Regional Perspectives on North Korean Scenarios

Regional Perspectives on North Korean Scenarios

SMA hosted a panel discussion with Dr. James Hoare (Chatham House / SOAS Centre of Korean Studies), Dr. John Nilsson-Wright (Cambridge University), Prof. Steve Tsang (SOAS China Institute), and Dr. Nicholas Wright – moderator (Intelligent Biology / Georgetown University) as a part of its SMA INDOPACOM Speaker Series. 

Date: 22 May 2018

Panel Preview

SMA hosted a panel discussion as a part of its SMA PACOM Speaker Series. The panelists for this session included Dr. James Hoare (Chatham House / SOAS Centre of Korean Studies), Dr. John Nilsson-Wright (Cambridge University), Prof. Steve Tsang (SOAS China Institute), and moderator Dr. Nicholas Wright (Intelligent Biology / Georgetown University). During this panel discussion, the speakers examined the future regional impacts of potential US policies on the Korean peninsula from four viewpoints: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, South Korea, China, and Japan. Some of the topics addressed by the panelists included the following: 1) What might a win-win scenario look like for that actor?, 2) In what ways might the US positively and negatively impact the evolving situation?, and 3) Under what regional and domestic political, economic, and social conditions would it be possible to achieve a complete and verifiable denuclearization of the DPRK without resorting to armed conflict?

This panel supported SMA’s Korea Strategic Outcomes project. For additional speaker sessions and project publications, please visit the Korea Strategic Outcomes project page.

Panel Recording

Briefing Materials

Biographies:

Since retiring from HM Diplomatic Service in 2003 – where his last post was establishing the British Embassy in North Korea – Dr. James Hoare has pursued a second career as a broadcaster, writer and occasional teacher on East Asia. Much of his work concerns North Korea but he also has expertise on China and Japan. He has published several books, some with his wife, Susan Pares, also a former diplomat. He is a graduate of Queen Mary University of London (BA 1964) and the School of Oriental and African Studies (PhD 1971).

Dr. John Nilsson-Wright (formerly Swenson-Wright) is senior research fellow for Northeast Asia with the Asia Programme at Chatham House, senior university lecturer in Japanese Politics and International Relations at Cambridge University and an official fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. He was head of the Chatham House Asia Programme from 2014 to 2016 and is a graduate of Christ Church, Oxford; SAIS, Johns Hopkins; and St. Antony’s College, Oxford. His research focuses on Cold War history and the contemporary international relations of Northeast Asia, with particular reference to Japan and the Koreas. He is the author and editor of a number of books including Unequal Allies? United States Security and Alliance Policy Toward Japan 1945-1960 (Stanford University Press, 2004); Crisis of Peace and New Leadership in Korea: Lessons of Kim Dae-jung’s Legacies (Seoul: Yonsei University Press, 2014), and The Politics and International Relations of Modern Korea (Routledge, 2016).

Professor Steve Tsang is Director of the SOAS China Institute. He previously served as the Head of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies and as Director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. Before that he spent 29 years at Oxford, where he earned his D.Phil. and worked as a Professorial Fellow, Dean, and Director of the Asian Studies Centre at St Antony’s College. Steve has a broad area of research interest and has published extensively. He is an Associate Fellow of the Chatham House and an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College at Oxford.

Professor Tsang regularly contributes to public debates on different aspects of issues related to the politics, history, foreign policy, security and development of the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and East Asia more generally. He is known in particular for introducing the concept of ‘consultative Leninism’ as an analytical framework to understand the structure and nature of politics in contemporary China. His latest books China in the Xi Jinping Era and Taiwan’s Impact on China were published by Palgrave in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

Dr. Nicholas Wright is a consultant at Intelligent Biology and an affiliated scholar at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics at the Georgetown University Medical Center. He applies insights from neuroscience and psychology to decision-making in international confrontations in ways practically applicable to policy. He has conducted work for the UK Government and Pentagon Joint Staff. He was previously an Associate in the Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security at the University of Birmingham (UK). Prior to joining Birmingham and Carnegie, he examined decision-making using functional brain imaging at University College London (UCL) and in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics. He worked clinically as a neurologist in Oxford and at the National Hospital for Neurology in London. He has published academically (e.g. Proceedings of the Royal Society), in general publications such as the Atlantic or National Interest, and with the Joint Staff at the Pentagon (see www.nicholasdwright.com/publications).

He has briefed multiple times at the Pentagon, and also at the UK MoD, French MoD, German Foreign Office and elsewhere. He has appeared on the BBC and CNN. Wright received a medical degree from UCL, a BSc in Health Policy from Imperial College London, has Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), has an MSc in Neuroscience and a PhD in Neuroscience both from UCL