The "blue wave" of Democratic Party victories on November 7th has altered the dynamics inside Congress and between the legislative and executive branches. U.S. policy toward Asia will be significantly affected. We can expect new and different pressures on relations with regional actors including China and the Koreas, on Asian regionalism, and on trade and economic issues. Indonesia is likely to come in for particular scrutiny. Join us for a timely discussion of the changed domestic politics of U.S. Asia policy now and in the final two years of the Bush administration.

The U.S.-Indonesia Society (USINDO) is an independent NGO specializing in policy issues relating to Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Alphonse La Porta assumed the presidency of USINDO in 2004 after a 38-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service. In the latter capacity he served as ambassador to Mongolia and held diplomatic positions in Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, and New Zealand. A former president of the American Foreign Service Association, Ambassador La Porta is a graduate of the National War College, Georgetown University, and New York University.

This is a Special Seminar within the CDDRL Taiwan Democracy Program (co-sponsored with Shorenstein APARC).

Richard Bush is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies. The Center serves as a locus for research, analysis, and debate to enhance policy development on the pressing political, economic, and security issues facing Northeast Asia and U.S. interests in the region.

Bush came to Brookings in July 2002, after serving almost five years as the Chairman and Managing Director of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the mechanism through which the United States Government conducts substantive relations with Taiwan in the absence of diplomatic relations.

Dr. Bush began his professional career in 1977 with the China Council of The Asia Society. In July 1983 he became a staff consultant on the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs. In January 1993 he moved up to the full committee, where he worked on Asia issues and served as liaison with Democratic Members. In July 1995, he became National Intelligence Officer for East Asia and a member of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which coordinates the analytic work of the intelligence committee. He left the NIC in September 1997 to become head of AIT.

Richard Bush received his undergraduate education at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He did his graduate work in political science at Columbia University, getting an M.A. in 1973 and his Ph.D. in 1978. He is the author of a number of articles on U.S. relations with China and Taiwan, and of At Cross Purposes, a book of essays on the history of America's relations with Taiwan.

About the Speaker:

Sheri Berman is Associate Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her research interests focus on issues of comparative political development, European politics and history, globalization, social theory, and history of the Left. Some of her recent publications include: "The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Ideological Dynamics of the Twentieth Century" (2006, Cambridge University Press); "Violence, Conflict, and Civil Society," Mittelweg, Spring 2006 (academic paper); "Islamism, Revolution, and Civil Society," Perspectives on Politics, 1, 2, June 2003 (academic paper). Berman received her B.A. (1987) from Yale, and M.A. (1990) and PhD. (1994) from Harvard.

About the Event:

The best way to understand how stable, well-functioning democracies develop is to analyze the political trajectories such countries have actually taken. For the most part, this means looking at Western Europe and North America. When we look carefully at these cases we see that the political backstory of most democracies is one of struggle, conflict and even violence. Problems and even failures did not mean that democracy would be impossible to achieve some day; in fact, they can in retrospect often be seen to be integral parts of the long-term processes through which non-democratic institutions, elites, and cultures were delegitimized and eventually eliminated, and their democratic successors forged. An important reason many do not seem to realize this is because of a lack of historical perspective: contemporary analysts often ignore or misread the often messy and unattractive manner in which the current crop of stable democracies actually developed. Understanding past cases better is thus a crucial step toward putting today's democratization and democracy promotion discussions into proper intellectual and historical context.