Stanford University

Beijing’s Building Boom

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"Scholars and pundits in the West have become increasingly alarmed that China’s planned Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) could further shift the global strategic landscape in Beijing’s favor, with infrastructure lending as its primary lever for global influence. The planned network of an infrastructure project—financed by China’s bilateral lenders, the China Development Bank (CDB) and the Export-Import Bank of China (CEXIM), along with the newly formed and multilateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank—is historically unprecedented in scope. But the B&R is only the natural progression of a global sea change in developing economy infrastructure finance that has already been underway for more than two decades." Read the whole article by Bushra Bataineh, Michael Bennon, and Francis Fukuyama here. 

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Crimea: Russia's Unique Experiment on Integration of Annexed Territory | A Conversation with Mustafa Dzhemilev

This event is now full. Please send an email to sj1874@stanford.edu if you would like to be added to the wait list.

 

Crimea has become a precedent in the newest world history. After annexation, Russia turned the peninsula into a testing ground for new tactics of information warfare, suppression of dissent, and the formation of militaristic sentiment. The former resort has been transformed into a powerful military base whose missiles can reach targets in the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic, and other nearby countries.

Russia has closed access to international organizations in Crimea. For the past five years, about 2.5 million people have remained without any legal protection from the actions of the occupying power. Forced disappearances, politically-motivated arrests, religious persecution, censorship, and the destruction of independent media have all become an everyday reality.

Mustafa Dzhemilev

During the Soviet Union, Mustafa Dzhemilev defended the right of the Crimean Tatar People to return from the places of deportation to their homeland, Crimea. He spent more than 15 years in Soviet camps and prisons and survived a 306-day hunger strike, which ended only after Andrei Sakharov's request. Mustafa Dzhemilev has been awarded dozens of international awards for his human rights activities. After the annexation of the peninsula, Russia banned Mustafa's return to his native Crimea.

 

 

 

This event is co-sponsored by The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, The European Security Initiative at The Europe Center, and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Stanford University. It is free and open to the public.

Mustafa Dzhemilev speaker Leader of the Crimean Tatar People

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan talks illiberal democracies, election issues

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“When you see something wrong, don’t be a bystander,” Annan responded. “You are never too young to lead. Don’t let my generation tell you, ‘Shut up and wait your turn.’ If there’s something you feel that you can do something about, do it. Work across racial, religious and other lines. Don’t accept divisions you see in society,” said former United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan in conversation with CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama. Read the article here and watch the video here.

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From Cold War to Hot Peace: An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia

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In 2008, when Michael McFaul was asked to leave his perch at Stanford and join an unlikely presidential campaign, he had no idea that he would find himself at the beating heart of one of today’s most contentious and consequential international relationships. As President Barack Obama’s adviser on Russian affairs, McFaul helped craft the United States’ policy known as “reset” that fostered new and unprecedented collaboration between the two countries. And then, as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, he had a front-row seat when this fleeting, hopeful moment crumbled with Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency. This riveting inside account combines history and memoir to tell the full story of U.S.-Russia relations from the fall of the Soviet Union to the new rise of the hostile, paranoid Russian president. From the first days of McFaul’s ambassadorship, the Kremlin actively sought to discredit and undermine him, hassling him with tactics that included dispatching protesters to his front gates, slandering him on state media, and tightly surveilling him, his staff, and his family.

From Cold War to Hot Peace is an essential account of the most consequential global confrontation of our time.

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Michael A. McFaul
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New Authoritarianism and Democratic Resistance

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This event is co-sponsored by The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies

 

The once much-hailed success story of Turkey’s democracy as a “regional model” has been decidedly replaced by studies of its breakdown. With its ever-increasing centralization of power under a one-man regime, some might now see Turkey as a “global model” for a new authoritarianism.


Why has the response of North Atlantic democracies to the erosion of Turkey’s democracy been muted? Is Turkey’s policy of “hostage diplomacy” and offers of trade deals paying off? Can democracy still make a comeback in Turkey? What lessons can the global democratic public draw from Turkey’s struggle?


In this panel, academics from Turkey will explore Turkey’s new political reality, prospects for change, and the international context.

 

 


 

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Halil Yenigun Stanford University
Yektan Turkyilmaz Fresno State University
Eda Erdener Academics for Peace, former Bingol University Professor
Sinan Birdal University of Southern California
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Francis Fukuyama: China’s ‘bad emperor’ returns

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"Since 1978, China’s authoritarian political system has been different from virtually all other dictatorships in part because the ruling Communist Party has been subject to rules regarding succession. Term limits for senior leadership have kicked in at regular 10-year intervals three times so far, and the party’s system of cultivating and training new leaders to replace the outgoing ones had allowed it to avoid the stagnation of countries like Egypt, Zimbabwe, Libya or Angola, where presidents ruled for decades. But all of this is out the window now because of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent announcement that term limits on the presidency will be abolished. This means that he will likely be China’s ruler for the rest of his life, turning at one stroke an institutionalized autocracy into a personal one. This builds upon the massive cult of personality he has been cultivating, with “Xi Jinping Thought” now canonized in the Constitution alongside Chairman Mao," writes CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama in Washington Post. Read the article here. 

 
 
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How Populism is Poisoning the Global Liberal Order

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"There is growing consensus that populism constitutes a grave threat to liberal democracy, and to the liberal international order on which peace and prosperity have rested for the past two generations," writes Francis Fukuyama in the World Economic Forum. The fate of the global liberal order could be jeopardized due to rising populist powers and movements. Read the full article here. 

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Future of Russia - U.S. Relations

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The founder of The Bell Liza Osetinskaya and Draper Hills alumna (Russia, '16) talks to CDDRL Mosbacher Director Francis Fukuyama, about Trump and Putin, the U.S.—Russia relations and the future of the world with political populism on the rise. Listen here and read the transcript here. 

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