Stanford University

Foreign Policy

The Future of Democracy in Southeast Asia

This program will bring together some of the world's leading experts on Southeast Asia and democracy to consider critical questions facing the region. Has the American model of democracy become tarnished in Asia, and is the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism of growing appeal and significance? What are the dimensions and implications of Islamicization for Southeast Asia? What are the prospects for cleaning up notoriously corrupt party politics? Will the military ever be driven out of politics in places like Thailand and the Philippines? Is the American-led "war on terror" helping stabilize politics in the region, or is it exacerbating already serious problems? What do these developments mean for U.S. foreign policy and American influence in Asia?

 

Kishore Mahbubani, one of Asia's leading public intellectuals, is author of the forthcoming The New Asian Hemisphere: the Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East; and Can Asians Think? and Beyond the Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust Between America and the World. Now the dean and professor of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, he served for 33 years as a diplomat for Singapore.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author or editor of more than twenty books, including Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, and the newly-released The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World.

Donald K. Emmerson has written or edited more than a dozen books and monographs on Southeast Asian politics, including the forthcoming Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia and Indonesia Beyond Suharto. His latest publication is titled "Challenging ASEAN" (Jan 2008). He is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he also heads the Southeast Asia Forum.

Douglas Bereuter (moderator) is president of The Asia Foundation. He assumed his current position after 26 years of service in the U.S. Congress, where he was one of that body's leading authorities on Asian affairs and international relations.

Co-sponsored with the Asia Society; Business Executives for National Security; UC Berkeley Center for Southeast Asian Studies; USF Center for the Pacific Rim; and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.

Click here to listen to the audio recording of this panel discussion.

Julia Morgan Ballroom
15th Floor
Merchant Exchange Building
465 California Street
San Francisco, California

Kishore Mahbubani author and dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy Speaker National University of Singapore

Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Larry Diamond Senior Fellow Speaker the Hoover Institution

Donald K. Emmerson

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Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Affiliated Faculty, CDDRL
Affiliated Scholar, Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies
aparc_dke.jpg PhD

At Stanford, in addition to his work for the Southeast Asia Program and his affiliations with CDDRL and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, Donald Emmerson has taught courses on Southeast Asia in East Asian Studies, International Policy Studies, and Political Science. He is active as an analyst of current policy issues involving Asia. In 2010 the National Bureau of Asian Research and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars awarded him a two-year Research Associateship given to “top scholars from across the United States” who “have successfully bridged the gap between the academy and policy.”

Emmerson’s research interests include Southeast Asia-China-US relations, the South China Sea, and the future of ASEAN. His publications, authored or edited, span more than a dozen books and monographs and some 200 articles, chapters, and shorter pieces.  Recent writings include The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century (ed., 2020); “‘No Sole Control’ in the South China Sea,” in Asia Policy  (2019); ASEAN @ 50, Southeast Asia @ Risk: What Should Be Done? (ed., 2018); “Singapore and Goliath?,” in Journal of Democracy (2018); “Mapping ASEAN’s Futures,” in Contemporary Southeast Asia (2017); and “ASEAN Between China and America: Is It Time to Try Horsing the Cow?,” in Trans-Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia (2017).

Earlier work includes “Sunnylands or Rancho Mirage? ASEAN and the South China Sea,” in YaleGlobal (2016); “The Spectrum of Comparisons: A Discussion,” in Pacific Affairs (2014); “Facts, Minds, and Formats: Scholarship and Political Change in Indonesia” in Indonesian Studies: The State of the Field (2013); “Is Indonesia Rising? It Depends” in Indonesia Rising (2012); “Southeast Asia: Minding the Gap between Democracy and Governance,” in Journal of Democracy (April 2012); “The Problem and Promise of Focality in World Affairs,” in Strategic Review (August 2011); An American Place at an Asian Table? Regionalism and Its Reasons (2011); Asian Regionalism and US Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010); “The Useful Diversity of ‘Islamism’” and “Islamism: Pros, Cons, and Contexts” in Islamism: Conflicting Perspectives on Political Islam (2009); “Crisis and Consensus: America and ASEAN in a New Global Context” in Refreshing U.S.-Thai Relations (2009); and Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (edited, 2008).

Prior to moving to Stanford in 1999, Emmerson was a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he won a campus-wide teaching award. That same year he helped monitor voting in Indonesia and East Timor for the National Democratic Institute and the Carter Center. In the course of his career, he has taken part in numerous policy-related working groups focused on topics related to Southeast Asia; has testified before House and Senate committees on Asian affairs; and been a regular at gatherings such as the Asia Pacific Roundtable (Kuala Lumpur), the Bali Democracy Forum (Nusa Dua), and the Shangri-La Dialogue (Singapore). Places where he has held various visiting fellowships, including the Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 



Emmerson has a Ph.D. in political science from Yale and a BA in international affairs from Princeton. He is fluent in Indonesian, was fluent in French, and has lectured and written in both languages. He has lesser competence in Dutch, Javanese, and Russian. A former slam poet in English, he enjoys the spoken word and reads occasionally under a nom de plume with the Not Yet Dead Poets Society in Redwood City, CA. He and his wife Carolyn met in high school in Lebanon. They have two children. He was born in Tokyo, the son of U.S. Foreign Service Officer John K. Emmerson, who wrote the Japanese Thread among other books.

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Donald K. Emmerson Director, Southeast Asia Forum Speaker Shorenstein APARC
Conferences

The Center on Ethics Arrow Lecture Series: Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World

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Samantha Power is the Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy Practice at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. A widely published columnist on foreign policy, her most recent book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction, and several other honors.

Among the topics she will discuss are the questions and issues left in the wake of the death of United Nations official Sergio Vieira de Mello, killed in a terrorist attack on UN Headquarters in Iraq in 2003. Chasing the Flame, her forthcoming book on his life, examines answers to the fascinating question of: Who possesses the moral authority, the political sense, and the military and economic heft to protect human life and bring peace to the unruly new world order?

This event is co-sponsored by the Barbara and Bowen McCoy Program in Ethics in Society, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality.

Kresge Auditorium

Samantha Power Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Speaker
Lectures

January 2008 Dispatch - South Korea's New President: An Opportunity for Closer Ties with the United States

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We are pleased to bring you the first dispatch of the new year in our series of Shorenstein APARC Dispatches. This month's piece comes from David Straub, this year's Pantech Fellow. Straub served thirty years in the U.S. Department of State, specializing in Northeast Asian affairs, including as the Department's director of Korean and of Japanese affairs. Since leaving the State Department last year, he has taught U.S.-Korean relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Seoul National University's Graduate School of International Studies. At Shorenstein APARC, he is writing a book on U.S.-South Korean relations.

In December 2007, for the first time ever, South Koreans, anxious about the economy, elected a businessman as their president. Pro-growth conservative Lee Myung-bak won a resounding victory, with 49 percent of the vote, over left-center candidate Chung Dong-young, who won only 26 percent. Lee's margin would have been even greater had it not been for the late entry into the race by another conservative, Lee Hoi-chang, who finished third with 15 percent.

Korean voters had become tired of ten years of rule by the left-center, and they saw incumbent President Roh Moo-hyun as confrontational and ineffective. By contrast, Lee, a former Hyundai Engineering and Construction CEO, has a reputation for being a pragmatic, can-do leader. As mayor of Seoul (2002-2006), he beautified the city and reformed its mass transit system.

Lee is scheduled to be inaugurated on February 25 for a single five-year term, but he faces two early challenges. First, just before the election, the left-center camp passed a bill establishing a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that Lee had been involved in business fraud and other corruption. The special prosecutor is supposed to announce his findings before the inauguration. A regular prosecutor earlier found the charges to be unfounded, and most observers think that the special prosecutor will not turn up significant new information.

Second, President-elect Lee must counter centrifugal forces in the conservative party ahead of parliamentary elections on April 5. Lee Hoi-chang's defection has already split the conservative camp, and now President-elect Lee and former conservative party leader Park Geun-hye (daughter of the late President Park Chung Hee) are feuding over how much say each should have in choosing candidates for the parliamentary election.

If President-elect Lee is cleared by the special prosecutor and if he successfully manages relations with Park, Lee's party will likely win a very large majority in the parliamentary election, offering him the opportunity to be a strong and effective executive.

As president, Lee will face two long-term challenges. First, as Lee has promised Korean voters, he must strengthen the economy. While the Korean economy has been growing at a rate of about 5 percent in recent years, the average Korean has felt hard-pressed by large increases in housing and education costs. Lee plans to focus on deregulation and attracting foreign investment. He has, however, already been forced to scale back his promise of 7 percent annual growth to 6 percent at least for his first year in office.

Second, although North Korea was not a major issue in the election campaign, due to the apparent progress in Six-Party talks to end North Korea's nuclear weapons program, many experts are skeptical that North Korea will fully abandon its nuclear ambitions. Lee supports engagement of North Korea and continued humanitarian aid, but he has said he will not provide major economic aid to North Korea until it ends its nuclear weapons program. This marks a significant departure from the policy of his predecessors Roh Moo-hyun and Kim Dae-jung. A renewal of tensions with North Korea could threaten South Korean economic growth and Lee's popularity.

Lee strongly supports South Korea's alliance with the United States. He may seek talks with the United States to adjust or delay implementation of agreements reached in recent years to reduce the United States' role in South Korea's defense. Lee also supports early ratification of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the largest U.S. free trade agreement since NAFTA. (The U.S. Congress has not yet approved the U.S.-Korea FTA.)

Many experts believe that the near coincidence of Lee's election and the inauguration of a new U.S. administration in January 2009 offers a major opportunity to strengthen U.S.-South Korean relations. Shorenstein APARC and the New York-based Korea Society recently announced the formation of a study group of senior former U.S. officials and experts to issue a report and recommendations on how the next U.S. administration can work with President Lee. The study group will travel to Seoul in early February for meetings with President-elect Lee and his economic, foreign policy, and security advisors.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the election of Lee was that Koreans did not think it remarkable. They simply took it for granted that the election would be free, fair, and peaceful. Yet it has only been twenty years since South Koreans literally forced a military-backed government to allow them to vote democratically for their chief executive. In those two decades, there have been five presidential elections, with Lee's victory making the second full-fledged transfer of power between political camps. Moreover, this election was conducted at very low cost, using public funds; companies were not "squeezed" for campaign contributions as in the past. South Korea has demonstrated itself to be, along with Australia and New Zealand, the most democratic country in East Asia and a model of political development for the entire international community.

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Gazprom case study released

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Russia's Gazprom is among the largest companies in the world, and by far the world's largest producer of natural gas, with close to a 20% share. Driven by its political masters, it continues to consolidate control over Russia's vast oil and (especially) gas resources, and many Western observers are worried by its international expansion into downstream assets. In a new study of the energy giant, Nadejda Victor details the ways in which Gazprom's actions are distorted by political demands and by the inefficiency of the Russian economy, suggesting that it is headed for a production crisis if business and investment considerations don't start to take a higher priority.
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Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century

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Join Philip Bobbitt, one of the nation's leading constitutional theorists and the Thomas C. Macioce Professor of Law at Columbia University, as he discusses topics related to his forthcoming book, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the 21st Century.

Bobbitt will bring together historical, legal, and strategic analyses to understand the idea of a "war on terror." Does it make sense? What are its historical antecedents? How would such a war be "won"? What are the appropriate doctrines of constitutional and international law for democracies in such a struggle? At stake is whether we can maintain states of consent in the twenty-first century or whether the dominant constitutional order will be that of states of terror.

This event is co-sponsored by CISAC and the Stanford Constitutional Law Center.

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Stanford Law School
Room 290

Philip Bobbitt Thomas C. Macioce Professor of Law Speaker Columbia University
Seminars

State Sovereignty and Security in East Asian International Relations

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Seo-Hyun Park (speaker) is a PhD candidate in the Government Department at Cornell University and a predoctoral fellow at CISAC. Her dissertation project explores how the hierarchical regional order in East Asia has conditioned conceptions of state sovereignty and domestic identity politics in historical and contemporary Japan and Korea, with both countries alternating between deferential and defiant security strategies vis-a-vis regional hegemons such as China and the United States. Park has been a recipient of the Japan Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Mellon Fellowship, and the Cornell University Einaudi Center's Carpenter Fellowship. She has also conducted research in Japan and Korea as a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University. Her research interests include the politics of sovereignty and national identity, globalization and regionalization, anti-Americanism, and territorial disputes as well as general issues in East Asian security and politics.

Phillip Lipscy (discussant), a specialist on Japanese political economy and international relations, is a center fellow at FSI and an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University. His fields of research include international and comparative political economy, international security, Japanese politics, U.S.-Japan relations, and regional cooperation in East and South East Asia. Prior to joining Shorenstein APARC, Lipscy pursued his doctoral studies in government at Harvard University. He received his MA in international policy studies and BA in economics and political science at Stanford University. Lipscy has been affiliated with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, The Institute for Global and International Studies at The George Washington University, the RAND Corporation, and the Institute for International Policy Studies in Tokyo. Lipscy's most recent research investigates negotiations over representation in international organizations such as the United Nations Security Council, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. He is also researching the causes and implications of the rapid accumulation of international reserves in East and Southeast Asia.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Seo-Hyun Park

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall E301
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 725-0938 (650) 723-6530
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Acting instructor
Seo-Hyun_Park.JPG

Seo-Hyun Park is an acting instructor in the Korean Studies Program at APARC and a PhD candidate in the Government Department at Cornell University. Her dissertation project explores enduring patterns of strategic thinking and behavior in East Asia, examining how the hierarchical regional order has conditioned conceptions of state sovereignty and domestic security politics through comparative case studies of Japanese and Korean relations with China in the traditional East Asian order and with the United States in the post-1945 regional alliance system.

Park has been a recipient of the Japan Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Mellon Fellowship, and the Cornell University Einaudi Center’s Carpenter Fellowship, and most recently, the Predoctoral Fellowship at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University. She has also conducted research in Japan and Korea as a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University.  She received a B.A. in Communications from Yonsei Universitiy and an M.A. in Government from Cornell University.

Seo-Hyun Park Speaker

Phillip Lipscy

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Former Thomas Rohlen Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Former Assistant Professor of Political Science
phillip_lipscy_2018.jpg PhD

Phillip Y. Lipscy was the Thomas Rohlen Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University until August 2019. His fields of research include international and comparative political economy, international security, and the politics of East Asia, particularly Japan.

Lipscy’s book from Cambridge University Press, Renegotiating the World Order: Institutional Change in International Relations, examines how countries seek greater international influence by reforming or creating international organizations. His research addresses a wide range of substantive topics such as international cooperation, the politics of energy, the politics of financial crises, the use of secrecy in international policy making, and the effect of domestic politics on trade. He has also published extensively on Japanese politics and foreign policy.

Lipscy obtained his PhD in political science at Harvard University. He received his MA in international policy studies and BA in economics and political science at Stanford University. Lipscy has been affiliated with the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo, the Institute for Global and International Studies at George Washington University, the RAND Corporation, and the Institute for International Policy Studies.

For additional information such as C.V., publications, and working papers, please visit Phillip Lipscy's homepage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phillip Lipscy Speaker
Seminars

Top U.S. Foreign Policy Experts to Examine U.S.-South Korean Alliance

Authors
Heather Ahn
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New York and Stanford, CA., Jan. 10, 2008 -- With South Koreans having elected a new president last month and Americans going to the polls in November to choose a new leader, Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the New York-based Korea Society today announced the formation of a non-partisan group of distinguished American former senior officials and experts to study ways to strengthen the alliance between the two countries.

The New Beginnings' study group will gather at the end of the month at Stanford University to discuss and analyze the implications of the Korean election for alliance relations. The group will then proceed to Seoul in early February for meetings with South Korean President-elect Lee Myung-bak and his top aides, as well as other leading figures in Korean business, academic, media and policy circles. Based on these meetings, the group will prepare a report in March on their findings and recommendations to present to American policymakers, including those from the leading U.S. presidential campaigns.

Korea Society President Evans J.R. Revere and Stanford University Professor Gi-Wook Shin said group members believe that U.S.-South Korean relations are critically important to the United States' role in East Asia and that the inauguration of new administrations in both the U.S. and South Korea offers a unique opportunity to create "new beginnings" in the alliance relationship.

They also noted that the two presidential elections coincide with a critical phase in multinational talks to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programs and that close U.S.-South Korean cooperation is essential to successful diplomacy in dealing with North Korea.

Shin and Revere said that the Bush and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, after initial policy differences over North Korea especially, had recently significantly improved their cooperation, but that the two countries could do much more to strengthen bilateral relations.

Shin and Revere said they regarded the study project as a continuing collaborative effort by their two institutions. After issuing the report in March, they intend to continue to meet with U.S. and South Korean policymakers and other leaders. They plan to update the report and recommendations after the U.S. presidential election.

Study group members are:

  • Michael H. Armacost, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan and former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; currently the Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow at Stanford University
  • Stephen W. Bosworth, dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, and a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea
  • Robert Carlin, a visiting scholar at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a former State Department Northeast Asia intelligence chief
  • Victor Cha, director of Asian Studies and D.S. Song Professor at Georgetown University, and former director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council and U.S. deputy head of delegation for the Six Party Talks in the George W. Bush administration
  • Thomas C. Hubbard, Kissinger McLarty Associates, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea
  • Don Oberdorfer, chairman of the U.S.-Korea Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and former longtime Washington Post foreign correspondent
  • Charles L. Pritchard, president of the Korea Economic Institute in Washington, D.C., and former U.S. ambassador and special envoy for negotiations with North Korea
  • Evans J.R. Revere, president of the Korea Society, and former principal deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
  • Gi-Wook Shin, director of Shorenstein APARC; the Tong Yang, Korea Foundation, and Korea Stanford Alumni Chair of Korean Studies; and professor of sociology at Stanford University
  • Daniel C. Sneider, associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University, and formerly a foreign affairs correspondent and columnist
  • David Straub, Pantech Research Fellow at Stanford's Shorenstein APARC, and a former State Department Korean affairs director
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Space, American Exceptionalism, and the Next Cold War

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 Is military conflict in space inevitable? Has former president Eisenhower’s vision of keeping space peaceful become outdated? How can the United States secure its space interests and assets without provoking international violence? Bound by a treaty written and signed forty years ago, every space-faring nation—save the U.S. and Israel—has gone on record in favor of a new agreement. A new Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) treaty could address changes in the post-Cold War world as well as modern satellite and weapons technologies that the 1967 treaty could not anticipate. But in the grand tradition of American exceptionalism, Washington has largely avoided the issue. The administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush have blocked negotiations, citing potential threats to U.S. “rights, capabilities, and freedom of action.” Self-proclaimed “space warriors” even argue that U.S. military dominance in orbital space will be the only guarantee for international peace in the future. In Twilight War: The Folly of U.S. Space Dominance, Moore argues that the U.S. merely provokes conflict when it presumes to be the exception to the rule. “Unilateral military actions in space will not guarantee American security; they will guarantee conflict, and possibly, a new cold war,” Moore concludes.

Mike Moore is an author, journalist, and speaker, and research fellow at The Independent Institute. He is the author of many articles on national security, conflict resolution, nuclear weapons and proliferation, space weaponry, and related topics. Mike has spoken at many professional conferences and meetings sponsored by scientific organizations and policy institutes. Moore is the former editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 2000, and he has also served as editor of Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists. He was general editor of Health Risks and the Press: Perspectives on Media Coverage of Risk Assessment and Health and has been an editor or reporter for the Milwaukee Journal, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Daily News, and the Kansas City Star. His articles have appeared in the Brown Journal of World Affairs, Foreign Service Journal, Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, and The SAIS Review and International Affairs. He has contributed chapters to The Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy, Cyberwar, Netwar and the Revolution in Military Affairs and Asia-Pacific Cooperative Security in the 21st Century. Moore has spoken at the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, Fudan University (Shanghai), the National Atomic Museum, the Lawyers Alliance for World Security, the Nuclear-Free Future Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Stanley Foundation, the International School on Disarmament and Research on Conflicts, the Eisenhower Institute, and the Nuclear Policy Research Institute.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Mike Moore Research Fellow Speaker The Independent Institute
Seminars

US-Korea Relations: the Ambassadors' Dialogue Program

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About the ambassadors
Ambassador LEE Tae-sik is a career diplomat whose service for his country covers four decades and four continents. After passing the High Diplomatic Service Examination and joining the Foreign Ministry in 1973, Ambassador Lee served in various locations around the globe including Liberia, the Philippines, Austria, Yugoslavia and the EU, among others.

He has also held several senior level positions within the Korean government, including director-general of the International Trade Bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), and deputy executive director of Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO).

In July of 2000 his first ambassadorial posting was as ambassador to Israel, where he served until February of 2002 when he was called back to serve as the deputy minister for Foreign Affairs. In his capacity as the deputy foreign minister, he led Korean delegations in numerous security negotiations and consultations, particularly those addressing North Korea's nuclear issue.

In June of 2003, he became the Korean Ambassador to the Court of St. James (United Kingdom). In January of 2005, he was posted back to Seoul as the vice minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Ambassador Lee became Korea's Ambassador to the United States in October of 2005, presenting his credentials to President Bush in November of 2005. Ambassador Lee had served in the Korean Embassy in the United States before, as a First Secretary from 1981-1984.

Ambassador Lee was born on October 26, 1945 and is a native of the Republic of Korea. He pursued his academic studies in Korea and the United States, graduating from the Department of International Relations at Seoul National University in 1970 and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins in May of 1988. Ambassador Lee is married with three sons.

Alexander Vershbow was sworn in as ambassador to the Republic of Korea on October 14, 2005 and took up his duties on October 17, 2005. He is a career member of the Foreign Service, with rank of career minister, and has extensive experience in East-West relations, non-proliferation and European security affairs.

From July 2001 to July 2005, Ambassador Vershbow served as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation. During his tenure, the Ambassador worked to promote U.S.-Russian cooperation in the areas of counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation, and to expand the agenda to encompass new challenges such as HIV/AIDS. He was a consistent advocate for the causes of democracy, human rights and rule of law in Russia, and received the American Bar Association's 2004 Ambassadors Award for these efforts. He also promoted U.S. business interests in Russia, advancing American trade, exports and investment during a period of unprecedented Russian economic growth, while campaigning for the protection of intellectual property rights.

From January 1998 until July 2001, Alexander Vershbow served as the U.S. Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). As U.S. Permanent Representative on the North Atlantic Council, Vershbow was centrally involved in transforming NATO to meet post-Cold War challenges, including the admission of new members and the development of relations with Russia. In June 2001, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell awarded Ambassador Vershbow the State Department's Distinguished Service Award for his work at NATO.

From 1994 to 1997, Alexander Vershbow served as special assistant to the President and senior director for European Affairs at the National Security Council. During this period, he helped shape U.S. policy toward NATO enlargement, the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, and NATO-Russia relations. In October 1997, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen presented him with the first annual Joseph J. Kruzel Award for his contributions to the cause of peace.

Vershbow is a long-time student of Russian Affairs and international relations. He received a B.A. in Russian and East European Studies from Yale College (1974) and a Master's Degree in International Relations and Certificate of the Russian Institute from Columbia University (1976). He has held a series of assignments since joining the Foreign Service in 1977, including postings to the U.S. Embassies in Moscow and London, advisor to the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Reductions Talks in Geneva, and deputy U.S. permanent representative to NATO. Ambassador Vershbow was director of the State Department's Office of Soviet Union Affairs during the last years of the USSR (1988-91). In 1990, he was awarded the Anatoly Sharansky Freedom Award by the Union of Councils of Soviet Jews for his work in advancing the cause of Jewish emigration from the USSR.

Ambassador Vershbow was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His wife, Lisa, is a prominent designer of contemporary jewelry. They have two sons.

This program is co-sponsored by the Korea Economic Institute in Washington, D.C.

Philippines Conference Room

Lee Tae-Sik Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to the United States Speaker
Alexander Vershbow Ambassador of the United States to the Republic of Korea Speaker
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