Stanford University

Security

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. 

The Future of European Security & Defence

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This seminar is part of the "European Governance" program series.

After decades of ambiguity towards European integration, the United States is pushing for Europe to become a genuine actor in security and foreign policy. As Vice President Biden put it at the 2013 Munich Security Conference, “a strong and capable Europe is profoundly in America’s interest, and I might add, presumptuously, the world’s interest.”

In principle, Europeans have accepted that closer defense cooperation is essential in order to maintain, and hopefully expand, existing military capabilities, and in order to reinforce mutual trust and contribute to a convergence in common goals and strategic cultures. But the sad reality is that decision-makers have not yet been willing to take the necessary decisions and disagree about what that means. In matters of European security and defense, the gap between rhetoric and policy is wider than in every other area of the European agenda, despite ever-shrinking defense budgets, declining capabilities, and the US “pivot.”

The European Council in December of 2013, focusing on defense and security issues for the first time in many years, will have to deliver ambitious projects - and member states will have to deliver when it comes to their implementation. The European Security Strategy from 2003 is in dire need of an update. And the EU’s new High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, who will assume office in 2014, will have the difficult task of developing a genuine "one voice approach", a common European foreign and security policy.

A number of fundamental issues will need to be addressed: European security policy priorities, the EU level of ambition and, even larger, the purpose and influence of the EU in a world in which we will increasingly struggle to make ourselves heard. Are EU countries ready and willing to truly join forces and pool resources?

The talk will address current efforts to enhance European security and defense policy, the political feasibility of further steps, Germany’s responsibility to push the agenda forward, and what these efforts in European defense and security policy mean for the United States.

 

Wolfgang Ischinger was the Federal Republic of Germany's Ambassador to London from 2006-2008. Prior to this assignment, he was the German Ambassador to the United States of America from 2001 to 2006. In 2007, he also represented the European Union in the Troika negotiations on the future of Kosovo.

Wolfgang Ischinger studied law at the universities of Bonn and Geneva and obtained his law degree in 1972.  He did graduate and postgraduate work at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and at Harvard Law School, Cambridge/USA (M. A., Fletcher School, 1973).

Ambassador Ischinger has published widely on foreign policy, security, and arms control policy as well as on European and transatlantic issues. He is a member of the Trilateral Commission, of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and of the Governing Board of SIPRI, Stockholm. He is Co-Chair of the Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative (Carnegie Endowment) and a member of the Global Zero Commission. He also serves on the Boards of the Atlantic Council of the U. S., of the American Institute of Contemporary German Studies (AICGS), of the American Academy, Berlin and of SWP, Berlin. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Tübingen.

CISAC Conference Room

Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger Career diplomat; Chairman of the Munich Security Conference; Global head of Government Relations at Allianz SE; member of the Supervisory Board of Allianz Deutschland AG, and of the European Advisory Board of Investcorp, London Speaker
Seminars
European Governance
European Governance Seminar Series

Migration

Through periods of colonial expansion, New World emigration, postcolonial immigration, and Eurozone migration, Europe has been shaped and reshaped by the constant movement of people and communities within and across its borders. The Europe Center supports scholarship that explicates the socio-political, economic, and cultural consequences of migration for both states that receive immigrants and states that send emigrants.

Book: "Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Russia", written by Nancy Kollmann

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History professor Nancy Kollmann relates the contrast between Russian law and its pragmatic application in the 17th and early 18th centuries to the country's social and political stability and puts Russian developments in the context of early-modern European state-building strategies and practices.

For a full synopsis, please visit the publication website by clicking on the book title below.

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Jozef Bátora

Encina Hall
616 Serra Street
Stanford, CA 94305

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Visiting Professor, The Europe Center
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Jozef Bátora is full professor at the Department of Political Science, Comenius University in Bratislava. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Oslo (2006). His work experience includes positions as associate professor and director at the Institute of European Studies and International Relations at Comenius University (2009 – 2015), visiting professor at The Europe Center, FSI, Stanford University (2013),  research fellow at the Institute for European Integration Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna (2006 – 2009), senior researcher at ARENA – Centre of European Studies at the University of Oslo (2006), and visiting scholar at Scancor, Stanford University (2003 – 2004). His research interests encompass international institutions and their change, organization theory, diplomacy, EU foreign policy, EU governance and security. He has published in a number of leading peer reviewed journals including Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Common Market Studies, West European Politics, International Relations, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy and Cambridge Review of International Affairs. In the period 2012-2015, he served as coordinating editor of Journal of International Relations and Development (www.palgrave-journals.com/jird). His latest book is The European External Action Service: European Diplomacy Post-Westphalia? (Palgrave 2015).

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Migration and Integration: Global and Local Dimensions

The Europe Center's 2-day multidisciplinary dialogue on migration -- the subject of great and growing consequence in the contemporary world. Conference participants from a wide range of theoretical, case-study, and comparative approaches will address the phenomenon of population movement and the experience of migration in its various qualities.

The agenda for this conference is below.

Co-sponsored by the University of Vienna, the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation


 

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Conferences
Migration

A Confiscated Memory – Wadi Salib and Haifa's Lost Heritage

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Haifa, the so-called "mixed city" of Jews and Arabs during the British Mandate period, also called the city of "co-existence" in the minds of its Jewish residents today, this city real and imagined will be the focus of this lecture, which suggests an archeology of memory of a conflict which is over and a conflict which still lingers.

Yfaat Weiss is professor in the department of the History of the Jewish People and Head of the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of various studies on German and Central European History, as well as on Jewish and Israeli History.

 

Philippines Conference Room

Yfaat Weiss Professor of History and Head of the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History Speaker the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Lectures

Innovative leaders bridging diversity in Sweden and the West

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Roland Hsu
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The Europe Center, through its Program on Sweden, Scandinavia, and the Baltic Region, has forged partnerships with those who bring visionary solutions to the challenge of diversity and reconciliation in our increasingly globalized world.   “Harbor of Hope:  a special evening celebrating Sweden’s diverse cultures” held on May 6th is the latest effort by the Europe Center to disseminate this new way of thinking.  The participation of Sweden’s leading documentary filmmaker Magnus Gertten, and Sweden’s cultural entrepreneur Ozan Sunar, resulted in an unprecedented pairing and an evening of motivating insight for a large public audience.  The program included the screening of Gertten’s documentary “Harbour of Hope”, a multi-media presentation by Sunar and an opportunity for the audience to engage in discussion with both of these special guests.

The evening opened with a welcome by the Europe Center’s director, Professor Amir Eshel, who highlighted the support of the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation for making possible the Europe Center’s Sweden Program and this research.  The center’s Associate Director, Dr. Roland Hsu then framed the thinking behind inviting these particular two guest speakers, Gertten and Sunar.

“This evening”, said Hsu,  “we gather for a special look at the challenge to meet and embrace difference.  In today’s globalized world, market economies, and educational opportunities, but also war and persecution send unprecedented numbers of peoples across borders, away from home cultures, and into new host neighborhoods. 

In the US and in Europe we share the concern and opportunity to learn what drives people far from home.  Tonight, we focus our gaze on the city of Malmo, a city whose neighborhoods contain extraordinary diversity.  Such diversity has a history, which we shall see on film, and it has a future, thanks in large part to the cultural programing we will learn about after the film. 

Our challenge is to learn from the experience of families, fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters, and children, displaced from the familiar, and replaced in new settings.  e will look at this challenge through the eyes of two visionary artists who have touched us with their works, and who are bridging divides across competing memories, and across growing diversity of today’s mobile and global West.” 

Hsu’s introduction of Magnus Gertten and Gertten’s documentary film “Harbour of Hope” included a line from a NY Times review of Gertten’s art which he felt echoed throughout the evening’s program:  “it seems as if the past is intruding on and sometimes overwhelming the present.”  “Harbour of Hope” includes footage from the original archival film shot on April 28, 1945, the day that 30,000 survivors of German concentration camps arrived in Malmo, Sweden to begin their lives over again.  This powerful and unforgettable film is about the life stories of 3 of the survivors seen on this footage:  Irene Krausz-Fainman, Ewa Kabacinska Jansson and Joe Rozenberg. 

Following the viewing of “Harbour of Hope”, Hsu introduced the next guest Ozan Sunar by saying “In Mr. Sunar’s cultural programming, we may see not the past overwhelming the present, but instead the present clearing the way for its future.” Sunar, with a long career in the fields of arts, media and integration politics, blazed a path for those seeking new ways to include artistic values from diverse origins into Sweden’s contemporary culture.  He is currently the founding and artistic director of the international cultural house Moriska Paviljongen in Malmo.  Sunar’s presentation and the subsequent discussion on his work uniting heretofore communities in conflict through culture were both inspiring and provocative.


Harbor of Hope:  a special evening celebrating Sweden's diverses cultures; May 6, 2013, Stanford University:

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EU’s Catherine Ashton asserts Europe’s responsibility for a robust foreign policy

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Roland Hsu
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The Europe Center was pleased to host Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission (HRVP), at Stanford University on May 7th.  HRVP Ashton’s address to a capacity audience of Stanford senior scholars is part of the Europe Center’s program focused on European and EU regional and global relations.  The event co-sponsors - the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, the Hoover Institution, and the  - speaks to the esteem and the interest that multiple partners share in engaging the European Union’s highest foreign policy official.

The Europe Center’s director Amir Eshel opened the session, followed by President Gerhard Casper, director and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, who delivered a formal introduction of Ashton.  HRVP Ashton spoke at length and in considerable detail on the mission of the office of EU High Representative, and addressed a number of the critical foreign policy challenges that we face today. 

Three pillars of EU foreign policy
In her talk, Lady Ashton highlighted three pillars of EU foreign policy:

  1. Europe assumes primary responsibility for bringing and safeguarding peace in its “neighborhood”.  Ashton proposed that the European Union – in terms of its status as a foreign policy actor – should be judged by the record of its mission to foster post-conflict resolution, and promote long-term stability and growth throughout its own member states, and in neighboring regions of North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, and Eastern and Baltic regions of former Soviet societies.
  2. European Union foreign policy should promote what Ashton termed “Deep Democracy”.  This includes reformed and transparent judiciary, police, and representative governing institutions that safeguard the well-being and individual emancipation of citizens, and women’s and human rights.
  3. European Union international relations prioritize effective and long-term cooperative missions with “strategic partners” beginning with the United States, as well as Russia and China.  Ashton emphasized that the EU also prioritizes long-term relations and strategic missions with regional and supra-national institutions beginning with the United Nations, and including the African Union, ASEAN, and the Arab League.

“Deep Democracy”: the long-term challenge
Of special note was Ashton’s significant elaboration on the priority for “deep democracy”.  When asked about the case of Mali, and what the vision was for what comes after the current French and European military intervention, she emphasized the following points of policy and tactics.

  • The EU views the military engagement against Jihadist forces in Mali, within a larger regional view of the “Sahel Arc”.  The EU is deeply engaged in the “Arab Awakening” movements – and the attendant security, political, and civil crises in each country of the region, and in terms of displaced populations across borders. 
  • In the case of Mali, the office of the EU High Representative invited the country’s leadership to Brussels for close coordination of policy. 
  • The EU foreign policy has been set to closely support the Malian government’s own road map for peace, territorial sovereignty, internal cohesion, and development.
  • In remote districts of northern Mali, residents have seen little evidence of the value of government.  The EU foreign policy of engagement in Mali includes programs to deliver primary health care (i.e. immunization and women’s reproductive health) and infrastructure (i.e. transportation and employment in local economic initiatives) to demonstrate the efficacy and value of state institutions.
  • The decision to commit troops from Europe to foreign soil remains, Ashton emphatically stated, the responsibility of the individual sovereign states, and of their democratically elected representatives who, in making such commitments, are ultimately responsible to their citizens.
  • Individual European nations are invited to meet with the governments and civil society leaders of countries undergoing transformations, to tell their distinct histories of democratic development.

Ashton delivered her insights in response to questions from the audience on a number of topics, including the growing magnitude of displaced regional refugees, EU-US military cooperation, and the support and criticism of the EU within European nations.  

Please visit the European Union website to learn more about HRVP Catherine Ashton.

 

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European Foreign and Security Policy: Challenges and Opportunities

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Catherine Ashton will be introduced by Gerhard Casper.

 

Co-sponsored by CISAC, Hoover Institution and CREEES.

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Catherine Ashton High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union; Vice-President of the European Commission Speaker
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