China is building more nuclear power plants than any other country today, with 21 plants up and running, 28 under construction and another 58 planned for development. The world’s most populous country is anxious to reduce its reliance on air-polluting fossil fuels and focus on alterative sources for a growing middle-class that is consuming more energy.

This rapid expansion in the number of nuclear power plants and associated nuclear fuel-cycle operations, such as fuel fabrication, possible fuel recycling and waste disposal, pose enormous nuclear safety and security challenges. Safety concerns were exacerbated by the 2011, tsunami-induced Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan.

Security concerns also stem from the fact that nuclear materials must be safeguarded to stay out of the hands of non-state actors and the facilities protected from potential terrorist attacks. These issues are of great concern to Chinese and Americans, so it stands to reason that China and the United States should want to join forces.

Four CISAC scholars – including veterans of Track II diplomacy, Siegfried Hecker and Chaim Braun – are working behind the scenes trying to get both sides to do just that.

The four traveled in October to China for meetings with Chinese scientists and policy analysts to discuss new approaches to nuclear security at a weeklong conference in Hangzhou and a one-day workshop in Beijing. The conference hosted top international nuclear energy and security experts. It was one in a continuing series featuring CISAC scholars and colleagues from several Chinese nuclear institutes and think tanks.

“We’re certainly back on a very positive slope with the Chinese,” said Hecker, a senior fellow at CISAC who first began visiting his counterparts in China in 1994 as head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. “They are very keen to foster continued cooperation on all things nuclear. It’s important in terms of national security – and it’s of great benefit to both sides.”

The Chinese have been a nuclear weapon state for decades, but are relative latecomers to nuclear electricity. While it only produces some 3 percent of the world’s nuclear energy today, China is on its way to become a world leader in nuclear power production and technology exports by 2020.

“The Chinese are taking a really pragmatic view of nuclear power,” said Jason Reinhardt, a MacArthur Nuclear Security Fellow at CISAC and national security systems analyst at Sandia National Laboratories. He traveled with Hecker and Braun to attend the conference, along with Larry Brandt, a visiting scholar at the center.

“All of us are better off if countries like China and Russia and the U.S. work together on nuclear proliferation and terrorism issues,” Reinhardt said. “So part of that is just going over there and seeing what they want to do and how they want to collaborate.”

Reinhardt is working on his Ph.D. at Stanford in decision and risk analysis with advisor Elisabeth Paté-Cornell, a professor of engineering and CISAC affiliated faculty member. He believes systems analysis can provide insights to improve capabilities to counter nuclear terrorism, facilitate nuclear agreements and reduce the risks of nuclear accidents.

“I think that the way policies are formed and the way technical information is used to inform policies is very different in China, as a matter of history and culture,” Reinhardt said. “So I’m trying to create a compelling story as to why systems analysis is a great way to collaborate between countries.”

Reinhardt said China and the United States have different priorities and approaches to nuclear security, with Beijing placing a high priority on preventing radiological and power plant attacks. The United States has done much since 9/11 to protect its nuclear power plants. Washington’s concerns are focused more on terrorist attacks with nuclear bombs and the potential of radiological, dirty bomb attacks. 

What is systems and risk analysis with regard to nuclear security?

Systems analysis is a structured scientific approach to tough problems, used to inform decision-making, Reinhardt said. One of the best sets of tools available – particularly when there is a lot of uncertainty – is decision and risk analysis.

And nuclear security is rife with uncertainty. What might an attack look like? Who are the attackers? What would the consequences be? How might the attackers change their strategy given our investments in countermeasures?

The questions are many and the connections complex. Risk analysis can borrow from probability theory, game theory and economics to bring some order to this chaos and provide insights that can inform policymakers.

“Systems analysis is using science and engineering techniques to answer policy questions for government,” said Reinhardt, whose work at Sandia includes projects with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security focusing on countering nuclear terrorism, promoting international engagement, and strengthening border security.

“We talk about concepts and taxonomies and ways to organize thinking, then mathematical models to help explore trade-offs – and then there are physical models and we go out in the field and experiment to try and get smarter,” Reinhardt said. “All of these help us understand the implications of proposed policies.”

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Reinhardt gave a presentation in China in which he proposed a joint study to develop a common framework. Moving forward, the study would primarily be academically focused in an effort to inform policymakers – not to set policy.

“I said that building a common framework for analysis and exercising those together would be a really powerful tool for creating collaboration at a very high level,” he said. “The United States and China have cooperated in areas of nuclear security in the past. These new efforts will build on that success and take them to a new cooperative level.”

He suggested they begin to work together to create a model that would:

1. Develop a list of potential attack scenarios, compile a list of potential perpetrators, and estimate probabilities of attack;
2. Compare the efficacies of different types counterterrorism measures to ward off radiological terrorism attacks;
3. Determine which countermeasures can and should be the focus of collaborative technical research;
4. And determine the next steps to develop Chinese and U.S. collaborations on countermeasures.    

The CISAC team will follow up with their Chinese colleagues during a visit in February and work to bring a young Chinese researcher to the center during the first half of the academic year.

“They’re trying to understand what they can implement to reduce internal and regional nuclear risks,” he said. “This requires that you first consider how to understand, assess, and measure these risks. Doing that together, I think we can come up with some answers that are valuable to both countries.”

A Growing Focus on Nuclear Power and Climate Change

The meetings in China came just as Washington and Beijing announced a landmark pact to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions by the world’s two largest consumers of energy. China is increasingly turning to nuclear power to address the adverse consequences of fossil fuels. As China expands its research and dependence on nuclear power – which in turn will cut down on greenhouse gas emissions – CISAC intends to help the Asian powerhouse protect its nuclear energy resources from potential accidents and deliberate attacks.

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Braun, a consulting professor at CISAC and an expert on nuclear proliferation smuggling rings and power plants around the world, also attended the conference and was invited along with Hecker to visit the Qinshan Nuclear Station about 50 miles southwest of Shanghai.

“For me, the visit to Qinshan’s Phase 3 plant was especially exciting, as I worked on the early phases of the construction of Qinshan Phase 3 while at Bechtel,” said Braun, who earlier in his career belonged to the Bechtel Power Corporation’s Nuclear Management Group and led studies on plant performance and maintenance.

Braun said Qinshan Phase 3 is now used as an experimental station to explore reprocessed uranium recycling and experiment with an alternate nuclear fuel, namely thorium.

According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, China leads the global clean-energy race, and last year attracted $54.2 billion in investment for alternative energies. That includes exporting safe, reliable nuclear technology to other countries that want to do the same.

“Russia and China are the two most important technological relationships we should be building right now,” Reinhardt said. "Any prospects for the future of arms control and reductions are all predicated on continued relationships with Russia and China.”

SCPKU hosted the International Diplomacy Lecture Series this fall which focused on driving discussions to better understand U.S. and cross-cultural diplomacy between the U.S., Asia, and China.  As part of the series, Karl Eikenberry's talk, "Post-Karzai Afghanistan," addressed how the new president and his administration will face a daunting set of security, governance, and economic challenges, even as the U.S.-led NATO coalition continues the drawdown of its combat forces.  Eikenberry was former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan and is currently at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) as a William J. Perry Fellow in International Security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Distinguished Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.  Terry Lautz's lecture, "Cultural Diplomacy in East Asia and U.S. China Relations," evaluated China's soft power push and compared the practice of cultural diplomacy in East Asia and the United States.  Lautz is a Visiting Professor at Syracuse University and former Henry Luce Foundation Vice President.  Thomas Fingar's talk, "U.S. China Relations and the 'Re-Balance' to Asia," analyzed the origins and objectives of the Obama Administration's "Re-Balance" to Asia as well as questions and concerns raised by the China and others in the region. Fingar is the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow at FSI at Stanford University.

Thomas Fingar speaks at SCPKU October 27, 2014, as part of the International Diplomacy Lecture Series.

Thomas Fingar speaks at SCPKU as part of the International Diplomacy Lecture Series.
Photo credit: SCPKU

CISAC's Scott Sagan is the chair of a new project by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, called the New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology and War.  The project convenes an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners (political scientists, philosophers, ethicists, lawyers, physicians, historians, soldiers, and statesmen) in a series of small workshops to explore the intricate linkage between the advancement of military technology and the moral and ethical considerations of the deployment of such capabilities in war and in postwar settings.

The project will produce a multidisciplinary Dædalus issue that will inform the debate surrounding the acceptable use of modern instruments of war and will provide a useful teaching tool for both universities and military service academies.

You can read more about the project on the AAA&S website here.

The rise of China as a global and regional power has created areas where the interests of China and the United States overlap in competition, the senior U.S. military commander in the Pacific told a Stanford audience. But Admiral Samuel Locklear III, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), rejected the traditional realpolitik argument, which predicts inevitable confrontation between the United States, a status quo power, and China, a rising power.

“Historians will say this will lead to conflict,” Locklear said, during an address at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center last Friday. “I don’t believe it has to.”

The United States and China have a “mutual skepticism of each other,” the Pacific Commander acknowledged, but he characterized the relationship as “collaborative, generally.”

He said the dangers of direct military confrontation between the two powers is low, but warned against Chinese tendencies to perceive the United States as engaged in an effort to ‘contain’ the expansion of China’s influence. Instead, Locklear urged China to work with the United States to build new security and economic structures in the region.

Economic interdependence between the countries makes it impossible for the two countries to avoid working together, he told the seminar, co-sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

He said that China has also benefited from the security environment that the United States has helped shape and maintain in the region.

Locklear reminded the audience of the central importance of the vast area under his command, which stretches from the Indian subcontinent across the vast Pacific Ocean. More than nine out of 10 of the largest ports in the world are in the Asia-Pacific region, and over 70 percent of global trade passes through its waters. The U.S. rebalance to Asia, a policy pursued by the Obama administration as early as year 2009, largely happened because of the economic and political importance of that area.

The mutual interest in economic prosperity depends, however, on a stable security environment. Washington has an interest in maintaining the structure of security that has ensured peace for the last few decades. Beijing seeks to change the status quo, to build a regional system that reflects its growth as a power.

Locklear called on China to work with the United States and other nations in the region, such as Japan and Australia, as well as the countries of Southeast Asia, to take the current “patchwork quilt” of bilateral and multilateral alliances and build a basis to maintain economic interdependence and security. He pointed to the U.S.-led effort to form a Trans-Pacific Partnership as a 12-nation economic structure, which could eventually include China.

“We want China to be a net security contributor,” he said, “And my sense is that both the United States and the nations on the periphery of China are willing to allow China to do that – but with circumstances.” He said conditions for the United States included open access to shared domains in sea, air, space and cyberspace.

The Pacific Commander cautioned against the danger, however, of unintended conflict, fueled by territorial disputes and Chinese assertiveness that worries its neighbors. Locklear stressed the need for more dialogue, including among the militaries in the region, an effort that the U.S. Pacific Command is currently carrying out.

“There’s a trust deficit in Asia among the nations, as it relates in particular to China,” he said.

Relations have been so icy that the top political leaders of Japan and China didn’t meet for nearly two years, only breaking the divide for a 20-minute meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Summit (APEC) in Beijing last month.

Refusing to engage at the highest level has made it difficult for countries to work on solutions to shared problems. The region now sees a confluence of old and new challenges that could threaten global stability if ill-managed, said Locklear, who has led the U.S. military command in the Pacific since 2012.                 

For decades, China and Japan have been at odds about sovereignty claims over islands in the East China Sea. In the past, during the time of Deng Xiaoping’s rule in China, the two countries agreed to, as Deng reportedly put it, ‘kick the issue into the tall grass’ for future generations to deal with it. These disputes have resurfaced in recent years, threatening to trigger armed conflict between the air and naval forces of the two countries.

Locklear said he believed that China and Japan would avoid inadvertent escalation, thanks to improved communications and tight command and control over their forces. But he also warned  that at least seven nations have conflicting claims in the South China Sea, which could easily escalate into direct conflict.

These situations, paired with an upsurge in Chinese military spending and the growing belief that the United States is a declining power, raise doubts about China’s intentions in the region. China’s Asian neighbors increasingly question the intensions of the world’s most populous nation, and second largest economy.

“Is it a return to the old days where you had basic tributary states? Is that the model that China is looking for? Or is it a 21^st century model?”

Locklear said China and other nations in the Asia-Pacific, as well as the United States, need to work harder to form shared views and consensus, particularly among those who “own the guns.”

Dialogue and interactions among the militaries are crucial, especially those who are called upon to make quick decisions during a possible flashpoint, for instance an accidental clash of boats or planes.

“Trust really does fall in many ways to military leaders to get it right and to lead, to some degree, the politicians and the diplomats,” he said. Locklear spoke of a tangible example of collaboration in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, also known as RIMPAC, hosted by USPACOM. Twenty-two countries participate in the world’s largest maritime warfare exercise in Hawaii, which this year included naval forces from China.

“Does it fix those friction points? No, it doesn’t.” But, Locklear concluded, “We hope that this kind of thing opens the door for future interaction.”

The audio file and transcript from the event can be accessed by clicking here. 

Recently, North Korea suddenly released the two remaining Americans it was holding – Kennth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller. The news made headlines internationally, and the drama of it was heightened because the United States’ top spy flew into Pyongyang and secured their release. Not surprisingly, the event raised many questions and is prompting a great deal speculation. Why did North Korea release the Americans? Why choose the U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper to receive the handover? And, especially, what are the implications for the troubling situation on the Korean Peninsula?

David Straub, associate director of the Korea Program at Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, has had direct experience with similar situations. In 2009, he accompanied former U.S. President Bill Clinton on a mission to Pyongyang to bring home two incarcerated American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee. As the State Department’s Korean affairs deputy director (1996-98) and director (2002-04), he was involved in efforts to obtain the release of a number of other Americans held in North Korea. Here, Straub offers his analysis of the recent event.

Kenneth Bae was sentenced to 15 years in prison and had already been held nearly two years when he was released on Saturday, while Matthew Todd Miller was arrested in April of this year and subsequently sentenced to six years in prison. Why did you think North Korea suddenly returned them?

The surprise is not that they were released. The North Koreans have returned every American they have held during the past few decades. While some Americans have been arrested for reasons that the North Koreans themselves might have thought valid, such as the charge that Bae was seeking to bring down the regime by his Christian proselytization, in every case the North Koreans treated the Americans as pawns. In fact, in the case of these two Americans and of Jeffrey Fowle, the third incarcerated American who was released last month, the U.S. government actually publicly used the word “pawns” for the first time to describe the way Pyongyang was using them. While that risked angering the North Koreans and delaying the releases, it reflected increasing American frustration at the North Korean practice of holding American citizens hostage to force the U.S. government to send senior figures to be seen as pleading for their release. North Korea intended to release Bae all along—after it got as much as it could of what it wanted.

But why did Pyongyang release the Americans at this particular time?

The reasons for that remain unclear. Many observers have speculated that the North Koreans wanted to ease U.S. and U.N. criticism of their human rights situation. The U.N. General Assembly will soon consider a measure, based on a damning U.N. investigative report, to hold top North Korean officials accountable for crimes against humanity due to the way they treat their own people. Others have speculated that the North Koreans wanted to release the Americans before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit this week in Beijing, to make it easier for Chinese President Xi Jinping to press President Obama to agree to return to the Chinese-led Six Party Talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. Both of these are plausible but they are speculation –only North Korean leaders really know.

But there is also an American angle to the timing. All along, the North Koreans have been demanding that the United States send a very senior current U.S. official to receive the release of incarcerated Americans. In the past, these roles have been performed by both very senior former U.S. officials, such as Presidents Carter and Clinton, and current but relatively low-ranking American officials, such as Ambassador Robert King, the United States’ special envoy for North Korean human rights issues. Almost from the start in this case, the U.S. was prepared to send Ambassador King but the North Koreans rejected him as being too junior. Instead, the North Koreans demanded a very senior sitting U.S. official come; they stuck with that demand and ultimately were successful. After a long process of negotiations and signaling, the two sides very recently agreed that National Intelligence Director Clapper would be appropriate. U.S. officials have publicly suggested that they were the ones who nominated Clapper. They say that the choice of this non-diplomat was intended to underline to all concerned that the sole purpose was to obtain the release of the remaining Americans. I am convinced that that was in fact the case. The U.S. government is naturally loath to talk substance with the North Koreans in a situation such as this when it is in fact acting under duress.

Then why didn’t the United States send Director Clapper sooner?

The United States does not want to encourage the North Korean leaders to think that they can coerce the United States by taking American citizens hostages. That might only result in more such hostage-taking. U.S. officials thus held firm for a long time and decided to send Mr. Clapper only when they concluded there was no better way to obtain the release of our citizens. U.S. officials have suggested that the North Koreans sent a signal a few weeks ago that triggered this particular decision, but exactly what was behind this exact timing remains to be disclosed.

Does the dispatch of someone as senior as Clapper increase the likelihood of more hostage-taking?

Unfortunately, it may. From a North Korean perspective, they got their basic demand—for a very senior sitting official—and it was the Americans who blinked. They also got a letter from President Obama to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, even if it was only “brief” and just certified that Clapper was his envoy for the purpose of retrieving the Americans. The North Koreans claim that President Obama “earnestly apologized”; the U.S. government has flatly denied making any apology. I’m sure U.S. officials weighed the concern about encouraging the North Koreans in further misbehavior against their desire to return Bae and Miller. Bae in particular had been held longer than any other American so far and he has a number of health issues. In response to the recent spate of hostage-taking, last year the State Department, for the first time, strongly warned Americans against all travel to North Korea. After the release of Bae and Miller, U.S. officials reiterated that warning.

You said that the North Koreans do this to force senior Americans to be seen as pleading for the release of incarcerated Americans. Do the North Koreans really go to so much trouble only for that?

Some observers say that the North Koreans do this because the United States refuses to talk and negotiate with them and that this is their desperate effort to try to negotiate and seek better relations with the United States. I’m afraid that is very much wishful thinking. The United States and North Korea actually communicate directly through North Korean diplomats assigned to U.N. headquarters in New York, as a North Korean ambassador there recently confirmed in an interview with Voice of America. The United States is also prepared to negotiate with North Korea, but only if it credibly signals that it is willing to negotiate an end to its nuclear weapons program. North Korea’s current stated position is that it is ready to return “unconditionally” to the Six Party Talks, but that is transparently cynical. The North Koreans have already created conditions, by using the Six Party Talks as a cover to achieve a nuclear weapons breakthrough. The North Korean now seriously say that they will not give up nuclear weapons until the United States gives up its own. Under such conditions, it would be a farce for the United States to agree to a resumption of Six Party Talks.

After accompanying President Clinton to North Korea in 2009, including sitting in on his meeting with its previous ruler, Kim Jong Il, I was even more puzzled as to why the North Koreans would go to so much trouble to force senior Americans to come to retrieve incarcerated American citizens. After much reflection, my working hypothesis is that the North Koreans must get great psychological satisfaction from forcing the U.S. government to bend to their will, even if they get nothing substantive in return—even if, in fact, they only increase the American disinclination to deal with them otherwise. In some cases, such as President Clinton’s visit, they also propagandize the event to their own people. So far, they have not yet reported to their people on Clapper’s visit. It will be interesting to see if they do.

A couple of quick final questions: do you think, as some media have suggested, that the Chinese government or private citizens played a role as intermediaries in the release of the Americans? And do you give any credence to some South Korean commentators’ belief that the timing of the release was related to the American mid-term elections?

It’s amazing to see all the people who come out of the woodwork after such an event, claiming to have played a role. Even Dennis Rodman is now saying he helped by sending a letter to Kim Jong Un. I know that many private citizens talked with North Korea officials about these cases and I would imagine that the Chinese government also urged Pyongyang to do the right thing, but I am confident that it was talks American and North Korean officials held that resulted in the release. As for speculation about the timing being connected to the American elections, that’s a common misperception in South Korea and probably North Korea as well. As any American knows, the idea that obtaining the release of these Americans from North Korea would somehow help the Democrats in the election is of course ludicrous.

David Straub also spoke with Radio Free Asia about the release of the American prisoners from North Korea. He says the release has nothing to do with North Korea's nuclear initiative, saying that issue must be addressed on its own merits. The article is in the Korean language and can be accessed by clicking here.

The Michigan War Studies Review (MiWSR), an online scholarly journal affiliated with the Michigan War Studies Group, reviewed Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies, a seminal book co-edited by Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) scholars Gi-Wook Shin and Daniel Sneider, and University of Washington’s Daniel Chirot.

“Confronting Memories of World War II is a forceful and timely warning about the dangers of leaving problematic memory legacies unresolved,” says Albert J. Schmidt from The George Washington University, writing for MiWSR.

Organized in four major parts, the book examines the consequences of historical memory of World War II and contemporary nationalistic rhetoric, looking at cases across Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) and Western and Eastern Europe, including Germany, Austria and France, among others.

Confronting Memories of World War II is part of an ongoing research project at Shorentein APARC that comparatively analyzes how wartime historical memory lives on through present-day national myths, and is furthered through educational material, media and popular culture.

The full review is attached below and may be also viewed on the MiWSR website.