UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations

Burma and a Lifetime of Human Rights Advocacy

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:53:25 PDT

Talk by Jack Healey, world-renowned human rights activist and pioneer, former Executive Director of Amnesty International.

TOPICS:

· Personal history as the child of a coal miner and young adult in the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

· Recruitment of popular artists and celebrities (e.g. Bono, U2) to aid his human rights campaigns.

· Violence against women and what to do about it.

· Advice for UCLA students and staff who want to positively impact the world.

SPEAKER BIO:
An effective and innovative leader in the human rights movement for over 47 years, Jack Healey has helped move the topic of human rights from closed-door diplomatic negotiations to public debate and direct citizen action. Colleagues credit him with making human rights a major focus of governments, advocacy organizations, and individuals around the world.

Called "Mr. Human Rights" by U.S News and World Report, Healey’s focus has been on inspiring the youth to support non-violent activism that would push back oppressive governments and societies. He has brought human rights to the global stage by his creative use of media and enlistment of world-class talent as advocates.

From 1977 until 1981 Healey directed the Peace Corps in Lesotho. After finishing his tour with the Peace Corps, he worked as the Director ofAmnesty International USA for 12 years. His work at Amnesty brought human rights to the forefront of popular culture by pioneering new ways to deliver the message of human rights to new generations. He brought a new wave of young people into the human rights movement by organizing concerts with well known artists, and by reaching out to high schools and colleges through his motivational speeches.

Healey has received 7 honorary doctorates and spoken in over a thousand colleges and high schools. He has produced 3 music albums and Douye, a documentary on Aung San Suu Kyi.

Today, Jack heads the Washington, D.C. based Human Rights Action Center (HRAC). In this capacity, he works tirelessly for the release and return to power of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma. He also aims to print the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into all passports.

OTHER ORGANIZATIONS BY JACK HEALEY:

The Freedom Campaign
US Campaign for Burma - related youTube video

New podcast: Global Political Risk: Managing Through Economic Catastrophe

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:53:51 PDT

Ian Bremmer is an American political scientist specializing in US foreign policy, states in transition, and global political risk. He is president of Eurasia Group, the global political risk consultancy.

In this podcast, Ian Bremmer various issues, some of which include:

Challenges, strengths, weaknesses and nuances in markets in Japan, India, Brazil, China.
Corporations' relationship with U.S. President Obama
Outlooks on Afghanistan

Bremmer’s books include the bestselling The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall (Simon & Schuster, 2006), named a Book of the Year by The Economist Magazine, and The Fat Tail: The Power of Political Knowledge for Strategic Investing (Oxford University Press, 2009, with Preston Keat). He is a regular contributor to The International Herald Tribune and the webzine Slate, and a contributing editor at Foreign Policy, The National Interest, and Survival. Bremmer has also written for such publications as The Harvard Business Review, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

Bremmer is most widely known for advances in the field of political risk and, more directly, bringing political science as a discipline to the financial markets. In 2001, Bremmer authored Wall Street’s first global political risk index, now the GPRI (Global Political Risk Index) —a joint venture with investment bank Citigroup. Bremmer's definition of an emerging market as "a country where politics matters at least as much as economics to the market"[2] is a standard reference in the political risk field.

Among his professional appointments, Bremmer presently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and the Advisory Board of the Westport Public Library. In 2007, he was named as a 'Young Global Leader' of the World Economic Forum.

Bremmer received his B.A. at Tulane University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University in 1994. He then served on the faculty of the Hoover Institution where, at 25, he became the Institution’s youngest ever National Fellow. He has held research and faculty positions at Columbia University (where he presently teaches), the EastWest Institute, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the World Policy Institute, where he has served as Senior Fellow since 1997.

Wesley Clark: Can NATO Survive Afghanistan?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:48:59 PDT

Clark, a senior fellow at UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations, opened the afternoon session for a Nov. 6 conference, "1989: Assessing the Collapse of Communism Twenty Years Later." The conference was organized by the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies.

By Alison Hewitt for UCLA Today

TWENTY YEARS AFTER the Berlin Wall fell and NATO's raison d'être was thrown into question, former NATO chief and retired U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark reflected on how the organization's tumultuous existence in the '90s reflects on its precarious position in Afghanistan today.

Clark, a senior fellow at UCLA's Burkle Center for International Relations, opened the afternoon session for a Nov. 6 conference, "1989: Assessing the Collapse of Communism Twenty Years Later." The conference was organized by the UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies.

NATO's founding purpose was to counter the U.S.S.R, so after the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO became an anachronism, Clark said. Member nations played tug-of-war for years over whether to expand by admitting other countries, and whether the ostensibly peace-keeping organization could go on the offensive in places like Yugoslavia, Kosovo and Albania to prevent genocide, Clark said. Expanding NATO was also politically sensitive because Russia interpreted it as a threat, Clark added. But after a contentious internal struggle, NATO countries agreed to admit new members and expand the group's peace-keeping role, he said.

Today, said Clark, the question is, "Can NATO survive a less-than-optimal outcome in Afghanistan?"

"In the case of Kosovo, we won a 78-day air campaign. We lost not a single allied soldier," saved 1.5 million Albanians and forced Slobodan Milosevic from power, Clark observed. "It was an incredible success — and NATO almost tore itself apart in finger pointing and blame."

But despite the grim prognosis that parallel suggests for NATO in Afghanistan, the agency will survive and thrive, predicted Clark, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.

"NATO's got some big challenges ahead, but don't write it off," Clark said. "There is nothing stronger than when nations pledge, one to another, that an attack on one is an attack on all. … That's the secret of NATO's survival. … It's going to be a powerful force in 21st century Europe, trans-Atlantic relations and in the world."

NATO's constant struggle has been divvying up costs and responsibilities, or "burden sharing," between its member nations, Clark said. From its founding, NATO members have fought over whether each have provided their fair share and sent enough troops.

"You'll see it again when Barack Obama announces more troops for Afghanistan," Clark said, affirming his belief that U.S. President Barack Obama will decide to increase troop levels.

NATO and the U.S. can still learn lessons from Cold War-era battles, too, Clark said, drawing parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan, where he said the U.S. should find a way out quickly.

"One: the more troops you send, the more casualties you can take. The more casualties you take, the less public support you get," Clark said. In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, he continued, the enemy headquarters are in different countries than where the wars are being fought, further draining public support.

The difficulty of winning "hearts and minds" in Afghanistan is also similar to the problem in Vietnam: Westerners don't speak the language or know the culture.

"It was easy for us to win hearts and minds of the Germans [after World War II] – 25 percent of the U.S. population is German," Clark said. "But we don't speak Pashto or Dari. We can't tell friend from foe. We're waving at them and they're probably giving us the finger, and we don't even know it. … We're like invaders from outer space … People are afraid when you don't look like they look and don't come from the same place … It's human nature."

Though he didn't draw a direct parallel between the Cold War and the War on Terror, Clark's remarks on the abrupt end of the Cold War cast a hopeful light on modern battles.

"It was a different era. The Soviets, they were the enemy … it was never to be resolved in our lifetimes," he said. "Suddenly in 1989, in the twinkling of an eye, it was over. … The Berlin Wall fell, Eastern Europe was free, two years later the Soviet Union disintegrated. It was the year of miracles."

The Center for European and Eurasian Studies is looking back on 1989 in public events extending into next year.

Burkle Sr. Fellow Dr. Suphamongkhon Speaks About ASEAN Progress

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:35:34 PDT

In October 2009 Burkle Senior Fellow Kantathi Suphamongkhon traveled to Santiago, Chile, for a conference to present his views on ASEAN progress in a speech titled "From Zero-sum to Positive-sum: Asean Turning Weakness Into Strength".

"From zero-sum to positive sum: ASEAN turning weakness into strength"

This first apeared in The Nation on November 10, 2009

Professor Kantathi Suphamongkhon, former foreign minister of Thailand and currently a Senior Fellow, Burkle Center for International Relations (UCLA), spoke at a conference jointly organized by the Chile Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chile Pacific Foundation in Santiago, Chile, 29 October 2009. The following is an excerp of his speech:

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is so good to be back in Chile once again. To me, I see Chile as the perpetual bright star in South America. I have been to Chile on several occasions. My last visit was to the inauguration of President Michelle Bachelet in 2006.

Today, I am here to share some thoughts with you on international relations in Southeast Asia. I was asked to go a little bit into history and I shall then get you updated. I won't give you a text book approach since you can always read the books. Instead, you will see Southeast Asia through my eyes.

I will begin by looking at relations between Southeast Asian countries themselves. What did the colonial powers leave us with? After that, I shall share with you how we have been managing our relations with the outside world. I will end with some thoughts on Southeast Asia and South America and touch on the potentials for Thai-Chile relations.

First, I am going to make some comparisons for you. Southeast Asia, has slightly more land and slightly more population than the European Union. (SEA: area 5,000,000 square kilometers, population 580 million. EU area 4,325,000 square kilometers, population 499 million).

Southeast Asia is located in a strategic part of the world. Among other things, we have the Straits of Malacca. When ships go from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, they go through Southeast Asia, they go through the Straits of Malacca. In fact, the Straits of Malacca are the main shipping channel linking major economies for example, India, China, Japan and the Americas. Much of world trade, including a quarter of all oil transported by sea, passes through the Malacca Straits.

We do have some pirates there but nothing like Somalia. They tend to target small fishing boats and have not challenged the shipping lanes. I have seen effective cooperation between maritime states in Southeast Asia with Japan, the US and Australia. In 2005, we launched the "Eye in the Sky" initiative in which military officers from many countries petrol the Malacca Straits together by air.

Southeast Asia is also a land of diversity - cultures, wealth, languages, religions, systems of government. Let me give you some examples.

Even I was surprised to learn that there are 350 indigenous languages spoken in Indonesia alone. I am lucky that Thailand has only one language, but I do get confused sometimes because we have many dialects.

When we think about the places of worship, Southeast Asia has multiple religions: Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity. You name it and we most likely have it. Recently, I met some Thais who were Mormons and they have brought Bangkok a little closer to Salt Lake City. By the way, the largest Muslim country in the world is in Southeast Asia. It is Indonesia. In fact, Indonesia has more Muslims than Egypt, Syria, Jordan and all the Arab states in the Persian Gulf combined.

When we look at the types of government in Southeast Asia, I will tell you that we have everything. We have an absolute monarchy. We have constitutional monarchies. We have republics. We even have communist countries up until today, at least by name. It seems to me that the only thing not diverse in SEA is the weather. It is just hot, very hot, and outrageously hot.

The population of Indonesia is 562 times larger than the population of Brunei. Singapore's GDP is 150 times that of Myanma's. In comparison, the GDP of Luxemburg, the wealthiest country in the European Union at its founding, was about 4 times wealthier than Portugal, the poorest.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am a little proud to say this, but I don't know if I should be. Until after World War II, Thailand was the only sovereign state in Southeast Asia. Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia that has never been colonized. I was told that we used smart diplomacy to save our independence. As you know, other parts of SEA had been colonized by Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the US. By the way, Thailand used to be known as Siam. It is now over 800 years old, even older than Mongolia.

During colonialism in Southeast Asia, colonial powers discouraged positive interactions between colonies in SEA. Therefore, when independence came, people in Southeast Asia did not know one another very well.

I remember when I was growing up in Thailand, I was exposed to either Thai local news and films or news and films from Europe or the United States. I would hear about a bridge being closed in the US. I would see the streets of Hollywood. But I did not see or hear much about our neighboring countries in Southeast Asia. When my friends in Thailand travel internationally, they would go to Europe or America and sometimes Australia and New Zealand. You know, even today, most of my Thai friends have not visited Thailand's neighboring countries. So, you can see how hard it is to build a Southeast Asia community today. But we are determined to do so.

I understand that Chile and Peru are still experiencing border demarcation problems. Well, we have the same problem in Southeast Asia. In fact, as we speak, Thailand and Cambodia are still trying to reach agreement on our border delimitation. As you know, colonial powers often enjoyed drawing border lines for their colonies. Many lines were drawn rather artificially separating natural communities. I won't go into details here about the border situation between Thailand and Cambodia. I would be happy to share my thoughts with you on that subject on another occasion.

Let us take a few steps back to the end of World War II. Europe was divided right in the middle between the communist world and the free world. It was the Cold War. The Cold War also came to Southeast Asia and we felt the cold, even though the weather was hot. Southeast Asia was also divided right down the middle. We had Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos under Communism, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines were firmly on the Western side, while Malaysia and Indonesia pursued a non-aligned policy. Burma which is now called Myanmar was alone as usual.

During that time, the US, Britain and France created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The aim was to stop the Communist expansion in Southeast Asia. You would probably remember the "domino theory". Interestingly, SEATO only had two Southeast Asian Members, namely Thailand and the Philippines. At one point, my father was appointed Secretary-General of SEATO. He wasn't happy because the press told him that SEATO was a tiger with no teeth.

SEATO was supposed to be to Southeast Asia what NATO was to Europe. But there was a subtle but substantial difference. For NATO, an armed attack on one country was considered an armed attack on all members and joint military response was envisioned. For SEATO, an attack on one member only obligated all other members to consult with one another immediately. You see the difference?

Well, SEATO slowly disappeared. In 1968, the non-Communist countries in Southeast Asia formed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It is important to note that Asean is a truly home-grown organization created by the non-communist Southeast Asian countries, with no external input or influence.

Why did we do this? We knew that unity means strength. We also needed to create a framework to manage relations with our neighbors in Southeast Asia. This framework became the beginning of our home-grown regional architecture for international relations.

I would say that we succeeded. The Asean framework was helpful to member states in the management of their relations. Here was our initial strategy. Solve the solvable problems and enhance cooperation. Shelve the difficult and sensitive problems for future discussion. Avoid armed conflicts between member states. I think we got an A- for that. You see, the professor in me is showing.

In 1979, an armed conflict took place outside of the Asean area in Southeast Asia. Vietnam invaded and occupied Cambodia (known then as Kampuchea). Asean reacted effectively, using multilateral diplomacy at the United Nations. ASEAN's message to the world was clear. Vietnam's invasion and occupation of Kampuchea was illegal and must be reversed.

Now that the Cold War is over, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam have all joined ASEAN. With the exception of the newly independent East Timor, all Southeast Asian countries are now members of ASEAN. There are 11 states in Southeast Asia. 10 are members of ASEAN.

Our challenge was to change the underlying assumption among Southeast Asian nations from zero-sum to positive sum. We were jealous of one another and we had the assumption that each of us could only benefit at the expense of our neighbors. We understand now that working together means winning together.

We came up with what we and others have called "the Asean Way." What does this mean? It means decision by consensus. It also means respect for member states' sovereignty. It means adherence to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states.

This leads us to a very important debate in international relations today. Many people are seeing a decline of state sovereignty. This is, they say, evidenced by the increasing willingness of states to interfere in the affairs of others for human rights protection and for other reasons. This means the willingness to violate and make irrelevant the principle of non-interference - the abandoning of the doctrine of state sovereignty which was enshrined in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia.

How did we manage this problem in ASEAN? What was the Asean way in dealing with this? Well, I think we found an Asean way. We upheld member state sovereignty. We upheld the principle of non-interference. We just changed our interpretation of it.

Let me give you some examples. When we started over 40 years ago, we emphasized that domestic issues of member states must not be discussed at the Asean level. Asean must not interfere.

Now we are saying that member state's domestic issues, with negative regional implications, may be brought up for discussion at the Asean level, without violating the principle of non-interference. We have done this for the Indonesian wild fires. We are also doing this with regards to human rights and democracy in Myanmar.

We are saying that state sovereignty entails the responsibility to ensure that activities within their borders do not harm other states in the community. We now see the extension of this idea at the United Nations in the form of the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, also known as R2P. This idea could also be extended to the fight against international terrorists.

Two years ago in 2007, at the young age of 40, Asean adopted the Asean Charter. The creation of a comprehensive Asean Community is now within reach. At the initiative of Thailand and Singapore, Asean member states have agreed to create a, Political, Economic and Socio-cultural Community in Southeast Asia by the year 2015. However, to be a true community, the people of Southeast Asia must interact more with one another. They must feel that they identify with one another. This remains a challenge. When I was foreign minister, I emphasized the importance of a people centered ASEAN. This concept is on top of ASEAN's agenda this year.

Now, let's turn to our relations with external powers. As you know, we are relatively small and weak countries. Southeast Asia is a strategic part of the world and whether we like it or not, external powers are interested in our region. We don't want to just follow big powers' agendas like we did with SEATO. It was important for us to be in control and have a say in the affairs of our region.

To achieve this goal, we became rather creative in the use of multidimensional diplomacy. Our individual bilateral relations with external powers would serve as the foundation. To supplement that, we created what I would call, a regional architecture, with Asean as a key player.

ASEAN began to engage key external powers by inviting them to individually become ASEAN's Dialogue Partners. We would then have meetings with them under the Asean Plus One formula. Countries such as the United States of America, Japan, China, the Republic of Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand are now interacting with us in this way.

In 1993 we felt that we wanted to interact with 3 major powers at the same time. We set up an Asean Plus Three meeting by inviting China, Japan and the Republic of Korea to attend. This formula worked well and it became institutionalized.

Although Southeast Asia has seen relative peace compared to many other parts of the world, we nevertheless felt that we needed a forum for us to engage with key countries on political and security issues. Thus, in 1994, we created and hosted the Asean Regional Forum (ARF). This is part of our preventive diplomacy.

The ARF now has 27 members, including the US, the European Union, Russia, China, India, Japan as well as both North and South Korea. It is indeed the only regional forum where both North and South Korea are members. When the Six Party Talks on the Korean Peninsula cannot convene, the ARF could serve as a venue to talk to North Korea.

The ARF's goal is to build confidence among participants and then when appropriate, engage in preventive diplomacy.

In 2005, we started the East Asia Summit (EAS). Members are Asean countries, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. Unlike other conferences, the EAS uses the top down approach where heads of state and heads of government would meet without preparatory meetings at lower levels beforehand.

Last Friday in Washington, DC, Professor Amitav Acharya at the American University noted that Asean was the only organization in the world where weaker countries would host and set agenda's for more powerful countries to follow. I agree. This is indeed unique. And we were able to achieve this through the creative construction of the Asean regional architecture or Asean regional groupings to engage external powers. Please note that these different groupings have different compositions. For example, the US is in the Asean Plus One formula and the ARF, but not in the Asean Plus 3 or the EAS. The Asean Plus conferences and the EAS are at the summit level, but the ARF is at the ministerial level.

ASEAN is the only thing that all these groupings have in common. All meetings are hosted and initiated by ASEAN. Participants are selected by ASEAN. My colleagues liked to emphasize that Asean must always be in the driver's seat. I understood what they meant, but I warned them to be careful about insisting on being in the driver's seat. I mentioned that many drivers, especially in Southeast Asia are, in fact, chauffeurs. I suggested that we should, instead, focus on ensuring that Asean plays a central role in all the meetings. We have a consensus on that. No one insists on being in the driver's seat anymore.

This was how Asean created strength from relative weakness. Now, let's look at the economic front. Thailand initiated the creation of an Asean Free Trade Area (AFTA). This agreement was signed in 1991. This was because we realized that globalization, together with the rise of China and India, would make it hard for 10 smaller individual markets in Southeast Asia to compete in the world. AFTA created an Asean market place of over half a billion in population. As I mentioned earlier, this is larger than the European Union. AFTA increased exports between Thailand and other Asean members dramatically and Foreign Direct Investment poured into Southeast Asia.

Kevin Brown noted in his 22 October 2009 article in the Financial Times that with a combined GDP last year of $1,500 billion, ASEAN's economy was bigger than India's. "If Asean were a single country, it would have the world's fifth largest trade flows after the US, Germany, China and Japan."

Keeping this in mind, when I was Thailand's Trade Representative back in 2001, I looked for trading partners in South America. I came to Chile and I met with President Lagos. We discussed the possibility of negotiating a free trade agreement between Chile and Thailand. I also went to Peru. I am pleased to report that Peru and Thailand has finished over 90 % of our free trade negotiations. I hope that more can be done between Chile and Thailand. There are tremendous opportunities for mutual gains if only we would recognize them and work together for rapid achievement.

The distance between Thailand and Chile is similar to the distance between Thailand and the United States of America. However, there are direct flights between Thailand and the US. That makes a big difference. We need to work together and see how we can cut travel time, travel cost and travel distance between Latin America and Southeast Asia. Above all, we need to ensure that our business communities are even more aware of the great opportunity for Chile and Thailand, for South America and Southeast Asia to work together and to win together under globalization.

I call on my Chilean friends to look west and discover The East. Interact with Southeast Asia more. Trade and invest in Southeast Asia more. Come and enjoy our larger markets by making good use of our regional and global free trade agreements.

The organization of this seminar at this time is therefore very appropriate.

Thank you very much

Gen. Wesley K. Clark (ret.) on CNN Larry King Live debating Pete Hegseth about Afghanistan

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:45:22 PDT

Gen. Clark on CNN Larry King Live on Monday, November 2 where he debated Pete Hegseth about Afghanistan.

CNN LARRY KING LIVE (See link for transcript and here for YouTube clips of the broadcast)

Will Obama Send More Troops to Afghanistan?; H1N1 Discussion

Aired November 2, 2009 - 21:00 ET

LARRY KING, CNN ANCHOR: "General Clark, do you listen to your general?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK, FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: You bet you. When the commander on the ground says he needs more troops to do the mission and you're the commander in chief, you better listen to him. It may be that you need to carefully consider what the mission is. But we don't want to get pushed out of Afghanistan by battlefield defeats. However, Larry, the real problem here is that the enemy's not just in Afghanistan. It's in Pakistan. And maybe that's the headquarters for the enemy.

And so we have to be concerned not only with Afghanistan but with Pakistan. And for Pakistan, if that's where al Qaeda is, that's really the heart of where our strategy should be focused. You know, you mentioned Vietnam. I think back to my experience. I was a company commander over there. I came home on a stretcher in 1970. I got shot by a guy in an ambush in a base camp. Basically there were three major lessons I took from Vietnam and from 30 years of reflecting on it.

Number one is that when you put your troops in, you take more casualties. We had a million troops in Vietnam, 550,000 Americans, almost 500,000 from the republic of Vietnam army. Plus another million in uniform that were part of the local militia. And the more troops, the more casualties. Secondly, that if you complain about the quality of the government, you're never going to solve this problem. We got rid of the government in Vietnam. We changed it, we still had problems. And to the end we complained that there was too much corruption.

So, that's endemic. They're not going to meet our standards. And third, the enemy wasn't in Vietnam. And we waited too long to realize that we had to go outside Vietnam. I hope we don't make that mistake in Afghanistan...

KING: General Clark, are you saying you would leave Afghanistan? What are you saying?

CLARK: I'd put troops in there right now to try to do something. But ultimately we're not going to create a government and a society that meets our standards in Afghanistan. And when you think about the United States Army and young people like captains and lieutenants going back there on fourth and fifth and sixth tours, and you look at what it does to the military, what it does to the country, how it distorts our efforts in so many other areas, we need to define what success is over there, we need to put in the necessary resources, we need to get to success as soon as possible.

Now, we could have a long discussion of whether Afghanistan is more like Vietnam or Iraq. I hope that Pete's right, but on the other hand, in Iraq, we had Iraqis fighting each other. That's not actually the case in Afghanistan. They're pretty much -- there's an insurgency and it's directed against us. That's a big difference and that's the way it was in Vietnam. And so, when you secure these cities have you have in there is.

KING: Let me get a break.

CLARK: Go ahead, Larry. We'll continue afterwards...

CLARK: One more thing I'd like to add, Larry.

KING: I'd like to just go back to one thing here.

CLARK: The enemy we went after out is in Pakistan.

KING: Quickly, General.

CLARK: The enemies in Pakistan, we spent at least talking about Afghanistan. The Pakistanis have got to go get out al Qaeda in Pakistan. And we've got to give ...

KING: All right. Let me get a break...

KING: We love to involve our audience. Let's get another call for this panel. Arlington, Virginia. Hello.

CALLER: Hi. Yes. I mean, is Obama afraid to make a decision? I'm here in Arlington, Virginia, to bury my son tomorrow, Lance Corporal David Baker who was killed two weeks ago. Tomorrow in Afghanistan, we need to send more troops. Is Obama -- why doesn't he listen to the people he hires? Why doesn't he listen?

KING: General Clark, do you want to respond?

CLARK: I think he will send more troops. But I also think he has to go through the full process of making sure the strategy's right, the mission's right and we know exactly what we have to do to succeed there. And that's really the review he didn't have when he first took office. He's doing it now. And I think he has to do it...

KING: General Clark, quickly, what do you think he's going to do?

CLARK: Put in more troops, probably not everything General McChrystal has asked for. Put pressure on the Pakistanis to do more, probably not enough pressure, give them some assistance and hope he can find some measure of progress in the effort there.

KING: Thank you all very much..."

END TRANSCRIPT

Lighting a Fire for Human Rights

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 15:01:02 PDT

When Jack Healey, founder and president of the Human Rights Action Center, came to UCLA on Nov. 5, his purpose was clear: to inspire undergraduates to dedicate themselves to the universal struggle for human rights, as he has done for nearly three decades.

by Kathleen Micham for UCLA Today

“Education is the lighting of a fire … that’s what I want to do today,” Healey told an audience of nearly 200 undergraduates, as well as faculty and staff, at the UCLA School of Law. He spoke as a guest of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations.

Healey is probably best-known for his efforts on behalf of Aung San Suu Kyi, the would-be leader of Myanmar and Nobel Peace Prize winner who, after winning that country’s 1990 election as leader of the National League for Democracy party, was put under house arrest — where she still remains — by the ruling junta.

Healey told his UCLA audience that he learned compassion for the suffering of the weak and poor as a result of his personal history: he was the son of a coal miner who died and left Healey’s mother with 11 children to care for. As a young adult, he became involved in the civil rights movement and was inspired by the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., from whom he said he learned that “…a man without power or money can move a whole nation…”

Healey became an activist in the priesthood but left to pursue a vigorous human rights agenda, working for several years at the Young World Development Program and the Center for Community Change. From 1977 to 1981, he served as the director of Peace Corps in Lesotho, a small country entirely surrounded by the Republic of South Africa. He said he chose that assignment so that he could “see the apartheid monster face-to-face.”

In recent years, Healey has marshaled the power of celebrity in support of his causes. He told his UCLA audience how he succeeded in convincing Bono, U2 and Bruce Springsteen to leave lucrative concert tours to work for him. Recently, he asked artist Shepard Fairey — famous for his ubiquitous images of Barack Obama during the 2008 election campaign — to create a poster for Aung San Suu Kyi.

Reflecting the global scope of human rights, Healey’s lecture included discussions of “the disappeared” in Argentina — thousands of people who vanished during the 1976-1983 dictatorship in that country — as well as the post-election protesters in Iran and the Dalai Lama’s continuing struggles in Tibet. He urged students to become involved in issues like these.

“What you read in our papers today, please take it seriously,” Healey exhorted. “Your eyes should burn. Your ears should melt.”

He also spoke of the widespread use of rape as a form of political torture and urged women students in particular to come forward to defend their gender. “There is a river of consciousness in the world that is growing and you must be a part of it,” he said.

Despite the magnitude of human rights abuse worldwide, Healey said there is reason for optimism, notably the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the continuing courage of Suu Kyi, whom he called “…the leading symbol of hope in the world.”

In a question-and-answer session that followed, UCLA students asked Healey for advice on how they could make a difference in struggles around the world, including the fight for democracy in Myanmar, the war in Afghanistan and human trafficking.

In response, he urged, “Find a story…keep it simple…get involved with people on their level. Put it on YouTube.”

“Get out there,” he added. “Bother people. Bother people a lot. They won’t like you but it doesn’t matter.”

Obama Committed to Working with International Institutions, US Official Says

Tue, 3 Nov 2009 10:04:54 PDT

Assistant Secretary of State Esther Brimmer looks at U.S. cooperation on issues from global warming to peacekeeping and human rights.

UCLA Today

When President Barack Obama led a session of the United Nations Security Council last September, one that produced a resolution calling for countries to support a world without nuclear weapons, he became the first U.S. president to ever do so.

That marked a shift from George W. Bush's sometimes hostile position towards the U.N. At a well-attended public forum sponsored by the Burkle Center for International Relations and held at the law school on Oct. 28, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Esther Brimmer explained the new U.S. approach.

"The president is deeply committed to using multilateral tools …," said Brimmer, who was appointed by Obama. "It is the decision to take the issues back into the United Nations and other international organizations and to empower those multilateral institutions to fulfill their intended roles that makes real the president's commitment."

At the State Department, she runs a bureau that represents U.S. interests through international bodies such as the U.N., the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Also responsible for the array of organizations that cover regional issues from South America to Southeast Asia, the bureau has a new office to track them. It presses world and regional bodies not only on issues but also for various types of internal reform.

"A lot of what we do is a bit like a management consultant," she said.

Students and faculty at the event asked Brimmer for specifics on issues, from global warming to peacekeeping and the security of materials used to make nuclear bombs. The first question from the audience was about the future of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has carried on without U.S. participation since 2002. In March, it issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. While saying that Obama is committed to accountability for war criminals as well as the use of multilateral tools, Brimmer repeated the administration's line that its position on the ICC is under review.

"Ultimately, accountability begins at home," Brimmer said. "We want to make sure that national mechanisms are able to deal with accountability issues." She cited "larger issues," including the potential prosecution of U.S. soldiers, that need to be weighed in deciding whether to rejoin the treaty that created the ICC.

With that exception, Brimmer repeatedly stressed the "shared responsibility" of nations and the importance of empowering international organizations, including in the area of human rights. Earlier this year the United States ran for and won a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, an organization that the Bush administration had shunned over what it said was the influence of repressive states on it. Under reforms enacted since the council replaced its predecessor body at the UN, all member states must submit to reviews of their human rights records against a single set of criteria every four years.

To face the problem of global warming, Brimmer said, broad international cooperation based on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will be absolutely essential.

Looking ahead to a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen in December, she said that striking a bargain with rapidly developing countries such as China, India and Brazil will be crucial because they represent almost "all the growth in emissions" of greenhouse gases.

"You will not be able to address climate change without these states taking on this issue seriously," she said.

The U.N., Brimmer said, has taken on roles in the 21st century that weren't anticipated at its inception after World War II. For one thing, it delivers services around the world through the U.N. Development Programme and the UNICEF fund for children. For another, the primary role as a guardian of peace now embraces different issues, not only global warming, but also the security of food supplies, a topic that Brimmer said traditionally had been absent from discussions of security.

"Given the fact that upwards of one billion people are undernourished, it can hardly be viewed in any other context," she said, clarifying that the United States will continue to help in short-term food emergencies.

On the question of changes in the composition of the powerful Security Council, Brimmer said the United States agrees with the principle that "the council needs to reflect the 21st century," particularly the growing influence of Asian and other regional powers. Discussion of this kind of reform, she said, is both healthy and part of "a remarkable development in international relations."

"The arrival of new powers into the international system traditionally has not been peaceful," Brimmer said.

Burkle Center Senior Fellow Gen. Wesley K. Clark (ret.) in Foreign Affairs on the Need for Cybersecurity

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:36:54 PDT

Burkle Center Senior Fellow and former Supreme Commander of NATO, General Wesley K. Clark, and Peter L. Levin, former CEO of the cybersecurity company DAFCA, report on the need to secure U.S. computer networks, software, and hardware from cyberterrorism.

This Op-Ed by Gen. Wesley K. Clark (ret). was first published in Foreign Affairs.

Securing the Information Highway: How to Enhance the United States' Electronic Defenses

During the July 4 holiday weekend, the latest in a series of cyberattacks was launched against popular government Web sites in the United States and South Korea, effectively shutting them down for several hours. It is unlikely that the real culprits will ever be identified or caught. Most disturbing, their limited success may embolden future hackers to attack critical infrastructure, such as power generators or air-traffic-control systems, with devastating consequences for the U.S. economy and national security.

As Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote earlier this year in these pages, "The United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory" in the conflicts of the future. When it comes to cybersecurity, Washington faces an uphill battle. And as a recent Center for Strategic and International Studies report put it, "It is a battle we are losing."

There is no form of military combat more irregular than an electronic attack: it is extremely cheap, is very fast, can be carried out anonymously, and can disrupt or deny critical services precisely at the moment of maximum peril. Everything about the subtlety, complexity, and effectiveness of the assaults already inflicted on the United States' electronic defenses indicates that other nations have thought carefully about this form of combat. Disturbingly, they seem to understand the vulnerabilities of the United States' network infrastructure better than many Americans do.

It is tempting for policymakers to view cyberwarfare as an abstract future threat. After all, the national security establishment understands traditional military threats much better than it does virtual enemies. The problem is that an electronic attack can be large, widespread, and sudden -- far beyond the capabilities of conventional predictive models to anticipate. The United States is already engaged in low-intensity cyberconflicts, characterized by aggressive enemy efforts to collect intelligence on the country's weapons, electrical grid, traffic-control system, and even its financial markets.

Fortunately, the Obama administration recognizes that the United States is utterly dependent on Internet-based systems and that its information assets are therefore precariously exposed. Accordingly, it has made electronic network security a crucial defense priority.

But networks are only the tip of the iceberg. Not only does Washington have a limited ability to detect when data has been pilfered, but the physical hardware components that undergird the United States' information highway are becoming increasingly insecure.

INTO THE BREACH

In 2007, there were almost 44,000 reported incidents of malicious cyberactivity -- one-third more than the previous year and more than ten times as many as in 2001. Every day, millions of automated scans originating from foreign sources search U.S. computers for unprotected communications ports -- the built-in channels found in even the most inexpensive personal computers. For electronically advanced adversaries, the United States' information technology (IT) infrastructure is an easy target.

In 2004, for example, the design of NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, including details of its propulsion and guidance systems, was discovered on inadequately protected "zombie" computer servers in South Korea. Mimicking the tactics of money launderers, hackers had downloaded them there in order to pilfer the data from a seemingly legitimate source. Breaches of cybersecurity and data theft have plagued other U.S. agencies as well: in 2006, between 10 and 20 terabytes of data -- equivalent to the contents of approximately 100 laptop hard drives -- were illegally downloaded from the Pentagon's nonclassified network, and the State Department suffered similarly large losses the same year.

Russia has already perpetrated denial-of-service attacks against entire countries, including Estonia, in the spring of 2007 -- an attack that blocked the Web sites of several banks and the prime minister's Web site -- and Georgia, during the war of August 2008. In fact, shortly before the violence erupted, Georgia's government claimed that a number of state computers had been commandeered by Russian hackers and that the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had been forced to relocate its Web site to Blogger, a free service run by Google.

The emergence of so-called peer-to-peer (P2P) networks poses yet another threat. These networks are temporary on-demand connections that are terminated once the data service has been provided or the requested content delivered, much like a telephone call. Some popular P2P services, such as Napster and BitTorrent, have raised a host of piracy and copyright infringement issues, mostly because of recreational abuse. From a security perspective, P2P networks offer an easy way to disguise illegitimate payloads (the content carried in digital packets); through the use of sophisticated protocols, they can divert network traffic to arbitrary ports. Data containing everything from music to financial transactions or weapons designs can be diverted to lanes that are created for a few milliseconds and then disappear without a trace, posing a crippling challenge to Washington's ability to monitor Internet traffic. Estimates vary, but P2P may consume as much as 60 percent of the Internet's bandwidth; no one knows how much of this traffic is legitimate, how much violates copyright laws, and how much is a threat to national security.

The commercially available systems that carry nearly all international data traffic are high quality: they are structurally reliable, globally available, and highly automated. However, the networking standards that enable cross-border electronic exchange were designed in stages over the last four decades to ensure compatibility, not security, and network designers have been playing catch-up for years. To the extent that they paid any attention to security, it was largely to prevent unauthorized, inauthentic, or parasitic access, not a widespread paroxysm of national or even international networks -- the IT equivalent of a seizure that strikes suddenly and without warning.

The price of perpetrating a cyberattack is just a fraction of the cost of the economic and physical damage such an attack can produce. Because they are inexpensive to plan and execute, and because there is no immediate physical danger to the perpetrators, cyberattacks are inherently attractive to adversaries large and small. Indeed, for the most isolated (and therefore resource-deprived) actors, remote, network-borne disruptions of critical national infrastructure -- terrestrial and airborne traffic, energy generation and distribution, water- and wastewater-treatment facilities, all manner of electronic communication, and, of course, the highly automated U.S. financial system -- may be their primary means of aggression.

From isolated intrusions to coordinated attacks, the number of network-based threats is growing. Dan Geer, the chief information security officer at In-Q-Tel, the nonprofit private investment arm of the CIA, points out that the perpetrators are no longer teenagers motivated by lunchroom bragging rights but highly paid professionals. He also believes that after spending billions of dollars on commercial research and development, the United States will still have less, and perhaps much less, than 90 percent protection against network attacks -- an unacceptably bad result. And this pessimistic estimate only considers software; it does not take into account the pernicious threat to hardware.

HARDWARE'S SOFT SPOT

In 1982, a three-kiloton explosion tore apart a natural gas pipeline in Siberia; the detonation was so large it was visible from outer space. Two decades later, the New York Times columnist William Safire reported that the blast was caused by a cyber-operation planned and executed by the CIA. Safire's insider sources claimed that the United States carefully placed faulty chips and tainted software into the Soviet supply chain, causing the chips to fail in the field. More recently, unconfirmed reports in IEEE Spectrum, a mainstream technical magazine, attributed the success of Israel's September 2007 bombing raid on a suspected Syrian nuclear facility to a carefully planted "kill switch" that remotely turned off Syrian surveillance radar.

Although networks and software attract most of the media's attention when it comes to cybersecurity, chip-level hardware is similarly vulnerable: deliberate design deficiencies or malicious tampering can easily creep in during the 400-step process required to produce a microchip.

Integrated circuits are etched onto silicon wafers in a process that simultaneously produces tens, or even hundreds, of identical chips. In fact, each chip may contain as many as a billion transistors. At the rate of one transistor per second, it would take one person 75 years to inspect the transistors on just two devices; even a typical cell phone has a couple of chips with a hundred million transistors each. Finding a few tainted transistors among so many is an exceedingly tedious, difficult, and error-prone task, and in principle an entire electronic system of many chips can be undermined by just a few rogue transistors. This is why chip-level attacks are so attractive to adversaries, so difficult to detect, and so dangerous to the nation.

Modern automated equipment can test certain kinds of manufacturing fidelity within integrated circuits at the rate of millions of transistors per second. The problem is that such equipment is designed to detect deviations from a narrow set of specifications; it cannot detect unknown unknowns. An apparently perfect device can provide a safe harbor for numerous threats -- in the form of old and vulnerable chip designs, embedded Trojan horses, or kill switches -- that are difficult or impossible to detect. The theoretical number of potential misbehaviors and possible hardware alterations is simply too large, and no mathematical formulas to constrain the problem have yet been invented.

Moreover, the timeline of a hardware attack is altogether different from that of a software or network attack. With the important exception of infection by symbiotic malware (unauthorized software that depends on the host to survive), pervasive network infections are generally detectable, are mostly curable, and, until now, have been largely containable through the use of software patches, which are now ubiquitous. In contrast, compromised hardware is almost literally a time bomb, because the corruption occurs well before the attack -- during design implementation or manufacturing -- and is detonated sometime in the future, most likely from a faraway location. Sabotaged circuits cannot be patched; they are the ultimate sleeper cell.

MODEL AIRPLANES

Sadly, research in hardware security has been anemic, with relatively few institutions allocating very few dollars. But one researcher, the Stanford University aeronautics professor Per Enge, has looked to the civilian aviation industry as a model for enhancing hardware security. Aircraft companies have historically focused intensely on systemic weakness and potential vectors of attack on the airframe of airplanes, its many components, and the flight-control infrastructure. It takes months or even years to assess danger in hardware-bound systems, which are common in the transportation industry. Therefore, the aviation sector has always preferred deliberate and quiet responses to vulnerabilities as they are revealed, in part to make sure that the vulnerabilities are not exploited and in part to maintain public trust in an otherwise excellent system. In contrast, the cryptography and software-development communities believe that full disclosure is the path to safety and security. In their view, a threat that is subject to the full scrutiny of academic, industrial, and governmental experts will be neutralized more quickly and mitigated more fully.

For many years, aviation companies believed they could not fully rely on such collaborative failure detection because the equipment they produced was not easily replaced, reused, or repaired. The cost of doing so was so prohibitive to those outside the industry that few even bothered to try. Today, however, with the advent of publicly available GPS technology, even the aviation community is beginning to absorb the lessons of open security standards.

Most computer hardware engineers have traditionally approached the problem in a similar manner: test, stress, and break, but keep discoveries low key so as to avoid exposing a weak flank to the public or to competitors. The long cycles of detection and remediation that characterize hardware, as opposed to software, are the fundamental reason why practically all large mainframe computer systems -- from those on airplanes to those in hospitals -- still require human intervention to detect and cope with failures.

The difference between a chip and an airplane is that an engineer's ability to absorb knowledge and reconfigure hardware in order to make it more secure is much greater in silicon than in aluminum, especially if the internal response is both adaptive and intelligent.

The need to endow U.S. networks, software, and even hardware with a digital immune system -- one that is openly described and freely discussed -- is one of the most important lessons to be learned from the open-source community, and it could help hardware engineers make their products more secure.

IMMUNIZATION DRIVES

Comparing cyberthreats to biological diseases helps illustrate the potency of electronic attacks and point the way toward possible cures. As Stephanie Forrest and her colleagues at the University of New Mexico have shown, bodily immune systems work best when they are autonomous, adaptable, distributed, and diversified; so, too, with electronic security. Perhaps the biggest reason to focus on hardware assurance is that it provides a resilient form of immunoprotection and dramatically extends the range of potential responses to an attack. As with their biological analogues, healthy electronic systems will focus protection at the gateways to the outside world (such as a computer's ports), rapidly implement sequential reactions to invading agents, learn from new assaults, remember previous victories, and perhaps even learn to tolerate and coexist with foreign intruders. In other words, healthy hardware can adapt to infection, but sick hardware is an incurable liability -- a remote-controlled malignancy that can strike at any time.

Natural science also provides a framework to understand the dangerous implications of static thinking. The aphorism "nature abhors a vacuum" applies strikingly well to cybersecurity: if there is a weak point, whether it is there intentionally or unintentionally, a cybercriminal will find it. Because of its inherent complexity, modern electronic infrastructure is exposed to foreign intrusion. Eventually, the temptation to deliberately build in deficiencies -- to leave the door unlocked, so to speak -- will likely prove irresistible to professional saboteurs. And even when doors are not left unlocked, an adversary can still deliberately design all the locks to be fundamentally similar, making intrusion easier at some point in the future.

A hardware breach is more difficult to detect and much more difficult to defend against than a network or software intrusion. There are two primary challenges when it comes to enhancing security in chips: ensuring their authenticity (because designs can be copied) and detecting malevolent function inside the device (because designs can be changed). One could easily imagine a kill switch disabling the fire-control logic inside a missile once it had been armed or its guidance system had been activated, effectively disabling the tactical attack capability of a fighter jet. Inauthentic parts are also a threat. In January 2008, for example, the FBI reported that 3,600 counterfeit Cisco network components were discovered inside U.S. defense and power systems. As many as five percent of all commercially available chips are not genuine -- having been made with inferior materials that do not stand up under extreme conditions, such as high temperatures or high speeds.

Even well-intentioned security efforts cannot provide ironclad safety. With only $10,000 worth of off-the-shelf parts, a research group led by Christof Paar at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, in Germany, built a code-breaking machine that was able to exploit a hardware vulnerability and, within ten seconds, crack the encryption scheme of the electronic passport chip in European Union passports. This breach could have exposed sensitive personal information to financial criminals and passport counterfeiters. The original design of the passport chip was not fundamentally flawed, but it was inadequately hardened, and no software upgrade could solve the problem.

Adversaries planning cyberattacks on the United States enjoy two other advantages. The first, and most dangerous, is Americans' false sense of security: the self-delusion that since nothing terrible has happened to the country's IT infrastructure, nothing will. Such thinking, and the fact that so few scientists are focused on the problem, undercuts the United States' ability to respond to this threat. Overcoming a complacent mentality will be as difficult a challenge as actually allocating the resources for genuine hardware assurance. Second, the passage of time will allow adversaries and cybercriminals to optimize the stealth and destructiveness of their weapons; the longer the U.S. government waits, the more devastating the eventual assault is likely to be.

THE TECHNOLOGICAL RAIN FOREST

Seeking to completely obliterate the threats of electronic infiltration, data theft, and hardware sabotage is neither cost-effective nor technically feasible; the best the United States can achieve is sensible risk management. Washington must develop an integrated strategy that addresses everything from the sprawling communications network to the individual chips inside computers.

The U.S. government must begin by diversifying the country's digital infrastructure; in the virtual world, just as in a natural habitat, a diversity of species offers the best chance for an ecosystem's survival in the event of an outside invasion. In the early years of the Internet, practically all institutions mandated an electronically monocultural forest of computers, storage devices, and networks in order to keep maintenance costs down. The resulting predominance of two or three operating systems and just a few basic hardware architectures has left the United States' electronic infrastructure vulnerable. As a result, simple viruses injected into the network with specific targets -- such as an apparently normal and well-trusted Web site that has actually been infiltrated -- have caused billions of dollars in lost productivity and economic activity.

Recently, national intelligence authorities mandated a reduction in the number of government Internet access points in order to better control and monitor them. This sounds attractive in principle. The problem, of course, is that bundling the channels in order to better inspect them limits the range of possible responses to future crises and therefore increases the likelihood of a catastrophic breakdown. Such "stiff" systems are not resilient because they are not diverse. By contrast, the core design principle of any multifaceted system is that diversity fortifies defenses. By imposing homogeneity onto the United States' computing infrastructure, generations of public- and private-sector systems operators have -- in an attempt to keep costs down and increase control -- exposed the country to a potential catastrophe. Rethinking Washington's approach to cybersecurity will require rebalancing fixed systems with dynamic, responsive infrastructure.

In addition to building diverse, resilient IT infrastructure, it is crucial to secure the supply chain for hardware. This is a politically delicate issue that pits pro-trade politicians against national security hawks. Since most of the billions of chips that comprise the global information infrastructure are produced in unsecured facilities outside the United States, national security authorities are especially sensitive about the possibility of sabotage.

Some observers have pointed to the Clinton-era Information Technology Management Reform Act as a leaky crack in the levee of secure hardware infrastructure because it explicitly encouraged the acquisition of foreign-made parts. They are wrong. In fact, streamlining procurement of IT components is in no way related to the integrity of the components themselves; how the government purchases components is unrelated to what is actually delivered, tested, and deployed.

Moreover, the enormous cost of maintaining a parallel domestic production capability to match the tremendous manufacturing advances of the private sector abroad would never pass muster in even the most hawkish appropriations review; such dedicated production facilities would also make an easy target for sabotage or direct attacks. A disruption in the supply chain would exact an incalculable price, not least in terms of the United States' defensive readiness, and would violate the principle of having a layered, diversified response. It makes sense now -- just as it made sense during the Clinton years -- to purchase components, even those made offshore. The problem is not foreign sourcing; it is ensuring that foreign-made products are authentic and secure.

None of this will require a fundamental change in the way computer networks are currently configured and deployed. Because hardware itself can now be reconfigured -- and is therefore adaptable -- electronic defenses within actual devices can be augmented without domestic chip designers' revealing more than they already do to the foreign manufacturers who actually produce the chips.

Of course, adversaries could build in hardware deficiencies during production that could hurt the United States later. But there are some very elegant ways to detect those deficiencies without the adversaries' knowing that Washington is watching. Promising strategies in the near term, such as embedding compact authentication codes directly into devices and configuring anti-tamper safeguards after the devices are produced, will enhance protection by tightening control of the supply chain and making the hardware more "self-aware."

The Bush administration's classified Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative, which led to a reported commitment of $30 billion by 2015 to bolster electronic defenses and which the Obama administration is expected to support, is a solid first step toward managing the risk.

Unfortunately, much of the relevant information -- such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's TRUST in Integrated Circuits program -- is classified. Confidentiality will not necessarily help ensure that the nation's information assets are well protected or that its cyberdefense resources are well deployed. In fact, because many of the best-trained and most creative experts work in the private sector, blanket secrecy will limit the government's ability to attract new innovations that could serve the public interest. Washington would be better off following a more "open-source" approach to information sharing.

The cybersecurity threat is real. Adversaries can target networks, application software, operating systems, and even the ubiquitous silicon chips inside computers, which are the bedrock of the United States' public and private infrastructure.

All evidence indicates that the country's defenses are already being pounded, and the need to extend protection from computer networks and software to computer hardware is urgent. The U.S. government can no longer afford to ignore the threat from computer-savvy rivals or technologically advanced terrorist groups, because the consequences of a major breach would be catastrophic.

This op-ed was first published in Foreign Affairs.

WESLEY K. CLARK, a retired four-star General, was Supreme Commander of NATO from 1997 to 2000, led the alliance of military forces in the 1999 Kosovo War, and is a Senior Fellow at the Ron Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA. PETER L. LEVIN was the founding CEO of the cybersecurity company DAFCA and is now Chief Technology Officer and Senior Adviser to the Secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. government.

Burkle Center Welcomes Fall 2009 Interns: Annie Augustine, Tomasz Dziadkowiec, Deborah Magsaysay, Sarah Mallory, Anubha Prakash, Amy Ta & Jasmin Yu

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:27:45 PDT

New to our Center are 7 accomplished undergraduate and graduate students to work as this year's Fall/Winter Quarter interns.

The Burkle Center would like to recognize its new team of interns:

Annie Augustine, Outreach Coordinator
Tomasz Dziadkowiec, Event Faciliatator
Deborah Magsaysay, Event Facilitator
Sarah Mallory, Researcher
Anubha Prakash, Graduate Researcher
Amy Ta, Multimedia Coordinator
Jasmin Laina Yu, Outreach Coordinator

The Burkle Center Internship Program offers UCLA undergraduate and graduate students direct exposure to international relations and related disciplines. From major events and conferences to research initiatives to student-oriented outreach programs, the Burkle Center offers a variety of venues for interested and engaged students to get involved.

If you are interested in applying to the winter/spring internship program, please click here.

"A Perspective on US Diplomatic Strategy" feat. US Asst. Secretary of State for Intl. Organizations, Esther Brimmer

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:17:39 PDT

US Asst. Secretary of State for International Organizations, Esther Brimmer

In this podcast, Esther Brimmer, US Asstistant Secretary of State for International Organizations, discusses US Diplomatic Strategy. Brimmer answered a number of questions including:

How has the U.S. Government’s approach to international organizations changed under the Obama Administration?
What is its approach to, and what are the benefits of, revitalizing multilateral diplomacy?
How can multilateralism help achieve U.S. foreign policy goals?
What are the Administration’s priorities in international organizations, particularly on peace and security, human rights and human security, and UN reform?

In her role as Assistant Secretary, Dr. Brimmer leads the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, which strives to advance U.S. interests through international organizations in areas including human rights, peacekeeping, food security, humanitarian relief, and climate change. Prior to her appointment, Dr. Brimmer was Deputy Director and Director of Research at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at The Johns Hopkins University. There she specialized in transatlantic political and security affairs. Dr. Brimmer’s previous government service included two years in the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning, where she worked on European Union, Western Europe, UN, and multilateral security issues. Dr. Brimmer was also a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in spring 2000. From 1993-1995 she served as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In that capacity she worked on UN, peacekeeping, human rights and political-military issues. Dr. Brimmer received her D.Phil. (Ph.D.) and master’s degrees in international relations from the University of Oxford and her B.A. in international relations from Pomona College in Claremont, California.

Social Norms and International Relations

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:05:29 PDT

Robert O. Keohane, Princeton Prof. of International Affairs

Biography

Robert O. Keohane is Professor of International Affairs, Princeton University. He is the author of After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (1984) and Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (2002). He is co-author (with Joseph S. Nye, Jr.) of Power and Interdependence (third edition 2001), and (with Gary King and Sidney Verba) of Designing Social Inquiry (1994). He has served as the editor of the journal International Organization and as president of the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association. He won the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, 1989, and the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, 2005. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences. He has received honorary degrees from the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and Sciences Po in Paris, and is the Harold Lasswell Fellow (2007-08) of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

For an advance copy of Prof. Keohane’s paper, “Social Norms and agency in world politics”, please click here.

Kantathi video

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:53:08 PDT

Burkle Center Senior Fellow Dr. Kantathi Suphamongkhon expresses his views about Thailand's relationship with North Korea.

This video first appeared on "Diplomat Talk".

Afghanistan and Pakistan

Fri, 2 Oct 2009 10:44:58 PDT

H.E. Shaukat Aziz, former Prime Minister of Pakistan.

In this podcast, H.E. Shaukat Aziz, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, speaks about Afghanistan and Pakistan at a Burkle Forum held at the UCLA James West Alumni Center on September 30, 2009. Shaukat Aziz served as Prime Minister of Pakistan from 2004 to 2007. Finance minister from 1999 until 2004, Mr. Aziz was appointed Prime Minister in August 2004, following the resignation of Zafarullah Khan Jamali. When Mr. Aziz left his post in November 2007, he had become the first Prime Minister of Pakistan to complete a full term in office. Mr. Aziz was born on March 6, 1949 and brought up in the southern city of Karachi. He received his early education from St. Patricks School in Karachi and Public School in Abbottabad. After graduating from Gordon College, Rawalpindi in 1967, he earned an MBA from the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi in 1969. That same year, Mr. Aziz started his career at Citibank, initially as a credit officer in Karachi. He later served in various countries including Greece, the United States, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, and Singapore. After a series of promotions, ranging from Citibank’s Head of Corporate and Investment Banking for a variety of regions; Corporate Planning Officer, Citicorp; Country Manager for Citibank in Malaysia and in Jordan, to board member of Citibank subsidiaries and several non-profit organizations, he was appointed Executive Vice President of Citibank in 1992. Before taking leave from Citigroup, he headed its global Private Banking Division and, at the height of his 30-year career in global finance, progressed to a senior post with the bank in New York. The Government of Pakistan appointed Mr. Aziz as Finance Minister in November 1999.

Former Pakistani PM Urges Open Talks on Afghanistan

Fri, 2 Oct 2009 15:37:42 PDT

Shaukat Aziz, who served Pakistan for eight years as finance minister and prime minister, argues in a talk at UCLA that global and regional powers will need to meet with all Afghan factions, the Taliban included, and offer a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan in order to put the country on the right track.

UCLA Today

AS THE OBAMA administration decides whether to send thousands of additional U.S. troops into Afghanistan, a former Pakistani prime minister told more than 200 people at the James West Alumni Center that the conflict cannot be ended by a military solution alone.

The Sept. 30 lecture and discussion with Shaukat Aziz, who left office less than two years ago, was sponsored by the Burkle Center for International Relations and the International Institute.

"Everyone has to be brought to the [negotiating] table," said Aziz. "If we think we can achieve this through military action alone, in my humble opinion, that will not be successful."

Aziz called for "a global approach" to Afghanistan with broad talks among all of the relevant Afghan factions, including the Taliban, along with Central and South Asian countries, Russia, Iran, China, Turkey, the European Union and the United States. Afghanistan will need new economic assistance and incentives, a "Marshall Plan–type approach" that Aziz said he's advocated for years, to control opium production and extremism.

"Pakistan used to be a major drug producer 20 years ago. Thanks to USAID and our own efforts … we are now poppy-free, so it can be done," he said. "But you have to give them alternate sources of income. You can't just pull the plug."

During the lecture, Aziz described military power as a tool "used to affect the outcome of dialogue and discussion." He praised the Pakistani army for a "marvelous job" in defeating Taliban forces this year in the Swat Valley, but emphasized that the key to that conflict was support for action from the local people.

Rather than force, discussions about Afghanistan should focus on economic development, according to Aziz, a former Citibank executive who traveled to Kabul often in his eight years in government, first as Pakistan's finance minister. He criticized the lack of a single official in charge of the Afghan economy.

"They need somebody who'll call the shots and get maximum bang for the buck for the aid which is coming in or will come in."

As Aziz spoke, the U.S. Congress was about to vote through a large increase in non-military aid to Pakistan, the world's second-largest majority Muslim country and a nuclear power. But Aziz told the audience that he would prefer a different approach to this bilateral relationship, which has followed a cyclical pattern of engagement, then flagging U.S. interest.

"What Pakistan needs, I believe, more than aid, is market access," he said, arguing that trade reaches poor families effectively without costing U.S. jobs.

For its Federally Administered Tribal Areas near the Afghan border, he said, Pakistan for six years has been seeking, without success, the creation of opportunity zones with special access to the U.S. market, "so people could drop their weapons and start producing whatever is needed here."

"When we talk of terrorism," said Aziz, a survivor of assassination attempts during office, "we must also look at the root causes of why people behave a certain way. ... Deprivation manifests itself in many forms: lack of justice, lack of democracy, lack of human rights, lack of a voice, lack of basic needs being met, lack of disputes being resolved."

Aziz sought to reassure audience members on a variety of topics, saying that Pakistan has firm control over its nuclear arsenal, that it opposes the further spread of nuclear weapons and that it is working to improve the lot of women. He also called on them to work towards better relations among world faiths, which he said share common values.

"There are many in this room, I'm sure, who feel that extremism and Islam are interlinked. Nothing is further from the truth," he said, observing that history offers examples of violent extremists from everywhere in the world.

Burkle Center Podcasts Ranked in the Top Ten of International Relations Podcasts Worldwide

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:51:08 PDT

The Center for Security Studies in Zurich, Switzerland, ranks Burkle Center podcasts as among the best of all international relations podcasts.

This article first appeared in the ISN Blog on September 22, 2009 by Kaisa Schreck.

International Relations Podcasts- The Best and the Brightest

In the same vein as our list of interesting international relations actors on Facebook, we put together a list of interesting audio sources for you to explore (again, in random order).

1. Council on Foreign Relations Podcasts
2. London School of Economics Public Lectures and Events Podcasts
3. UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations Podcasts
4. World Radio Switzerland Podcasts on International Relations
5. The Economist Audio and Video
6. Carnegie Council Podcasts
7. C-SPAN Radio
8. New York Times World View Podcast
9. BBC Radio From Our Own Correspondent Series
10. World Politics Review Podcasts

Some, like C-SPAN, provide a live stream of congressional events, speeches and hearings (often on foreign affairs); others offer insights into current affairs drawn from expert interviews, while the Economist, for example, provides audio summaries of their Special Reports and a weekly podcast outlining the key events to look out for in the days ahead. The London School of Economics and the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations provide audio and video files of speeches and public lectures held at the schools on a wide variety of topics and often by high profile speakers.

And remember that we can also be found on the audio airwaves – enjoy ISN podcasts at home or on the go! Any other podcasters that deserve a mention?

Click here to read the original article.