This event is part of Shorenstein APARC's fall webinar series "Shifting Geopolitics and U.S.-Asia Relations."

This panel will review and assess various aspects of the relationship between the United States and South Korea under the leadership of President Donald Trump and President Moon Jae-in. The two leaders appeared able to work together quickly and make some bold moves on issues like North Korea, but the differences between the two have been stark on issues such as military burden sharing and policies toward China. The discussion will also compare the current dynamics of U.S.-ROK relations with that of during the George W. Bush and Roh Moo-hyun period (2003-2008), which is often referred to as the most turbulent yet the most transformative era in the history of the security relationship between the two countries.

Panelists:

Laura Bicker, BBC Seoul Correspondent
Ms. Bicker has been a BBC Correspondent for 20 years. She is currently based in Seoul where she reports on both North and South Korea. She is known for her interviews with President Moon Jae-in and her coverage of the inter-Korean and US-North Korean summits. This year she has produced a number of reports on South Korea’s battle with Covid19 including the documentary "How to Fight Coronavirus." In her previous role as North America Correspondent she followed Donald Trump’s election to the White House and his first years in office, as well as a host of deployments covering a number of issues and breaking news across the United States.

Mark Lippert, former US Ambassador to South Korea
A graduate of Stanford (BA, MA), Ambassador Lippert served as the United States ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Republic of Korea from 2014-2017. He previously held positions in the Department of Defense, including as chief of staff to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (2013-2014) and as assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs (2012-2013). Lippert also worked in the White House as chief of staff to the National Security Council in 2009. Lippert served in the uniformed military as an intelligence officer in the United States Navy, he mobilized to active duty from 2009 to 2011 for service with Naval Special Warfare (SEALs) Development Group that included deployments to Afghanistan and other regions. From 2007 to 2008, he deployed as an intelligence officer with Seal Team One to Anbar Province, Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Myung Hwan Yu, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, South Korea
Minister Yu has 37 years of distinguished service with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, including Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade from 2008 to 2010.  Minister Yu started his foreign service in Japan in 1976 as a young diplomat and returned as Ambassador to Japan in 2007. He advised on various political and economic issues concerning both the private and public sector with a view to revamp bilateral relation until his departure from Japan to join President Lee Myung Bak’s administration as a cabinet minister in 2008. He also served as Ambassador to the State of Israel; Ambassador for Anti-Terrorism and Afghanistan Issues; and also Minister of the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. His experience extends across a broad range of issues in the international relations including trade and security issues, and negotiations with North Korea in particular.

Moderator:

Gi-Wook Shin, Director of Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University
Gi-Wook Shin is the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea; the founding director of the Korea Program; a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and a professor of sociology, all at Stanford University. As a historical-comparative and political sociologist, his research has concentrated on social movements, nationalism, development, and international relations.

* Please note all CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.

 

Seminar Recording: https://youtu.be/UOHyKJR5d1w

 

About the Event: 

In 2017, former diplomat Elizabeth Shackelford wrote a pointed resignation letter to her then boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. She had watched as the State Department was gutted, and now she urged him to stem the bleeding by showing leadership and commitment to his diplomats and the country. If he couldn’t do that, she said, “I humbly recommend that you follow me out the door.” In The Dissent Channel, Shackelford chronicles how the challenges facing the State Department under the current administration, while extreme, are not new. In this live-streamed conversation, Shackelford will discuss the costs of a government unwilling to face mistakes or correct its course. She will also discuss how to build a more accountable foreign policy, through greater public engagement, more effective congressional oversight, and a State Department culture more open to dissent. In her book, The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age, she shares her personal experience as a diplomat trying to push back against the status quo and offers insight into the State Department’s long history of overlooking others who have tried to do the same. 

Moderating the discussion will be Rose Gottemoeller, Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and CISAC. Gottemoeller served as Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019 and prior to that as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the U.S. Department of State for nearly five years. While Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance in 2009 and 2010, she was the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation.

Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Dissent-Channel-American-Diplomacy-Dishonest/dp/1541724488

 

About the Speakers: 

Elizabeth Shackelford was a career diplomat in the U.S. State Department until December 2017, when she resigned in protest of the Trump administration. During her tenure with the Foreign Service, Shackelford served in the U.S. embassies in Warsaw, Poland, and Juba, South Sudan; the U.S. Mission to Somalia; and Washington, D.C. For her work in South Sudan during the outbreak of civil war, Shackelford received the Barbara Watson Award for Consular Excellence, the State Department's highest honor for consular work. Shackelford is a non-resident fellow with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

 

Moderated by: Rose Gottemoeller is the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its Center for International Security and Cooperation. Gottemoeller was Deputy Secretary General of NATO from 2016 to 2019. Prior to NATO, she served for nearly five years as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the Department of State, advising the Secretary of State on arms control, nonproliferation and political-military affairs. Gottemoeller was also the chief U.S. negotiator of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the Russian Federation in 2009 and 2010.

 

 

This event has been rescheduled to October 14, 2020

It is a good time to be interested in Southeast Asia-China relations. In addition to the three new books referenced in this webinar, additional books on the subject are forthcoming from other authors.  The timing is all the more propitious in view of the current animosity between Beijing and Washington as it may implicate Southeast Asia and American policy toward the region, depending in part on who wins the 3 November US election.  These books are both sweeping and granular.  Hiebert’s and Strangio’s country-focused chapters cover all ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), while Emmerson and his co-authors mix country studies with thematic arguments about China’s relations with its neighbors.

Given China’s clearly superior size and power, is Beijing’s incremental domination of its neighbors foreordained? Strangio says no: “Southeast Asia’s future will not be one of linear and inexorable Chinese advance, but rather one in which past dynamics and contradictions reproduce themselves over time at varying pitches of tension.” Is he right? Hiebert calls for the US “to support the region as it faces a rising and more assertive China”—to “remain an actively engaged partner that shows up, brings some resources, and rewrites the perception that it is often unreliable and missing in action.” Is that good advice?  For Emmerson, “strategic autonomy necessarily begins at home. Outsiders can help or hurt. But nothing can substitute for the creativity of Southeast Asian states in individual and joint pursuit of their own and their region’s security.” Is that true, and even if it is, so what?

The webinar will explore these and other aspects of Sino-Southeast Asian relations.

Murray Hiebert, in addition to his position at CSIS, is research director for BowerGroup Asia. Before joining CSIS, he was senior director for Southeast Asia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Earlier, he was a journalist in the China bureau of the Wall Street Journal. Prior to his posting to Beijing, he reported from Washingon on US-Asia relations for the Wall Street Journal Asia and the Far Eastern Economic Review. In the 1990s he worked for the Review while based in Kuala Lumpur and, earlier, in Hanoi, having joined the Review's Bangkok bureau in 1986 to cover developments in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. He is also the author of two books on Vietnam, Chasing the Tigers (1996) and Vietnam Notebook (1993). He has a master’s degree in news media studies from American University.

 

Sebastian Strangio has written from and on Southeast Asia for many publications including Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, The Economist, Forbes, Foreign Policy, and The New York Times. In addition to living and working in Cambodia, where he spent three years with The Phnom Penh Post, he has reported from Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and China, among other countries. Other previous affiliations include New America’s International Reporting Project; the Future Forum, a policy institute in Phnom Penh; and Chiang Mai University’s Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development. Foreign Affairs named his first book, Hun Sen’s Cambodia, a 2015 Book of the Year. He has a master’s degree in international politics from the University of Melbourne.

 

Donald K. Emmerson, in addition to his position in APARC, is a faculty affiliate of Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. So far in 2019-2020 he has spoken on Southeast Asian topics to audiences in Bangkok, Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, New York, Singapore, and Washington, DC.  Recent publications include “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” Asia Policy (2019) and ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (edited, 2018). Before moving to Stanford in 1999, he taught political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Australian National University, among other institutions.  His doctorate in political science is from Yale University.

ABSTRACT

This talk is based on the co-authors' recent paper "How Much Will the Pandemic Change Egyptian Governance and for How Long?" The Egyptian regime has reacted in an unexpected way to the global pandemic—with civilian, technocratic, and expert bodies leading the way and even some (admittedly officially patrolled) political debate being allowed to emerge. This talk examines these recent developments and evaluates whether they mark a real change in Egyptian governance, and if so, why, what kind, and will it last.

Co-Authors Bios

Amr Hamzawy is currently a senior research scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He studied political science and developmental studies in Cairo, The Hague, and Berlin. He was previously an associate professor of political science at Cairo University and a professor of public policy at the American University in Cairo. Between 2016 and 2017, he served as a senior fellow in the Middle East program and the Democracy and Rule of Law program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC. 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. His new book On The Habits of Neoauthoritarianism – Politics in Egypt Between 2013 and 2019appeared in Arabic in September 2019. 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 All Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi.

Nathan Brown is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at The George Washington University. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at The Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and serves on the board of trustees at the American University in Cairo. His contributions span a wide range of topics, including Islamist movements, Egyptian politics, Palestinian politics, and Arab law and constitutionalism. Dr. Brown served as the president of the Middle East Studies Association between 2013 and 2015. He was previously named a Guggenheim Fellow and a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and is a former fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. His previous research was funded by the United States Institute of Peace and two Fulbright fellowships. He received the Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Award for Scholarship from George Washington University in 2015 and the Harry Harding teaching award from the Elliott School of International Affairs in 2014. His dissertation received the Malcolm Kerr award from the Middle East Studies Association in 1987. Dr. Brown is the author of six books, including Arguing Islam after the Revival of Arab Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), and When Victory is Not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). He received his B.A. in political science from the University of Chicago and his M.A. and Ph.D. in politics and Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. 

Recent public outcries over facial recognition technology, police and state usage of automated surveillance tools, and racially motivated disinformation on social media have underscored the ways in which new digital technologies threaten to exacerbate existing racial and social cleavages.  What is known about how digital technologies are contributing to racial tensions, what key questions remain unanswered, and what policy changes, by government or tech platforms, might help?

On Wednesday, September 23rd, from 10 a.m. - 11 a.m. Pacific Time, please join us for Race and Technology, with Kelly Born, Executive Director of the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, in conversation with Julie Owono, the Executive Director of Internet Sans Frontières, a digital rights advocacy organization based in France, an affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard and at Stanford’s Digital Civil Society Lab, and a member of Facebook’s Oversight Board; Mutale Nkonde, CEO of AI for the People, a member of the recently formed TikTok Content Advisory Council, and a fellow at Stanford’s Digital Civil Society Lab; and Safiya Noble, Associate Professor at UCLA in the Departments of Information Studies and African American Studies, and author of Algorithms of Oppression. 

The event is open to the public, but registration is required.