FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.
Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions.
In the wake of the recent historic meeting of the leaders of China and Taiwan, the Stanford News Service asked two of the university's Asia experts about the aftermath of that meeting and its possible effects on political relations between the two countries, the military situation and Taiwan's Jan. 16 presidential and parliamentary elections.
The first presidential meeting between the leaders of the communist mainland and the democratic island, split by civil war in 1949, was held in early November on neutral territory in Singapore.
Do you anticipate any lasting effects from the face-to-face meeting of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou?
Thomas Fingar: At a minimum, the meeting appears intended by both sides to validate and lock in the much-improved cross-Taiwan Strait relationship that has evolved over the past several years.
Kharis Templeman: I do think the Ma-Xi meeting itself will have one lasting legacy: it has created a precedent for treating the directly elected president of the Republic of China as an equal and as the rightful representative of Taiwanese interests in cross-strait relations. From now on, leaders in Beijing are going to have a hard time arguing that a non-KMT (the Kuomintang, Taiwan's governing party,) president is illegitimate, as they did during the [former Taiwanese president] Chen Shui-Bian era, or to continue to insist on referring to Taiwan’s leaders as provincial-level officials. So, the next president will come into office somewhat strengthened by that precedent.
Will the meeting have any effect on the January elections in Taiwan?
Templeman: I don’t think it will make much, if any, difference. Taiwanese public opinion is deeply divided about Ma Ying-Jeou’s meeting with Xi. Ma himself remains quite unpopular, the economy is barely growing, and the KMT presidential candidate remains at least 20 points behind in the polls. There’s little indication that this meeting has shaken up what has been a large and steady lead for DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-Wen, and I would be shocked if she didn’t win a comfortable victory in January.
Fingar: Probably not. Beijing seems to have learned that its past attempts to influence elections on Taiwan have been ineffectual or counterproductive, and the meeting is unlikely to change minds or votes on the island.
How might the elections affect military spending on either sides, or China's aggressive island-building for military bases?
Fingar: The meeting will not have any effect on military spending or the building of artificial islands in the South China Sea, but Beijing may have hoped that agreeing to meet with Ma to demonstrate how "good" the relationship is might persuade Washington not to approve another round of arms sales to Taiwan. Regardless of who wins the election on Taiwan, the next administration is likely to seek another round of U.S. arms sales in order to prove that it has the support of the United States.
Templeman:The meeting will have no impact on the security balance in the region. Ma reportedly raised the issue of PRC (People's Republic of China) missiles within easy range of Taiwan, but Xi claimed, implausibly, that they were not targeted at Taiwan, and that was the end of it. The broader trends are unchanged: the PRC’s military budget is growing annually by double-digit rates while Taiwan’s remains essentially flat. The consequence is that the PRC’s capacity to take coercive measures against Taiwan continues to expand, even as cross-strait cooperation has been improved and institutionalized.
Dan Stober is at the Stanford News Service.
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Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore on Nov. 7, 2015.
Flickr/Office of the President Republic of China (Taiwan)
Negotiators from 12 Pacific Rim countries recently reached an agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a sweeping trade pact that has been promoted by the Obama administration as a high-quality, next-generation deal that will set standards for international trade for years to come. While noting the agreement still requires ratification by each member state, Stanford scholars believe that the TPP will be approved and reshape not only trade but also security relations in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
The TPP negotiations originally began as an expansion of the Trans-Pacific Economic Partnership Agreement signed by Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore in 2005, and then took on broader significance in 2008 when the United States expressed interest. The number of members eventually grew to include the other North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) economies of Canada and Mexico, as well as Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia and Japan. Even before the agreement was finalized, leaders of many other Asia-Pacific countries expressed interest in joining the next round of negotiations, including South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Colombia, Thailand and most recently, Indonesia.
A summit with leaders of the member states of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP). Pictured, from left, are Naoto Kan (Japan), Nguyễn Minh Triết (Vietnam), Julia Gillard (Australia), Sebastián Piñera (Chile), Lee Hsien Loong (Singapore), Barack Obama (United States), John Key (New Zealand), Hassanal Bolkiah (Brunei), Alan García (Peru), and Muhyiddin Yassin (Malaysia). Six of these leaders represent countries that are currently negotiating to join the group.
The appeal of the TPP in the region is twofold. First, the repeated failure of new trade talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) has forced countries seeking greater trade liberalization to pursue it through other bilateral or regional multilateral negotiations. Second, in the Asia-Pacific region, the number of these agreements has rapidly multiplied, creating myriad different standards, procedures and tariff rates that raise the costs of doing business across state borders and inhibit international trade and investment.
The TPP offers the prospect of a common set of rules governing investment, production and exchange across all member states, with significant improvements in economic efficiency. In addition, the danger of being excluded from a new trade regime that includes a huge share of the region’s economic activity has created a sense of urgency to seek membership from those countries not in the initial round of negotiations. By far the most conspicuous absence among the TPP members is China, which is now the world’s second-largest economy and a significant trading partner of all current member states.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been a research focus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has organized several eventsexploring aspects of the TPP, and the Taiwan Democracy Project in the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law held a conference in 2013 that examined the TPP from a Taiwanese perspective. The conference produced a comprehensive report on the topic, and an audio recording of an earlier Shorenstein APARC panel event was made available online. Now that negotiations have concluded, the Taiwan Democracy Project will revisit the topic in an upcoming conference on Feb. 9.
With the public release of the agreement in early October, three noted experts from Stanford University, Thomas Fingar, Michael Armacost, and Donald Emmerson, offered their analysis of the TPP’s prospects for ratification and its impact on the Asia-Pacific region.
Now that the agreement has been published, what is significant about the TPP? What does it mean for China?
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The TPP is a big deal for many reasons, perhaps the most important of which is that it will provide the impetus and the template for concluding the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and myriad other regional and mini-lateral trade negotiations initiated in response to the failure of the Doha Round of WTO reform. As with all trade agreements, there will be winners and losers, pain will be local and benefits diffuse, and critics will find much to criticize. But the agreement is likely to be ratified and its provisions will affect corporate strategies, investment decisions and globalized production chains. The fact that North America (the United States, Canada and Mexico) are parties to the TPP virtually assures that the globally important NAFTA group will not accept terms in TTIP or other negotiations that are incompatible with the TPP because NAFTA governments and companies do not want to cope with multiple standards, requirements, and procedures. The same is true of other major trading states and international firms, so the TPP will quickly become the new standard for “everyone” wishing to take advantage of opportunities in a globalized world.
This means that the TPP will serve as a—the—decisive building block for beyond-WTO trade arrangements. Without success in the TPP (or TTIP, which also has the size and importance to have become the new global standard if it had been concluded before the TPP) negotiations, there was a danger that the advantages of an integrated global trading system would be degraded by adoption of multiple and partially incompatible sub-regional agreements. Now those negotiating bilateral and mini-lateral agreements are likely to strive for consistency with the requirements adopted by key trading nations and the firms based in them.
The TPP is often but erroneously described as part of a U.S. effort to contain or constrain China. It isn’t. The United States should and will seek to bring China into the TPP, not to exclude it. I anticipate that Beijing will join together with South Korea, Indonesia, and possibly other states that are not yet members.
Thomas Fingar is a Shorenstein APARC Distinguished in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He served previously as assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, principal deputy assistant secretary, deputy assistant secretary for analysis, director of the Office of Analysis for East Asia and the Pacific, and chief of the China Division.
Does the TPP carry security benefits? What are possible consequences for the U.S.-Japan relationship?
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The TPP is a trade agreement, not a security pact. Security is generally a predicate for growth and trade. It does not thrive amidst turmoil, let alone conflict. But with greater economic interdependence, the incentives for avoiding conflict increase. And fortuitously Asia remains an unusually peaceful region despite some growing tensions between China and its neighbors.
The TPP agreement is certainly an integral feature of the Obama administration’s effort to “rebalance” toward the Asia-Pacific region. It embeds the United States in a new institution whose membership, I believe, is destined to grow. America’s engagement in the region is a source of reassurance to our friends and allies there. The United States has been bolstering its alliance with Japan, and this agreement will add a broader framework to the U.S. alliance, which was established through the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, and which contains a specific clause encouraging expanded economic collaboration.
I regret that selling the agreement publicly has included some explicitly anti-Chinese features such as the claim that if the United States and others don’t write the rules of trade, China will. The TPP is and should be open to new members who are prepared to live up to its requirements and that includes China.
Michael H. Armacost is a Shorenstein APARC Distinguished Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He held a 24-year career in the public service, including having served as U.S. ambassador to Japan and the Philippines.
How does the TPP fit into the context of Southeast Asia and its possible alternative arrangements for economic cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region?
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In strictly economic terms, there is no exact alternative to the distinctively comprehensive and intrusive TPP. In loosely economic but mainly geopolitical terms, however, a competitor does exist: the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The United States is in the TPP. China is not. In the RCEP, the reverse is true. The United States has propelled the TPP. China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are driving the formation of RCEP by all ten ASEAN states plus Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
Compared with the TPP, RCEP is far less robust. RCEP is mainly about straightening the overlapping and sometimes inconsistent free trade agreements that already complicate Asian regionalism—the tangled contents of Asia’s “noodle bowl” of overlapping FTAs. (Trade agreements in the Asia-Pacific have burgeoned from around 60 ten years ago to some 300 today.) Under pressure from the more detailed and thoroughgoing TPP, RCEP’s would-be progenitors have been trying to expand their agenda to include more intrusive proposals. Partly for that reason, observers are pessimistic that RCEP’s negotiators will be able to proclaim its successful completion before the end of 2015.
ASEAN is divided. Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, and Thailand are inside RCEP but outside the TPP. The other four ASEAN members—Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam—enjoy the advantage of sitting at both negotiating tables. If only one of the two projected partnerships fails, these four states would still have the other arrangement to fall back on, and so much the better for them if both schemes succeed. It is partly for this reason that varying degrees of interest in joining the TPP have been expressed by five of the six non-TPP states in Southeast Asia. The exception is Myanmar, but once the structure and character of its new government have been clarified, its leaders too may wish to consider the TPP. Even China’s initially hostile view of the TPP has softened.
Given the market-favoring and regulation stipulations of the TPP, new entrants may be unwilling to accept its detailed, full-spectrum rules. But the Doha Round is dead, and the proposal to replace it with a scaled-down “Global Recovery Round” has gone nowhere. For the time being, the best one can hope for in the Asia-Pacific region is a successful TPP that China could eventually join, or a successful RCEP that could someday welcome the United States, or the birth of both arrangements followed by effective steps to render them complementary rather than competitive.
Donald K. Emmerson is director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he is also affiliated with the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies.
Interested in joining the conversation? The Taiwan Democracy Project will revisit this topic on Feb. 9. The one-day symposium will bring together scholars and practitioners to reconsider Taiwan's prospects for entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. RSVP here today.
President Barack Obama participates in a trilateral meeting with Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, right, at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Center, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, Nov. 16, 2014.
Joshua Tucker and his colleagues have introduced a novel classification of strategies employed by autocrats to combat hostile activity on the web and in social media in particular. Their classification looks at these options from the point of view of the end internet user and distinguishes online from offline response and exerting control from engaging in opinion formation. For each of the three options - offline action, infrastructure regulation and online engagement - they provide a detailed account for the evolution of Russian government strategy since 2000. In addition, for online engagement option they construct the tools for detecting such activity on Twitter and test them on a large dataset of politically relevant Twitter data from Russia, gathered over the period of nine month in 2014.
Bio:
Joshua Tucker is a Professor of Politics and, by courtesy, Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University with an affiliate appointment at NYU-Abu Dhabi. He is a Co-PI of the NYU Social Media and Political Participation laboratory (SMaPP), a Co-Author of the award winning politics and policy blog - The Monkey Cage at The Washington Post, and the Co-Editor of the Journal of Experimental Political Science.
On November 17, CDDRL’s Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) hosted Lina Khatib, a senior research associate with the Arab Reform Initiative, for a special talk on the Syrian crisis. Khatib was a co-founder of the ARD Program and managed its research agenda for four years before leaving CDDRL to lead the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.
After conducting extensive fieldwork on the Syrian-Turkish border, Khatib provided a detailed analysis of ISIS’ origins and how they are benefitting from the unresolved crisis in Syria. Khatib also weighed in on the refugee crisis, as well as the regional rivalries that are using Syria as a proxy to exert themselves militarily. Khatib argued that a military solution to solving the ISIS problem is not the right approach, and encouraged the international community to begin engaging different members of the Syrian opposition, and rethinking their approach to international diplomatic negotiations.
As the protracted and chaotic conflict in Syria continues into its fifth year, Syrians of all backgrounds are being subjected to gross human rights violations. A growing number of parties to the conflict, including the Government and the Islamic State, display disregard for international legal conventions and employ tactics such as sexual violence, murder, and torture that have resulted in mass civilian casualties, large-scale displacement, and the destruction of Syria’s cultural heritage.
Peter Bouckaert
Peter Bouckaert is Human Rights Watch’s emergencies director, coordinating the organization’s response to major wars and other human rights crises. A Belgian-born Stanford Law School graduate, Bouckaert has conducted fact-finding missions around the world, including currently documenting Syrian refugees in Europe.
Sareta Ashraph
Sareta Ashraph specializes in international criminal, humanitarian, and human rights law and has served since 2012 as the Senior Analyst on the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, investigating and reporting on violations of international law in the context of ongoing events in Syria.
In an opinion piece published on October 23, 2015 in the New York Time, FSI director and senior fellow Michael McFaul shares his latest comentary on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Taiwan’s claims in the South China Sea are often regarded as virtually indistinguishable from China’s. On paper, Taiwan and China appear to be making substantially the same claims and the controversial U-shaped dashed line may be found on ROC and PRC maps alike. Neither government has officially clarified the dashed line’s meaning or assigned its coordinates.
Dr Kuok, however, argues that Taiwan has in the past year taken small but significant steps toward clarifying its claims. It has also adopted a more conciliatory approach best illustrated by President Ma’s official launch of a South China Sea Peace Initiative in May 2015. These moves imply possible daylight between Taiwan and China regarding the South China Sea. Dr. Kuok will examine these developments, as well as the costs, benefits, and chances of widening or narrowing that daylight in the larger context of Taipei-Beijing relations, domestic considerations including the January 2016 election in Taiwan, and the responses of other actors in the region.
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Lynn Kuok’s latest publication is Tides of Change: Taiwan’s Evolving Position in the South China Sea (2015). She was recently a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for International Law (Singapore), and has held fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Her research interests include ethnic and religious relations and nationalism in Southeast Asia and the politics and security of the Asia-Pacific region. She has served as editor-in-chief of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs and the Singapore Law Review. She holds degrees from the University of Cambridge (PhD), the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (MALD), and the National University of Singapore (LLB).
Lynn Kuok
Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Brookings Institution
Human rights groups have only two assets: people and information. Learn about Benetech's decade of putting information technology tools into the hands of human rights activists, with the goal of making these two assets more effective in advancing the global cause of human rights.
Bio
Jim Fruchterman is the founder and CEO of Benetech, a Silicon Valley nonprofit technology company that develops software applications to address unmet needs of users in the social sector. He is the recipient of numerous awards recognizing his work as a pioneering social entrepreneur, including the MacArthur Fellowship, Caltech's Distinguished Alumni Award, the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and the Migel Medal - the highest honor in the blindness field - from the American Foundation for the Blind. Since its founding in 1989, Benetech has touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Its tools and services have transformed the ways in which people with disabilities access printed information, at-risk human rights defenders safely document abuse, and environmental practitioners succeed in their efforts to protect species and ecosystems. Through his work with Benetech and as a trailblazer in the field of social entrepreneurship, Jim continues to advance his vision of a world in which the benefits of technology reach all of humanity, not just the wealthiest and most able five percent.
Wallenberg Theatre
450 Serra Mall #124
(The room is located in the main quad, across the road from Stanford Oval.)
Russian leaders are grappling with difficult and complex foreign policy choices on Afghanistan in the wake of the U.S. and NATO military exit, a Stanford expert says.
"Russian policy in Afghanistan is at a crossroads, with worsening relations with the West looming against the background of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict," wrote Kathryn Stoner, a Stanford political scientist and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, in a new article in the journal Asian Survey.
The Soviet experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s left haunting memories in the minds of Russian policymakers, "who have no interest in being trapped again in a war they can neither afford nor win," wrote Stoner in the article, titled "Russia’s 21st Century Interests in Afghanistan: Resetting the Bear Trap."
The Soviet-Afghan War from 1979 to 1989 was called a "Bear Trap" by some Western media, and thought to be a contributing factor to the fall of the Soviet Union.
Power vacuum perils
Stoner said that as the U.S. pullout deadline approached in December 2014, Russia was critical of the arguably hasty retreat of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Some troops remained behind in an advisory role.
As she described it, Moscow's leaders thought a sudden power vacuum would leave a variety of threats within Afghanistan – weapons proliferation, corrupt police, a rising drug trade and radical Islamists, for example.
Of the latter, recent news reports indicate the Islamic State group has established a presence in Afghanistan; Russia has urged the United Nations Security Council to stop its expansion.
"On the ISIS vs. Taliban question," Stoner said in an interview, "it is a question of the lesser of two evils, of course, from a Russian perspective."
For Russia, she said, the Islamic State group may be more undesirable than the Taliban in Afghanistan because they are attempting to recruit young Russian Muslims to their cause, which could breed homegrown terrorists who return to Russia with the group's message and training.
"The other issue is that although Afghanistan was brutally ruled under the Taliban, it was more stable than it is currently. Still, neither group is pro-foreigner or pro-Russian especially," she added.
As Stoner wrote, in the interest of stability Russia has expressed possible support for moderate rank-and-file Taliban to be included in the Afghan government.
"Russian leaders point to the fact that heroin trafficking was less under the Taliban than in the past five years under the U.S./NATO coalition," noted Stoner, adding that narcotics were reaching the Russian population.
Meanwhile, Russia is exploring the possibility of moving additional troops to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as well as re-equipping those countries' armies to provide a "defensive zone in Central Asia against Afghan radical or narcotics incursions into the Russian heartland," according to Stoner.
The ideal Russian scenario in Afghanistan would have been for President Hamid Karzai to stay in power and a government of national reconciliation formed with moderate Taliban, she said. That scenario, however, has failed, and Russia will have to cope with an Afghanistan without Karzai.
Choices and a crossroads
Stoner believes Russia is faced with three choices. One is to return to its 1990s policy and support an updated version of the Northern Alliance as a way to create a northern buffer zone that protects its Central Asian allies from any incursions from Afghanistan.
The second is to cooperate with the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, and perhaps a moderate Taliban, in governing Afghanistan.
"The latter strategy could have the advantage of reducing narcotics trafficking, but it risks allowing Afghanistan to again become a haven for radical Islamic terrorists," said Stoner.
Russia clearly does not want another front to open in its war on radical Islam – the Chechen conflict has already produced enough grief for the Russian population and its leadership, she noted.
A third option for the Russians, according to Stoner, would be to continue some degree of cooperation with Western forces in creating a protective zone around Central Asia. The problem for the Russians is that this might bring about a "counterbalancing strategy on the part of China, which would not fit with Russia's strategy."
Besides, it's a long shot, she added, as Russia's renewed conflict with the West over Ukraine has deeply damaged its ability to cooperate with Western powers in and around Afghanistan.
"There are few reliable indications of which path Russia is likely to choose," wrote Stoner. "One can discern elements of each scenario in Russian statements and actions in Afghanistan."
She explained that Russian leaders want to reassert their country's prominence on the global stage.
"In many ways, Russia is resurgent internationally. It has emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union not as the superpower it was, but as a formidable regional power that cannot be discounted," said Stoner.
Under Vladimir Putin, Russia seeks to command the respect of the international community, though it can no longer rely on brute military force. Rather, it must today depend on adroit diplomatic or strategic moves to "act as facilitator or spoiler in many parts of the world," she wrote.
This Russian resurgence, she said, has played a role in its policy choices in Afghanistan since 2001. "It wants influence, but not ownership, in Central Asia, and ultimately in Afghanistan," she wrote.
As a result, Russia will act on the margins of the Afghanistan issue, leveraging its power to protect its own security interests in Central Asia.
"Russia has much to lose and little to gain by doing much more. For this reason, Russian policymakers are in the awkward position of not having wanted the Americans to come to Central Asia, but now, not wanting them to leave," she wrote.
Clifton B. Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.
A summit with leaders of the member states of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP). Pictured, from left, are Naoto Kan (Japan), Nguyễn Minh Triết (Vietnam), Julia Gillard (Australia), Sebastián Piñera (Chile), Lee Hsien Loong (Singapore), Barack Obama (United States), John Key (New Zealand), Hassanal Bolkiah (Brunei), Alan García (Peru), and Muhyiddin Yassin (Malaysia). Six of these leaders represent countries that are currently negotiating to join the group.
