Stanford University

International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

Is multilateralism dead?

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Pascal Lamy has served as Director-General of the World Trade Organization since September 2005.

Previously, he was the Trade Commissioner of the European Union in Brussels from 1999 to 2004.

From 1994 until 1999, he served as Director-General of the team responsible for restructuring the Credit Lyonnaise.

The beginnings of Mr. Lamy’s career are marked by time spent in civil service at the French Finance Ministry, the Inspection Générale des Finances, and the Treasury Department.

He later became adviser to Economics and Finance Minister, Jacques Delors, and to Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy. From 1984 to 1994, Mr. Lamy worked in Brussels as chief of staff to Commission President, Jacques Delors.

A member of the French Socialist Party, Mr. Lamy is also politically active in the Mouvement Europeen. In 1999, he was the recipient of the Officier de la Legion d’Honneur and has been honored with several international orders of merit.

THIS EVENT IS CO-SPONSORED BY ICA

CISAC Conference Room

Pascal Lamy Director-General Speaker World Trade Organization
Seminars

Reorganizing U.S. Government Democracy Promotion Efforts Project

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Comparing American and European Strategies for Democracy Promotion

Conventional wisdom holds that the United States and the European Union pursue vastly different strategies to promote democracy around the globe. The U.S. is often perceived to rely on coercion, while the EU employs "soft power." This project completed a book demonstrating that American and European strategies to spread democracy display far more similarities than differences. For the first time, leading European and American experts systematically compare U.S.

America and the World: Presidential Candidate Advisors Speak on International Security

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The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Dependence on expensive foreign oil. Challenging diplomacy with nuclear-armed countries. America's next president needs a strong vision and stronger will to tackle these formidable tasks and those that lie ahead. Which candidate is best equipped to meet these challenges? Our panel of top advisors to the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees will address each candidate's plan to improve our international security. Join us to listen and ask questions of these experts.

Sponsored by The Commonwealth Club of California.

Mark Hopkins Intercontinental Peacock Court
999 California St.
San Francisco, CA

Hon. James Woolsey Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Former Director of Central Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency (1993-1995); Advisor to Senator McCain Speaker

Michael A. McFaul

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

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Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies, Department of Political Science
Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
mcfaul_headshot_2025.jpg PhD

Michael McFaul is the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in Political Science, Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, all at Stanford University. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995 and served as FSI Director from 2015 to 2025. He is also an international affairs analyst for MSNOW.

McFaul served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).

McFaul has authored ten books and edited several others, including, most recently, Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, as well as From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, (a New York Times bestseller) Advancing Democracy Abroad: Why We Should, How We Can; and Russia’s Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin.

He is a recipient of numerous awards, including an honorary PhD from Montana State University; the Order for Merits to Lithuania from President Gitanas Nausea of Lithuania; Order of Merit of Third Degree from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford University. In 2015, he was the Distinguished Mingde Faculty Fellow at the Stanford Center at Peking University.

McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his B.A. in International Relations and Slavic Languages and his M.A. in Soviet and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. As a Rhodes Scholar, he completed his D. Phil. in International Relations at Oxford University in 1991. 

International Working Group on Russian Sanctions

The International Working Group on Russian Sanctions aims to provide expertise and experience to governments and companies around the world by assisting with the formulation of sanctions proposals that will increase the cost to Russia of invading Ukraine, and support democratic Ukraine in the defense of its territorial integrity and national sovereignty.
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Global Populisms

A new project examining the global surge in populist movements and what it means for established democratic rules and institutions.
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Michael A. McFaul Deputy Director, Freeman Spogli Institute For International Studies and Professor of Political Science, Stanford University; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; Advisor to Senator Obama Speaker
Dr. Gloria C. Duffy President and CEO, The Commonwealth Club of California; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton Moderator
Conferences

Biofuels and Food Security in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways of impacts and assessments of investments

Biofuel development contributes most effectively to rural income growth when you can have vertical integration. People all along the value chain have to be making money. The emerging connections between agriculture and energy markets are complex, but can be advantageous if handled carefully - Siwa Msangi

The New Japan: Recent Transformations in Japanese Business Strategies

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Professor Schaede's seminar will focus on the themes of her new book, Choose and Focus: Japanese Business Strategies for the 21st Century (Cornell UP, 2008). She will argue that Japan has undergone a strategic inflection point so fundamental that relying on what we used to know about Japan from the 1980s is insufficient to understand the new Japanese competitiveness.

In addition to analyzing this recent shift away from diversification to focused, lean organizations among Japan's leading companies, Professor Schaede will also discuss the newly emerging takeover market in Japan, as well as the changing role of venture capital and startups in Japan's newly emerging open system of innovation.

Ulrike Schaede is Professor of Japanese Business at UC San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. Schaede has written extensively on business organization and the financial system in Japan. Her recent working papers discuss changes in business groups and Japan's main bank system; investment funds, institutional investors and hostile takeovers; legal reform and "revitalization", as well as changing employment strategies and non-regular work. She is also an investigator for SPRIE's Japanese Entrepreneurship project.

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Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Ulrike Schaede Professor of Japanese Business Speaker UC San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies
Seminars
Entrepreneurship in Japan: New Patterns After Post-Bubble Reforms

Indian Democracy and Law from the Bottom Up: the Case of Urban Rickshaw Pullers and Street Vendors

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Madhu Kishwar is Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi; founder-president of Manushi Sangathan, an organization committed to strengthening democratic rights and women's rights in India; and founder editor of Manushi - A Journal About Women and Society, which has been published continuously since 1978. Her work on issues relating to "Laws, Liberty and Livelihoods" is aimed at evolving a pro-poor agenda of economic reforms in India. Kishwar, the author of numerous books and articles, has lectured extensively in India and abroad, and received many awards for her work. Her two most recent books are Zealous Reformers, Deadly Laws, New Delhi, Sage Publications, 2008; and Deepening Democracy: Challenges of Governance and Globalization in India, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2005.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Madhu Kishwar Senior Fellow Speaker The Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) in Delhi, co-sponsored by the Stanford Center for South Asia
Seminars

Thomas Isaacs

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Affiliate
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Tom is Co-Principal Investigator for the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) Developing Spent Fuel Strategies (DSFS) project coordinating international cooperation on issues at the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle with emphasis on spent fuel management and disposal in Pacific Rim countries. Participants include senior nuclear officials from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Canada, and the United States.

Tom advises national nuclear waste programs on facility siting, communications, stakeholder engagement, and public trust and confidence. He has worked with the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) for 15 years.

Tom was recently named as the Chair of the recently formed Experts Team to support Southern California Edison  at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Previously Tom was a Consulting Professor at CISAC, lead advisor to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, Member of the National Academy of Sciences Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, Director of Planning at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and long time senior executive at the Department of Energy where he led the siting of Yucca Mountain as the nation’s candidate site for a geologic repository.

He has degrees in Engineering, Applied Physics, and Chemical Engineering from Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

 

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