Article
BCSIA''s International Council meeting on April 3-4 proved a highlight of spring at the Kennedy School. The meeting began with a Forum in which recently returned U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Thomas Foley - a new Senior Fellow at the Center - addressed the issue: Is Japan''s Sun Setting? A panel including Kennedy School professor Robert Lawrence (just returned from the Council of Economic Advisors), Harvard professor Susan Pharr (Director of Harvard''s U.S.-Japan Program), and Dean Joseph Nye probed economic, political, and security dimensions of the issue - a debate enlivened by members of the Council from the floor including Timothy Collins (CEO of Ripplewood, which recently bought Japan''s Long Term Credit Bank).
The agenda of the next day''s session included Ashton Carter on managing foreign policy with a broken government, John Holdren on energy policy (or the lack thereof), Henry Lee on California''s blackouts, and John Deutch, John White, and James Schlesinger (Chairman of the Council) debating national missile defense. At the closing lunch, Paul Volcker introduced a discussion of the state of the international economy - and its future. At the end of that session, which ran over because of the intensity of the involvement of members, one commented that while participants were sworn to secrecy, individuals were free to use their cell phones to call their brokers.
Chairman Schlesinger encouraged candid disagreements - of which there were not a few. Internet entrepreneurs and venture capital leaders (including Donald Listwin, Manuel Medina, Ram Mukunda, and Aby Alexander, among others) disagreed about the impact of the collapse of the internet bubble on the economy and the future of the information technology industries. Robert Belfer, Volcker, Schlesinger, and others debated the proper role of government and business in energy production and distribution. Many international members of the Council from Europe and Asia expressed mystification about the U.S. government''s enthusiasm for national missile defense, especially in the light of current technical realities. Others were surprised by the level of agreement on the lines of arguments developed in the article by Deutch, White, and Harold Brown distributed prior to the session on the prospects for missile defense.
On the central question about which the Center sought counsel from the International Council - namely, the appropriateness of the issues addressed by the Center currently and the quality and significance of its findings - the Council gave BCSIA high marks - as well as a number of suggestions about issues for the future.