Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland

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Start date: 1996End date: 1999

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    The Participation of Japanese Military Forces in U.N. Peacekeeping Operations
    (1996-06) Leitenberg, Milton
    In September 1992, the first Japanese military forces were committed to participation in a U.N. peacekeeping mission, the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). This occurred under new Japanese legislation enacted in June 1992. It was followed by other short-term deployments with U.N. contingents in Mozambique in May 1993, in Zaire in 1994, and most recently with U.N. Peacekeeping forces on the Golan Heights in 1996. In September 1994, the Japanese Socialists reversed their policies of decades, accepting all that they had opposed before in regard to the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF), including its basic constitutionality and legitimacy. However, the constitutional question has always been a proxy for a less symbolic and more basic issue: How can the Japanese public and political leadership guard against a resurgence of "militarism," the accretion of both forces and political power that would permit the use of Japanese military forces for aggressive purposes? Has the discussion of this question been realistic? Could such a process any longer take place without the approval and direction of the government? Is any incremental step toward the involvement and integration of the Japanese military in international collaborative activities, such as U.N. peacekeeping, the initiation of unavoidable and inevitable military independence, and the loss of control over the military by Japanese civil society and government? What would be the most desirable policies to follow so that the Japanese military behaved in accordance with international norms for the indefinite future? Is the most likely inhibitor of its misbehaving in the long term its integration with the military forces of other Asian and worldwide militaries, after 50 years of isolation, or attempting to maintain that total isolation indefinitely? And what does the question of a thoroughgoing and heretofore essentially absent Japanese national understanding of the practices of its armies in Asia between 1931 and 1945 have to do with these questions?
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    China Policy and the National Security Council
    (1999-11-04) Daalder, Ivo; Destler, I.M.; CISSM
    Over the past three decades, no area of U.S. foreign policy has been more dramatic than the opening and development of relations with the People"s Republic of China. And on no policy subject has the National Security Council played a more central role. From Henry Kissinger"s secret journey to Beijing in July 1971 to Anthony Lake"s trip a quarter century later in the wake of military confrontation in the Taiwan Straits, the assistant to the president for national security affairs has personally played a leading role. All governments take it particularly seriously when the American president sends his personal aide to them on a negotiating mission. The Chinese government has particularly invited, and welcomed, such White House engagement in diplomacy. This pattern has created particular problems, however, for the secretary of state, the State Department, and the overall coordination of U.S. policy both toward China and toward relations with other countries that have strong stakes in how Washington and Beijing interact. With these policy and organizational concerns in mind, the Brookings Institution and the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland convened this Oral History Roundtable bringing together officials from the National Security Council, the Department of State, and other government agencies to discuss how China policy was actually made over the past decades. We were delighted with the quality and range of policy players who were able to join in the discussion. When we learned that Ambassador Winston Lord a key policy participant over twenty-five years could not be present, we invited him to provide comments at appropriate points in the discussion. He did so, and these have been inserted and highlighted in the text. (We would refer readers also to Lord"s discussion of the China opening in our Oral History Roundtable on the Nixon administration.1) This is the fifth in a series of Oral History Roundtables carried out as part of the National Security Council Project, co-sponsored by the Brookings Institution and the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). We are grateful to the participants who gave freely of their time and insights. We also wish to express our appreciation to Shakira Edwards, who served as the primary editor of the manuscript, to Josh Pollack, who helped organize the meeting and worked with the original transcript, and to Karla Nieting, who brought the project to completion. I.M. "Mac" Destler is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland. Ivo Daalder is a Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
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    The Bush Administration
    (1999-04-19) Daalder, Ivo; Destler, I.M.; CISSM
    The Bush administration was home to a particularly collegial team of senior nationalsecurity policymakers. They had worked together in the Ford and Reagan administrations and held compatible views on both the substance of policy and how it should be made. And during the Bush administration they faced "a world transformed" (the apt title of the unique memoir co-authored by the president and his national security adviser). This roundtable examines the National Security Council process during the Bush administration, as seen through the eyes of officials a level or two below the principals. They were responding to substantial changes throughout the world: Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin wall, the unification of Germany, the Gulf War, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. As they address specific questions about the policy process (reprinted as Appendix A), the participants in the roundtable recorded in this transcript tell the story of a National Security Council whose collegiality and substantive effectiveness extended to a number of key NSC and State Department officials (although not to some at the assistant secretary level). This is the third in a series of roundtables held by the National Security Council Project, co-sponsored by the Center for International and Security Studies at the Maryland School of Public Affairs and the Foreign Policy Studies program of the Brookings Institution. Transcripts of two previous roundtables on the Nixon NSC and the role of the NSC in international economic policymaking have been published. Three additional transcripts on the role of the national security adviser, the NSC and U.S. policy toward China, and on the NSC and arms control policy will be published in the near future. Other roundtables are planned for the fall of 2000. These have been conducted for their own independent value. They also will provide useful input to a report on the NSC we plan to publish in the fall of 2000 and a book to be published in 2001. We are grateful to the participants for coming and talking with candor and insight. We would also particularly like to thank Karla Nieting for help in organizing the roundtable and her work with the participants in bringing this edited version of the proceedings to publication. Responsibility for any remaining errors rests with us. I.M. "Mac" Destler is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland. Ivo Daalder is a Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
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    The Nixon Administration
    (1998-12-08) Daalder, Ivo H.; Destler, I.M.; CISSM
    The Nixon administration brought far-reaching changes to the National Security Council. Building on a strong mandate from (and a strong policy relationship with) the President, National Security Assistant Henry A. Kissinger achieved operational policy dominance greater than any predecessor or successor. His role and methods generated enormous controversy. They were also tied to substantial policy achievements: an opening to China, arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, and eventually an historic, albeit flawed, Vietnam peace accord. One means of gaining insight into how the Nixon NSC actually worked is to ask those who were there. This was the purpose of the Nixon NSC Oral History Roundtable, conducted on December 8, 1998, at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. Thirty years almost to the day after Kissinger and other Nixon transition planners developed a blueprint for a new system, we brought together a group of ten veteran practitioners and observers of American foreign policy who were directly involved in the Nixon process to share their recollections with us. The participants drew on their experiences as advisers in the Nixon transition; as members of President Nixon"s NSC staff; and as officials who dealt with the Nixon NSC from important vantage points in other agencies. For over three hours, they spoke informally about how and why the new system was established, how it operated, and how it evolved over time. The discussion confirmed much that is already in the public domain, but it also brought to light new facts and insights. We hope students of the Nixon administration and of the modern foreign policy process and its institutions will find it useful. I.M. "Mac" Destler is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland. Ivo Daalder is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
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    Biological Weapons Arms Control
    (1996-05-01) Leitenberg, Milton; CISSM