Abstract: This talk discusses the evolution of nuclear deterrence in the post-Cold War and Post-911 environment.  An examination of the historic role of deterrence and past trends in stockpile composition are discussed, and the concept of a capability-based deterrent and the implications for stockpile size, the nuclear weapons complex, and science are examined.  The role of both complex- and stockpile-transformation in enabling a capability-based deterrent is evaluated

Dr. Martz has been with Los Alamos National Laboratory for 25 years.  He is an authority on plutonium chemistry and metallurgy, and has lead various elements of the nuclear weapons program at Los Alamos including the group responsible for pit activities, the program examining materials aging in the stockpile, leadership of the weapon design division, and most recently, was head of the New Mexico team in the recent Reliable Replacement Warhead Design study.

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North Korea’s nuclear weapon test in October 2006 and the subsequent “debate” in Japan about whether or not to ponder its own nuclear future brought renewed attention to the subject of Japan and nuclear weapons.  Pundits and policy makers in both the United States and Japan contemplated the implications of Pyongyang’s nuclear breakout, and many wondered if this marked the beginning of fundamental change in Japanese thinking on these issues.  Just as North Korea’s long-range missile test over Japanese airspace in 1998 was a major catalyst leading to Japan’s full-fledged embrace of America’s missile defense (MD) development program a few years later, might the 2006 nuclear test eventually prove to be a similar watershed moment in Japanese defense policy?  Would there be a rising tide of Japanese sentiment in favor of reexamining the three non-nuclear principles of non-possession, non-manufacture, and non-introduction? 

In pursuit of answers to these questions, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA) conducted an extended research effort over the past two years to examine not only Japan’s propensity and capacity to “go nuclear,” but also to explore the overarching issue of how deterrence is functioning and changing in the context of the U.S.-Japan alliance.  It is these latter questions in particular regarding deterrence and extended deterrence that proved most interesting and, we think, particularly important to U.S. policy makers, given the dramatic changes underway in the regional security environment in East Asia and relevant proposals in the areas of non-proliferation and arms control.  Mr. Schoff's presentation will describe the results of IFPA's study and offer steps that the allies can take to reshape extended deterrence for the twenty-first century in ways that strengthen and diversify the bilateral relationship, and ultimately contribute to regional stability and prosperity.

About the Speaker:

James L. Schoff is the Associate Director of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA) in Cambridge, MA, where he specializes in East Asian security issues, U.S. alliance relations, international crisis management cooperation, and regional efforts to stem WMD proliferation. He also contributes to IFPA’s U.S. government and military contract work relating to East Asia. Some of his recent publications include Realigning Priorities: The U.S.-Japan Alliance and the Future of Extended Deterrence (IFPA 2009); Nuclear Matters in North Korea: Building a Multilateral Response for Future Stability in Northeast Asia (Potomac Books 2008) (co-author); In Times of Crisis: Global and Local Civil-Military Disaster Relief Coordination in the United States and Japan (IFPA, 2007); “Transformation of the U.S.-Japan Alliance,” in The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs (Winter 2007); Political Fences and Bad Neighbors: North Korea Policy Making in Japan and Implications for the United States (IFPA, 2006); and Tools for Trilateralism: Improving U.S.-Japan-Korea Cooperation to Manage Complex Contingencies (Potomac Books, 2005).

Mr. Schoff joined IFPA in 2003, after serving as the program officer in charge of policy studies at the United States-Japan Foundation. Prior to that he was the business manager for Bovis Japan and Bovis Asia Pacific, and international construction and project management firm. Mr. Schoff graduated from Duke University and earned an M.A. in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He also studied for one year at International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Japan, and he lectured at Boston University in 2007.

Japan has been hit unexpectedly hard by the global economic  recession.  Although Japanese financial institutions were not  seriously damaged by the initial financial crisis in the United  States, the economy has been staggered by an unprecedented drop in  exports.  With the economy likely to shrink by five to six percent  in 2009, Japan faces the worst economic downturn in over a half  century.  Policy responses to this situation have been complicated  by the uncertain political situation, with an unpopular prime  minister and a looming election for the lower house of the national  Diet.

What does all this mean for relations with the United States?   There are several important developments.  First, one impact of the  crisis is a shrinkage of Japan's current-account surplus, implying  that (at least in 2009) Japan will be a much smaller net supplier  of capital to the United States and the rest of the world.  Second,  the government appears to be willing to respond to the crisis with  strong fiscal stimulus, which should please the Obama  administration.  Third, even with stimulus in Japan, economic  recovery will lag behind that of the United States because real  recovery will depend on an upturn in exports.  Fourth, it is China,  not Japan, that will be the key among Asian countries.  China will  continue to grow, and is also applying fiscal stimulus, so it will  likely play a significant global role in enabling an end to the  recession.
All of these factors will play into bilateral relations,  complicated by the political uncertainty in Japan.  Bilateral  relations are close, and will remain so in the Obama  administration.  But the administration is likely to view Japan as  playing only a limited role in the global effort to cope with the  consequences of the financial and economic crisis.

About the Speaker:

Edward J. Lincoln joined NYU in 2006 to be director of the Center for Japan-U.S. Business and Economic Studies and clinical professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business. Professor Lincoln teaches courses on the global economy.

Professor Lincoln’s research interests include contemporary structure and change in the Japanese economy, East Asian economic integration, and U.S. economic policy toward Japan and East Asia. His latest book, on the underappreciated importance of economic issues in international relations and American foreign policy, is Winners Without Losers: Why Americans Should Care More About Global Economic Policy, published in 2007. He is the author of eight other books and monographs, including East Asian Economic Regionalism (The Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, 2004), Arthritic Japan: The Slow Pace of Economic Reform (Brookings, 2001), and Troubled Times: U.S.-Japan Economic Relations in the 1990s (Brookings, 1998). An earlier book, Japan Facing Economic Maturity (Brookings, 1988) received the Masayoshi Ohira Award for outstanding books on the Asia-Pacific region.

Before joining NYU, Professor Lincoln was a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and earlier a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. In the mid-1990s, he served as Special Economic Advisor to Ambassador Walter Mondale at the American Embassy in Tokyo. He has also been a professorial lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Professor Lincoln received his Bachelor’s degree from Amherst College, his M.A. in both economics and East Asian Studies at Yale University, and his Ph.D. in economics also at Yale University.

Is Japan Adrift?

The political drift in Japanese politics and the meteoric rise of China have led many analysts to begin discounting Japan as a major player in the international system. However, beneath the frustration caused by Prime Minister Taro Aso's abysmal poll ratings and opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa's campaign finance scandal, Japan continues moving steadily forwrd in pursuit of a more active national security strategy. While Japanese poliics are in structural paralysis, Japanese political thought is not. Indeed, a consensus is apparent in a series of unofficial strategic documents issued by scholars and politicians this last year. Meanwhile, the Japan Self Defense Forces have recently stood up their first fully independent and joint operational commands to deal with the North Korean missile launch and Somali pirates.

Japan has always been a conservative society, slow to change well established institutions and patterns of behavior in the face of new strategic circumstances. But Japan has also historically been finely attuned to three strategic coordinates:the power of the world's leading hegemon, the power of China, and the threat from the Korean peninsula. All three are in flux, and so too is Japan's future strategic trajectory

About the Speaker

Michael Green is a senior adviser and holds the Japan Chair at CSIS, as well as being an associate professor of international relations at Georgetown University. He served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council (NSC) from January 2004 to December 2005. He joined the NSC in April 2001 as director of Asian affairs with responsibility for Japan, Korea, and Australia/New Zealand. From 1997 to 2000, he was senior fellow for Asian security at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he directed the Independent Task Force on Korea and study groups on Japan and security policy in Asia. He served as senior adviser in the Office of Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of Defense in 1997 and as consultant to the same office until 2000. From 1995 to 1997, he was a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and from 1994 to 1995, he was an assistant professor of Asian studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he remained a professorial lecturer until 2001.

Green speaks fluent Japanese and spent over five years in Japan working as a staff member of the National Diet, as a journalist for Japanese and American newspapers, and as a consultant for U.S. business. He graduated from Kenyon College with highest honors in history in 1983 and received his M.A. from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 1987 and his Ph.D. in 1994. He also did graduate work at Tokyo University as a Fulbright fellow and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a research associate of the MIT-Japan Program. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, The International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Aspen Strategy Group and is vice chair of the congressionally mandated Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission. He serves on the advisory boards of the Center for a New American Security and Australian American Leadership Dialogue.

Ambassador Ichiro Fujisaki first entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1969 and served in the Ministry of Finance Jakarta, Paris (delegation of OECD) and London.  He was made Deputy Director-General, Asian Affairs Bureau in 1994 and Political Minister of the Embassy of Japan to the United States in 1995.  In 1999 he was assigned as Director-General of North American Affairs Bureau and in 2002 was made Deputy Minister for foreign Affairs (including Prime Minister’s personal representative (Sherpa) to the G8 Summit, Japan’s chief negotiator for FTA).

In 2005 he was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative of Japan to the International Organizations in Geneva and in 2008 was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan to the United States of America. 

A potential solution for weak or failing states is to enact a delegation agreement whereby a host relinquishes authority over some governance function to an external actor. Through case studies in Melanesia, I find that these arrangements can be implemented as treaties, rather than contracts, so that the external actor can in such cases remain somewhat exempt from the normal procedure or law of the host state. I also generate hypotheses about the conditions under which host states and external actors enact these self-enforcing equilibria: host states request these agreements either where a failure of law and order requires assistance to reestablish control over the use of force, or where a budgetary crisis necessitates funding to provide public goods. External actors agree to them where the host state poses a transnational security threat, and where the reputational and actual costs of the mission are low, as judged against alternative methods for resolving the threat. The next step in this project, then, is to test these hypotheses in other cases to see if similar agreements are enacted in different regions, and, if so, whether the same incentives also explain the decisions elsewhere.

Aila M. Matanock is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Stanford. Her current research is on effective governance for minimizing conflict, and on bringing violent groups into elections in conflicted states. Before coming to Stanford, she was employed by the RAND Corporation as a research assistant and summer associate on non-proliferation and counterterrorism projects. She received an undergraduate degree magna cum laude in Social Studies from Harvard University, while also working with the Belfer Center's Managing the Atom Project and with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Seminar summary:

In her presentation, "Learning to Share: Under What Conditions do States Delegate Governance?" Aila Matanock seeks to define the concept of delegated governance and to identify the circumstances under which it arises. Drawing from field research with political elites in Australia and the Melanesian micro-states, she presents the variation in degrees of shared governance arrangements, from strict delegation to semi delegation, contracting and monitoring.

She defines delegated governance as an arrangement between a host state and an external actor that involves sharing in the decision function of the host state. She emphasizes the incentives of both host state and external actor as a framework for identifying the set of conditions under which we might expect to observe delegated governance. She argues and finds, in the Melanesian cases, that host states are more likely to seek delegation agreements if (1) they have lost their monopoly over the use of force (and there is no civil war or major ethnic cleavage); or (2) they are suffering from a severe budgetary crisis. External actors, for their part, enter into such agreements based on the costs they believe they will incur: reputational gains within the international community and domestic support for the delegation arrangement decrease an external actor's cost perception and increase its likelihood of entering into such an agreement. Matanock concludes that the Melanesian cases inform us that governance delegation is not an infrequent phenomenon. It is likely to emerge where lawlessness threatens both the host and external actor, but is constrained by the level of violence and the cleavages in society.

Matanock's presentation prompted questions about the scope and generalizability of the argument (To what extent do these findings reflect a special relationship between Australia and the Melanesian states? Would this apply in larger states such as Cambodia and Liberia, where the costs to an external actor might be greater?); the specific factors leading to the choice of delegated governance over other options (such as contracting, monitoring,...); and the power relationship between external actor and host state.

Joshua Teitelbaum, PhD (Tel Aviv University, 1996). Senior Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and Senior Lecturer in the Department of  Middle Eastern and African History, Tel Aviv University. Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Stanford University. W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo Campbell National Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Fields of specialization: the history of the Arabian Peninsula, specifically Saudi Arabia, Palestinian history and politics.

Author of The Rise and Fall of the Hashimite Kingdom of Arabia (2001) and Holier Than Thou: Saudi Arabia's Islamic Opposition (2000). Editor of Political Liberalization in the Persian Gulf  (2008).

Reading is available in the publications shelf (located on the left hand side of CISAC's main reception area) in a limited number of hard copies.

Charli Carpenter joined the Department of Political Science at University of Massachusetts-Amherst in Fall 2008, after teaching for four years at University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. Her teaching and research interests include national security ethics, the laws of war, transnational advocacy networks, gender and political violence, war crimes, comparative genocide studies, humanitarian affairs and the role of information technology in human security. She has a particular interest in the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security. She is the author of Innocent Women and Children: Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians, and the editor of Born of War: Protecting Children of Sexual Violence Survivors in Conflict Zones. She has also published numerous articles in journals such as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Security Dialogue and Human Rights Quarterly and has served as a consultant for the United Nations. Dr. Carpenter's current research focuses on global agenda-setting, investigating why certain issues but not others end up on the human security agenda. With funding from the National Science Foundation, she is directing a project on Transnational Advocacy Networks. In addition to teaching and research, Dr. Carpenter spends her time raising two future members of the American electorate, surfing, snowboarding, and rambling about international politics at Duck of Minerva and asymmetric warfare at Complex Terrain Lab. 

Alexander Montgomery, a visiting assistant professor in 2008-09, was a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC in 2005-2006 and is an assistant professor of political science at Reed College. He has published articles on dismantling proliferation networks and on the effects of social networks of international organizations on interstate conflict. His research interests include political organizations, social networks, weapons of mass disruption and destruction, social studies of technology, and interstate social relations. His current book project is on post-Cold War U.S. counterproliferation policy, evaluating the efficacy of policies towards North Korea, Iran, and proliferation networks.

He has been a joint International Security Program/Managing the Atom Project Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has also worked as a research associate in high energy physics on the BaBar experiment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and as a graduate research assistant at the Center for International Security Affairs at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has a BA in physics from the University of Chicago, an MA in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in sociology and a PhD in political science from Stanford University. 

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For more than three months now the French academic world has been shaken by an unprecedented crisis with many demonstrations, action days, alternative teaching and protest initiatives of all sorts. A very specific feature of this movement is that it encompasses the whole political spectrum. In almost daily demonstrations, law professors, traditional support of right wing governments, and social sciences scholars, the leftist part of the French academic scene, were marching hands in hands. What are the reasons for such upheaval? What is under threat? What is called for? Beyond the analysis of the causes and goals of these actions, the talk will focus on the deep transformations in culture and education that are affecting French modern society.

Synopsis

To Prof. Canto-Sperber, the recent protests to university reform in France represent an unprecedented crisis in the French academic world encompassing the whole political spectrum. She sees the two most immediate causes as the reforms President Sarkozy has tried to pass. The first one would give more autonomy to the universities to regulate their professors in terms of time management and promotion. However, Prof. Canto-Sperber reveals that this comes into conflict with the fact that French academics believe that only a national body has the legitimacy to decide on the best balance between research and teaching, as well as the promotion of professors. In addition, Prof. Canto-Sperber explains it is commonly assumed in the French academic world that only a body of professors of the same academic discipline is entitled to judge the performance of a particular professor. The second reform involves a shift in the training of professors by introducing professional exams and taking away from the current system of aggregation, an achievement that mainly exhibits intellectual status. Prof. Canto-Sperber focuses on the fact that the proposition of such professional exams was seen to strike at the pride and identity of professional teaching. Moreover, to Prof. Canto-Sperber, such exams were also seen as a threat to the quality of the professors and as lowering the knowledge requirements for becoming a professor. In addition to this, Prof. Canto-Sperber also focuses on changing social realities in the French education system where some of the students do not even speak French. Professors want to maintain high intellectual status without having to come to terms with the necessity for professional training, the system of aggregation is a way to hold on to their beliefs.

In order to properly understand to significance of recent events, Prof. Canto-Sperber sets out to put them in historical context. She explains the history of the university system in France, as well as the rise and domination of the Grandes Ecoles over the universities. She argues that as French universities have all been state dependent and equal in status, they have had no incentive to attract students and have gradually become isolated from French society. They have not had to deal with the necessities of most social organizations such as efficiency, responsibility, and self-regulation. To Prof. Canto-Sperber, that is why at this stage it is difficult for universities to fathom organizing and regulating themselves. Prof. Canto-Sperber reinforces this by making the point that from the 15th century through to the 19th century, French universities repeatedly ignored the development of new knowledge such as the Cartesian revolution or the Enlightenment. This led to a habit in France of creating parallel institutions to deal with the necessity of having platforms to discuss these new intellectual approaches. Prof. Canto-Sperber puts forward the view that the reason the renewal of universities in France has been so difficult is that it means reintegration with a society that has moved on culturally and scientifically.

What Prof. Canto-Sperber therefore expresses is that there is no longer a choice but to put universities back into society and give them autonomy. Professors must be allowed to maintain their ‘republican’ ideals but in a more modest way. Prof. Canto-Sperber argues that the program of rational emancipation has led to segregation and must be abandoned. Finally and most importantly, universities must be given financial autonomy to define and regulate themselves. However, Prof. Canto-Sperber concludes by arguing that due to intellectual and philosophical barriers, the “awkward” situation will most probably continue.

In a spirited and lengthy discussion session, one of the points raised was that of bringing together research and teaching. Discussion of this also led to the point of the problem of donations in French universities and these universities' dependence on the state.

About the Speaker

Monique Canto-Sperber is the director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris, rue d'Ulm), she is a university professor and a fellow of National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS, Center Raymond Aron), she was the former vice president of the French National Ethics Committee.

Alumnus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, with an aggregation and a doctorate in philosophy, she was professor at several universities (University of Rouen and Amiens). She chaired a research center (at University of Caen) and in 1993 was appointed director of research at the CNRS. She was the scientific director of many international scientific conferences. She taught at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and at many other universities abroad. She was a visiting professor at Stanford University.

Monique Canto-Sperber sat on numerous boards and committees. She was a member of the board of trustees of the French National Library, and she chaired the Philosophy Committee of the National Center of Letters. She is the editor of two series edited at the Presses Universitaires de France. She takes part in a television program on essays and debates in the Senate channel, Public Sénat, and runs a radio weekly program on France Culture.

Monique Canto-Sperber was trained as a classicist and first worked in the field of ancient philosophy. She published four translations and commentaries of Plato's dialogues and several books on Greek philosophy: Les Paradoxes de la connaissance (1991), Philosophie grecque (1997) et Ethiques Grecques (2002).

For more than fifteen years, most of her books have been devoted to contemporary moral and political philosophy and to practical ethical questions. She published numerous books on these issues, translated into several languages, among them La Philosophie morale britannique (1994), le Dictionnaire d'Ethique et de philosophie morale (1996, 4ème édition : 2004), L'Inquiétude morale et la vie humaine (2001, Englis trans, 2008)), Les Règles de la liberté (2003), Le Bien, la guerre et la terreur (2005), Faut-il sauver le libéralisme? (2006), Naissance et liberté (2008). She was the editor of several books as Le Style de la pensée (2002), and Ethiques d'aujourd'hui (2004).

Monique Canto-Sperber is Chevalier des arts et des lettres, Chevalier de la légion d'honneur and Officier de l'ordre national du mérite.

There are some peculiarities in conducting interviews about the Soviet past in post-Soviet space. What details of everyday life do interviewees reveal? And how do life stories shaped during Soviet times, but recalled and reconsidered in the post-communist era influence the interview?

Prof. Dalia Marcinkeviciene is chair of the Women’s Studies Center, and a lecturer in History Department at Vilnius University. Her research interests include Lithuanian family history during the period 1795-1990; theories in Sovietology. Marcinkeviciene was awarded Fulbright (2002-2003) and AAUW (2005-2006) research fellowships. She is an author and editor of three books (published in Lithuanian): Famous Lithuanian Women, the 19th – the Beginning of the 20th Century. Vilnius University Press, 1997; The Society of Married People: Marriage and Divorce in Lithuania, the 19th – the Beginning of the 20th Century. Lithuanian Institute of History, 1999; Life Stories of Lithuanian Women. Vilnius University Press, 2007