August 30, 2022, 11:20-12:35 PST
To address questions from among the following, from an Indo-Pacific sub-regional perspective:
Appointed to the Senate of Canada in November 2016, the Honourable Yuen Pau Woo sits as an independent representing British Columbia. He has been the Facilitator of the Independent Senators Group since 2017, and was re-elected for a second term in December 2019.
Senator Woo has worked on public policy issues related to Canada’s relations with Asian countries for more than 30 years. From 2005-2014, he was President and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and on the Standing Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Committee. He is also Senior Fellow at Simon Fraser University’s Graduate School of Business, and at the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is a member of the Trilateral Commission and on the board of the Vancouver Academy of Music. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of the Mosaic Institute, the Canadian Ditchley Foundation, the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation, and the York Centre for Asian Research. Senator Woo has been a member of the following Senate Standing Committees: Foreign Affairs and International Trade; National Finance; Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources; Selection; Transport and Communications; and Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament.
Kresse has also served as a Social Enterprise Ambassador for the UK Government and as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.
Dr. Kristi Govella is deputy director of the Asia Program and senior fellow at The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF). Kristi is an expert on the intersection between economic and security policy in Asia, as well as on Japanese politics and foreign policy. Her research has examined topics such as economic statecraft, trade war, trade agreements, foreign investment, government-business relations, defense capacity building, regional institutional architecture, and the governance of the global commons. In addition to her publications in journals and edited volumes, Kristi has edited two books: Linking Trade and Security: Evolving Institutions in Asia, Europe, and the United States and Responding to a Resurgent Russia: Russian Policy and Responses from the European Union and the United States. She regularly provides commentary for U.S. and international media outlets. She also serves as an adjunct fellow with the East-West Center and Pacific Forum and as co-editor of the journal Asia Policy. Prior to joining GMF, Kristi was an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, and an associate professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. She has also been a visiting research fellow at the University of Tokyo and Waseda University. Kristi holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. in political science and Japanese from the University of Washington, Seattle.
Dr. Van Jackson is an American political scientist, futurist, and media pundit specializing in Asian security and the politics of US foreign policy. He is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington, and concurrently holds think tank appointments as a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, as the Defence & Strategy Fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies in Wellington, New Zealand, and as a Senior Fellow in the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation & Disarmament. Van’s first book, with Cambridge University Press, was Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in U.S.-North Korea Relations (2016). His second book, also with Cambridge University Press, is On the Brink: Trump, Kim and the Threat of Nuclear War (2018). While writing On the Brink, Van kept a diary about its writing process that was published every day at War on the Rocks, called Nuke Your Darlings. In 2021, Van began writing regularly for the Duck of Minerva. In 2019, Van was featured in the Washington Diplomat’s “People of World Influence” series. He is currently engaged in two major research projects—one examining the implications of progressivism for grand strategy, and the other a critical scrutiny of America’s paradoxical role in both sustaining and risking the “Asian peace.” Although long affiliated with the Center for a New American Security in various capacities, he has no relationship to it whatsoever since 2021.
Van is the host of The Un-Diplomatic Podcast, and previously hosted the acclaimed show Pacific Pundit. From 2015 through April 2017, he was an Associate Professor in the College of Security Studies at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) in Honolulu. From 2014 through September 2015, Van was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in residence at the Center for a New American Security, researching the intersection of Asian security and defense strategy. He has testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, and is a frequent commentator in popular media and policy outlets.
From 2009 to 2014, Van held positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) as a strategist and policy adviser focused on the Asia-Pacific, senior country director for Korea, and working group chair of the U.S.–Republic of Korea Extended Deterrence Policy Committee.
During his time in OSD, Van’s responsibilities ranged from long-range strategy, policy planning, and studies of military innovation to crisis management and direct negotiations with numerous Asian government ministries. He was a contributor to the 2013 Strategic Choices Management Review, the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, and OSD’s implementation of the U.S. policy of rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific. He was also part of the DoD working group that established the Department’s positions on autonomy in weapons systems (DoD Directive 3000.09). From 2009 to 2012, Van advised the White House and Secretary of Defense on crisis management and strategic courses of action through two Korean Peninsula crises, represented the Department in direct negotiations with North Korea addressing its nuclear program, and helped establish the first extended deterrence consultation mechanisms with South Korea and Japan. He is the recipient of multiple awards in OSD, including the Exceptional Civilian Service Medal.
Van previously taught courses on Asian security, grand strategy, and bridging the theory-policy divide at Georgetown University, Hawaii Pacific University, and the Catholic University of America, and has been a rotating lecturer in the Naval Postgraduate School’s Regional Security Education Program. In 2014, Van was also appointed as a Track II adviser to the Alliance Vision Group headed by the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning and South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has delivered guest lectures at a number of schools globally, including Stanford University, Harvard University, Syracuse University, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Ritsumeikan University, the U.S. National War College, the U.S. Naval War College, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. From 2011 to 2013, Van was also a non-resident James A. Kelly Fellow in Korean Studies with the Pacific Forum at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. He has published widely in academic journals, including Security Studies, Journal of Strategic Studies, International Studies Review, European Journal of International Security, Foreign Policy Analysis, Journal of Global Security Studies, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, Survival, Naval War College Review, Asia Policy, Asian Security, Comparative Strategy, and Contemporary Security Policy. His commentary and policy analysis has appeared in the Washington Post, POLITICO Magazine, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Hill, Axios, Far Eastern Economic Review, War on the Rocks, The Interpreter, Real Clear Defense, The Spinoff, and The Diplomat, among others. He holds a PhD in world politics from the Catholic University of America and was formerly selected as one of the “Top 99 under 33” foreign policy leaders by Diplomatic Courier magazine. Van started his career in the U.S. Air Force as a Korean linguist and intelligence analyst, and was an honors graduate from the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA.
Atsushi Sunami is the President of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and the President of the Ocean Policy Research Institute of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. He is also Director of the SciREX Center and Executive Advisor to the President at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) and Guest Professor at the Research Organization for Nano & Life Innovation at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan.
Mr. Sunami is currently serving as a member of the Basic Policy Group under the Committee on National Space Policy in the Cabinet Office and Chair of the Space Utilization Promotion Round-table under the Minister for Space Policy in the Cabinet Office. In addition, he is a member of the Innovation Strategy for Security and Safety at the Cabinet Office and on the Advisory Board for the Promotion of Science and Technology Diplomacy in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan. He holds a BSFS from Georgetown University and an MIA and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.
