Abstract: The conventional international approach to post-conflict intervention has fallen short of expectations despite the enormous resources devoted to the endeavor. In this talk, Naazneen H. Barma will offer her original analysis of the underlying problem, arguing that while international peacebuilders aim to build effective and legitimate government, post-conflict elites co-opt process-focused interventions to serve their own very different political ends. She will present the core findings of her book, The Peacebuilding Puzzle, which develops a historical institutionalist approach to understanding peacebuilding. Through a comparative analysis of UN peace operations in Cambodia, East Timor, and Afghanistan, she will illustrate how competing international and domestic visions of post-conflict political order shape outcomes at three critical peacebuilding phases: the peace settlement; the transformative peace operation; and the aftermath of intervention. The central implication emerging from this study is that international peacebuilders must abandon the notion that post-conflict institutions can be designed and transplanted in whole cloth. Barma will conclude the talk with suggestions for a more incremental and adaptive approach to better achieve robust political order in post-conflict countries.

Speaker bio: Naazneen H. Barma is Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School. Her research and teaching focus on peacebuilding and political order, the political economy of development, and natural resource governance, with a regional specialization in East Asia and the Pacific. Her most recent book, The Peacebuilding Puzzle (Cambridge University Press 2017), argues that international peace operations fall short of achieving the modern political order sought in post-conflict countries because the interventions empower domestic elites to attain their own political ends. Barma received her PhD and MA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MA in International Policy Studies and BA in International Relations and Economics from Stanford University. From 2007–2010, she was a Young Professional and Public Sector Specialist at the World Bank, where she conducted political economy analysis and worked on operational dimensions of governance and institutional reform in the East Asia Pacific Region. Barma is a founding member and co-director of Bridging the Gap, an initiative devoted to enhancing the policy impact of contemporary international affairs scholarship. 

Abstract: China’s participation in venture deals financing is at a record level of 10-16% of all venture deals (2015-2017) and has grown quite rapidly in the past seven years.  Technologies where Chinese firms are investing are foundational to future innovation:  artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, augmented/virtual reality, robotics and blockchain technology. Moreover, since these technologies are dual use--designed for commercial use but also equally applicable for military applications, these are some of the same technologies of interest to the U.S. Defense Department.  

Investing is itself only a piece of a larger story of massive technology transfer from the U.S. to China. China has a long-term, systematic effort to attain global leadership in many industries, partly by transferring leading-edge technologies from around the world.

U.S. military superiority since World War II has relied on both U.S. economic scale and technological superiority. If we allow China access to these same technologies concurrently, then not only may we lose our technological superiority but we may even be facilitating China’s technological superiority. 

Speaker bio: Michael Brown is a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow in the U.S. Defense Department. He is the co-author of a Pentagon study on China’s participation in the U.S. venture ecosystem which served as key input for the proposed Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA) being reviewed with bipartisan support by both the House and Senate.

Michael is the former CEO of Symantec Corporation, the global leader in cybersecurity and the world’s 10th largest software company with revenues of $4 billion and more than 10,000 employees worldwide. During his tenure as CEO, Michael led a turnaround as the company developed a new strategy focusing on its security business.

Michael is the former Chairman & CEO of Quantum, a leader in the computer storage industry specializing in backup and archiving products. After leaving Quantum, Michael served as Chairman of EqualLogic, a storage array company. 

He serves on the Board of Trustees of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, received his BA degree in economics from Harvard University in 1980 and his MBA degree from Stanford University in 1984.  

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After the Cold War, Thailand became a poster child of democratizing processes in Southeast Asia. Student protests, farmers’ activism, a thriving civil society, and an expanding middle class suggested a model of successful democratic transition. In the last decades, however, many of the forces that supported that process turned sour on electoral politics. Dr. Sopranzetti’s book will explore how that happened—new class alliances, discourses of corruption and morality, questions of law.  In this context, he will portray Thailand as an experimental space for a new model of authoritarianism, inspired by Beijing and now spreading throughout the region.  The book, Owners of the Maps: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility, and Politics in Bangkok, will be available for sale at the talk.

Claudio Sopranzetti is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Owners of the Maps: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility, and Politics in Bangkok and he is currently working on Awakened,  an anthropological graphic novel on Thai politics.

Abstract: Founded in 1945 by Manhattan Project scientists who “could not remain aloof to the consequences of their work,” the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists aimed to chronicle the dawn of the nuclear age through the words of the men and women who built the atomic bomb. In 1947, Bulletin supporters—including a veritable Who’s Who of nuclear physics, from Einstein and Fermi to Szilard and Oppenheimer—expanded their four-page newsletter into a magazine that featured a minimalist clock, ticking toward the midnight of nuclear Armageddon, on its cover. More than 70 years later, the now-famous Doomsday Clock is set each January to reflect the world’s security situation. That event is now covered by thousands of media outlets around the world, and today’s Bulletin is hardly your grandfather’s niche magazine. It has become a global multimedia platform that deals with a host of manmade threats to civilization—from nuclear weapons to climate change and on to a host of emerging technologies—and reaches a worldwide digital audience of millions each year.     

Speaker bio: John Mecklin is the editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Miller-McCune (since renamed Pacific Standard), an award-winning national magazine that focuses on research-based solutions to major policy problems, and the top editor of High Country News, a nationally acclaimed magazine that reports on the politics, environment, and culture of the American West. Writers working at his direction have won many major journalism prizes, including the George Polk Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors certificate, and the Sidney Hillman Award for social justice journalism. Beyond his columns for the magazines he has edited, Mecklin’s writing has been published by Foreign Policy, The Columbia Journalism Review, and the Reuters international news service, among other media outlets. Before his magazine work, Mecklin was an investigative newspaper reporter and covered the Persian Gulf War from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He holds a master in public administration degree from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Over the last dozen years, Taiwan’s democracy has deepened in important ways. Executive power has rotated twice, from the DPP’s Chen Shui-bian to the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou in 2008, and from Ma to the DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen in 2016. The majority in the legislature also changed for the first time in 2016, from the KMT to the DPP. Taiwan’s most recent overall Freedom House ranking is 93/100, significantly higher than the United States. Its freedom of the press ranking is the highest in all of Asia, ahead of Korea and even Japan, and its rule of law and anti-corruption scores are trending in a positive direction as well.

To be sure, serious concerns remain about the practice of democracy in Taiwan, including a poorly institutionalized and often chaotic lawmaking process, incomplete legislative oversight of executive branch actions, and a partisan and increasingly fragmented media environment. Nevertheless, the greatest threat to Taiwan’s continued place among the world’s liberal democracies now appears to be external, not internal. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has always posed an existential threat to Taiwan, but its growing economic influence, rapid military modernization, assertive territorial claims in the region, and aggressive global efforts to isolate Taiwan have accelerated in recent years. Put simply, Taiwan’s long-term future as a democracy is imperiled by China’s rise.

The PRC’s growing power presents difficult security challenges for most of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region, not just for Taiwan. But these challenges are rarely considered from a multi-lateral perspective—most analyses of regional security issues instead tend to focus on bilateral or trilateral (US-China-Country X) relationships. This pattern is particularly common in discussions of Taiwan’s security, where the dominant focus is on Cross-Strait and US-Taiwan relations to the neglect of Taiwan’s other relationships in the region.

The goals of this workshop, then, are to place Taiwan’s security challenges in a broader, regional context, to consider possible obstacles to and opportunities for greater regional cooperation on security issues, and to devise a set of recommendations for Taiwan and its partners and allies. Workshop participants will include experts on a wide array of economic, diplomatic, and security topics from Taiwan, the United States, and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region.

Remarks are Off-the-Record.  Recording, reporting and citation of remarks is strictly prohibited.

AGENDA

Monday, March 5 - Koret-Taube Conference Center, John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Building

9:00-9:30am CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

9:30-9:45am OPENING REMARKS
Larry Diamond, Senior Research Fellow, Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
Karl Eikenberry, Director, U.S.-Asia Security Initiative, Asia-Pacific Research Center

9:45am – 11:30am: PANEL I.
Assessment of US Alliances and the Political and Military Situation in the Western Pacific
Chair: Tom Fingar (APARC, Stanford)
• Overview of Military Trends and US Strategy in Region. Karl Eikenberry (APARC, Stanford)
• US-Taiwan Relations. Robert Wang (Center for Strategic and International Studies)
• US-Japan Relations. TJ Pempel (UC Berkeley)
• US-Korea Relations. Kathy Stephens (APARC, Stanford)

11:30am-1:00pm LUNCH
Keynote Speaker: Robert Sutter (George Washington University) - "Will Trump administration advance support for Taiwan despite China's objections?"

1:15pm-3:00pm: PANEL II.
Trade and Economic Relations in the Western Pacific
Chair: Phillip Lipscy (APARC, Stanford)
• Regional Trade Agreements after TPP: RCEP vs TPP-11. Barbara Weisel (former Assistant US Trade Representative for SE Asia and the Pacific)
• China’s Institution-Building: OBOR, Maritime Silk Road, AIIB. Amy Searight (Center for Strategic and International Studies)
• Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy. Russell Hsiao (Global Taiwan Institute)

3:15-5:00pm: PANEL III.
Maritime Security Issues: The South and East China Seas
Chair: Karl Eikenberry (APARC, Stanford)
• Interpreting Chinese Maritime Strategy in the South China Sea, Don Emmerson (APARC, Stanford)
• China’s Maritime Militia. Andrew Erickson (Naval War College)
• Evolution of US Policy: FONOPS and Beyond. Dale Rielage (Captain, US Navy)
• Taiwan’s Role in Maritime Security Issues. Yeong-Kang Chen, (Admiral (Ret.), ROC Navy)

Tuesday, March 6 - McCaw Hall, Stanford Alumni Center

9:00-9:30am CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

9:30-11:15am: PANEL IV.
Taiwan’s Key Asian Relations
Chair: Kharis Templeman (APARC, Stanford)
• A Taiwanese Perspective on Asian Relations. Lai I-chung (Prospect Foundation)
• NE Asia, Yeh-chung Lu (National Chengchi University)
• SE Asia, Jiann-fa Yan (Chien Hsin University of Science and Technology)

11:30-1:15pm: PANEL V.
Cross-Strait Relations
Chair: Larry Diamond
• The Domestic Politics of Security in Taiwan. Kharis Templeman (APARC, Stanford)
• Beijing’s Taiwan Policy after the 19th Party Congress. Alice Miller (Hoover Institution)
• US Role in the Trilateral Relationship. Raymond Burghardt (former chairman, American Institute in Taiwan)

1:15am-2:15pm LUNCH