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Digital flyer for Shorenstein APARC Japan Program April 15 2025 event "Recalibrating U.S. -Japan Collaboration in a Time of Tumult"


As the United States redefines its role in the world, its closest ally, Japan, gains new prominence while facing new pressures, new challenges, and new opportunities. This symposium features leading experts on issues that concern the American, Japanese, and global public in this turbulent time. They will explore the evolving U.S.-Japan ties from various angles and engage in a wide-ranging conversation spanning the liberal international order, global trade, DEI, civil society — and baseball.

Free lunch and refreshments will be provided on a first come, first served basis
 

Agenda

 

Session 1 – Global Democracy, Foreign Aid, and Regional Security: As the U.S. Pulls Back, Will Tokyo Step Up?


Larry Diamond, Mosbacher Senior Fellow of Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Shinichi Kitaoka, former Japanese Ambassador to the United Nations, former former President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA

Kiyoteru Tsutsui, Director, Japan Program at Shorenstein APARC; Stanford Professor of Sociology



Session 2 – How Tariffs and Trade Wars are Reshaping the Indo-Pacific


Wendy Cutler, Vice President at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), former Acting Deputy United States Trade Representative

Peter Wonacott, Managing Editor, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability; former Wall Street Journal Deputy Washington Bureau Chief



Session 3 — The Future of DEI, ESG, SDGs: Will Japan Follow the U.S. or Stay the Course?


Keiko Tashiro, Deputy President, Head of Sustainability, Daiwa Securities Group Inc.

Gayle Peterson, Associate Fellow, Saïd School of Business, University of Oxford

Patricia Bromley, Co-Director, Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society



Session 4 — Redefining the Relationship Through Civil Society: Burden Sharing, Knowledge Sharing, Picking up the Slack


Mike Berkowitz, Executive Director, Democracy Funders Network,

Jacob M. Schlesinger, President & CEO, United States-Japan Foundation



Session 5 — Diamond Diplomacy Redux: Baseball as a Bilateral Bridge


Stan Kasten, President & CEO, Los Angeles Dodgers

Yuriko Gamo Romer, Director/Producer, Diamond Diplomacy documentary



Speakers


Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He chairs the Hoover Institution Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and serves as a senior consultant at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. His research focuses on democratic trends and conditions around the world and on policies and reforms to defend and advance democracy. During 2002–03, he 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.

Shinichi Kitaoka is a Shorenstein APARC visiting scholar and Japan Program fellow. He was president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA: 2015-2022) and is an emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo. Previous posts include president of the International University of Japan (2012-2015), professor at University of Tokyo (1997-2012), professor of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) (2012-), professor of Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, the University of Tokyo (1997-2004, 2006-2012), ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, deputy permanent representative of Japan to the United Nations (2004-2006), and professor of the College of Law and Politics, Rikkyo University (1985-1997). His specialty is modern Japanese politics and diplomacy. He is a former member of the Board of Trustees of the United States-Japan Foundation.

Kiyoteru Tsutsui is the Henri H. and Tomoye Takahashi Professor and Senior Fellow in Japanese Studies at Shorenstein APARC, the director of the Japan Program, and deputy director at APARC, a senior fellow of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Professor of Sociology, all at Stanford University. His research interests lie in political/comparative sociology, social movements, globalization, human rights, and Japanese society. His current projects include studies of populism and the future of democracy, global expansion of corporate social responsibility and its impact on corporate behavior, Japan’s public diplomacy, and perceptions of Japan in the world. He is a fellow in the United States-Japan Foundation's U.S.-Japan Leadership Program network.

Wendy Cutler is vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) and the managing director of the Washington, D.C. office. She focuses on leading initiatives that address challenges related to trade, investment, and innovation, as well as women’s empowerment in Asia. She joined ASPI after nearly three decades as a diplomat and negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), where she also served as acting deputy U.S. trade representative. During her USTR career, she worked on a range of bilateral, regional, and multilateral trade negotiations and initiatives, including the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, U.S.-China negotiations, and the WTO Financial Services negotiations. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the United States-Japan Foundation.

Peter Wonacott is managing editor of a new, global-facing sustainability publication being developed at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He previously worked for three decades at The Wall Street Journal, where he was a correspondent in China, a senior correspondent in Pakistan and India, chief of the Africa bureau, chief of the Middle East bureau, and deputy chief of Washington coverage. He spent a year at the Johns Hopkins University-/Nanjing University Center for U.S.-China Studies and is fluent in Mandarin.

Keiko Tashiro is deputy president at Daiwa Securities Group, a position she has held since 2019. She currently serves as the Group’s head of Sustainability, Financial Literacy and Education, Securities Asset Management, and Think Tank functions. She has held various positions at Daiwa, including overseas assignments in Singapore, London, and New York. Outside of the firm, she serves as vice chairman at the Japan Association of Corporate Executive, a trustee of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) foundation, a member of the Harvard Business School Japan Advisory Board, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Responsive Financial Systems. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the United States-Japan Foundation.

Gayle Peterson is associate fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and senior managing director of pfc social impact advisors. She directs Oxford's Impact Investing Programme and the Social Finance Programme. She has two decades of experience as a strategist, philanthropist, and advisor to social investors worldwide and has managed and assessed more than $15 billion in philanthropic and social investments to alleviate poverty, mitigate climate change, promote gender and financial inclusion, and build the capacity of new leaders in the field of social finance. She is currently leading a global case and film series, Ten Years in the Making: Japan’s Impact Economy, examining the role of philanthropy, public, and private sectors in addressing Japan’s most complex socio-economic challenges.  

Patricia Bromley is associate professor in the Graduate School of Education, the Doerr School of Sustainability, and (by courtesy) Sociology at Stanford University. She also directs the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (SCANCOR) and is co-director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS). She teaches courses related to sustainable development, nonprofit organizations, and global education policy. Her research examines the expansive societal effects of the rise and globalization of a liberal world culture as well as contemporary challenges to that order, such as growing restrictions on civil society organizations. Much of her current work takes place in the Global Civil Society and Sustainable Development Lab in PACS. Current research includes multiple projects related to sustainable development, education, organizations, and civil society.

Mike Berkowitz is co-founder & principal at Third Plateau, where he leads the firm’s Democracy practice and works across its Philanthropic Management and Jewish Community Impact portfolios. He serves as executive director of the Democracy Funders Network, a cross-ideological learning and action community for donors concerned about the health of American democracy. He is also co-founder of Patriots & Pragmatists, a network and convening space through which civic leaders and influencers debate, envision, and realize a brighter future for American democracy. He is a senior advisor to the Pritzker Innovation Fund, which supports the development and advancement of paradigm-shifting ideas to address the world’s most wicked problems, with a primary focus on climate and energy and on U.S. democracy. 

Jacob M. Schlesinger is president and CEO of the United States-Japan Foundation, an organization that gives grants and runs a fellowship program dedicated to bolstering relations between the two countries. Schlesinger previously worked at The Wall Street Journal for more than 30 years as a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., Tokyo, and Detroit. He was a fellow at Stanford’s Asia-Pacific Research Center from 1994-1996 and returned to Stanford in 2021 as a fellow at the Distinguished Careers Institute, where he studied the threats and challenges to democracy, in the U.S. and around the world.  

Stan Kasten is president & CEO of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, a position he has held since 2012. He has been a member of numerous ownership committees in Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League, and is a former trustee of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. In 1999, he became the first person to hold the title of president of three different teams in three different major sports simultaneously, doing so with MLB’s Atlanta Braves, the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, and the NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, founded in 2023. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the United States-Japan Foundation.

Yuriko Gamo Romer is an award-winning director based in San Francisco. Her current documentary project, Diamond Diplomacy, explores the relationship between the United States and Japan through a shared love of baseball. (That project was funded in part with a United States-Japan Foundation grant.) She directed and produced Mrs. Judo: Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful, a biographical documentary about Keiko Fukuda, the first woman to attain the 10th-degree black belt in judo. Her short films include Reflection, Kids Will be Kids, Sunnyside of the Slope, and Fusion and Friend Ships, a short historical animation about John Manjiro, the inadvertent Japanese immigrant rescued by an American whaling captain.

Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center
Fisher Conference Center
326 Galvez Street
Stanford, CA 94305

Parking Instructions:
The nearest self-pay visitor parking is located at Memorial Way (off of Galvez Street) and the Stanford Graduate School of Business Knight Management Center Garage:
Details on how to pay.
Guests will need to reference the lot Zone Number when paying:
Knight Management Center Garage—Zone # 7207
Memorial Way Zone Number= 7213
Locations indicated on map.

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SCCEI China Conference 2025 on China and The Changing Global Economy on May 14, 2025.

 

The Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institution's (SCCEI) annual China Conference brings together leading voices from policy, business, and academia to examine key economic trends in China and their implications for the world.

This year's conference will examine China's role in a changing global economy. Panels of experts from Stanford and around the world will take a deep dive into China’s evolving economic ambitions and self-perception on the global stage, assess the roles of state and private enterprises in advancing China’s goals, and analyze the impacts on global trade, finance, and institutions.



We are finalizing an outstanding lineup of speakers from academia, industry, and policy communities. Updates will be posted here as confirmed. 

*Schedule is subject to change  

Location: 

Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford University



9:00 AM - 9:30 AM  Registration & Light Breakfast

9:30 AM - 9:45 AM  Welcome & Opening Remarks


Hongbin Li 
Faculty Co-director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions 
The James Liang Endowed Chair; Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University

Scott Rozelle 
Faculty Co-director of the Stanford Center on China's Economy and Institutions
Helen F. Farnsworth Endowed Professorship; Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University


9:45 AM - 10:30 AM  Morning Fireside Chat


Elizabeth Economy
Hargrove Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Stanford University  
 

10:30 AM - 11:00 AM  Break
 
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM  Session 1 | The View from Beijing: China's Economic Ambitions in a Changing World


Session Panelists:
Gangsheng Bao 
Professor of Political Science, Fudan University
Skyline Scholar, Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions

Jonathan Czin
Michael H. Armacost Chair in Foreign Policy Studies, John L. Thornton China Center
Brookings Institute

Stephen Kotkin
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; 
Kleinheinz Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Stanford University
 

12:00 PM - 1:00 PM  Lunch
 
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM  Session 2 | China Inc.: The Role of State and Private Enterprises in Fulfilling China's Ambitions


Session Panelists:
Nan Jia
Professor of Management and Organization
University of Southern California

Arthur Kroeber
Founding Partner and Head of Research
Gavekal Research

Shitong Qiao
Ken Young-Gak Yun and Jinah Park Yun Research Scholar; Professor of Law
Duke University
 

2:00 PM - 2:30 PM  Break

2:30 PM - 3:15 PM  Afternoon Keynote


Sean Stein
President, U.S.-China Business Council
 

3:15 PM - 3:45 PM  Break

3:45 PM – 4:45 PM  Session 3 | China in the Global Economy: Disruptor, Competitor, Partner?


Session Panelists:
Deborah Brautigam
Director of the China Africa Research Initiative; Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy Emerita
Johns Hopkins University

Kyle Chan
Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in Sociology
Princeton University

Ramin Toloui
Distinguished Policy Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Stanford University


4:45 PM - 6:00 PM  Reception in the Courtyard



Questions? Contact scceichinaconference@stanford.edu 

 


Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford University

This event is by invitation only.

Conferences
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Join us for an engaging conversation with Ambassador of Lithuania to the United States Audra Plepytė and Director of the Freeman-Spogli Institute Michael McFaul on Russia’s war against Ukraine, its global implications, and transatlantic support to Ukraine

As we are nearing 1,000 days of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the debate in Washington, D.C., and European capitals remains on what Ukraine can and cannot do to defend itself, its territory, and the whole democratic world. Lithuania has been among the most vocal supporters of Ukraine advocating that instead of Western commitments to stand with Ukraine as long as it takes, commitment to Ukraine’s victory is needed.

The event will feature a discussion on what is at stake in Russia’s war on Ukraine and why it matters beyond Ukraine and Europe. Ambassador Plepytė and Professor McFaul will discuss security on NATO’s Eastern flank, Western strategy for Ukraine, and the U.S. role in standing up to the new ‘axis of evil’ in defense of democracy and the free world.

Opening remarks will be delivered by Michael Keller, Vice Provost and University Librarian.

This in-person event is free and open to the public. RSVP is requested.


 

Audra Plepytė, Ambassador of Lithuania to the U.S.

Ambassador Audra Plepytė was appointed as Lithuania’s Ambassador to the United States of America and to the United Mexican States in 2021. Before this she was a Lithuanian Permanent Representative to the United Nations where she facilitated several negotiations, led the Group of Friends, and was elected to executive bodies of UN instruments and institutions, including being elected as the President of the Executive Board of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in 2021. As a career diplomat for over 30 years, she has held numerous positions within the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dealing with bilateral and multilateral issues, heading the European Union Department (2014–2017), the Personnel Department, and International Missions and Conflict Prevention Division. She was also Lithuania’s ambassador to Spain, World Tourism Organization from 2010 till 2014.
 

Michael McFaul

Michael McFaul is Director at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Ken Olivier and Angela Nomellini Professor of International Studies in the Department of Political Science, and the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1995. He served for five years in the Obama administration, first as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House (2009-2012), and then as U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation (2012-2014).


 

This event is part of Global Conversations, a series of talks, lectures, and seminars hosted by Stanford University Libraries and Vabamu with the goal of educating scholars, students, leaders, and the public on the benefits of but also challenges related to sustaining freedom.

Michael A. McFaul
Michael McFaul
Ambassador Audra Plepytė
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Does Attorney-Client Privilege Put Some People Above the Law? Lecturer Erik Jensen and Stanford Law and Policy Lab students Sarah Manny and Kyrylo Korol expose how attorney-client privilege can undermine the rule of law.

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Visiting Scholar at The Europe Center, 2024
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Lukas Herndl is a post doc researcher at the Faculty of Law of the University of Vienna, Austria. He received a PhD from the University of Vienna and an LL.M. degree from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law ('19).

Lukas has a wide-ranging teaching background in academia and published articles in diverse fields of private law. His current research focuses on banking law, particularly exploring its ESG dimensions (“Green Finance”). At Stanford, he pursues a research project on subordination agreements in financing contracts under US law and European legal systems.

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Nora Sulots
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In May 2024, Georgia's president, Salome Zourabichvili, vetoed the Parliament's contentious anti-foreign agent law, but called her act "symbolic," as the majority Georgian Dream party promised to override the veto at their next session.

In a talk hosted by The Europe Center on May 28, Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), explored Georgia's democratic aspirations within the context of the law, dissecting its potential ramifications for civil society, political freedoms, and Georgia's European integration ambitions.

Professor Stoner, who was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2016 from Iliad State University in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, also discussed the politics and complexities of the recent law and its implications for Georgia's future.

A recording of the talk can be viewed below:

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Tbilisi, Georgia
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Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director of CDDRL, discussed the politics and complexities of the anti-foreign agent law and its implications for Georgia's future.

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Portrait of Robert Harris, Assistant Legal Adviser for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, US Dept. of State
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The South China Sea is a region of immense geopolitical importance, with many different countries advancing competing territorial and maritime claims in a vital economic and strategic waterway. China’s maritime claims have been a source of tension and conflict with other nations, particularly those Southeast Asian nations whose maritime rights under the international law of the sea overlap with China’s maritime claims. 

The China Program at Shornstein APARC brings you this expert session, featuring the State Department Assistant Legal Adviser Robert Harris, who will examine China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea, including the evolution and legal basis for these claims and their implications for regional security and stability. 

We will also explore the role of international law in resolving disputes in the region and how actions by the international community, including freedom of navigation exercises, can help articulate and preserve the international law of the sea.
 

Bob Harris

Robert Harris is Assistant Legal Adviser for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, providing legal advice to policymakers on legal issues related to U.S. foreign policy in the Asia and Pacific region. As a senior career lawyer at the Department of State, he has served as legal adviser and as head of delegation to more than 100 different bilateral and multilateral negotiations on a wide array of issues and international agreements, including international migration, trade in services and commercial air services, international law enforcement (e.g., counterterrorism, drug trafficking, and the extradition of fugitives), maritime boundary delimitation, transboundary watercourses, the international law of the sea, including marine pollution and ocean dumping, global environment protection (including control of hazardous chemicals, biological diversity, and international conservation), sustainable development, international human rights and refugees, nuclear liability and the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. He is a lecturer of law on international law and the law of the sea at Columbia Law School. He is a graduate of Cornell University (AB History), the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (MPA), and Stanford Law School (JD).  

Laura Stone

Laura Stone, a member of the U.S. Department of State, is the Inaugural China Policy Fellow for the 2022-2023 academic year at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC). She was formerly Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Maldives, the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for China and Mongolia, the Director of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs, and the Director of the Economic Policy Office in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs. She served in Hanoi, Beijing, Bangkok, Tokyo, the Public Affairs Bureau, the Pentagon Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. While at APARC, she is conducting research with the China Program on contemporary China affairs and U.S.-China policy.

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Laura Stone
Laura Stone, China Policy Fellow, Shorenstein APARC
Robert Harris, Assistant Legal Adviser for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, US Dept. of State Assistant Legal Adviser for East Asian and Pacific Affairs
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Monica Schreiber
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The judicial branches in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia are acting as a bulwark against authoritarianism, according to an article by SLS’s Diego Zambrano and co-authors.

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Ten years of debates over democratic backsliding have failed to produce many examples of independent institutions thwarting authoritarian attempts on democracy. Yet Latin American courts seem to be countering this larger trend. The three largest countries in the region—Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia—have produced robust institutions able to check leaders with authoritarian tendencies, with high courts playing a fundamental role. In a dramatic succession of recent cases, courts in these three countries have been innovative, acted with a high degree of independence, and appear legitimately interested in defending democratic norms. All of this is profoundly surprising. There is little to no track record of independent Latin American judiciaries that stand in the way of authoritarian governments. Closer study of these three countries is therefore critical for scholars and practitioners, who are otherwise locked in debates over the importance of judicial review in preserving democracy. After dozens of judicial reform failures since the 1990s, we may be observing some overdue success. It appears that 1990s judicial reforms are making a comeback in Latin America.

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Journal of Democracy
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Diego A. Zambrano
Ludmilla Martins da Silva
Rolando Garcia Miron
Santiago P. Rodríguez
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As part of on ongoing effort by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) to provide research-based programming on the current situation in the Middle East, Scott Sagan and Allen Weiner joined moderator Janine Zacharia at an event co-sponsored with the Stanford Law School to discuss the legal framework of war and how the current conflict in Gaza fits into those precepts.

Scott Sagan is senior fellow at FSI and co-director of the institute’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. Allen Weiner, an FSI affiliate, is a senior lecturer in law and director of the Stanford Program in International Law at Stanford Law School, and a former legal counselor at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. Janine Zacharia is a lecturer in the Department of Communication.

Their discussion took place  before a Stanford student audience.



Conduct in Conflict


To understand how the principles of just war theory are relevant  today, Dr. Sagan began by outlining what they are and where they came from.

Principles governing honorable and dishonorable conduct in conflict have ancient origins, but the most comprehensive foundations of the law of armed conflict, or international humanitarian law, originate from the four Geneva Conventions concluded in the years following WWII and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, with atomic weapons. Beginning in 1949, these conventions provided an important set of agreements governing the rules of war. In the 1977 Additional Protocols, these agreements were developed and expanded on in greater detail to create the framework recognized internationally today.

However, as Sagan noted, neither Israel nor the United States is party to the Additional Protocols of the 1977 Geneva Convention.  Nevertheless, both countries accept that some of the foundational principles codified on the Protocols constitute customary international law, and are thus legally binding on them.
 

Key Principles of the Laws of War


In their discussion, Sagan and Weiner focused on three principles in particular: the principle of distinction, the principle of proportionality, and the principle of precaution. As defined by Sagan, they state the following:

Principle of Distinction — Only military targets are permissible in conflict; civilians and civilian targets are not permitted. It is left up to warring parties to determine what constitutes each one. 

Principle of Proportionality — Collateral damage will occur in war, even if civilians are not targeted. Therefore, militaries must weigh the advantage of attacking a particular target compared to the harm that it will do to civilians. Attacking a military target of high importance, even if it entails the risk of harming many civilians, might be acceptable, but attacking a target of low-importance with high potential for collateral damage is unacceptable.

Principle of Precaution — Military commanders must take precautions to limit the amount of civilian damage while pursuing targets.

Expanding on that, Weiner also reminded the audience of what the principles of armed conflict are not:

“The laws of war are not the same as human rights law,” he emphasized. “They recognize the existence of war. They recognize that armies are going to engage in killing and destruction. International humanitarian law is designed to minimize the worst suffering that war causes.”
 

The Laws of War in Practice


While these principles provide a general framework, applying them to the specific case of Israel and Hamas is legally complex.

“There is a lot of flexibility and discretion in the application of these laws,” Weiner explained.

The status of Gaza adds another layer of complication. As a sui generis entity, it falls into a gray zone of independent legal classification. Originally part of the Palestinian Mandate, after the Arab-Israeli 1948 war, it was controlled by Egypt until 1967. Israel took control of the territory at the end of the 1967 Six-Day War.  Around the time of 1979 Camp David Accords, Anwar Sadat relinquished any territorial claims Egypt might have to the territory.  Israel withdrew its military forces and citizens from the Gaza Strip in 2005, and since 2007 the territory has been governed by Hamas, which is not the recognized government of Palestine, whose status as a state is likewise contested on the geopolitical stage.

“All of these issues create incredibly complex issues regarding which bodies of law apply to Gaza,” says Weiner.

Beyond the contestation about what legal rules apply to this conflict between Israel and Hamas, and how they should be interpreted, another confounding issue in analyzing the application of laws governing the use of force is the scarcity of reliable, clear facts about what is or is not happening in Gaza. As other Stanford scholars have reported, misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war has been rampant, further fueling animosity and anger both on the ground and online.

Speaking to this, Weiner acknowledged, “I am not able to ascertain with confidence what the facts are around many actions taking place on the ground. And that makes commenting as an outsider about the application of the laws of war in this situation extremely difficult and fraught. We have to be modest and we have to be humble about this.”
 

Questions of Scale


Because many key facts regarding what has and is happening on the ground in Gaza remain unclear, Sagan and Weiner refrained from offering definitive opinions on if or how the rules of war are being violated.

Both scholars agreed that Israel’s goal of eradicating Hamas as the governing entity in Gaza as a response to the attacks on October 7 was a legitimate goal. But each was quick to caution that legitimacy alone is not always the best guiding principle in cases of conflict.

“We need to recognize that there can be acts which are lawful, but awful,” Sagan reminded the audience. “The aims may be legitimate, but if in pursuing those aims you are creating more terrorists than you are killing, the aim you had may have been lawful in terms of its scope, but awful in terms of its consequences.” 

Weiner returned to the principle of jus ad bellum proportionality in thinking about the consequences of scale in responding to an attack such as the one conducted by Hamas on October 7. That principle is different from the jus in bello concept of proportionality, which requires the military advantages of a particular action to be weighed against civilian harms. Under jus ad bellum proportionality, there is also the need to weigh whether the overall scope of a military campaign is proportional to the cause that triggered the response.

But, Weiner cautioned, the jus ad bellum proportionality test “is among the most notoriously fuzzy and ambiguous standards that is used.”  

Looking specifically at Gaza, Weiner continued, “I stipulate that destroying Hamas is a legitimate war aim for Israel under these circumstances. But if you can’t do that without causing excessive damage, I do wonder whether the goal of the state in resorting to war has become greater than the harm it is causing.”
 

Beyond Revenge


While laws and legal precedent may provide a type of formal structure for conduct in conflict, Sagan and Weiner also acknowledged the very impactful role that emotion and human impulses play in how the spirit of those structures are interpreted. 

Speaking to data he and colleagues have collected on the relationship between identity, nationalism, and the ethics of war, Sagan admitted that, “I am concerned that in this conflict and others, the desire for vengeance can easily cloud judgements about what is right and what is wrong.” 

Reflecting on his own experiences, Weiner offered this consideration:

“Having lived through the American response to 9/11, I felt that because there was so much demand for retribution and for vengeance, something about our norms and values and practices changed in the United States. And, clouded by that sense of vengeance, I think after 9/11 the United States made a series of decisions that turned out to be very bad decisions from a national security standpoint and a humanitarian standpoint. And I do worry that the same might be true in Israel, particularly in respect to the scope of the war aims that it is setting.”

As the conflict continues and more information becomes available, Sagan encouraged those in attendance to be judicious and open in their thinking and analysis, even — and particularly — when that may be uncomfortable.

“In cases like the one we are witnessing now, we have to be very strict about what are facts and what are values. We have rights to our own values and our own interpretations. But we don’t have rights to our own facts,” said Sagan.

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Professors reflect on evolving role of democracy in global politics

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Scott Sagan and Allen Weiner explain the principles that govern the laws of armed conflict and the current war between Israel and Hamas.

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