Myanmar/Burma: Outside Interests, Inside Challenges
Friday, October 30th, 2009
9:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.
SAIS
Kenney Auditorium
1740 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC
Welcoming Remarks:
William Wise is the associate director of
Southeast Asia Studies and the associate practitioner-in-residence at the
Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins
University (SAIS). Prior to coming to SAIS, he was an adjunct professor
of the practice of international affairs at George Washington University.
In 2000, he was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars. He was also president of the Sorrento Group, an international
consulting firm. From 1992 to 1997 he served as the deputy national security
advisor to the vice president of the United States. Prior to his White
House service, Mr. Wise was the chief of policy at the U.S. Pacific Command
in Honolulu and the deputy director for policy planning in the East Asia
and Pacific region in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon.
He held various positions in the U.S. intelligence community for over 15
years before that. Mr. Wise spent more than 30 years in military service,
retiring from the U.S. Air Force as a Colonel. He is the author of Indonesia's
War on Terror and the co-editor of U.S. Strategy in the Asia-Pacific Region.
Moderators
Priscilla Clapp is a retired minister-counselor
in the U.S. Foreign Service. During her 30-year career with the U.S.
government, she served as chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Burma,
deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in South Africa, principal
deputy assistant secretary of state for refugee programs, deputy political
counselor at the U.S. embassy in Moscow and chief of political-military
affairs at the U.S. embassy in Japan. She also worked on the state department's
policy planning staff; in its East Asian, political, military and international
organizations bureaus; and with the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament
Agency. Prior to her government service, she spent 10 years in foreign
policy and arms control research under contract to the M.I.T. Center
for International Studies and as a research associate at the Brookings
Institution. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and
the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Her books include Bureaucratics
Politics and Foreign Policy (with Morton Halperin), Managing an
Alliance: The Politics of U.S.-Japanese Relations (with I.M. Destler
et al.) and U.S.-Japanese Relations in the 1970's (with Morton
Halperin). In addition, she is the author of numerous chapters, articles
and other publications.
Jurgen Haacke is a senior lecturer
in the department of international relations at the London School of
Economics and Political Science. His main research interests are ASEAN,
the international relations of Southeast Asia, and the politics, security
and foreign policy of Burma/Myanmar. He is the author ofASEAN's Diplomatic and Security Culture: Origins, Development and Prospects and Myanmar's Foreign Policy: Domestic Influences and International Implications, as well as a co-editor of Cooperative Security: The ASEAN Regional Forum. Apart from work on Burma/Myanmar and China-ASEAN relations, his externally funded research projects include a comparative study of how regional arrangements have responded to transnational security challenges. Dr. Haacke has an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. from the University of London.
David Dapice has worked in developing
economies, mainly in Southeast Asia, since 1971. A professor of economics
at Tufts University since 1973, he has served as a department chair
and as a consultant from many international donor agencies. He has
also been an economist for the Vietnam program at Harvard since 1990
and has recently worked on economic policy in Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia
and Burma/Myanmar. His work spans many sectors and tends to focus on
strategic problem areas in the country concerned.
Panelists
Scot Marciel currently serves as
a deputy assistant secretary in the East Asia and Pacific
bureau of the U.S. Department of State. He is responsible for relations
with Southeast Asia and is the ambassador for ASEAN affairs. Mr. Marciel
is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, having joined in
1985. His most recent assignments were as the director of the department's
Office of Maritime Southeast Asia, the director of the Office of Mainland
Southeast Asia and the director of the Office of Southeastern Europe.
He has also served in Vietnam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Brazil and
Turkey, as well as in the economic bureau's Office of Monetary Affairs.
He has degrees from the University of California at Davis and the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy.
Khin Zaw Win lives in Burma/Myanmar.
He has worked as a consultant at UNICEF Yangon and in the government
health services of Myanmar and Malaysia. He attended the Master in
Public Policy program at the National University of Singapore, was
a fellow in the New York office of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in
2007 and was an FCO Chevening fellow at the University of Birmingham
in 2008. He has published papers on sanctions, civil society and the
political transition. Khin was imprisoned from 1994 to 2005 for "seditious
writings" and his human rights work. Since his release, he has worked
on HIV/AIDS, interfaith cooperation and peacebuilding, policy advocacy
and cyclone recovery. He is currently engaged in capacity building
for the transition in 2010 and beyond.
Andrew Selth is a research fellow
with the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University in Brisbane,
Australia. He has been studying international security issues and Asian
affairs for 35 years as a professional diplomat, strategic intelligence
analyst and research scholar. He has published four books and more
than 50 peer-reviewed monographs and articles, most about Burma/Myanmar
and related subjects. His latest major work was Burma's Armed Forces:
Power Without Glory. In 2007, he was awarded a three-year fellowship
by the Australian Research Center to study Burma's role in the changing
strategic environment of the Asia-Pacific region.
Zhai Kun is the director of the Institute
of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary
International Relations (CICIR). His B.A. and M.A. are from the University
of International Relations, and he has a Ph.D. from CICIR. His research
interests are Southeast Asia, regional cooperation and security studies.
He has co-authored or contributed chapters to Panorama of China-ASEAN
FTA and other books, and has published articles in Contemporary
International Relations and other leading journals in China. His
commentaries have appeared in China Daily and People's Daily.
He is also a columnist for World Affairs, a commentator for
CCTV and an advisor for several CCTV channels. He has been a visiting
scholar at the Atlantic Council, the Johns Hopkins University School
of Advanced
International Studies and the Rajaratnam School of International Studies
at Nanyang Technical University.
Gurmeet Kanwal is the director
of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS) in New Delhi. He commanded
an infantry brigade in the high-altitude Gurez Sector on the Line of
Control with Pakistan and an artillery regiment in counter-insurgency
operations in Kashmir Valley. He is a former director of security studies
and a senior fellow of the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.
He was also a senior fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and
Analyses, a senior fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies, and
a visiting research scholar at the Cooperative Monitoring Centre of
Sandia National Laboratories. The Brigadier has authored several books,
including Nuclear Defence: Shaping the Arsenal, Indian Army:
Vision 2020, Pakistan's Proxy War, Heroes of Kargil, Kargil
99, Blood, Guts and Firepower and Artillery: Honour and
Glory. He has an M.Sc. in Defence Studies and an M.Phil. in Strategic
Studies and Management.
Toshihiro Kudo is the director of
the Southeast Asian Studies Group II of the Area Studies Center at
the Institute of Developing Economies in Chiba, Japan. His research
interests are Myanmar/Burma and development economics. He received
his M.Phil. in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge
in 1994 and was an overseas research fellow in Yangon from 2000 to
2003.
Tin Maung Maung Than, a Myanmar national,
is a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS)
and the coordinator of its Regional Strategic and Political Studies
Programme. He has an M.A. in Nuclear Physics from the Rangoon Arts
and Science University and a graduate diploma in economic planning
from the Rangoon Institute of Economics, as well as a Ph.D. in Politics
from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.
He is an associate editor of the ISEAS journal Contemporary Southeast
Asia, a series editor of ISEAS Working Papers and the author
of State Dominance in Myanmar: The Political Economy of Industrialization.
His research interests include the political economy of development;
democratization and civil-military relations in developing countries;
human security; nuclear proliferation; and Myanmar politics and economics.
GUO Xiaolin is a senior research fellow
at the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm.
Trained in anthropology at the University of London and the University
of British Columbia, she has extensive fieldwork experience in Yunnan
and has published on topics related to China's economic reforms, PRC
policies toward national minorities and state-society relations. In
2006, she joined the Institute for Security and Development Policy,
whereupon she adopted Burma/Myanmar as a research subject. Her earliest
publication on Burma/Myanmar through the prism of Sino-Burmese relations
is Towards Resolution: China in the Myanmar Issue. Her later
publications have explored and sought to explain how East-West politics
plays itself out in the case of Burma/Myanmar. Her current work examines
cross-border trade between Yunnan and the upper Shan state.
Summary
An international forum that looks at Myanmar/Burma in the light of recent
developments internally and externally. It will focus on alternative approaches
to promoting political development and economic growth that might be more successful
than either the engagement or the sanctions emphasized during the past 20 years.
Speakers at this event, together with other global leaders on Burma/Myanmar
policy, met privately during the two days preceding this event to discuss recent
changes in the political climate, past initiatives and potential future outcomes.
Invitation (PDF Format)
