Stanford University

Recent Advances in the Development of an Alternative Global Rare Earth Supply Chain

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For spring quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

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About the Event: With China's rapid rise and the reemergence of Russia as a major power, the global stage is set for multipolar competition for critical metals that support a variety of advanced technologies and provide the foundation for energy transitions, communication, and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. While the sources of rare earth elements (REEs) are slowly expanding, the REEs are finding accelerated demand in more applications, such as in electric vehicle batteries and permanent magnet motors. Consequently, many national initiatives are designed to respond to growing demand by discovering new ore deposits, finding substitute elements for specific applications, developing separation and extraction technologies, or recycling end-of-life (EOL) products. Despite these national initiatives, the current global REE supply chain is still highly imbalanced and tightly controlled by just a few countries. Such an imbalance of the critical metals supply chain poses a significant challenge to the energy transition and national security of many countries worldwide. With an in-depth analysis, this research offers insights into the current progress in developing an alternative REE supply chain and the possibilities of future strategic, technological, and economic international engagements.
 

About the Speaker: Dr. Gorakh Pawar is a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Dr. Pawar holds a doctorate in Mining Engineering and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Pawar is researching the global imbalanced critical material supply chain that poses a significant challenge to the energy transition and national security of many countries worldwide. Dr. Pawar is also a research scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory of the United States Department of Energy and a recipient of the Early Career Exceptional Achievement Award of Idaho National Laboratory. Dr. Pawar has spearheaded many projects resolving the fundamental scientific bottlenecks in advancing clean energy technologies.

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

Gorakh Pawar
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

Chinese Grand Strategy

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Cover of the book 'Strategy in the Contemporary World' and screenshot of first page of Oriana Skylar Mastro's chapter "Chinese Grand Strategy"

This chapter briefly covers the history of Chinese grand strategy since 1949 before focusing most heavily on China's strategy of rejuvenation under Xi Jinping. It also covers some of the domestic factors that have influenced Chinese grand strategy over time. It then highlights two components central to China's grand strategy — its approach to international institutions and its maritime ambitions. The chapter ends with a discussion of the United States shift to great power competition with China.

Below is an excerpt from Mastro's chapter in Strategy in the Contemporary World, edited by John Baylis, James J. Wirtz, and Jeannie L. Johnson, reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.
 

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Nuclear Deterrence and the US-China Strategic Relationship

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Nuclear Deterrence and the US-China Strategic Relationship
Book Chapters
December 2021

Military Competition With China: Harder Than the Cold War?

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Military Competition With China: Harder Than the Cold War?
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September 2021
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In Strategy in the Contemporary World, edited by John Baylis, James J. Wirtz, and Jeannie L. Johnson, Oriana Skylar Mastro examines the evolution of Chinese grand strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping, its drivers, and its implications.

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Oriana Skylar Mastro
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Oxford University Press

Foreign Policy in Hard Economic Times

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For winter quarter 2022, CISAC will be hosting hybrid events. Many events will offer limited-capacity in-person attendance for Stanford faculty, staff, fellows, visiting scholars, and students in accordance with Stanford’s health and safety guidelines, and be open to the public online via Zoom. All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 

                                                                                           

About the Event: Freddy Chen has developed a domestic political theory to explain the consequences of economic shocks for foreign policy. He argues that political leaders have incentives to improve their perceived competence by linking economic grievances to foreign countries. This linkage, in turn, increases public desire for more hawkish foreign policy. Nonetheless, leaders’ ability to make such connections depends on whether they can successfully manipulate information about the culpability for economic shocks. Therefore, the extent to which leaders can control the information environment determines whether an economic shock leads to more aggressive foreign policy. Survey experiments fielded on the American public and a unique sample of U.S. foreign policy analysts show that the information environment shapes elites’ expectations about leaders’ political behavior, public perceptions of leader competence, perceived culpability for the economic shock, and public preferences over foreign policy. Moreover, a cross-national analysis demonstrates that an economic shock tends to increase foreign policy hawkishness if the shock is more foreign-related or if the public has less access to a potential voice of the opposition. This article advances our understanding of the relationship between economic shocks, foreign policy, and public opinion as well as the interactions between domestic politics and international relations, with important implications for both political science research and policymakers.

About the Speaker: Frederick Chen is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and currently a Pre-doctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. His research focuses on how economics and security can interact to influence international relations, particularly through domestic political mechanisms. His work has appeared in the Journal of Politics and Conflict Management and Peace Science. He received the David A. Lake Award for best paper from the International Political Economy Society. He earned his M.A. in International Relations from Peking University (2016) and B.A. in International Politics from Tsinghua University (2013).

Virtual to Public. Only those with an active Stanford ID with access to William J Perry Conference Room in Encina Hall may attend in person. 

Frederick R. Chen CISAC
Seminars
Research Seminar Series

South Korea Votes, Beijing Watches

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Gi-Wook Shin
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Hannah June Kim
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This article first appeared in the online magazine American Purpose.  

On March 9, South Koreans head to the voting booths to elect their new president. Although conventional wisdom posits that foreign affairs have little effect on voting preferences, South Koreans have defied this prediction in the past—and now, they may once again. Indeed, the atmosphere in this year’s election recalls that of 2002, when anti-American sentiments swept the South Korean presidential election. This time, it may be anti-Chinese sentiments that make an impact.

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According to our survey of over one thousand South Koreans, conducted this past January, a large majority of respondents—78 percent—indicated that Republic of Korea (ROK)-China relations will be an important consideration when deciding which presidential candidate to vote for. Given that younger South Koreans are expected to be the deciding factor in this election, it is particularly significant that the figure rises to 82 percent for respondents in their twenties. Twenty years ago, anti-American sentiments tipped the vote in favor of Roh Moo-hyun, the liberal candidate, who pledged not to kowtow to the United States. This time, how will anti-Chinese sentiment play out in Seoul? Will it work in favor of the conservatives, who tend to be tougher on China and emphasize the U.S.-ROK alliance? And what does this mean for Washington?

Research by Gi-Wook Shin

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The ongoing South Korean presidential race holds significant sociopolitical implications for the future of democracy as democratic backsliding has now become an undeniable reality in South Korea.
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Anti-Chinese sentiment surges—especially among the young—in advance of the March 9 elections.

China Chats with Stanford Faculty: From Education to World Development with Professor Eric Hanushek

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China Chats with Stanford Faculty event header by the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions

China Chats with Stanford Faculty 

Friday, May 13, 2022          6 - 7 PM Pacific Time 
Saturday, May 14, 2022    9 - 10 AM Beijing Time

From Education to World Development

Ensuring that every child in the world achieves basic skills is a key development goal emphasized in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. But how far is the world away from reaching this goal? And what would achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 mean for world development?  This talk will outline the development of an achievement data base for all of the countries of the world along with estimation of the economic gains from educational improvement. 

This Stanford alumni event will feature Eric Hanushek, the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He will be joined by Scott Rozelle, the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University, who will moderate a discussion about the major themes of the research. A question and answer session with the audience will follow the discussion.

About the Speakers
 

Eric Hanushek
Eric Hanushek is the Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He has been a leader in the development of economic analysis of educational issues, and he was awarded the Yidan Prize for Education Research in 2021. His widely-cited research spans many policy-related education topics including the economic value of teacher quality, the finance of schools, and the role of education in economic growth. His latest book, The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth, identifies the close link between the skills of the people and the economic growth of the nation. He has authored or edited 24 books along with over 250 articles. He is a Distinguished Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and completed his Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
 

 

Scott Rozelle
Scott Rozelle is the Helen F. Farnsworth Senior Fellow and the co-director of Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University.  For the past 30 years, he has worked on the economics of poverty reduction. Currently, his work on poverty has its full focus on human capital, including issues of rural health, nutrition and education. For the past 20 year, Rozelle has been the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Most recently, Rozelle's research focuses on the economics of poverty and inequality, with an emphasis on rural education, health and nutrition in China. In recognition of this work, Dr. Rozelle has received numerous honors and awards. Among them, he became a Yangtse Scholar (Changjiang Xuezhe) in Renmin University of China in 2008. In 2008 he also was awarded the Friendship Award by Premiere Wen Jiabao, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a foreigner.

Questions? Contact Debbie Aube at debbie.aube@stanford.edu

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Scott Rozelle

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Eric Hanushek Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution Stanford University
Lectures

Russia, Ukraine and NATO: The View from Paris

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 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone. 
 

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About the Event: Europe's attention has been transfixed for more than two months by the Russian military build-up near Ukraine, efforts to coordinate a trans-Atlantic response, and contacts with Russia and Ukraine.  France has been closely involved in shaping the West's policy and diplomacy, and President Macron in February visited both Moscow and Kyiv.  Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director, leader writer and columnist for Le Monde, will discuss how the crisis has been viewed in Paris and the French government's policy response.

 

About the Speaker: Sylvie Kauffmann is Editorial Director, Leader Writer and Columnist for Le Monde, writing a weekly column on global affairs. Her opinions on European and international politics have also appeared in the New York Times. Previously, she was the first female Editor-in-Chief of Le Monde, including during the Wikileaks collaboration with El País, the Guardian and the New York Times. She has reported from Asia, Eastern Europe and the United States, where she wrote a prize-winning series of articles about life in America following the 9/11 attacks. Kauffmann graduated from the Institut d’Études Poltiques Aix-en-Provence and the faculty of law at the University of Provence Aix-Marseille.

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Sylvie Kauffmann
Seminars
European Security Initiative

Examining the U.S.-China Rivalry Without Racism

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an image of a map of the world with a U.S. and China flag with the event text details.

 

How can we understand the geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and China without fueling anti-Asian hate?

Join REDI's student representatives, Maddy Morlino and Miku Yamada, for an open discussion on how we can avoid contributing to racial discrimination when engaging in academic dialogues on U.S.-China competition.

This in-person event will facilitate an open dialogue with participants and invited speakers, FSI Senior Fellow Thomas Fingar and Postdoctoral Fellow, Dongxian Jiang. Since seating is limited, registration is reserved for current Stanford faculty, students, and staff only with a Stanford.edu email.

Confirmed attendees will be notified by email on February 22.

Speaker bios:

Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He was the inaugural Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow from 2010 through 2015 and the Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford in 2009. From 2005 through 2008, he served as the first deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and, concurrently, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Fingar served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (2000-01 and 2004-05), principal deputy assistant secretary (2001-03), deputy assistant secretary for analysis (1994-2000), director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific (1989-94), and chief of the China Division (1986-89). Between 1975 and 1986 he held a number of positions at Stanford University, including senior research associate in the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

Dongxian Jiang is a political theorist and intellectual historian. His primary research interests lie in comparative political theory, the history of political thought, and pressing practical questions of democratic and international politics, including Western and non-Western perspectives on human rights, democracy, good governance, and political legitimacy. He is also interested in the transmission and traveling of political ideas across divergent intellectual traditions. He holds a B.A. in International Politics and Philosophy from Peking University, an M.A. in Political Science from Duke University, and a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University (as of September 2020). Dongxian Jiang is currently Civics Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, Stanford University.

Registration required:

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Thomas Fingar FSI Senior Fellow Speaker Stanford University
Dongxian Jiang Political Science Postdoctoral Fellow Speaker Stanford University
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Critical Conversations

Ukraine Is a Distraction from Taiwan

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Oriana Skylar Mastro
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This commentary was originally published by The Wall Street Journal.

A Russian invasion of Ukraine would be the most consequential use of military force in Europe since World War II and could put Moscow in a position to threaten U.S. allies in Europe. Many in the American foreign-policy establishment argue that the appropriate U.S. response to any such invasion is a major American troop deployment to the Continent. This would be a grave mistake.

The U.S. can no longer afford to spread its military across the world. The reason is simple: an increasingly aggressive China, the most powerful state to rise in the international system since the U.S. itself. By some measures, China’s economy is now the world’s largest. And it has built a military to match its economic heft. Twenty-five years ago, the Chinese military was backward and obsolete. But extraordinary increases in Beijing’s defense budget over more than two decades, and top political leaders’ razor-sharp focus, have transformed the People’s Liberation Army into one of the strongest militaries the world has ever seen.

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China’s new military is capable not only of territorial defense but of projecting power. Besides boasting the largest navy in the world by ship count, China enjoys some capabilities, like certain types of hypersonic weapons, that even the U.S. hasn’t developed.

Most urgently, China poses an increasingly imminent threat to Taiwan. Xi Jinping has made clear that his platform of “national rejuvenation” can’t be successful until Taiwan unifies with the mainland—whether it wants to or not. The PLA is growing more confident in its ability to conquer Taiwan even if the U.S. intervenes. Given China’s military and economic strength, China’s leaders reasonably doubt that the U.S. or anyone else would mount a meaningful response to an invasion of Taiwan. To give a sense of his resolve, Mr. Xi warned that any “foreign forces” standing in China’s way would have “their heads . . . bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

If Taiwan falls into Chinese hands, the U.S. will find it harder to defend critical allies like Japan and the Philippines, while China will be able to project its naval, air and other forces close to the U.S. and its territories

The U.S. must defend Taiwan to retain its credibility as the leader of a coalition for a free and open Indo-Pacific. From a military perspective, Taiwan is a vital link in the first island chain of the Western Pacific. If Taiwan falls into Chinese hands, the U.S. will find it harder to defend critical allies like Japan and the Philippines, while China will be able to project its naval, air and other forces close to the U.S. and its territories. Taiwan is also an economic dynamo, the ninth-largest U.S. trading partner of goods with a near-monopoly on the most advanced semiconductor technology—to which the U.S. would most certainly lose access after a war.

The Biden administration this month ordered more than 6,000 additional U.S. troops deployed to Eastern Europe, with many more potentially on the way. These deployments would involve major additional uncounted commitments of air, space, naval and logistics forces needed to enable and protect them. These are precisely the kinds of forces needed to defend Taiwan. The critical assets—munitions, top-end aviation, submarines, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities—that are needed to fight Russia or China are in short supply. For example, stealthy heavy bombers are the crown jewel of U.S. military power, but there are only 20 in the entire Air Force.

The U.S. has no hope of competing with China and ensuring Taiwan’s defense if it is distracted elsewhere. It is a delusion that the U.S. can, as Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said recently, “walk and chew gum at the same time” with respect to Russia and China. Sending more resources to Europe is the definition of getting distracted. Rather than increasing forces in Europe, the U.S. should be moving toward reductions.

To be blunt: Taiwan is more important than Ukraine. America’s European allies are in a better position to take on Russia than America’s Asian allies are to deal with China.

There is a viable alternative for Europe’s defense: The Europeans themselves can step up and do more for themselves, especially with regard to conventional arms. This is well within Europe’s capacity, as the combined economic power of the NATO states dwarfs that of Russia. NATO allies spend far more on their militaries than Russia. To aid its European allies, the U.S. can provide various forms of support, including lethal weapons, while continuing to remain committed to NATO’s defense, albeit in a more constrained fashion, by providing high-end and fungible military capabilities. The U.S. can also continue to extend its nuclear deterrent to NATO.

The U.S. should remain committed to NATO’s defense but husband its critical resources for the primary fight in Asia, and Taiwan in particular. Denying China the ability to dominate Asia is more important than anything that happens in Europe. To be blunt: Taiwan is more important than Ukraine. America’s European allies are in a better position to take on Russia than America’s Asian allies are to deal with China. The Chinese can’t be allowed to think that America’s distraction in Ukraine provides them with a window of opportunity to invade Taiwan. The U.S. needs to act accordingly, crisis or not.

Ms. Mastro is a center fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, part of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Colby is a principal at the Marathon Initiative and author of “The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict.”

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Oriana Skylar Mastro

Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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Chinese military propaganda depicting the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1958.
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Reassessing China’s Capabilities and Goals for Strategic Competition

On the World Class podcast, Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that in order to set effective policy toward China, the United States needs to better understand how and why China is projecting power.
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Would the United States Come to Taiwan's Defense?

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U.S. Army Reserve members during a Cold Weather Operations Course near Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, Jan. 13, 2022.
U.S. Army Reserve photo by Sgt. 1st Class Clinton Wood
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Getting bogged down in Europe will impede the U.S.’s ability to compete with China in the Pacific.

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