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Resident Fellow Dan Blumenthal, Henry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy Nicholas Eberstadt, Senior Fellow John R. Bolton, and Research Fellow Christopher Griffin |
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Several AEI scholars, including Dan Blumenthal, John R. Bolton, Nicholas Eberstadt, and Christopher Griffin, have been closely monitoring the situation in North Korea. They spoke at an April briefing on the February six-party agreement, which was broadcast on C-SPAN, addressing questions related to Pyongyang's motives and goals.
Ambassador Bolton followed up on his remarks in three forceful Wall Street Journal op-eds in which he warned that North Korea would continue to seek concessions from the United States without keeping its promises. In the Los Angeles Times, Mr. Blumenthal argued that U.S. willingness to concede to North Korea's demands has chilled the relationship between Washington and Tokyo.
Michael Auslin joined AEI as a resident scholar in July to study U.S.-Japanese relations, Asian security, U.S.-East Asian relations, and Asia-Pacific multilateral organizations. Mr. Auslin, along with Messrs. Blumenthal and Griffin, commented on Japan's dramatic July 2007 parliamentary elections, and Mr. Auslin also addressed the handover of power from Shinzo Abe to Yasuo Fukuda in an Asian Outlook. Mr. Eberstadt has been monitoring the domestic situation in North Korea. With Mr. Griffin, he wrote about North Korea's refugee crisis. This year, he published The North Korean Economy: Between Crisis and Catastrophe (Transaction), in which he argues that Pyongyang has deliberately--and perversely--blackmailed other countries by pouring resources into offensive military capabilities while letting its people endure severe famine and privation. Another April conference addressed the possibility of North Korean regime collapse.
AEI scholars also continue to monitor the rise of China. In December 2006, Mr. Blumenthal addressed how the United States and Japan can jointly confront Chinese hegemonic ambitions. Also in December, the AEI Press published Dwight H. Perkins's 2006 Henry Wendt Lecture, The Challenges of China's Growth. Among these challenges is China's consumer product safety record, which took a beating in 2007. Scott Gottlieb, M.D., testified before Congress and a government commission on Chinese products. Philip I. Levy has been studying Chinese trade and monetary policy and how these have been received in Washington. Claude Barfield and Andrei Zlate of Boston College are working on an AEI Press book about China and the rise of Asian regionalism in trade.
China's involvement in Africa, Asia, and Latin America is the focus of Mauro De Lorenzo, who held conferences this year on the power China wields in Darfur and Africa as a whole. Renato Cruz De Castro of De La Salle University in Manila wrote an Asian Outlook in July about how China has curried favor with the Philippines. Beijing's human rights record came in for criticism by Ellen Bork of the Project for a New American Century, whose May Asian Outlook exposed the different U.S. treatment of Soviet and Chinese dissidents. Mr. Blumenthal and Gary J. Schmitt have been following China's military buildup. They are also coordinating the new Tocqueville on China project to study China's contemporary civic culture.
In February, Mr. Griffin organized a conference on U.S.-Vietnamese relations. Speakers, including former ambassador to Vietnam Raymond Burghardt, discussed Washington's efforts to upgrade its relationship with Hanoi, given China's growing influence in Southeast Asia. In April and November, Messrs. Griffin and Blumenthal and Thomas Donnelly held workshops on U.S. security assistance to Indonesia. Michael A. Ledeen hosted a forum on Indonesia as a model for tolerant Islam. Joshua Muravchik moderated a panel on the Saffron Revolution in Burma.
At a conference on constitutional change in Taiwan in January, panelists addressed the security consequences of Taiwan's amending its constitution. In September, Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian addressed AEI by videoconference on the island nation's aspirations to join the United Nations. Messrs. Blumenthal and Schmitt study Taiwan's domestic politics and its relations with China and the United States.
The American's July/August issue included a special report on "the new Japan," including articles on how Japan revived its economy after the 1990s, its role in the global trade chain, and analysis of how Japan views itself, China, and the United States.
Messrs. Auslin, Blumenthal, and Griffin are examining many aspects of defense cooperation in Asia with a series of conferences and articles.
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