Date: July 8, 2010, 14:00~15:20

Venue: Cara Room, Westin Chosun Seoul

 

Moderator: Mely Caballero-Anthony

 

Colleagues, friends, good afternoon and welcome to our session on cluster discussion for the third cluster of the MacArthur Asia Security Initiative. Someone asked me today, “What’s the name of our cluster?” The categorization of our cluster is “internal challenges.” I think during the first call for grand scheme, the full title was “internal challenges and cross country implications.” I see familiar faces but I think for the benefit of those who are with us for the first time, it may be good to just go around the table and say something about ourselves. And then we can decide the modality of how we are going to conduct our meeting. Belinda, you can start.

 

Belinda Chng

 

I’m the program officer for the ASI project in the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies. We work on three main programs here: internal conflict, climate change as well as energy and human security.

 

Moderator: Mely Caballero-Anthony

 

By the way, Belinda is actually the one writing to everybody, because as you know, we have a Cluster 3 website. This is our deliverable to the MacArthur Foundation and (to Belinda) can you just show the research cluster page to everyone? We are all here. See? There you are… I know you all have your respective websites, but this is where the MacArthur Foundation keeps track of how much information or interactions we have. We will talk about this later and continue with the introduction. James, please?

 

James Gannon

 

Thank you, it’s good to belong somewhere. I’m James Gannon. I’m the director of Japan Center for International Exchange, U.S. office. We do a lot of political exchange activities and policy work here, but mostly what I focus on is non-governmental underpinnings of the U.S. and Asia. Thank you.

 

Tadashi Yamamoto

 

I’m Tadashi Yamamoto. I’m the founder of the JCIE. It is an institution not controlled by the government or bureaucrats. We have survived so far. I really think that we are a very truly independent institution. I’m very proud of it but we are rather precarious because we depend on contributions. To make a very long story short, we focus on three cutting-edge clusters. One is civilness; civil society network. The second is the network of NGO. The third one is the proclamation programs, mainly with the United States. So we have a staff of about fifty or so in Tokyo and five in New York. We believe in networking very much. So we have the East Asia Community Project since way back, in fact ahead of you guys, including MacArthur. We solely believe in the importance of networking with like-minded institutions for us to survive, make contributions and learn. I think that strategy has been great and I hope to broaden the network so that Japan can truly be part of the international community.

 

One last thing, I should really say that I was very much concerned about who Japan was. Japan was emerging as the industrial nation and we were kind of a lonely state. We didn’t have any friends, others were suspicious about us, and so we wanted to network with others. Most of the secondary was very much concerned about the government control of our JCIE. So we insisted on independence, and so we do not get any form of subsidy. If you do so, you get owned by the government. So this is a shortened version of what we do.

 

David F. von Hippel

 

I am David von Hippel from Nautilus Institute. I guess I was inclined to just give a two minute introduction, and then I’m assuming we would be coming back around the table talking about our project and initiatives. I’m not a Nautilus Institute employee but probably have more longevity with Nautilus Institute than anybody else besides Peter Hayes. I’ve been working with Peter on issues related to North Korea and more broadly, energy security in North East Asia and East Asia for many, many years. We will be happy to describe projects in that regard. I will let my colleague Peter Yi (Kisu Yi) to talk about that.

 

ANM Muniruzzaman

 

Thank you. My name is Muniruzzaman but you can just call me Munir. I am the head of the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies. It’s an independent think tank where you work on a broad spectrum of security issues; both traditional and nontraditional issues and cross national security issues. I’m kind of new in the cluster, so I will appreciate it if my institution logo is included in the website. I have been associated with the MASI’s initial design of its concept before it was launched, so I have been with the MacArthur’s initial concept for a couple of years. It’s been three years now. So I am happy to be here to discuss about our project as we come back again. Thank you.

 

Kirsten Trott

 

Hi, I’m Kirsten Trott. I work for the Strategy and Research Impact at the Centre for Asia and Globalization (CAG), which is a small research center based at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, which is a school based at the National University of Singapore. We will talk more about our projects later.

 

Ilmas Futehally

 

Hi, I’m Ilmas Futehally. I’m the executive director of the Strategic Foresight Group, an independent think tank based in Mumbai. We were set up eight years ago to provide poverty research.

 

Kiho Yi

 

Nice to meet you. My name is Kiho Yi. Actually, I work in different sectors concurrently. One is the Nautilus Institute. In Seoul office we call Nautilus “ARI.” ARI is Asia Regional Initiative. We have actually been working on building up some sort of a civil society cooperation network based on the local government or civil society. We are much interested in building a kind of face to face communication and local to local solidarity. Of course we do not deny the international paradigm, but we would also like to develop local and regional paradigms which will be a new way of working as a unit or a community. At the same time, I work at Hanshin University, where I’m in charge of the Center for Peace and Public Integrity. But today, I came here as a director of Nautilus ARI, so if I just briefly talk about it continuing from David, in Nautilus ARI we would like to develop not only about the issues but, if I just briefly say two things, we would like to make a comment about the complexity of the global problems and how those are connected. At the same time, we would like to develop some methodology to see what the problem really is and how to solve it together. So, we also developed the scenario workshop as our methodology, and in our context we are also developing an ARI version of the ISA –a Japanese word which we call isa, which means, as you probably know, “now, it’s time to go.” ISA means issue-defining by ourselves; it should not be defined by others. It should be defined by the very people who are living there. S is scenario, and A is alternative strategy. So that is in the process of development, which is just what I would like to say. The other concern about the issue, as I have mentioned, is that we would like to see the complexity and connections among the global issues, and over here, in the next two years, we would like to give a focus to creating more nuclear free zones in the perspective of the civil society. We would like to make a focus on Japan and Korea nuclear free zone first of all. That’s all, and thank you...(Continued)

 

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Moderator

Mely Caballero-Anthony

 

Participants

Belinda Chng

Ilmas Futehally

James Gannon

David F. von Hippel

ANM Muniruzzaman

Tadashi Yamamoto

Kiho Yi

Kirsten Trott

 

Prepared by the Asia Security Initiative Research Center at the East Asia Institute. The East Asia institute, an Asia Security Initiative core institution, acknowledges the MacArthur Foundation for its generous grant and continued support. The East Asia Institute takes no institutional position on policy issues and has no affiliation with the Korean government.