Since the 1990's the US Department of Defense has been pioneering the development of more coherent approaches to improve the coordination of complex technologies, program, policies, and institutions.  Among the most significant and influential of these new approaches is Systems of Systems, which is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on organizing independent stand-alone components into more integrated solutions.

As one of the developers of this concept, Bill will draw on his expertise to review the history of this emerging field, summarize its major scientific and practical features, describe examples of its application in DoD and other arenas, and explore its relevance to a variety of technical and non-technical issues affecting security concerns.

Bill Reckmeyer is Professor of Leadership and Systems at San José State University, Faculty Chair of the International Study Program on Global Citizenship at the Salzburg Global Seminar, and a Visiting Professor at CISAC.  A systems scientist/cybernetician whose work emphasizes collaborative approaches to problematic organizational, national, and global issues, his research and consulting have focused on leading multi-year strategic planning efforts in diverse institutional settings and conducting senior-level policy studies on national strategy for the US Department of Defense.

During the 1990s Bill co-authored several studies on Revitalizing America for OSD's Office of Net Assessment, which originated the ideas for systems of systems approaches to address hyper-complex concerns whose resolution require the integration of independent complex systems.  From 2003-2006 he served as Chief Systems Scientist for the Systems of Systems Center of Excellence, which was established by Congress and funded by DoD to lead national efforts at developing more integrative solutions to interconnected challenges affecting defense acquisition and logistics, national security, homeland security, and international affairs.

Prior to joining Stanford Bill also held posts as a Visiting Professor or a Senior Fellow at Harvard, Southern California, Maryland, Stockholm, St. Gallen, Aveiro, and several other major universities in the United States and Europe.  He currently serves as Strategic Advisor to the California Levees Roundtable and as a Core Faculty member in the CA Agricultural Leadership Program.

A former President of the American Society for Cybernetics in 1983-1985, Bill was a Kellogg National Leadership Fellow in 1988-1992 and a Salzburg Global Fellow on five occasions from 1995-2004.  He earned his PhD in Russian Studies at American University in 1982 and completed several advanced leadership programs at Harvard University from 1990-1995.

In the four years since a State Council think tank, the Development Research Center, bluntly declared the failure of three decades of healthcare reform, China has placed a high political priority on designing, building and financing a modern, equitable health delivery system that serves every last one of its 1.3 billion people. As publisher of practice-building trade magazines for medical specialists in China and India, Jeffrey Parker has developed unique and valuable perspectives on what's wrong with China's healthcare system -- and how Indian practitioners are able to deliver results despite a per-capita GDP that is roughly half of China's. Through an unprecedented China-India training exchange, Mr. Parker has begun testing whether Indian models of self-financed grassroots medical startup practices can help doctors shake free of China’s Stalinist paralysis without having to wait for sweeping programmatic reforms that are always on the horizon, but seem never to come. What's more, would such grassroots empowerment models not create unprecedented opportunities for participation by international investors who up to now have been largely marginalized in China's healthcare development?

In this lunchtime colloquium, Mr. Parker reviews his experiences in China and India over the past six years and looks at several exciting recent developments in China. These include:

• An ambitious rural reimbursement scheme that already has begun to complete a nationwide healthcare safety net. The program is creating a vast pool of funds to finance rural medical services, but how will Beijing populate the countryside with sustainable grassroots practices?
• The first domestic healthcare IPO, by which Aier Ophthalmology raised some $50 million as one of 28 debut listings in the Shenzhen's new "ChiNext" Growth Enterprise Market. New wind in the sails of healthcare privatization?
• Licensing reforms that have begun delinking doctors' certification from their "work unit" hospitals under trials in Beijing and Yunnan, removing a vexing obstacle to hands-on surgical training of young practitioners. Will the breaking of senior doctors' "skills monopoly" create opportunities for private-sector training programs that will shake up China's Soviet-style residency programs?

Jeffrey Parker has lived in Greater China since 1990, first as a journalist and since 2003 as a publisher. His transition from chronicler of China's historic rise to active proponent of its economic development gives him a unique perspective on the opportunities still opening up in China -- and the challenges facing anyone keen to participate. With a twin B.A. in Asian Studies and Geography from U.C. Santa Barbara and Masters training in Journalism from Columbia University, Parker trimmed his sails for a China career from an early age. After early editorial jobs in New York and Washington, D.C., he was dispatched to Beijing by United Press International as senior correspondent in 1990. During the next 10 years with UPI and then Reuters, he covered a wide range of political, economic and social stories from postings in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Peoples Republic. In his final two years at Reuters, Parker got his first taste of media development, launching local-language multimedia news and video feeds in China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia. Since 2003, Parker has built up a family of world-class doctors' magazines serving more than 50,000 specialists in China and India from the Shanghai base of ILX Media Group, where he is editorial director, chief operating officer, a corporate director and investor. Among his objectives is to help foster a badly needed transformation of medical practice across China by inspiring grassroots doctors to deliver high-quality, cost-effective services in rural and less-developed communities left behind by government health care.

Dr. Stephen Flynn served as a senior policy advisor on homeland security during the Obama campaign and during the presidential transition. Since May 2009, he has been supporting the Department of Homeland Security in drafting of the first Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) that will be presented to Congress by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in Jan 2010. In addition, he has been assisting the newly created National Security Council Directorate for Resilience Policy on integrating the concept of resilience into presidential guidance on national preparedness. He will discuss how the homeland security mission is being recalibrated by the Obama Administration to place greater emphasis on building national capacity to withstand, quickly recover from, and adapt to man-made and natural disasters.

About the speaker:

In December 2009, Dr. Stephen Flynn becomes the fifth President of the Center for National Policy (www.cnponline.org), founded in 1981.  Prior to being selected to lead CNP, he spent a decade as a senior fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Following the election of President Barack Obama, he served as the lead policy advisor on homeland security for the presidential transition team.  He is a member of the bipartisan National Security Preparedness Group, co-chaired by former 9/11 commissioners, Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton.

Dr. Flynn is the author of the critically acclaimed The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation (Random House, 2007), and the national bestseller, America the Vulnerable (HarperCollins 2004).  He is a Consulting Professor at the Center of International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School's Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania.  Since 9/11 he has provided testimony on twenty-two occasions on Capitol Hill.  Dr. Flynn is also a member of the Marine Board of the National Research Council. Prior to September 11, 2001, he served as an expert advisor to U.S. Commission on National Security (Hart-Rudman Commission), and following the 9/11 attacks he was the principle advisor to the bipartisan Congressional Port Security Caucus, and advised the Bush Administration on maritime and homeland security issues. 

He is a frequent media commentator and has appeared on Meet the Press, 60 Minutes, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The Today Show, the Charlie Rose Show, CNN and on National Public Radio.  Four of his articles have been published in the prestigious journal, Foreign Affairs.  Excerpts of his books have been featured in Time, as the cover story for U.S. News & World Report, and as the subject of two CNN documentaries.

A 1982 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Dr. Flynn served in the Coast Guard on active duty for 20 years, including two tours as commanding officer at sea, received several professional awards including the Legion of Merit, and retired at the rank of Commander.  As a Coast Guard officer, he served in the White House Military Office during the George H.W. Bush administration and as a director for Global Issues on the National Security Council staff during the Clinton administration. 

Dr. Flynn received the M.A.L.D. and Ph.D. degrees in International Politics from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in 1990 and 1991.  He was a Guest Scholar in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution from 1991-92, and in 1993-94 he was an Annenberg Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.   He has been a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations since 1999.

Dr. Flynn is the principal for Stephen E. Flynn Associates LLC, where he provides independent advisory services on improving enterprise resiliency and critical infrastructure protection, and transportation and maritime security.

Born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1960, Dr. Flynn lives in Connecticut with his wife JoAnn and their daughter Christina.

At the core of US-Taiwan-China relations, mistrust has long been, and remains today, the most difficult and elusive problem policy makers face. The danger is obvious given that the Taiwan Strait is the only place where the US could go to war with a nuclear armed great power.  In her talk, Nancy Bernkopf Tucker will examine the nature of US commitments, the intricacies of decision-making, the intentions of critical actors and the impact of Taiwan’s democratization.

Nancy Bernkopf Tucker is Professor of History at Georgetown University and the
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service . She also holds an appointment as a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. She is the author of Strait Talk: US-Taiwan Relations and the China Crisis (Harvard, 2009), Uncertain Friendships: Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States (Columbia, 2006), Patterns in the Dust: Chinese-American Relations and the Recognition Controversy, 1949-50 (Columbia, 1983), and more than a dozen of book chapters, edited volumes and journal articles.

With a flawed Afghan election and a request for more troop increases by General Stanley McChrystal, there is renewed attention toward whether and how the United States can turn the situation in Afghanistan around. Several options for going forward have been proposed: a resource- and manpower-heavy counterinsurgency strategy; a more scaled down counterterrorism campaign; and various models in between those extremes. Yet regardless of which option is chosen a key ingredient of success will be the degree to which Afghan communities are invested. Unfortunately, regaining their trust and confidence will be no small task given the current environment. High civilian casualties and a corresponding failure to protect Afghans from the daily brutality of insurgents, criminal groups, and warlords lead Afghans to regard international military as impotent, malevolent, or both. Though billions have been spent to build schools, support economic development, and other initiatives, corruption, security concerns, and mismanagement lead Afghans to view these projects as symbols of Afghan and international fecklessness and failure rather than reasons to cast their lot with them in the future. Successful Taliban propaganda, often based on legitimate community grievances, has further fueled mistrust between the Afghan population and those who are supposed to be protecting their interests. 

While there has been much talk about enhancing the legitimacy of the Afghan government and winning "hearts and minds", it seems unlikely that elections or military slush funds will get anywhere near what Afghan communities perceive as the problem. Based in large part on on-the-ground observations and discussions with Afghan civil society groups, this talk will focus on some of these community perceptions and narratives about what is fueling the conflict with a view toward better analyzing the strategic implications.

Erica Gaston is a human rights lawyer consulting on civilian casualties for the Open Society Institute in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She first visited Afghanistan in 2007 to conduct research for a legal study on private security companies, and then moved to Kabul in 2008 with the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), whose mission is to encourage warring parties to provide compensation, victim assistance, recognition or other redress to victims of conflict. In addition to her work with CIVIC, she worked extensively with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, and was the lead editor on their 2008 report on the conduct of pro-government forces in Afghanistan. She also worked with the Afghan NGO WADAN, which focuses on grassroots civic education, governance and human rights advocacy.

In addition to her work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Erica has also been involved in other human rights documentation and advocacy related to the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in the summer of 2006, situations of ethnic conflict in Ethiopia, cluster munition use, among others.  She has also published legal articles related to the accountability of private security companies, issues and problems inherent in the humanitarian project, and the improvement of emergency preparedness for homeland security and counter-terrorism purposes. She is a blog contributor to the Huffington Post and has provided commentary on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, CBC, and other local and international radio programming.

Erica graduated from Harvard Law School in 2007. She graduated with a B.A. in International Relations, with honors in International Security, from Stanford University.