Livestream: This event will not be live-streamed or recorded.

Abstract: Despite a lull after the fall of the Soviet Union, grassroots activism in Russia is on the rise. The protests for free elections that swept across Russia in the summer of 2019 may have captured international headlines, but many other Russian grassroots groups have been actively organizing over the last decade. What types of civic movements exist in today’s Russia? What are the risks that civic activists face? How do they interact with the state or state-protected interest groups? Finally, what role could grassroots groups play in democratizing Russia? Russian activist Evgeniya Chirikova will shed light on these questions through her personal experience as an environmental activist and as a coordinator of Activatica.org, an online news platform covering grassroots activism across Russia.

Speaker's Biography:

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Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/nTFLMMdK9Zc

Abstract: What is Putin up to? In this lecture, Taylor argues that Russian foreign policy is best understood as a product of both Russian power and purpose. Purpose is understood as the worldview and mentality of Team Putin, which Taylor has defined as “The Code of Putinism” (as elaborated in his 2018 book of that name). Power and purpose combined produce a foreign policy strategy driven by Russia’s consistent attempts to “punch above its weight.” The disjuncture between this Russian mentality and foreign policy strategy and traditional US approaches to world politics explain the current low point in US-Russian relations.

Speaker's Biography:

Brian Taylor

The Sino-Japanese competition for influence in Asia is often overlooked by Western observers. While the US-Japan Alliance has been the cornerstone of security in East Asia for over a half-century, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan has modernized its military, steadily enhanced it regional activities, and deepened relations with countries around the region. Economically, as well, Tokyo has offered a counterpart to Chinese investment and development aid. The alliance with the United States is a indispensable element in Japan's regional strategy, one which Beijing would like to disrupt. How has China pursued its goal of driving a wedge between Tokyo and Washington? From military buildup, through pressure in the East China Sea, to diplomatic initiatives, Beijing has sought to raise the perceived risk to both Japan and the United States of maintaining their unique relationship. What are the prospects for the future of the US-Japan alliance, especially in the post-Abe era?

SPEAKER

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Michael Auslin is the Payson J. Treat Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A historian by training, he specializes in contemporary and historical U.S. policy in Asia and political and security issues in the Indo-Pacific region. A best-selling author, Dr. Auslin’s latest book is The End of the Asian Century:  War, Stagnation, and the Risks to the World’s Most Dynamic Region (Yale). He is a longtime contributor to the Wall Street Journal and National Review, and his writing appears in other leading publications, including The Atlantic, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Politico. He comments regularly for U.S. and foreign print and broadcast media. Previously, Dr. Auslin was an associate professor of history at Yale University, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a visiting professor at the University of Tokyo.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has been named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, a Fulbright Scholar, and a Marshall Memorial Fellow by the German Marshall Fund, among other honors, and serves on the board of the Wilton Park USA Foundation. He received a BSc from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and his PhD in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

PARKING

Please note there is significant construction taking place on campus, which is greatly affecting parking availability and traffic patterns at the university. Please plan accordingly. Nearest parking garage is Structure 7, below the Graduate School of Business Knight School of Management.
 

This event is part of the Stanford Silicon Valley-New Japan Project Public Forum Series.

Consumption is a major driver of national economies, and scholars often study important differences across consumption patterns across countries, which influence many aspects of their societies and economies. Yet, the underlying business of logistics operations, and how they support countries’ respective retail industries, has as much, if not more impact than simply examining consumer behavior. In this public forum, Ryuichi Kakui, with deep expertise in eCommerce logistics, will explain how logistics are used in retail industries, comparing across the world’s three largest economies: the US, China, and Japan. He will introduce the concept of strategic logistics thinking and the “4C” framework and informs leading strategic logistics thinking. A conversation with Kenji Kushida, who examines how technologies and specific industry dynamics shape varying models of political economies around the world, will then link the area of logistics and retail to important systemic differences and underlying similarities across the world’s leading economies, which are pursuing contrasting models of social, economic, and political organization.

SPEAKERS

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Ryoichi Kakui is the founder of E-Logit, the leading eCommerce logistics company in Japan. He has published 29 books related to logistics, Amazon, and “omnichannel” distribution, which have been published in Japan, the US, China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam. He is a frequent commentator on television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and other media. Educated in Sophia University in Japan with an MBA from Golden Gate University, he founded UKETORU in 2015, a app addressing the issue of re-delivery, which escalated to a social issue in Japan.

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Kenji Kushida is a research scholar at the Japan Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. One of this research themes examines how IT technologies shape political economies around the world, and how varying national political economic models shape the development trajectories of technologies. He leads the Silicon Valley – New Japan Project, a sustained platform for research and collaboration between Silicon Valley and the new and emerging aspects as Japan transforms itself.

PARKING

Please note there is significant construction taking place on campus, which is greatly affecting parking availability and traffic patterns at the university. Please plan accordingly. Open parking at Stanford University available starting 4:00pm unless otherwise marked. Nearest parking garage is Structure 7, below the Graduate School of Business Knight School of Management.

President Trump has stopped even mentioning North Korea’s abysmal human rights record in order to secure meetings with Leader Kim Jong-un ostensibly to make progress on serious security issues with North Korea.  After 18 months of White House effort and two and a half summits, however, there has been little progress on denuclearization.  Ambassador King argues that we must push North Korea on human rights in order to encourage the government in Pyongyang to respond positively the wishes of its own citizens.  Unless we do this, we are unlikely to see real progress on shifting North Korea’s focus from nuclear weapons and missiles to the wellbeing of its own people.

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Abstract: We have learned a great deal about Iraq since the fateful decision to invade the country in 2003. Given academic research on Iraqi society and politics over the past 16 years and hard won lessons from U.S. intervention in Iraq, what what are the lessons learned for contemporary U.S. policymakers? And, crucially, what role should Iraq play in current U.S. foreign policy and its regional strategy toward the Middle East?

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/4OBQOshr-gs

Speakers:

Colin H. Kahl Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the inaugural Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a Professor, by courtesy, in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University.

Brett McGurk Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute and Center for Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

With moderator: Lisa Blaydes
Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Speaker's Biography: 

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From October 2014 to January 2017, he was Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President. In that position, he served as a senior advisor to President Obama and Vice President Biden on all matters related to U.S. foreign policy and national security affairs, and represented the Office of the Vice President as a standing member of the National Security Council Deputies’ Committee. From February 2009 to December 2011, Dr. Kahl was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East at the Pentagon. In this capacity, he served as the senior policy advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, and six other countries in the Levant and Persian Gulf region. In June 2011, he was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service by Secretary Robert Gates. 

From 2007 to 2017 (when not serving in the U.S. government), Dr. Kahl was an assistant and associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. From 2007 to 2009 and 2012 to 2014, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a nonpartisan Washington, DC-based think tank. From 2000 to 2007, he was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. In 2005-2006, Dr. Kahl took leave from the University of Minnesota to serve as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where he worked on issues related to counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and responses to failed states. In 1997-1998, he was a National Security Fellow at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.

Current research projects include a book analyzing American grand strategy in the Middle East in the post-9/11 era. A second research project focuses on the implications of emerging technologies on strategic stability.

He has published numerous articles on international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security, the Los Angeles Times, Middle East Policy, the National Interest, the New Republic, the New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post, and the Washington Quarterly, as well as several reports for CNAS.

His previous research analyzed the causes and consequences of violent civil and ethnic conflict in developing countries, focusing particular attention on the demographic and natural resource dimensions of these conflicts. His book on the subject, States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World, was published by Princeton University Press in 2006, and related articles and chapters have appeared in International Security, the Journal of International Affairs, and various edited volumes.

Dr. Kahl received his B.A. in political science from the University of Michigan (1993) and his Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University (2000).

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McGurk’s research interests center on national security strategy, diplomacy, and decision-making in wartime.  He is particularly interested in the lessons learned over the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump regarding the importance of process in informing presidential decisions and the alignment of ends and means in national security doctrine and strategy.  At Stanford, he will be working on a book project incorporating these themes and teaching a graduate level seminar on presidential decision-making beginning in the fall of 2019.  He is also a frequent commentator on national security events in leading publications and as an NBC News Senior Foreign Affairs Analyst. 

Before coming to Stanford, McGurk served as Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS at the U.S. Department of State, helping to build and then lead the coalition of seventy-five countries and four international organizations in the global campaign against the ISIS terrorist network.  McGurk was also responsible for coordinating all aspects of U.S. policy in the campaign against ISIS in Iraq, Syria, and globally.

McGurk previously served in senior positions in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, including as Special Assistant to President Bush and Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan, and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran and Special Presidential Envoy for the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State under Obama.

McGurk has led some of the most sensitive diplomatic missions in the Middle East over the last decade. His most recent assignment established one of the largest coalitions in history to prosecute the counter-ISIS campaign. He was a frequent visitor to the battlefields in both Iraq and Syria to help integrate military and civilian components of the war plan. He also led talks with Russia over the Syria conflict under both the Trump and Obama administrations, initiated back-channel diplomacy to reopen ties between Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and facilitated the formation of the last two Iraqi governments following contested elections in 2014 and 2018.

In 2015 and 2016, McGurk led fourteen months of secret negotiations with Iran to secure the release of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezain, U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, and Pastor Saad Abadini, as well as three other American citizens.

During his time at the State Department, McGurk received multiple awards, including the Distinguished Honor Award and the Distinguished Service Award, the highest department awards for exceptional service in Washington and overseas assignments.

McGurk is also a nonresident senior fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

McGurk received his JD from Columbia University and his BA from the University of Connecticut Honors Program.  He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Denis Jacobs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2d Circuit, and Judge Gerard E. Lynch on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

ABSTRACT

This lecture will consider the challenge of moving from a negotiated transition to a consolidated democracy as exemplified by the case critical of Tunisia. The country's upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections, to be held respectively in September and October 2019, will provide a vital although not easy opportunity to move beyond the power sharing, consensus-based political pact negotiated in 2014, to a more consolidated democracy, one which presumably will be led by a government representing a clear majority. The shift from a cooperative, positive sum model of governance to a zero sum, non-cooperative model faces many obstacles, including the enduring Islamist/secular divide, as well as still socio-economic significant cleavage pitting advocates of state intervention and social welfare against advocates of free market reforms. The upcoming elections might provide an incentive for new ruling and opposition coalitions that would facilitate the efforts of leaders to address these challenges, or the elections could exacerbate cleavages in ways that might invite a return to the immobilizing politics of consensus. Professor Brumberg will map out these different scenarios, particularly with reference to the results of the September 15 presidential elections. His will then discuss the implications of these elections for the October 6, parliamentary elections, whose results should be just surfacing on the day of this lecture.

SPEAKER BIO

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ABSTRACT

While the phenomenon of Egyptians leaving their homeland in search for work abroad has been ongoing for decades, a new trend has emerged since 2011, namely thousands have expatriated for political reasons. Some have left based on a general sense that the political climate has become hazardous for them, while others left because of specific fears due to court convictions, lawsuits, loss of employment, attacks in the media, or direct physical threats related to their political, journalistic, or civil society activities. In contrast to waves of politically motivated Egyptian migration into exile in the 1950s–1970s, migrants now have highly diverse identities, motives, destinations, and experiences in exile. While specific data are hard to locate, post-2011 Egyptian exiles generally appear to be greater in numbers, younger, and enjoying higher educational attainment than those of the past. One reason for this diversity is that far more groups are at serious risk in Egypt—Islamists as well as Christians, liberals as well as leftists, artists as well as businesspeople, prominent intellectuals as well as underground activists—compared to the past, when fewer groups faced political or social persecution at any given time.

SPEAKER BIO

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His research and teaching interests as well as his academic publications focus on democratization processes in Egypt, tensions between freedom and repression in the Egyptian public space, political movements and civil society in Egypt, contemporary debates in Arab political thought, and human rights and governance in the Arab world. He is currently writing a new book on contemporary Egyptian politics, titled Egypt’s New Authoritarianism.

Hamzawy is a former member of the People’s Assembly after being elected in the first Parliamentary elections in Egypt after the January 25, 2011 revolution. He is also a former member of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights. Hamzawy contributes a weekly op-ed to the Egyptian independent newspaper al-Shorouk and a weekly op-ed to the London based newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi.

Abstract:

Scholars and policymakers maintain that economic growth requires strong legal institutions that can ensure competitive markets. Developing countries are therefore encouraged to create efficient judiciaries that protect property rights, enforce contracts, settle disputes, and provide antitrust and bankruptcy regulation. Although this market-enhancing model for development is widely accepted, several of the fastest growing economies have not pursued such legal reforms, instead allowing certain actors to dominate their legal institutions and markets. To understand why theory and reality diverge, we examine legal changes in India, a country that experienced slow growth in its early decades yet is currently one of the fastest growing economies in the world. We find that India’s growth miracle is at least partly attributable to weak legal institutions and uncompetitive markets. As the Indian economy matures, however, we suspect market-enhancing legal reforms will be required to sustain growth. More generally, market-enhancing legal reforms need to be designed and pursued carefully, taking into account the structure and size of the economy.

Speaker(s) Bio:

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Abstract: Russia’s challenge to the West includes information operations (e.g., disinformation, political propaganda, and other forms of online manipulation) aimed at destabilizing the common ground that democratic societies in Europe and the United States need in order to govern themselves.  Kate Starbird will describe two case studies of online information operations connected to Russia’s media/intelligence apparatus:  interference in the 2016 U.S. election and the campaign against the “White Helmets” in Syria.  She argues that defending against Russian online information operations will require a more nuanced understanding of the problem, in particular, moving beyond focusing on “bots” and “trolls” to looking at the collaborative nature of disinformation campaigns that target, infiltrate, shape, and leverage online communities—communities which may not recognize their role in these campaigns. 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/lF4M11FkEKY

Speaker's Biography:

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