November 21st, 2008

Daniel C. Sneider comments on "troubling" developments in the contentious relationship between North and South Korea

South Korea's new president, Lee Myung-bak, has taken a hardline approach in his dealings with North Korea, effectively signaling the end of former president Kim Dae Jung's once-vaunted "Sunshine Policy." Relations between the two nations have desintegrated in recent months. North Korea experts suggest, however, the the DPRK's growing belligerence toward the South actually follows a consistent pattern that may even help the United States in future negotiations. Read more »

November 20th, 2008

Managing Global Insecurity project launches 'Plan for Action' in Washington, D.C.

CISAC's Stephen Stedman and partners from the Brookings Institution and New York University released a comprehensive set of foreign policy recommendations for the next U.S. president in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 20, a week after the project was unveiled at Stanford. Read more »

Experts debate key policy issues at FSI's fourth annual conference

"How grievous are the wounds the rule of law has sustained over the past seven and one-half years?" FSI Director Coit D. Blacker asked at the beginning of FSI's fourth annual conference, Transitions 2009. This year's conference, coming on the heels of the U.S. presidential election, focused on opportunities for change offered by historic transitions at home and abroad. The Nov. 13 invitation-only event was attended by 370 Stanford scholars, outside experts, policymakers, diplomats, and leaders from business, medicine, and law, bringing together some of the sharpest minds in the country to formulate and discuss recommendations for U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and other world leaders. Audio transcript available 2 conference agendas available
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November 18th, 2008

A Foreign Policy Quiz

A quiz by visiting assistant professor Alex Montgomery that tests readers' knowledge about foreign policy. Read more »

November 13th, 2008

Wara and Victor quoted in Discover Magazine on CDM

Michael Wara and David Victor comment on the UN's Clean Development Mechanism's inability to prove that off-sets are working to reduce carbon emissions. Read more »

CDDRL's McFaul and Diamond in open letter to President-elect Obama, with recommendations to modernize foreign assistance

Michael McFaul, Director of CDDRL, and Larry Diamond, Coordinator for the Democracy Program at CDDRL, as part of a bipartisan coalition of foreign policy and development leaders, writes to President-elect Barack Obama to recommend early critical steps toward strengthening development and diplomacy. The coalition, Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN), also urges the President-elect to put forth a robust International Affairs Budget request for FY10.

• » MFAN open letter to President-elect Obama
• » MFAN transition recommendation strategies
• » MFAN press site
• » CDDRL program on Reorganizing US Government Democracy Promotion Efforts

November 12th, 2008

Transitions 2009 conference to focus on action plan for President-elect Obama

CISAC's Stephen Stedman, Bruce Jones from NYU and Carlos Pascual from the Brookings Institution will unveil a "plan for action" for President-elect Obama to tackle emerging transnational threats at FSI's annual conference Nov. 13. The plan is part of "Managing Global Insecurity," a project launched in 2007 that seeks to build international support for institutions and partnerships that can help foster peace and security for the next 50 years. Read more »

PESD carbon storage project database update released

PESD researchers Varun Rai, Ngai-Chi Chung, Mark Thurber, and David Victor have released an updated version of the PESD Carbon Storage Project Database. The previous version was released on 30 June 2008. The purpose of this work is to maintain an up-to-date database of all publicly-announced current and planned CCS projects worldwide, from which we project a trajectory of the quantity of carbon stored underground as a function of time. The paper suggests that a much wider application of CCS for the electric power industry will be needed in the next decade or so if CCS is to be a central player in efforts to slash CO2 emissions.
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November 11th, 2008

Barack Obama's missile defense challenge

President-elect Barack Obama's first major foreign policy test will be how to handle the issue of missile defense in Europe, CISAC's Pavel Podvig argues. Read more »

November 10th, 2008

Obama Administration will give diplomacy a chance to deal with the North Korean Nuclear problem

David Straub, the acting director of Korean Studies Program, argues that Obama administration will finally give diplomacy a chance to deal with the North Korean nuclear problem. He stresses that Senator Obama understands the difficulties of dealing with North Korea and will proceed carefully. If North Korea does not respond to this more nuanced American approach, he concludes, the international community is likely to be more supportive of U.S. efforts to constrain North Korean behavior.

• » Dong-A Ilbo (Korean)

November 7th, 2008

Bloggingheads: Proud to Be American

Program on Global Justice Director Joshua Cohen and Glenn Loury of Brown discuss how Barack Obama's victory changes international opinion of Americans. Read more »

Sarah Chayes discusses life in Taliban-resurgent Afghanistan

Award-winning journalist Sarah Chayes spoke at CISAC Nov. 5 about the realities of the so-called "war on terror" from inside Afghanistan. A day after Barack Obama was named president-elect, she expressed hope that the United States would re-engage constructively with its global partners. "For the last 10 years, the U.S. has [acted] more and more unilaterally, and has withdrawn from the world," she said. Read more »

November 5th, 2008

Trilateral Relations of U.S. and Two Koreas under New Obama Administration

"With the current affairs such as the financial crisis and the Iraq War," Gi-Wook Shin, the director of Shorenstein APARC, says "the new Obama administration may not have the North Korea issues on its priority list for a while. Lee Myung-bak administration, meanwhile, is urged to revisit the workable policies of the past as well as to initiate the pragmatic diplomacy towards the collaboration between South Korea and the U.S."

• » Op-ed in Dong-A Ilbo (in Korean)
• » Interview with Yonhap News (in Korean)

November 4th, 2008

Global Financial Reformers Must Heed Asia's Clout

Professor Phillip Lipscy discusses the current international financial crisis and provides insight for future reforms. "The IMF and World Bank should be reformed to better reflect the interests and concerns of rising economic powers. Voting shares need to be further redistributed to reflect underlying economic realities. Decisionmaking rules should be modified to give greater weight or agenda-setting authority to regional actors - the US may have a strong interest in loans to Mexico, but Japan may have a greater stake in Indonesia. Assignment of the top positions should be made truly competitive. Core functions should be decentralized - both institutions are headquartered in Washington, impeding employment of top talent from Asia and limiting intellectual exchange." Read more »

November 3rd, 2008

Joffe reviews Herring's 'From Colony to Superpower' in NYT

"The strength of this book is the author's Herculean power of synthesis," writes FSI senior fellow Josef Joffe in the New York Times article, "Entangling alliances". "Ours is the age of merciless specialization -- no grand prizes for grand sweeps. Yet Herring recaptures a quarter-millennium of American foreign policy with fluidity and felicity. Wisely or warily, he avoids taking sides in the great controversies; a good teacher, he presents the 'on the one hand' along with the 'on the other,' copious references included." George C. Herring will be giving a lecture at FSI on Nov. 17 titled, "From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776". Read more »

Lawrence Wein awarded 2008 Frederick W. Lanchester Prize

Wein awarded 2008 Lanchester Prize by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). Read more »

David Victor on offsetting the human impact on climate change through geoengineering

In the recent issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, David Victor explores the possibilities of using geoengineering systems to offset the human impact on climate change. He argues that a regulatory framework to govern deployment of this technology system will be required promptly as a mechanism to address the human induced effects on the planet's climate.
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Divided Memories and Reconciliation: History Text Books and War

An international conference on "Divided Memories and Reconciliation: History Text Books and War" was held on September 29, at Northeast Asia History Foundation in Korea. The first part of Divided Memories Project, a three-year joint project of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Northeast Asia History Foundation, is to study and analyze how high school history text books in Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan and US describe the violent history between the 1931 Manchurian Incident to the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, as the textbooks serve as the master narrative that composes the historical memory of a nation. Read more »

November 2nd, 2008

Lawrence Wein, CISAC faculty member, is cited in article about America's unpreparedness for a bioterrorism attack

Despite billions of dollars, America is still not prepared for a bioterrorism attack, writes Judith Miller. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist cites Lawrence Wein's research in this article. Read more »

October 31st, 2008

AIG Lobbied for India Nuke Deal (Really!)

Len Weiss, a CISAC affiliate, is quoted in this article about insurance giant AIG ensuring that Congress knew its stance on U.S.-India nuclear relations--on the brink of bankruptcy and facing a government takeover. Read more »

October 29th, 2008

Playing with Fire

Program on Global Justice Director Joshua Cohen talks with Glenn Loury of Brown University about Sarah Palin, what comes after the collapse of conservatism, and why a life defined by racial identity is poorly lived. Read more »

October 27th, 2008

Gender Imbalance in China

Dr. Marcus Feldman of Stanford's Biology department discussed the sex-ratio imbalance and gender studies in China in the first of three colloquia on "The Implications of Demographic Change in China," co-sponsored by the Asia Health Policy Program and the Stanford China Program. Read more »

October 24th, 2008

Health Care Reform in 2009: Fuchs Offers Inconvenient Truths

As Democratic and Republican presidential hopefuls advance solutions to reform U.S. health care, CHP/PCOR core faculty member Victor Fuchs offers three "inconvenient truths" that may serve as a starting point to address and inform health care policy. In a recent article published by the Commonwealth Fund, Fuchs asserts (1) that health care expenditures must be reduced; (2) that medical technology and interventions are largely responsible for cost increases; and (3) that universal coverage cannot be attained without subsidization and compulsion. Read more »

October 23rd, 2008

McFaul offers historical view of regime change

In video taken October 14, during a debate with former CIA Director James Woolsey, CDDRL Director Michael McFaul attacks the idea that America invaded Iraq solely to promote democracy. McFaul argues that, except in a few rare instances, the United States has never invaded a country unless there was a national security concern. Read more »

Scholars and scientists pursue fieldwork at Jasper Ridge

Christopher Field, FSI senior fellow and faculty director of the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, is featured in a Stanford Report article on the preserve. FSE Director Rosamond Naylor and FSE Deputy Director Walter Falcon are also mentioned. Read more »