Germany has always been too strong or too weak for Europe. Now it is Number One again, but what a difference 70 years of democratic development and European integration have made. Merkel's Germany is no "Fourth Reich", and the political class knows it. If she isn't "triangulating" like Bill Clinton, Merkel "leads from behind" like Obama. After two murderous grabs for hegemony, Germany is an accidental great power - so strong because France, Britain, Italy and the rest are so weak.

Abstract: Taiwan (the Republic of China) has been changing with the times. So has its diplomacy. Having served his country for more than 40 years in various important diplomatic posts under different administrations, Ambassador Chen is one of Taiwan’s most seasoned diplomats. He joins us to share his personal experience and perspectives of Taiwan’s diplomacy. It is a historical review, but also an attempt to explore the future. Ambassador Chen believes that the diplomacy of Taiwan is unique because of its unique background. Although it should be defined by its own people, the country has been heavily influenced by the Chinese Mainland and the United States of America. How to promote Taiwan’s interests while preserving its identity and dignity, and conducting the balancing exercises in an asymmetric international environment has always been the crux of diplomacy in Taiwan. Ambassador Chen’s insights will allow us a better understanding of diplomacy in Taiwan, its successes and frustrations and presenting a possible roadmap for the future.

C.J. Chen is the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (1999-2000). He has also served as Taiwan’s de facto Ambassador to the United States (2000-2004) and European Union (2004-2006). Having spent most of his career in the Foreign Ministry, Mr. Chen is regarded as one of Taiwan’s most accomplished diplomats and an expert on U.S./Taiwan relations. He was educated in Taiwan, Britain, Spain and the US, and has extensive experience representing his nation in the United States. He began his first tour of duty in Washington, D.C. in 1971 and was later a key member of the team that negotiated with the United States government for the future relations between Taiwan and the U.S. after the U.S. switched diplomatic ties from the Republic of China (ROC) to the People’s Republic of China) in 1979. Mr. Chen was heavily involved in communicating with the U.S. Congress during the implementation of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) which still serves as the back bone and framework for U.S./ Taiwan relations. In addition to Mr. Chen’s diplomatic experience, he was also selected by the Kuomintang (KMT), to be a member of the Legislative Yuan, where served under both the blue (KMT) and green (DPP) administrations.

Please note date change to June 6

On December 16, 2012, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which was swept from power in 2009 by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) after more than half a century of dominance, roared back with a landslide of its own. Entering the election with only 118 of 480 seats in the House of Representatives, the lower house of the National Diet, the LDP emerged with a whopping 294 seats, more than a third of them captured by first-time candidates. Moreover, the LDP and its long-time coalition partner, the Komeito, jointly surpassed the two-thirds threshold needed to override vetoes from the upper house, the House of Councillors, where the coalition lacks a majority—at least until the upper house election this July. The incumbent DPJ, which had taken power with an even more impressive 308 seats in 2009, retained just 57 seats this time, barely managing second place after three difficult years in government.

How did the LDP do it? In this presentation, Smith will highlight the key findings of two chapters on the LDP’s candidate selection and election results from the forthcoming volume, Japan Decides 2012 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), edited by Robert Pekkanen, Steven R. Reed, and Ethan Scheiner.

The structure of the Chinese economy changed dramatically between 2005 and 2009.  It changed from an export-investment leading economy to a domestic-demand leading economy.  Before 2004 China was a huge factory because of its cheap and abundant labor.  After 2010 it has become a huge market because of the rapid increase of their income level.

Not only the rapid growth of China’s GDP, but the rapid increase of the number of middle-class-income people in China whose GDP per capita surpass 10 thousand USD gave Japanese companies many business chances since 2010. Even under the worst political condition between Japan and China after Senkaku territorial dispute most of Japanese companies keep increasing their investment in China because Chinese local governments are so eager to invite the investment of Japanese companies. If Japan and China can realize the normalization of Sino-Japan relations, their win-win relationship should be accelerated.

The Xi Jinping’s administration started officially in March. Chinese ordinary people’s complaint against the Chinese government seems very strong mainly because the former administration put off the resolution of many important problems including the corruption of governmental officials, environmental deterioration, economic inequality. Xi Jinping’s administration should work on these difficult problems. In such a situation it is important for China to normalize Sino-Japan relations to enhance the economic stability.

Kiyoyuki Seguchi is the Research Director of the Canon Institute for the Global Studies. His research focuses on the Chinese economy and relations between the United States, China and Japan. He worked for the Bank of Japan from 1982 to 2009. He was the Chief Representative of the Representative Office of BOJ in Beijing from 2006 to 2008, the international visiting fellow at RAND Corporation (Los Angeles, CA) from 2004 to 2005. He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Tokyo.

Catherine Ashton will be introduced by Gerhard Casper.

Co-sponsored by CISAC, Hoover Institution and CREEES.

About the topic: The worldwide web has its origins in American science and ingenuity.  The greatest concentration of cyber power on the planet today is at Fort Meade in eastern Maryland.  So why are American networks so vulnerable?  And what will be needed from government, industry and private citizens to make them less so?

About the Speaker: As director of the Central Intelligence Agency, General Michael Hayden was responsible for overseeing the collection of information concerning the plans, intentions and capabilities of America’s adversaries; producing timely analysis for decision makers; and conducting covert operations to thwart terrorists and other enemies of the US.

At Chertoff Group, General Hayden will use his broad geographic and political knowledge to brief clients on intelligence matters worldwide – including developments in cybersecurity – that may affect their businesses. “The best defense is knowing what your enemies are up to, before they know you know it. For today’s CEOs,” he adds, “there is also the challenge of figuring out who and where your enemies are.”

Before becoming director of the CIA, General Hayden served as the country’s first principal deputy director of national intelligence and was the highest-ranking intelligence officer in the armed forces. Earlier, he served as commander of the Air Intelligence Agency, director of the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center, director of the National Security Agency and chief of the Central Security Service.

General Hayden graduated from Duquesne University with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1967 and a master’s degree in modern American history in 1969.  He also did postgraduate work at the Defense Intelligence School conducted by the Defense Intelligence Agency.  He is currently a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University.

The United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars on transforming the international landscape through military force in order to enhance America’s national security. But is there any other way? This lecture explores America`s Cold War experience in dealing with the communist states of Eastern Europe in an effort to make them less tyrannical and less hostile to the Western world. The focus will be on economic and psychological warfare, cultural and economic border penetration, and diplomacy as a tool of coercion in particular. The presentation also analyzes these policies in the light of the ideology, goals, strategies and tactics employed by the other side, while also considering the difficulties U.S. policy faces in adequately responding to external challenges. The discussion touches on the changing goals and strategies of U.S. foreign policy in Eastern Europe within the national independence/stability paradigm.

Co-sponsored by the History Department

Abstract:

For the past several years, and especially since the beginning of the "Arab Spring" in December 2010, Arab regimes have experienced sweeping processes of political decay, disintegration, reform, and revolution. While these are far from finished and clear in their impacts, they have already begun to transform the political parameters affecting peace and stability in the Middle East. The prevailing assumption is that destabilization of the neighborhood has made Israel even more reluctant to take any new initiatives or assume any new risks for a peace agreement with the Palestinians. But the changing regional parameters also generate new opportunities and especially new urgency for obtaining a two-state solution while it is still possible.

The manner in which complex quantum matter organizes evades elucidation. More than an esoteric problem, the lack of a first-principles description of this physics impedes our ability to deterministically design the transformational materials necessary for next-generation technology. To enhance our understanding of quantum matter, we are working to construct "quantum simulators" out of the coldest objects in the known universe, quantum gases of atoms. We will describe this new direction in quantum physics and how it may be applied to dissipation-less power grids and advanced "neural" networks for social network analysis.

About the speaker: Benjamin Lev received his Bachelors degree Magna Cum Laude from Princeton in 1999 and his Ph.D. from Caltech in 2005, both in Physics. He was an NRC postdoc at JILA (2006-2007), and an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2008-2011) before joining the Stanford faculty as an Assistant Professor of Applied Physics and Physics in 2011. Benjamin has received a Packard Fellowship and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) as well as NSF CAREER, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, DARPA, and Office of Navy Research young investigator awards. His research focuses on exploring strongly correlated, topological, and quantum soft matter using cavity QED, cryogenic atom chip microscopes, and quantum degenerate gases of exotic dipolar atoms.