Asia & the Pacific

"Belfer Center Newsmakers" highlights members of the Belfer Center community who have been featured recently in the news.

Ambassador Tommy Koh, recipient of the 2014 Great Negotiator Award, discussed “Multiparty Deals: The Law of the Sea, the Rio Earth Summit, and the Future of Large Conference Negotiations” during an event in April honoring him for his many successful efforts in large-scale diplomacy. Koh, of Singapore, is the eleventh recipient of the Award, awarded jointly in 2014 by Harvard’s Program on Negotiation (PON) and the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School.

The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Belfer Center joined together in March to host the China Public Policy Forum on the current and future state of U.S.-China relations.

During the past year, the Belfer Center and Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation have continued building on their years of work aimed at improving U.S.-China cooperation and exploring opportunities and challenges related to China.

International Security is America’s leading journal of security affairs. It provides sophisticated analyses of contemporary security issues and discusses their conceptual and historical foundations. The journal is edited at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and published quarterly by the MIT Press.

"Researching Asian security issues has never been more topical," Yvonne Yew said in discussing her work at the Belfer Center. Despite Asia's economic growth, she said, "simmering tensions, territorial disputes, nuclear proliferation concerns, and military skirmishes serve to potentially undermine the region's peace and prosperity. As a former Singaporean diplomat and representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yew is in a unique position to view security issues spurred by the momentous and ongoing rise of Asia."

The United States' extended system of security commitments creates a set of institutional relationships that foster political communication. Alliance institutions are first about security protection, but they also bind states together and create institutional channels of communication. For example, NATO has facilitated ties and associated institutions that increase the ability of the United States and Europe to talk to each other and to do business. Likewise, the bilateral alliances in East Asia also play a communication role beyond narrow security issues. Consultations and exchanges spill over into other policy areas. This gives the United States the capacity to work across issue areas, using assets and bargaining chips in one area to make progress in another.

“Debating the pros and cons of government policy, applying scientific methods to pressing national challenges and teaching the next generation...that’s ultimately what gets me out of bed in the morning” says Michael Beckley, a research fellow with the Belfer Center’s International Security Program. According to Beckley, who expects to receive his Ph.D. from Columbia University later this year, “It is clear to me that public policy, both domestic and foreign, has a tremendous effect on people’s lives and that individuals armed with information, can and should work to improve those policies.”

"China narrowed the gap in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) and will likely overtake the United States as the world's largest economy sometime between 2015 and 2040. What matters for national power, however, is not gross wealth, but net wealth—the wealth left over after people are clothed and fed. China's 1.3 billion people produce a large volume of output, but they also consume most of it immediately, leaving little left over for national purposes."

"...[F]oreign fighter mobilizations empower transnational terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, because war volunteering is the principal stepping-stone for individual involvement in more extreme forms of militancy. For example, when Muslims in the West radicalize, they usually do not plot attacks in their home countries right away, but travel to a war zone such as Iraq or Afghanistan first. A majority of al-Qaida operatives began their militant careers as war volunteers, and most transnational jihadi groups today are by-products of foreign fighter mobilizations."