Lan Anh: Building a foundation for close U.S.-Vietnamese relations
By Lan Anh
On the night of May 22, President Obama landed at Noi Bai International Airport to start his official visit to Vietnam. U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had also visited Vietnam while in office.
The American War in Vietnam was a long and sad chapter but that conflict ended 41 years ago.
President Obama’s visit to Vietnam was a dramatic turning point as the two countries establish stronger ties to promote the development, peace and security of the both countries, the Asia/Pacific region and the wider world.
Vietnam has spent much blood, wealth and time defending itself from invadersto regain and preserve its independence. The country has constantly faced threats to its freedom, sovereignty and territorial integrity.
But, overcoming the sorrow of historical events, and some missteps in its economic-development strategy, Vietnam has today achieved remarkable improvements in the economic and other aspects of its development. It has great potential strengths from its location and its population of 100 million, (making Vietnam the 13th most populous nation) including its large number of young people who are very receptive to new technology. It is also playing an increasingly important role in global economic development.
Meanwhile, Vietnam preserves many of its ancient traditions while it stays open to learning and accepting the best aspects of cultures and values all over the world.
Vietnam has become an inspiring story of a country in transition. A nation that suffered the sorrow of a long war with the U.S., Vietnam has since normalized the relationship with America and is taking steps to improve it further. Vietnamese-U.S. relations are now a world-recognized symbol of reconciliation and of progress toward a peaceful, more secure and developed world.
America has the world’s largest economy and is the global military superpower. Thus, the U.S. plays a crucial role in preserving stability around the Earth. American military power can be deployed quickly to any place in the world. Further, America is the innovation hub of the planet. It’s where leading technologies are constantly being invented and refined with great international impact.
Since World War II, the U.S. has led the establishment of a network of multilateral organizations -- most notably the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and such regional security organizations as NATO. In part becase of these organizations, the U.S. has strong allies around the world.
These factors are crucial parts of the foundation for stronger Vietnamese-U.S. relations.
Prof. Thomas Patterson, a leading Harvard scholar on politics, press and public policy, and a co-founder and director of The Boston Global Forum (BostonGlobalForum.org), said that the bases for a strong and sustainable relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam are trust and respect for each other and mutual understanding of each other’s needs and values. Despite some inevitable differences, the two countries have many shared goals, which include building their own and each other’s prosperity, friendly cultural exchanges and peace and security in the South China Sea (called in Vietnam the East Sea). Strong andfriendly U.S.-Vietnamese relations will foster the strong growth of the two countries in the Pacific Era.
The U.S. can help Vietnam with capital and advanced technology so that Vietnam can continue growing its knowledge and innovation economy via such technology solutions as artificial intelligence (AI) and network security.
After the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TTP) comes into effect, Vietnam’s GDP is projected to increase to $23.5 billion in 2020 and $33.5 billion in 2025. Its exports are projected to rise by $68 billion by 2026. Under the TPP, big markets, such as the U.S., Japan and Canada, willeliminate tariffs for goods imported from Vietnam, which will obviously give its exporting activity a big boost..
Meanwhile Fulbright University Vietnam has officially been granted approval to open. This is a milestone in the journey of cooperation between U.S. and Vietnam in education. Further, the University of California at Los Angeles ( UCLA ) will soon work with Vietnam to carry out new initiatives in global citizenship education.
To establish itself as a major global player, Vietnam needs to be independent of bigger countries so that it can strategize its path ahead while following universal standards and values. Vietnam will raise its visibility in the world with a loving, tolerant and generous attitude.
Vietnam has overcome sorrow and loss to make peace with other countries that caused it pain. Hence, Vietnam has become a symbol of reconciliation and can play an important role in preserving international peace and security in the Asia/Pacific region and around the world.
For example, Vietnam can contribute to the effort to resolve conflicts between the U.S. and Russia, between Europe and Russia, between China and Russia, between the U.S., Japan and North Korea, and between the U.S. and China. Vietnam could also become a centerfor finding solutions to conflicts in the Middle East and forhelping North Korea integrate with the rest of the world (as when Vietnam helped Myanmar reintegrate). And it can be a pioneer in building harmony and security in online space in South East Asia and around the world. This can include educating people to be responsible online citizens in Internet era; teaching them to respect each other’s culture, knowledge and morality, and promoting initiatives for global citizenship education.
Building strong Vietnamese-U.S. relations, as well as the other initiatives cited above, can’t be completed overnight but the path to a brighter future is opened. Tomorrow has started today.
Lan Anh is a journalist for VietNamNet.
Cambridge conference to discuss developing international cyberbehavior ethics
(April 28th, 2016) The Boston Global Forum (BGF) will host a May 9th Conference titled “Building Ethics Norms for Cyberbehavior’’. This conference (time, place and speakers below) is in part a follow-up to the recent creation of the BGF’s “Ethics Code of Conduct for Cyber Peace and Security,’’ which has been informed by BGF online dialogues with cyberexperts from several countries.
It is part of The Boston Global Forum’s BGF-G7 Summit Initiative, in which the BGF has convened leading scholars and business, technology and government leadersto seek solutions to pressing global issues involving peace, security and development. This BGF group has been working with Japanese officials to draft proposals to present to the national leaders meeting at the G7 Summit on May 26-27 in Japan.
The BGF’s biggest priority leading up to the summit is developing what it calls “Strategies for Combating Cyberterrorism’’.
The May 9 event:
Time: 7 p.m. (EDT) May 9, 2015
Venue: Room 2, Harvard Faculty Club, 20 Quincy St., Cambridge, MA 02138
To be live-streamed at www.bostonglobalforum.org
The conference will be directly linked with participants in Tokyo and Bonn.
For further information, including on attending the conference, please send queries to: Office@BostonGlobalForum.org.
The conference will be moderated by:
- Former Mass. Gov. Michael Dukakis, Co-Founder, Chairman, Boston Global Forum.
Speakers:
- Prof. Jose Barroso, former President of the European Union.
- President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, former President of Latvia, President of Club de Madrid.
- Prof. Thomas E. Patterson, Co-Founder, Member of Board of Directors, Member of Editorial Board, Boston Global Forum; Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press, Harvard Kennedy School.
- Prof. Joseph Nye, Member of the BGF Board of Thinkers; University Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard Kennedy School.
- Prof. Koichi Hamada, Special Adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
- Prof. Thomas E. Patterson.
- Nguyen Anh Tuan, Co-Founder and CEO, Boston Global Forum; Chair, International Advisory Committee, the UNESCO-UCLA program on Global Citizenship Education.
- Prof. John Savage, An Wang Professor of Computer Science, Brown University.
- Ryan Maness, Visiting Fellow of Security and Resilience Studies, Department of Political Science, Northeastern University.
- Tomomi Inada, Chairman of Policy Research Council of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party and a Member of the Japanese House of Representatives.
- Prof. Nazli Choucri, Professor of Political Science, MIT; Director of the Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD).
- Prof. Chris Demchak, RADM Grace M. Hopper Chair of Cybersecurity and Co-Director of the Center for Cyber Conflict Studies, at the U.S. Naval War College.
May 9 conference to discuss G7 agenda
The Boston Global Forum will hold a conference on May 9 on the agenda of the G7 Summit, which is coming up on May 26-27, in Japan. The BGF conference, to start at 6 p.m. on May 9, will be held at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge. The meeting is part of The Boston Global Forum's BGF-G7 Summit Initiative, in which BGF experts have been working with Japanese officials to craft proposals to present to the national leaders for consideration at the summit.
The initiative has been discussing a wide range of issues, from security in Asia in the face of North Korea and Chinese militarism, the global economy, public health, global warming and sustainable infrastructure improvements. But the BGF's biggest priority this year is addressing cybersecurity threats, a topic to which the BGF has drawn internationally known cybersecurity experts to make recommendations.
For further information about the May 9 conference, including about attending it, please consult BostonGlobalForum.org or address inquiries to:
office@BostonGlobalForum.org
Online dialogue with chief Japanese spokesman postponed to April 18
The event below has been postponed to April 18, at an hour to be announced, from April 14 because of an urgent meeting with Russian diplomatic officials visiting Japan.
Yasuhisa Kawamura, Director-General for Press and Public Diplomacy of the Japanese government, a job that includes being chief spokesman for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will be the featured speaker in a Boston Global Forum(BGF) live online dialogue titled “The Role of Japan in Peace, Security and Development in the World Today.’’ Such a dialogue takes on particular importance now because Japan will host this year’s G7 Summit, to be held on May 26-27.
The event can be seen live at bostonglobalforum.org.
Joining Mr. Kawamura in the discussion will be Michael Dukakis, Chairman of the Boston Global Forum’s Board of Directors and Board ofThinkers, and Prof. Thomas Patterson, a member of the BGF Board of Directors and Board of Thinkers; Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and Acting Director of the Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
The session is one in the series of online dialogues in the Boston Global Forum’s BGF-G7 Summit Initiative, in which BGF experts have been working with Japanese officials to craft proposals to be considered by the national leaders at the summit.
The Boston Global Forum encourages its members and friends to send questions for the discussants to office@bostonglobalforum.org. Members of the Boston Global Forum’s Special Editorial Board will gather your questions and insights and send them to the speakers.
The talk and listeners’ responses to it will be live-streamed at www.bostonglobalforum.org
Ask the Japanese government
Yasuhisa Kawamura, the Director General for Press and Public Diplomacy for the Japanese government, will discuss themes of the G7 Summit, scheduled for May 26-27 in Japan, in a Boston Global Forum (BGF) online dialogue. The session will start at 7:30 a.m ( EST ) on Thursday, April 14. Mr. Kawamura, who is the chief spokesperson for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will answer questions about the summit and Japanese plans and policies.
The Boston Global Forum, founded in 2012, is based in Boston and Cambridge.
The dialogue with Mr. Kawamura is part of the BGF-G7 Summit Initiative, in which BGF experts are working with Japanese officials to craft recommendations to be considered by the national leaders at the summit.
The Kawamura program can be seen on the BGF’s Web site --- bostonglobalforum.org.
You may send questions to Mr. Kawamura via: Office@bostonglobalforum.org.
Webcast: Using 'white hat hackers' to thwart cybercriminals
From The Boston Global Forum (bostonglobalforum,org), see a Webcast on using "white hat hackers'' to to fight cybercrime.
http://bostonglobalforum.org/2016/03/white-hat-hacking-presentation-to-the-bgf/
Watch Boston's nascent international think tank
Do think tanks really think? It's not that these organizations -- mostly centered in Washington, D.C., but also scattered across America – don't harbor some fine minds among their scholars and fellows, but the problem is that we know what they think -- and have often known for a long time. The rest is articulation.
Among Washington think tanks, we know what to expect from the Brookings Institution: earnest, slightly left-of-center analysis of major issues. Likewise, we know that the Center for Strategic and International Studies will do the same job with a right-of-center shading, and a greater emphasis on defense and geopolitics.
What the tanks provide is support for political and policy views; detailed argument in favor of a known point of view. By and large, the verdict is in before the trial has begun.
There a few exceptions, house contrarians. The most notable is Norman Ornstein, who goes his own way at the conservative American Enterprise Institute (##aei). Ornstein, hugely respected as an analyst and historian of Congress, often expresses opinions in articles and books that seem to be wildly at odds with the orthodoxy of AEI.
A less-celebrated role of the thinks tanks is as resting places for the political elite when their party is out of power. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, rumored to be favored as a future Republican secretary of state, is hosted at AEI. National Security Adviser Susan Rice was comfortable at Brookings between service in the Clinton and he Obama administrations. At any time, dozens of possible office holders reside at the Washington think tanks, building reputations and waiting.
My interest in think tanks and their thinkers has led me to what might be developing into a think tank, although it's too early to say. It's so early that it has no headquarters, secretariat or paid staff. But this nascent think tank has gathered a loose faculty from a coterie of public intellectuals, mainly in and around Boston, and abroad in Hanoi, Tokyo and Berlin.
It's called the Boston Global Forum. Formed in 2012, it's led by two very different but, apparently, compatible men: Michael Dukakis, former Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential nominee, and Nguyen Anh Tuan, who founded a successful internet company in Vietnam and now lives in Boston.
The concept of the forum is to study and discuss a single topic for a year. Last year, in forums and internet hookups between Boston and Asian and European cities, the topic was security in the South and East China seas, where war could easily erupt over territorial disputes. After a year of discussion, the participants concluded that a framework for peace in the region needs to be established and that current international arrangements and organizations don’t go far enough in that direction. This year’s topic is cybersecurity.
The Boston Global Forum has strong ties to the faculties at Harvard and Northeastern University, where Dukakis is a professor. Most forum meetings take place on the Harvard campus. Two of the forum's most conspicuous champions are Harvard Professors Joseph Nye and Tom Patterson. Patterson’s office at the John F. Kennedy School of Government serves as a kind of de facto headquarters.
This new entrant into the think tank cohort is very East Coast-tony, and very energetic. This year it has plans for meetings in Vietnam, Tokyo and somewhere in Europe, and has attracted such media heavyweights as David Sanger, of The New York Times, and Charles Sennott, one of the founders of the online GlobalPost.
As the Boston Global Forum is a new think tank, questions abound: Will it get funding? Will it find premises and staff ? Will it get public recognition?
The big question about anything that looks like a think tank is, will thinking happen there? Will the Boston Global Forum be a crucible for big ideas? Or will it, like other think tanks, develop its own binding ideology?
Will the Boston Global Forum become, like so many, a smooth propaganda machine? Or will it be a place where the outlandish can live with the orthodox?
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of “White House Chronicle” on PBS. His e-mail is lking@kingpublishing.com.