CISAC's co-director Amy Zegart wrote this essay, "James Comey's 'Shock and Awe' Testimony," for The Atlantic in its June 8 edition and was also quoted in this Stanford News Service article:

Imagine that two years ago, you sequestered a jury of 12 Americans, kept them in a news-free zone, and brought them today to hear former FBI Director James Comey testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Chances are that all of them—no matter what their political beliefs—would be stunned and outraged.

From the perspective of one of these Americans, Comey dropped bombshell after bombshell: The Russians are mucking around in American democratic elections, trying to change how we think, how we act, how we vote—and they will be back. The attorney general cannot be trusted to ensure impartial enforcement of the law. The president fired the FBI director and then lied about why he did it. Yet by the time Comey said these things in an open hearing, all of it was old news. It should have been more shocking than it was, but on some level, Americans were used to it.

Some historical context here is important. Only one FBI Director has ever been fired since J. Edgar Hoover took the job back in 1924: William Sessions, who was sacked by President Bill Clinton in 1993 after the Justice Department's own Office of Professional Responsibility found so many severe ethical lapses, they filled a 161-page report. It included schemes to avoid paying taxes, using government funds to build an expensive home fence that actually reduced the security of the property, using FBI resources for personal purposes, and involving his wife, Alice, in bureau management in “entirely inappropriate” ways. Comey, by contrast, was fired by President Trump for doing his job. Big difference. One was miscarrying justice and abusing power; the other was carrying out justice and speaking truth to power.

Similarly, the only episode in recent history approximating the cloud hanging over the attorney general’s office occurred during the Watergate scandal. That attorney general chose to resign rather than fire White House special prosecutor Archibald Cox and impede an investigation reaching into the White House. This attorney general, by contrast, appears to be implicated in an investigation that reaches into the White House.

Finally, never in American history has a foreign power so deliberately, powerfully, and maliciously tried to distort the cornerstone of American democracy. Comey sent this point home in the hearing, declaring, “There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever. The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did it with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts. … It is a high confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community. ... It's not a close call.”

Comey’s testimony delivered a “shock and awe” campaign, FBI-style: calm, cautious, and candid, at once stoic and relatable. It was as though Comey were trying to reach through our television sets and shake the body politic into our collective senses.

And yet, his shock and awe testimony may not shock and awe for long. The biggest story of the day is how unlikely this is to remain the biggest story. In all likelihood, after the Twittersphere dies down, partisans will retreat to their respective corners and business as usual will return to Washington.

Why?

Because of something called the “normalization of deviance:” the more frequently exceptional things happen, the less we think of them as exceptional.  Over time, we become desensitized to events that fall far outside the normal range—often with disastrous consequences. The space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986 despite previous shuttle launches that revealed O-ring seals in the shuttle’s rocket boosters were cracking in cold weather. They shouldn’t have been cracking at all. But NASA “normalized” the poor performance of O-rings as acceptable and okayed the launch, even with record low temperatures forecast for liftoff. Seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space, were killed.

We experience the normalization of deviance in daily life, too. Ever hear a funny noise in your car? The first time, it seems alarming. After living with it for a few days, however, you think it must not be so serious after all. You tell yourself the car seems to be running just fine. You grow accustomed to the noise. After a while you don’t notice it anymore. And maybe the car really is fine. Or maybe the funny noise is an indication that the car is about to experience a catastrophic breakdown (which is what happened to me one night, when I assumed a strange noise in my car was really nothing, until the car broke down on the freeway, at night, in Los Angeles, “without warning.”)

The Trump era has brought the normalization of deviance to politics. In four short months, this administration’s national-security advisor has had to resign in disgrace for lying about his contacts with Russians and now faces possible criminal charges. The attorney general is so tainted by his own Russian-related activities that he has had to recuse himself from the bureau’s investigation of Russian-related activities. And the FBI director, who by law serves a 10-year term precisely to ensure independence from the president, was fired by the president because he was independent. This is bizarro world. Any one of these events would in normal times be enough to bring down a president. And yet senators today were talking about whether President Trump’s exact words to Jim Comey constituted a hope, a wish, an order, a directive, a threat, or as one senator characterized it, simply a “light touch” approach.

Comey was right about one thing: The Russians “are coming after America.” They may not have to. In this era of normalized deviance, we are defeating ourselves.

Read Amy Zegart's comments and those from other Stanford faculty in this Stanford News Service article.

The latest American assertion of freedom-of-navigation rights in the South China Sea may have reassured some that new bonhomie between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping won’t lead to abandonment of the region. But questions remain.

On 24 May, the guided missile destroyer USS Dewey transited within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef, a land feature occupied by China in the South China Sea. Analysts who had followed and criticized China’s campaign to control the sea, upon learning of this Freedom of Navigation Operation may have shared the same thought: Finally! Not since mid-October 2016 had the US been reported to have conducted such operations in the South China Sea. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, the Pacific Command had repeatedly been denied permission to conduct such a transit. 

Speculation abounds. Was the Dewey’s sail-by a one-off? Or did it augur a resumption of US efforts to forestall Chinese maritime dominion? Defense Secretary James Mattis will speak at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this week, and perhaps the Dewey’s route is meant to reinforce a message of reassurance for Asian leaders, that the United States is not resigned to Chinese primacy in the South China Sea. News of the Dewey’s trip was not formally announced. Nor was it accompanied by an official promise to follow up with further freedom-of-navigation operations. Any assuaging message, if intended, was thereby undercut, all the more so by Trump’s reputation for unpredictability and impulsiveness. 

Uncertainty abounds, too, as the region is left to wonder whether the Trump administration will make an ongoing commitment or will it offer, by implication, a transaction in the shorter run: suspension of US willingness to check China in the South China Sea, in return for Chinese willingness to check North Korea.

China’s behavior may have made these questions academic. For several years, Washington has watched Beijing turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake. Impunity has benefited the pace of appropriation, and already some analysts have concluded the game is over. The stronger, less reversible, China’s maritime position becomes, the less valuable – bargainable – an American offer to accommodate it will be. American indifference has facilitated, or at least not impeded, China’s efforts eventually to establish full-spectrum sway over one of the economically and strategically most crucial waterways in the world. A million square kilometers larger than the Mediterranean, the South China Sea is vital for the many countries that border or use it – including China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and, not least, the United States.

Obama-style “strategic patience” not only failed to lessen the missile-tossing truculence of Pyongyang. It failed to slow Beijing’s drive to dominate the South China Sea. Washington warned Beijing not to build up the land features it controlled; China did so anyway.  Washington warned Beijing not to militarize those properties; China did so anyway despite Xi’s public pledge to the contrary. Freedom-of-navigation operations were few, intermittent and increasingly far between, despite a promise to conduct them twice every three months. 

Meanwhile, ASEAN’s leaders were the objects of vigorous yuan diplomacy by China – attractive gifts and loans repayable in silence and deference. The Obama administration offered principles instead: good governance and navigational freedom. The Trans-Pacific Partnership promoted the first; freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea defended the second.

In San Francisco in February 2016, an astute Malaysian asked his American audience to put themselves in Southeast Asian shoes: The Chinese offer you a stack of cash to spend.  The Americans offer you a stack of principles to follow. Which offer do you accept? It was a rhetorical question.

Trump may have abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s provisions for reasons of good economic governance. But why was the principle of navigational freedom neglected?  Why were the freedom-of-navigation operations performed less often under Obama and stopped altogether under Trump? 

A one-word answer could be linkage. Obama’s White House, including the National Security Council, viewed US relations with China as multi-stranded. Provoking Beijing with such operations risked losing cooperation on other issues that mattered to Washington: economic discrimination, cybersecurity, global warming, North Korea. As for Trump, initially, discontinuance of the operations could have been due to the new administration’s internal disarray and lack of staff. By May, however, it appeared that Washington might not be restarting them for a different reason: to incentivize Beijing to alleviate American economic concerns and restrain Pyongyang. 

It’s become conventional to distinguish Obama’s “strategic patience” from Trump’s “transactional dealing,” but linkage is present in both approaches. Both subordinate America’s interest in restraining Chinese maritime assertions in East Asia to America’s interest in gaining Chinese cooperation on other matters. In effect, Obama and Trump alike had bigger fish to fry. China’s salami-slicing tactic also made its incremental advances too insignificant to pick a fight over.

The Dewey’s voyage past Mischief Reef has broken a string of seven months without freedom-of-navigation operations, raising more policy questions. If operations do resume, does that mean Washington has also broken the linkage to other issues on which China could be helpful?  Is that freedom were worth defending in its own right? And what if no further operations ensue or follow a haphazard pattern?

Reassurances matter. In May, during his first trip to Europe, president Trump could have recommitted his country to defense of NATO partners by endorsing Article 5. He did not. Europeans now have reason to doubt America’s willingness to defend them against Russia President Vladimir Putin’s desire to destabilize or even retake Russia’s former satellite states. If the Dewey’s journey was not a resumption, but merely a one-time blip, will ASEAN’s leaders echo Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel in doubting America’s willingness to restrain Xi’s maritime ambitions in its own “near abroad”?

Southeast Asian policy elites may already assume that the Trump administration doesn’t care about their region. The gap between what these elites want from the US and what they expect to get emerges clearly in an April survey of more than 300 influential officials, businesspeople, scholars, journalists and activists across the 10 ASEAN countries on “How do Southeast Asians View the Trump Administration,” conducted by ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute.

Of these respondents, an impressive 70 percent agreed that “Southeast Asia is more stable and secure with active US engagement.” But 56 percent expected the US to become less engaged in Southeast Asia in future, while 52 percent felt that the Trump administration was “not interested” in the region or considered it “irrelevant.”  As to which country or regional organization was the “most influential” in Southeast Asia, a mere 4 percent of the respondents chose the United States, compared to the 18 percent who cited ASEAN and the whopping 74 percent who chose China. An even higher proportion, 80 percent, expected China to fill any “strategic vacuum” in the region that American “indifference” might create.

There is one supportive result for Washington in the April survey: 68 percent of the respondents agreed that “the US will uphold freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.” The Trump administration should live up to that expectation. The Dewey’s sail-by should be followed by additional trips, performed regularly, publicly acknowledged, and justified by stating and restating strategic conviction: that no one country – not the United States, China, Japan nor any other state – should exercise exclusive control over the South China Sea. Such commitment, far from a chip to bargain with, is a key interest of the United States itself.

This piece was originally carried by YaleGlobal Online on June 1, 2017, and reposted with permission.

North Korea’s economy continues to move ahead despite years of isolation and international trade restrictions. The economy is performing at a moderate rate with a mean GDP growth rate of 0.7 percent from 2004 to 2015, and appears to be a focus of the regime’s policy decision-making, researchers have found.

“The government has embraced markets as an acceptable and effective way to improve performance and enhance legitimacy but maintains the ability to regulate marketized activities,” SK Center Fellow Yong Suk Lee and Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar wrote in a joint report released today.

The report, available in English and Korean (forthcoming), is an outcome of research collaboration between the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and the Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS), a research body focused on national security policy that is part of the South Korean government.

Conducted over the course of six months, the collaboration included two roundtable meetings at Stanford and in Seoul with the report’s co-authors from the INSS, Kwang-Jin Kim and Hyung-Seog Lee, and Korea-focused scholars at Shorenstein APARC, including Gi-Wook Shin, director of the center; Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow; and Daniel Sneider, associate director for research.

“We set out with the research question ‘how is the current North Korean regime performing,’ and through our engagements with the INSS, were able to combine our expertise and look at the question from new and different angles,” said Shin, also a professor of sociology and director of the Korea Program, who initiated the collaboration.

The researchers participated in discussions and parsed through data and qualitative accounts, including surveys from the INSS and reporting by journalists. From their collaboration, they determined two approaches to understanding the country’s economic and institutional expansion since Kim Jong-un assumed power six years ago, both of which are outlined in the report.

Their first approach suggests that organizational and personnel changes in Kim Jong-un’s cabinet, key ministries and committees were undertaken, at least in part, to enact operational effectiveness and a more productive economy.

“There’s evidence that indicates new appointments by Kim Jong-un were intended to maintain or enhance the ability of the government to meet continuing and new policy objectives,” said Fingar, a political scientist with an emphasis on Northeast Asia.

Kim Jong-un has attempted to consolidate control by removing at least two-dozen officials in the government’s main governing body – the Korean Workers’ Party, and in some cases, promoting them to different positions.

In the report, the researchers mapped the systems of North Korea’s three rulers since its founding in 1948 and the significant leadership changes under Kim Jong-un, noting that recent vice-premier promotions have included new economic responsibilities.

Personnel changes in the military have also involved positions responsible for oversight of foreign relations, commerce, oil and statistics, which suggest that officials are judged not only on their loyalty to the regime, but also on their performance at the job, Fingar said.

Their second approach suggests that North Korea’s improved economic performance is linked to its expansion of markets, and since 2009, its increased trade and investment with China.

“While the government maintains the ability to regulate market activities, North Korea’s growing dependence on the ‘private sector’ is a sign of the priority assigned to it and of its movement away from a socialist-style economy,” said Lee, an economist and deputy director of the Korea Program.

Officially licensed markets in North Korea have been estimated to number in the hundreds and the government collects taxes from them. There also exists a similar estimate for unofficial markets operating in the country, according to data cited in the report.

The researchers said it is improbable that North Korea will abandon market-oriented activities and capital inflows from outside its borders, particularly from China, in a time of tightening sanctions from the U.N. Security Council and other countries in response to North Korea’s repeated nuclear and missile tests.

“Taken together or apart, the two approaches we’ve put forth provide a comprehensive puzzle for future study,” said Lee. “We hope this report brings additional lenses that researchers can apply to analyze the performance of the North Korean regime and that policymakers can use to assess the efficacy of international sanctions.”

Colonel Patrick Winstead, the 2016-17 FSI senior military fellow at Shorenstein APARC, writes about the second annual orientation at U.S. Pacific Command headquarters

The mission of the Department of Defense (DoD) in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region recently became a bit clearer for 22 faculty and military fellows from Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Naval Postgraduate School and the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS). The U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI) organized a group of faculty and fellows for a two-day orientation of United States Pacific Command (USPACOM) and its component military organizations in and around Honolulu, Hawaii, April 13-14, 2017. The purpose of the orientation was to provide researchers with a comprehensive understanding of how America’s armed forces both develop and implement U.S. national security strategy, doctrine and policy throughout Asia.

The trip began with a visit to the headquarters of USPACOM at Camp H.M. Smith. After receiving briefings about USPACOM's mission and operations, the group engaged in roundtable discussions with General Terrence O’Shaughnessy (Commander, U.S. Pacific Air Forces); Major General Kevin B. Schneider (Chief of Staff, USPACOM); Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery (Director for Operations, USPACOM); Major General Steven Rudd (Director for Strategic Planning and Policy, USPACOM); as well as other key joint directors and members of the command staff. The faculty and fellows provided short presentations on the situation in the South China Sea, U.S.-Philippine relations and cyber warfare to an audience of mid-grade military officers and civilian personnel assigned to USPACOM.

In addition to meeting with the leadership of USPACOM, the group was also afforded the opportunity to interact with personnel from the four separate component commands. Deputy Commanding General of U.S. Army Pacific, Major General Charlie Flynn, provided a command briefing at the U.S. Army Pacific headquarters at Fort Shafter. The briefing stimulated a wide-ranging discussion about Army initiatives and activities in support of USPACOM’s mission in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. At Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay, under the guidance of trainers, the visitors took part in a hands-on experience operating Humvee simulators in a virtual-reality convoy setting and firing simulated weapons that Marines typically employ in combat operations. The first day of the trip ended with a working dinner at the historic Nimitz House with the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Scott Swift, where the conversation ranged from Chinese military modernization to evolving U.S. naval doctrine.

Those themes carried into the second day, when the group met for several hours with faculty at APCSS for plenary presentations and multiple breakout sessions to facilitate in-depth dialogue on select topics including the threats posed by nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula and in South Asia. The day continued with a tour of the U.S.S Hopper, an Arleigh-Burke class guided missile destroyer, based at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Once onboard, the ship’s captain, Lieutenant Commander J.D. Gainey, provided briefings on Hopper’s mission and operational capabilities. In addition, the group spoke with members of the ship’s crew. The experience allowed the faculty and fellows to interact informally with sailors who serve in the Asia-Pacific theatre and to candidly discuss issues of concern. The second day of the orientation ended with a visit to the headquarters of U.S. Pacific Air Forces and a dialogue with O’Shaughnessy and his staff about the unique security challenges of the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, such as tyranny of distance, limited support bases and multiple emerging threats, and how those challenges impact the Air Force and the entire U.S. military’s preparations for contingencies in the region.

Overall, the orientation provided a unique opportunity to engage directly with high-level leaders of USPACOM and to learn first-hand about the challenges faced by those who serve in the armed forces. The orientation also provided a forum to discuss the United States’ national security interests in the region and its efforts to maintain peace and stability in the Indo-Asia-Pacific and to help maintain a rules-based, liberal democratic order.

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"If the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear weapons were easy to solve, the problem would have been solved long ago. In addressing the threat from North Korea, a very real threat in which the North Korean’s could develop ICBMs that could deliver nuclear weapons to the American mainland, the United States must confront two very difficult challenges," explains Stephen Krasner in the Lawfare. Read the whole article here.