FSI Senior Fellow, and the 19th secretary of defense; Michael A. McFaul, professor of political science, Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, and director of CDDRL; and Stephen J. Stedman, professor of political science (by courtesy) and senior fellow at CISAC and FSI. Said Perry, on efforts to reduce nuclear arms worldwide, “If we want to end the dangers that nuclear weapons pose to our civilization, we should not be waiting for divine intervention. We ourselves must take the necessary action.”

Rosamond L. Naylor, director of the Program on Food Security and the Environment and Julie Wrigley Senior Fellow, presented as part of the panel, “Big Plans for a Small Planet: Can We Feed the World Without Wrecking the Oceans?” moderated by Dean Pamela Matson of the School of Earth Sciences. Addressing some of the economic and environmental ramifications of the world’s growing dependence on the oceans for food, Naylor said, “Promoting environmentally sustainable fish farming operations requires knowledge of waste flows from open netpens, the ecological impacts of farming on wild fish populations, the economics of farming, and the regulatory Decisive Gifts Enable Summer Fellows Program to Continue with Bold Vision institutions governing the industry. Stanford is unique in integrating all of these factors into its analysis of the aquaculture sector.”

In San Diego, on March 8, Dean Richard Saller of the School of Humanities and Sciences moderated a panel on “Clash of Cultures,” featuring Stephen D. Krasner, Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations and FSI Senior Fellow; Abbas Milani, Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies, research fellow and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution; and Martha Crenshaw, professor of political science (by courtesy) and senior fellow at CISAC and FSI. They explored how cultural differences influence power relations between nations in the post–Cold War world. Said Crenshaw, “Actually, the ‘new’ terrorism is not so different from the ‘old’ in terms of goals, methods, and organization. Terrorism in a variety of forms has occurred in all cultural contexts. What all expressions of the phenomenon have in common is political motivation. Terrorist violence is best understood as politics, not culture.”

In Hong Kong on April 19, President Hennessy and FSI Director Coit D. Blacker addressed the changing balance of power between the U.S., China, and India. Scott Rozelle, Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow, spoke on the panel, “Troubled Waters,” moderated by Dean Pamela Matson. Noting that more than 1.1 billion people have no access to safe or plentiful water, Rozelle addressed implications for global health and economic development.

Asked Rozelle, “Is China facing a water crisis? Some say yes. It could destablize China. It could even push China to ‘starve the world’ by reducing its ability to produce food and force it to turn to international markets, which would push up the cost of food globally. Can Stanford’s research help build ‘bridges’— sound policy bridges — over troubled waters? Should Freeman Spogli Institute researchers be involved in such work? We believe the answer is unequivocally yes. We are getting involved in the solutions to society’s most complicated problems. We are building partnerships with government officials, academics, and community leaders — and most of all the poorest of the poor, in trying to become builders of bridges.”