Senior Military Fellow John Chu was promoted to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army at Stanford last Friday, a position selectively afforded for distinguished service and leadership. Colleagues and Stanford affiliates attended the afternoon ceremony marking the occasion.

Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Karl Eikenberry led the proceedings and recognized Chu’s accomplishments in the Army and his tenure as a researcher at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI).

“We look over the course of John’s life and where he’s been, and it says so much good about him and the strengths of the United States of America,” Eikenberry said.

“As threats have changed, doctrine has changed and our national security has changed, John has continued to adapt. It says a great deal about him, our services and our country that he has been able to steadily make those shifts over the course of his career.”

Chu was born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the United States. He attended West Point and later achieved advanced degrees in environmental engineering and national security. Chu has had three tours of duty in Korea and served in Iraq as staff at the highest strategic level, among other posts.

At Stanford, Chu has been studying U.S. policy toward North Korea and strategic deterrence on the Korea Peninsula as a fellow at FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center during the current academic year.

The fellowship program, supported by the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative and the Center for International Security and Cooperation, provides military officers an opportunity for self-directed study under the tutelage of Stanford scholars. The program started under former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry. Five fellows came to campus this year; their brief bios can be found here.

Chu thanked his wife of eighteen years, Tina, and expressed gratitude to everyone who guided him over the years.

“You are the real heroes – the people I’ve worked with throughout my career,” Chu said, addressing the audience. “It is you that really deserves all the recognition, for I would not be here today without the support of many.”

Chu expects to deploy to Afghanistan as his follow-on assignment.

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.

Kharis Templeman is the Taiwan Democracy program manager at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He recently wrote about why Taiwan's defense spending has fallen as China's has risen. Thomas Fingar is a distinguished fellow at Stanford's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. He served as the chairman of the National Intelligence Council and in other key positions in Washington. 

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.

Lynn Eden has announced her retirement after 25 years as a senior research scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

She has also been associate director for research since 2002, except for 2008-2009 when she was acting co-director—with co-director Sig Hecker on the science side.

“All the people who have been associated with CISAC for the last 25 years have benefited from her wise counsel,” said CISAC colleague Sig Hecker, research professor of Management Science and Engineering.

“She really has been the heart and soul of this place.”

Colleagues and former fellows said it would be hard to imagine CISAC without Eden.

“Most of us, even long-timers, have never known CISAC without her,” said CISAC co-director Amy Zegart.

“Lynn has been pivotal to both fostering and embodying the intellectual culture we know and love at CISAC: discussion that is rigorous and kind; candid and constructive; penetrating and interdisciplinary.”

Many said Eden’s most enduring legacy at CISAC would be her mentorship of young scholars during their formative years as CISAC fellows.

“She’s a wonderful mentor and a central figure in creating the intellectual community here at CISAC,” said David Holloway, Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History.

Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said Eden had a tremendous impact on his development as a young academic.

"As a visiting fellow at CISAC very early in my academic career, I benefited tremendously from Lynn Eden's mentorship, intellect, and friendship," McFaul said.

"I am simply amazed at how many people enjoyed the same kind of mentorship with Lynn as I did as a young scholar. I thought I was special! It turned out that I was just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of Lynn's pupils."

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, former FSI and CISAC director and current California Supreme Court Associate Justice, said he had also benefited from Lynn's guidance over the years.

"Many dozens of scholars are who they are -- and have achieved as much has they have -- because of Lynn," said Cuellar.

"I am among them. I benefited from Lynn's contributions when I was a graduate student, a junior faculty member, a tenured professor, honors program director, CISAC co-director, and FSI's Director."

FSI/CISAC senior fellow Martha Crenshaw said no matter where she traveled in the world to speak at conferences on international security, she invariably encountered former fellows who recalled the positive influence Eden had on their experiences at CISAC.

“She’ll always be pretty much the first person they mention,” Crenshaw said.

“Her role as a mentor has been so important to the many people who come through this place.”

Crenshaw’s observation was echoed by Rod Ewing, Stanford professor in the School of Earth Sciences and the inaugural Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security Studies at CISAC.

“Before I arrived at Stanford, I already had heard of Lynn from past fellows,” Ewing said.

“All were deeply in debt to Lynn for her efforts to shape their thinking and their projects.  I have never seen any single person have such an impact on so many fellows.”

[[{"fid":"221270","view_mode":"crop_870xauto","fields":{"format":"crop_870xauto","field_file_image_description[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"Lynn Eden talks about nuclear war and fire effects to students at Castilleja School in Palo Alto","field_credit[und][0][value]":"","field_caption[und][0][value]":"","field_related_image_aspect[und][0][value]":"","thumbnails":"crop_870xauto"},"type":"media","attributes":{"title":"Lynn Eden talks about nuclear war and fire effects to students at Castilleja School in Palo Alto","width":"870","style":"width: 450px; height: 299px; float: left; margin-right: 15px;","class":"media-element file-crop-870xauto"}}]]You only need to do a quick survey of the dissertations and books produced by CISAC fellows to understand the scope of Eden’s impact, according to Scott Sagan, Caroline S.G. Munro professor of political science.

“Lynn has been a mentor par excellence for dozens of CISAC fellows over the years,” Sagan said.

“Indeed, if there was an “Social Science Acknowledgement Citation Index” (like the well-known Social Science Citation Index), my guess is that Lynn Eden's count would be the highest in all of international security studies.”

And her mentorship wasn’t limited to the social sciences.

“Lynn has mentored a stunning breadth of scholars, including political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, physicists, computer scientists, and biologists,” said former CISAC fellow Rebecca Slayton, who is now on the faculty at Cornell University.

Other former fellows said they deeply valued Eden’s thoughtful feedback on their academic work.

“Lynn read my work with great care, and offered commentary that was on point, useful, and kind,” said Kimberly Marten, professor of political science at Barnard College and a faculty member at Columbia University.

“She was also a real friend, who cared about me not only as a budding scholar but as a person. She remains a role-model for me of what mentorship is all about.”

Colleagues said they also admired Eden’s contributions to the field of nuclear scholarship.

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History professor Norman Naimark said he valued Eden’s “uncompromising intellectual honesty.”

“She wants to know; she wants to understand; she does not put up with artifice or entangled arguments; she tries as best she can to barrel in on the “truth,” whatever that might be,” Naimark said.

James E. Goodby first met Eden when they both served on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, before he moved to Stanford as an Annenberg distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

“She came as close to pure, unbiased intellect as anyone I have ever worked with,” Goodby said.“

CISAC co-director David Relman said Lynn had helped shape and guide the intellectual discourse at CISAC.

“I’ve deeply valued Lynn for the rigor of her thinking, her love of teaching and mentoring of trainees and students, and the smile she brings to everyone’s face during any conversation,” said David Relman, CISAC co-director.

Elizabeth Gardner, FSI associate director for partnerships and special projects, worked alongside Eden at CISAC for more than a decade.

She said Eden helped make CISAC a place people wanted to come back to.

“CISAC is legendary for its “boomerangs” – people who return to the Center after their initial stint because they liked it so much the first time around,” Gardner said.

“The reason many of those people return is Lynn. It's her warmth, willingness to help with the hardest problems and her laser-like intellect that kept people coming back.”

Eden said she would continue her academic writing after retiring from CISAC, on “how organizational processes have enabled U.S. policymakers and nuclear war planners to make real plans that if enacted would result in the very thing no one possibly wants—the end of the world.”

Eden will also attend a variety of CISAC seminars when she can, and particularly the social science seminar series David Holloway and she founded 20 years ago.

Eden’s retirement party is scheduled to be held in CISAC’s Central Conference Room from 12noon–1:30pm on Thursday, December 3.

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.

Read Professor McFaul's Op Ed in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/23/opinion/the-myth-of-putins-strategic-….

CISAC senior fellow Siegfried Hecker has been awarded an honorary membership by ASM International – one of the most prestigious awards from the world’s largest association of materials scientists and engineers who study and work with metals.

The ASM International board of trustees cited professor Hecker “for scientific enlightenment of Plutonium technology; for leadership of Los Alamos National Laboratory and for leadership in international control of nuclear arms.”

Hecker said he was proud to join a list of honorees that included many of his “old metallurgical heroes,” including Arden Bemet (former director of the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology), and Thomas Edison (inventor of the phonograph, movie camera and light bulb) who was awarded an honorary membership in 1929.

ASM International established its honorary membership award in 1919 to recognize “truly outstanding individuals who have significantly furthered the purposes of the Society through an evidenced appreciation of the importance of the science of materials and through distinguished service to the materials science and engineering profession and the progress of mankind.”

Hecker was also invited this week to deliver the Alpha Sigma Mu International Professional Honor Society for Materials Science and Engineering distinguished lecture in Columbus, Ohio, where he recounted highlights from his storied career, from his time as a student at Ohio’s Case Institute of Technology, rising up the ranks to become director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, leading cleanup efforts at Russia’s former nuclear test site Semipalatinsk, and his current track-two diplomacy and nuclear non-proliferation initiatives with scientists from Russia, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran.

He concluded his lecture expressing the hope that scientists would use nuclear power to contribute to global peace and prosperity, rather than create war and disaster.