not in residence

0
Hamburg Fellow

Devon Curtis was a 2003-2004 Hamburg Fellow at CISAC and a doctoral candidate in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics. Her dissertation looks at external actors and the promotion of power sharing agreements in ethnic conflict, focusing on the case of Burundi. Ms. Curtis also holds an MA and a BA in Political Science and Economics from McGill University. Previously, Ms. Curtis has lectured at the London School of Economics and has worked as a researcher at the Privy Council Office of the Government of Canada, the United Nations Staff College, the International Development Research Centre and the Forum of Federations. She has also served as a consultant to a number of non-governmental organizations, including the Overseas Development Institute.

Paragraphs

Covering the intricate facets of America's most important democratic tradition, this book serves as an important resource to understand how citizens' views are translated into governmental action.

George Washington toured the countryside on horseback asking citizens their thoughts on his new government. Abraham Lincoln held weekly meetings with citizens to better understand their views. Today, public opinion is power, and no nation can afford to ignore it. Determining what the public is thinking is not always easy. Polls are powerful weapons, but they can be misused.

Public Opinion and Polling around the World presents a thorough review of public opinion from its roots in colonial America to its role in today's emerging democracies. More than 100 entries prepared by top scholars examine the 200-year history of public opinion, measurement methodologies with an emphasis on telephone interviews and Internet polls, and key figures like George Gallup and Elmo Roper, who created their own polling systems.

An analysis of theories compares schools of thought from the fields of psychology, sociology, and economics and explores how people form opinions. A fascinating snapshot of the public's current views on economic issues, foreign policy, gender, gay rights, and other hot-button topics observes patterns across genders, race, ethnic origins, class, and religion in regions all over the world. Students, academicians, and political observers will discover answers to such questions as, "does public opinion shape the behavior of government?"

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Books
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
ABC-CLIO in "Public Opinion and Polling Around the World: A Historical Encyclopedia"
Authors
Number
1-57607-911-2
Paragraphs

The size and shape of U.S. nuclear forces must be determined in the context of the highest considerations of United States strategy. And one of the highest strategic considerations for the United States in the coming decades is to prevent the use of nuclear warheads against any city in the U.S. or indeed anywhere in the world, whether by the act of a state or of a terrorist group. Contrary to assumptions made in the current U.S. administration's nuclear policy, research into new types of nuclear weapons could damage our nonproliferation objectives.

Remarks at the June 21-22, 2004 Carnegie Conference on Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Working Papers
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference
Authors

The Conference on South Asia and the Nuclear Future was co-sponsored by CISAC and the U.S. Army War College. It highlighted some of the top academic and policy-relevant scholarship on the prospects for peace and proliferation in India and Pakistan. The conference was also intended to encourage deeper interaction between policy makers, advisers and scholars working on regional and global security issues.

The five panels at the conference focused on understanding current and future developments in the nuclear programs, plans, and problems in India and Pakistan and how such developments might interact with broader global trends in nuclear nonproliferation regime. Papers were presented by leading international scholars and critiqued by scholars and policy makers. Selected papers will be revised for publication by a major university press, in a volume to be edited by Scott Sagan and Sumit Ganguly of Indiana University.

Bechtel Conference Center

Mitchell B. Reiss Director of Policy Planning Keynote Speaker U.S. Department of State
Rakesh Sood Deputy Chief of Mission Keynote Speaker India's Embassy to the United States
David Sanger reporter Panelist New York Times
Christopher F. Chyba Panelist

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-2715 (650) 723-0089
0
The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
rsd25_073_1160a_1.jpg PhD

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of DaedalusEthics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Creeds and Contestation: How US Nuclear and Legal Doctrine Influence Each Other,” with Janina Dill, in a special issue of Security Studies (December 2025); “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
CV
Date Label
Scott D. Sagan Panelist

Not in residence

0
Affiliate
rsd15_078_0365a.jpg PhD

Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.

In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.

Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.

Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.

CV
Lynn Eden Panelist
Henry S. Rowen Panelist
Conferences
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
A graduation ceremony held at CISAC on June 11 recognized the 10 undergraduate students who this year have completed the center's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies, and the ceremony honored four of the students with awards for excellence on their honors theses.

A graduation ceremony held at CISAC on June 11 recognized the 10 undergraduate students who this year have completed the center's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies, and the ceremony honored four of the students with awards for excellence on their honors theses.

The award-winners are as follows:

*John Cieslewicz, a computer science major, received a William J. Perry Award for his thesis on "Attacks and Accidents: Policy to Protect the Power Grid's Critical Computing and Communication Needs."

*Elizabeth Eraker, a history major, received the John and Marjorie Hines Prize in American History for her thesis on "Cities as Critical Nodes: The Influence of Air Force Doctrine in the Targeting of the Atomic Bomb."

*Daniel Kliman, a political science major, also received a William J. Perry Award for his thesis on "Japan's Defense Policy in the Post-9/11 World: Toward a 'Normal' Nation."

*Anya Vodopyanov, who is studying history and political science, received a Firestone Award for her thesis on "A Watchful Eye Behind the Iron Curtain: The U.S. Military Liaison Mission in East Germany, 1953-61."

At a CISAC Directors' Seminar on June 9, Cieslewicz, Kliman and Vodopyanov presented their award-winning theses to fellow students, faculty members and others in the CISAC community.

The other six students who completed the CISAC Honors Program are the following:

Anne-Marie Corley, Slavic languages and literatures

Dana Craig, political science

Andrea Everett, political science

Tarek Ghani, symbolic systems

Lengsfelder, Savannah, international relations

Vaynman, Jane, international relations

Begun in 2000 to help develop the next generation of security specialists, the CISAC Honors Program accepts 12 Stanford undergraduate students each year, from all disciplines throughout the university. Those selected for the program attend the CISAC honors college in Washington, D.C., complete an internship with a security-related organization, attend a year-long core seminar on international security research, and produce an honors thesis with policy implications for international security. After fulfilling their individual department course requirements and completing the Honors Program, the participating students graduate in their major with an honors certificate in international security studies.

All News button
1
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Those advocating nuclear arms control and nonproliferation have few reasons for optimism and many reasons for concern, with obstacles including a lack of public interest in the issue; inadequate security controls at facilities storing nuclear-weapons materials; the threat posed by rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea; and the Bush administration's opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty banning nuclear weapons testing.

These and other challenges were explored at a special CISAC workshop on "Arms Control and Nonproliferation: Past Triumphs, Future Prospects," held June 1 at SIIS. The event honored George Bunn -- a nuclear nonproliferation pioneer and consulting professor at CISAC -- on the occasion of his 79th birthday. The workshop, which drew more than 120 attendees, was moderated by CISAC co-director Christopher F. Chyba and featured presentations by four expert panelists who have worked closely with Bunn. They included his son Matthew, a senior research associate for Harvard University's Project on Managing the Atom.

As the first presenter, Matthew Bunn discussed the problem of inadequate security systems to prevent the theft of weapons-grade nuclear materials. Because there are no worldwide standards for protecting such materials, many nations devote inadequate resources to the task. Bunn showed slides of nuclear materials storage facilities with primitive locks, flimsy seals and broken-down fences. He cited Russia as the largest threat, because it has the world's biggest stock of unguarded nuclear-weapons materials. He urged international standards for safeguarding nuclear materials; renewed discussion with Russia on the issue; and the removal of nuclear material from sites where adequate security is not feasible.

In the second presentation, Thomas Graham -- a senior U.S. diplomat who has negotiated numerous major arms-control agreements -- said the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty was not meant to forever discriminate between nuclear "haves" and "have-nots." Instead, it was designed so that those without nuclear weapons would benefit by receiving peaceful nuclear technology from weapons-producing nations, and guarantees that they would not be attacked. But when the United States shirks its nonproliferation obligations -- as it has done by rejecting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and taking steps to develop new nuclear weapons -- the entire regime is threatened, Graham said. He cited Pakistan and North Korea as the biggest nuclear threats, and said the United States must engage in direct negotiations with the latter.

The next presentation, by Daryl Kimball -- executive director of the Arms Control Association -- addressed prospects for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Though the treaty has been signed by 171 nations including the United States, it has been ratified by only 113 of those nations -- not including the United States -- and must be ratified by 12 more of the 44 designated "nuclear-capable" nations before the treaty can take effect. Kimball discussed the Bush administration's opposition to the treaty, noting that Bush has sought to remove it from the Senate's agenda. Still, Kimball said he's optimistic that the treaty will ultimately be ratified by the United States and will take effect. He cited increasing international pressure on CTBT "holdout states," and a recent U.S. poll showing that public support for the treaty is at its highest level ever, 87 percent.

John Rhinelander, an attorney who helped negotiate the ABM Treaty and SALT I agreements, discussed the prospects for nuclear weapons in space. The weaponization of space is supported by the Bush administration, he noted, and is a real possibility if the United States follows through on its missile defense program. He predicted that President Bush, if re-elected, would continue to pursue weapons development in space, but said Kerry seemed unlikely to do so if elected.

During a question-and-answer session following the presentations, the panelists offered perspectives on why it is so difficult to get the public's and lawmakers' attention on nuclear non-proliferation issues. The panelists agreed that since the breakup of the Soviet Union, most Americans -- including lawmakers -- no longer perceive nuclear weapons as a serious threat, and they have little knowledge about the existing quantity of nuclear weapons. Matthew Bunn said the problem is, "there is no one whose reelection depends on reducing or securing nuclear weapons." He said nuclear non-proliferation could best be promoted by tying it to the issues of terrorism and homeland security. Rhinelander and Grahm advocated holding Congressional hearings on the issue for the first time in 20 years.

Regarding Israel, India and Pakistan, Graham said those nations -- which produce nuclear weapons but have refused to join the NPT regime -- cannot continue to remain outside the regime. He proposed that the three nations be allowed to join in limited form, in exchange for accepting basic limitations such as no first use and no nuclear testing.

Throughout the event, Bunn was praised by the panelists and moderator; Chyba described him as "the personification of the best that CISAC strives to be." Bunn was the first general counsel for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, helped negotiate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and later served as U.S. ambassador to the Geneva Disarmament Conference.

All News button
1
Authors
William J. Perry
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

A $2 million gift honoring Professor William J. Perry, from telecommunications entrepreneur Jeong H. Kim, will create a new professorship on contemporary Korea to be established jointly by the Stanford Institute for International Studies (SIIS) and the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Perry, the 19th secretary of defense of the United States, currently holds the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professorship and is a senior fellow at SIIS. Upon Perry's retirement from Stanford the new Korea chair will be named the William J. Perry Professorship.

"Bill Perry's dedicated work on Korean issues over the last decade and the significant contributions he has made to this very crucial dialogue are unparalleled," said Kim, a member of the SIIS Board of Visitors. "I can think of no one more appropriate than Bill for this chair to be named after."

Kim's interest in the political and cultural life of his native Korea has been sustained over the years in part by following the work of his mentor and friend, Bill Perry, who has played a significant role in encouraging Kim's entrepreneurship.

Learning of Kim's gift, Perry said, "I am pleased that so many students will benefit from this generous gift. I am quite humbled that Jeong and Cindy Kim have chosen to honor me in this way, as Jeong's own accomplishments deserve to be acknowledged and, indeed, emulated."

As Perry related, "Jeong Kim's story is as impressive as it is inspiring. He left Korea at the age of 14 and made his way to America with no money and little English. He worked his way through high school and college, and became a nuclear engineering officer in the U.S. Navy. After leaving the navy, he returned to school, earned his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, and started an innovative new company in the highly competitive telecom business. Within five years he took his very successful company public and sold it to Lucent Technologies for $1 billion. He went on to manage a major division for Lucent, until offered a professorship at the University of Maryland. His dedication to education is clearly evident, not only by his decision to teach future leaders, but through his endowments of a new engineering building at the University of Maryland and now this chair in Korean studies at Stanford. And all before he turned 45."

"I understand that the university is at a critical juncture in the development of Korean Studies at Stanford," said Kim. "I am delighted to be able to do something meaningful to encourage its growth."

The establishment of an incremental endowed faculty position to be held jointly by both SIIS and the School of Humanities and Sciences is unique and innovative for Stanford University and is a likely precursor to further joint appointments that may characterize the university's upcoming multidisciplinary initiatives.

"Jeong Kim's gift is a momentous tribute to Bill Perry. It also presents a perfect opportunity for the Institute and H&S to work cooperatively to further strengthen Korean Studies at Stanford, which has been growing impressively under the leadership of Program Director Professor Gi-Wook Shin," said SIIS Director Coit D. Blacker.

H&S Dean Sharon Long concurred, "I am so pleased that Dr. Kim has extended such a generous recognition of one of the university's most valued faculty members. This gift will contribute to the growth of our understanding of Korea, a subject of deep concern to our donor and to our faculty and students."

William J. Perry has worked inside and outside of government over the last decade toward a resolution of what he has often called the "dangerous armed truce" on the Korean peninsula. Having served as secretary of defense during the 1994 crisis on the Korean peninsula, he has often said that the United States was closer to war there during that period than at any other time during his tenure.

During the second term of the Clinton administration, Perry served as special advisor to the president and the secretary of state for the review of the United States policy toward North Korea. He continues his efforts for peace on the Korean Peninsula at SIIS and as co-director of the Preventive Defense Project, a research collaboration between Stanford and Harvard.

All News button
1
Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a senior research scholar with the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at the Stanford Institute for International Studies and a senior adviser to CISAC's Preventive Defense Project, has been selected as a 2004 Carnegie Scholar.

The 15 scholars chosen this year by the Carnegie Corporation of New York will each receive up to $100,000 for a period of two years to pursue research. They join 52 others awarded the fellowships since 2000.

"The Carnegie Corporation has a long history of supporting path-breaking work in international security, and I am truly honored to be included in such a distinguished group of scholars," said Sherwood-Randall. "Given the state of the world -- and the fact that there are few foreign and defense policy goals that we can successfully pursue unilaterally -- I intend to use this support to generate new ideas about the leadership of America's key alliances and partnerships."

Sherwood-Randall's research topic is "Transforming Transatlantic Relations: A New Agenda for a New Era." Her study will seek to understand the elements of continuity and change in the global security environment in order to determine whether and how America's most important alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, can remain relevant and effective. She intends to publish the results of her work in a journal-length article as well as produce policy memoranda and briefings for appropriate officials in the U.S. government and relevant international organizations.

Sherwood-Randall served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia during the first Clinton Administration (1994-1996). She played a key role in creating a cooperative context for denuclearization efforts in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan and in establishing security ties with the new states of Central Asia. Prior to her government service, Sherwood-Randall served as co-founder and associate director of the Harvard Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, as chief foreign affairs and defense policy advisor to Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and as a guest scholar in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution.

Sherwood-Randall received her B.A. from Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges, magna cum laude. She received her doctorate in International Relations from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

Chosen in a highly competitive process -- from an initial group of 144 nominees, 54 were invited to provide complete proposals -- the 15 selected Carnegie Scholars will explore issues critical to economic growth and human development. These include the American electoral process; political theory of international law; school reform from an international perspective; a reconsideration of the Iran hostage crisis; the logic of suicide terrorism; local control and federal reform of education; how U.S. transatlantic relations can remain relevant and effective; Hispanic students' achievements in elementary education; justice in education; political obligations in World War I America; the rise of far-right extremist groups and the role masculinity plays in their resurgence; the role of the United States in the 21st century; and the rebirth of democracy in Iraq.

"The annual announcement of the Carnegie Scholars is an opportunity to celebrate original and creative thinking on a wide array of social issues important to the Corporation's strategies," said Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, who inaugurated the Scholars Program in 1999 to support innovative and path-breaking scholarship.

"Criteria for selection were based on stringent academic standards and the relevance of the project to Corporation program priorities," said Neil Grabois, Carnegie Corporation's vice president and director for strategic planning and program coordination, who facilitated the various levels of deliberations. "The program's definition of excellence incorporates demonstrating intellectual risk-taking, framing unusual questions, possessing the capacity to communicate clearly and effectively on complex themes, and advancing scholarship in the Corporation's programs."

The Carnegie Corporation of New York was created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding. As a grant-making foundation, the Corporation seeks to carry out Carnegie's vision of philanthropy, which he said should aim to do real and permanent good in the world. The Corporation's capital fund, originally donated at a value of about $135 million, had a market value of $1.8 billion on Sept. 30, 2003. The Corporation awards grants totaling approximately $80 million a year in the areas of education, international peace and security, international development and strengthening U.S. democracy.

All News button
1
Authors
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs
John W. Lewis is professor emeritus of Chinese politics at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and a frequent visitor to China and North Korea. He wrote this for the Mercury News.

Beijing tries to read mixed U.S. signals in Korea diplomacy By John W. Lewis

For the past year China has led the quest for a negotiated solution to the Korean nuclear crisis. It facilitated and hosted three-way talks with the United States and North Korea a year ago this week and two sessions of the six-party talks (adding South Korea, Japan and Russia) in August and February. Its officials crisscrossed the globe to explore potential areas of common interest and compromise and this week hosted North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to explore options for the beleaguered Korean Peninsula. Yet, in each of the formal talks, the Chinese have been discouraged by the minimal results. They are now questioning U.S. intentions toward Korea and, in the longer term, toward China.

Beijing considers the unchecked expansion of North Korea's nuclear weapons to be a real possibility, and its reasoning starts with the record of U.S. policies toward nuclear proliferation. That record, the Chinese argue, is mixed and often contradictory. As a result, China worries that Washington might continue to tolerate the program so long as Pyongyang did not cross key red lines, such as the transfer of nuclear materials to terrorists.

Whatever Beijing's past position on nuclear matters, many senior Chinese now regard nuclear weapons on their border to be a direct threat to their national security and suspect Washington of downplaying that danger. For them, it is no great leap to the conclusion that the unfettered growth of the Korean program might embolden others in Asia, including Taiwan, to acquire nuclear weapons despite verbal opposition from Washington. Beijing's leaders can easily imagine how that nightmarish turn of events would undermine the nation's drive toward modernization and end strategic cooperation with the United States.

Despite the fact that all parties at the six-party meeting in February endorsed the dismantling of the North's nuclear weapons program, the Chinese fear that the talks may be dead in the water. Following that meeting, they began to debate other ways to resolve the crisis. They had already reorganized the leadership team responsible for North Korean affairs, and that team had begun acting to prevent the worst case, including offering further inducements to Kim Jong Il this week. Whereas last fall the talk of deepening U.S.-China cooperation on Korea pervaded the news, now, especially after Vice President Dick Cheney's uncompromising stand on Korea and Taiwan last week, the reverse is occurring.

What China can do in these circumstances is quite limited. Its influence on North Korea is largely determined by what the United States does or doesn't do. By refusing to negotiate on a staged process leading to the eventual dismantlement of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons, Washington has tacitly allowed the North's program to proceed. It has rejected proposals for a temporary freeze, technical talks and any interim steps short of the unconditional and complete ending of the program. The result is virtual paralysis.

Beijing has been able to work with North Korea only when it could find areas of potential compromise between Washington and Pyongyang. It cannot or will not act

alone to exert pressure because this would jeopardize its influence on the North. Contrary to a widely circulated story, Beijing did not cut off energy shipments to North Korea for three days in 2003. Beijing would not take such a counterproductive action when its main influence with the North lies in the kind of quiet diplomacy being practiced this week with Kim Jong Il.

Many in Beijing are beginning to question whether there might be a more promising approach with Pyongyang. Should the Chinese, South Koreans and Russians conclude that making progress toward the common goal of the North's complete nuclear disarmament is out of reach, for example, they reluctantly might translate their joint offer of aid in February into a quid pro quo for a partial agreement, such as a limited freeze, that would allow the situation to stabilize. China could worry that such an independent action could endanger the common front with Washington. At the same time, it could calculate that the United States would be sufficiently pleased with any solution that halted the North Korean nuclear program.

None of these developments may come to pass, of course, but who could have imagined a year ago that Washington would have permitted the situation to deteriorate to the present point?

All News button
1
Subscribe to The Americas