ALUMNI WEEKEND 2003

Making Connections, Looking Ahead

Multidisciplinary talks and panels probed the role of the United States in world conflicts.

[Originally published in Stanford Lawyer #68]

Riley Bechtel, JD/MBA '79 Photo: Steve Gladfelter

Ultimately, the success of Iraq might turn on whether the infrastructure of the Middle Eastern nation—ravaged by decades of neglect and post-conflict looting—can be quickly rebuilt. Riley Bechtel, JD/MBA '79, Chairman and CEO of Bechtel Group, Inc., spoke on its Iraq mission at the Oct. 16 Dean's Circle Dinner.

The U.S. government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in April awarded a Bechtel subsidiary a contract to help restore Iraq's infrastructure. This includes work on schools, fire stations, hospitals, water supplies, sewage systems, airports, railways, bridges, and power plants.

Bechtel told alumni that the company has since achieved some major milestones, such as the repair of more than 1,200 schools in time for the first day of classes, the reopening of the Um Qasr port (which had been blocked by silt and wrecks and was essentially without power), and the return to pre-conflict electrical generating levels, all by October 2003. He noted that Bechtel was employing more than 30,000 Iraqi craftsmen through 100 Iraqi subcontractors.

But Bechtel added that daunting challenges remained. The power sector was "an unbelievable mess," he said, noting that Iraq had been "power starved" in the years before the war and that raising Iraq's electrical system to Western standards would be difficult given peak furnace-season demands and transmission system issues.

The contract has subjected the company to criticism, but Bechtel pointed out that USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios had explained publicly that Bechtel won the contract in competition against half a dozen competitors because of better experience, a superior team, and a low price.

"Forget the New York Times trying to get you to believe that there is some element of political influence in the award or that the Iraqis don't want us there," Bechtel said. "We won the job entirely on the merits, and we are seeing appreciation on the faces of the Iraqi schoolchildren and their teachers as they return to school. We feel this is a noble assignment."

(left to right): Allen Weiner '89, Mi-Hyung Kim '89, Bernard S. Black '82, Gi-Wook Shin, Scott D. Sagan Photo: L.A. Cicero

Nearly One million people in Rwanda were slaughtered during four months of 1994. Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Assistant Professor of Law, calls it a "100-day killing spree with a speed never seen before."

It's difficult not to use the word "genocide" to describe what happened, but Cuéllar suggests that at a critical juncture, United States policy makers carefully avoided using the term. And on Oct. 17, in an Alumni Weekend 2003 panel, "The Power of Influence, the Influence of Power," Cuéllar explained that their choice of terminology had tremendous implications for the Rwandans—and the rule of law.

Cuéllar held up a recently declassified document from an interagency discussion group including Defense and State Department lawyers. It was prepared in May 1994, at the very beginning of the slaughter, and it suggests that officials were well aware of the situation. One of the issues was whether to support a United Nations proposal for an international investigation of "possible violations of the genocide convention."

Cuéllar read the response from the higher-echelon officials: "Be careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday—Genocide finding could commit USG [United States government] to actually 'do something.'" Clearly, he added, officials thought that intervening in Africa was not going to be politically popular at home.

For the rule of law to have an effect internationally, "We cannot just look at governments' actions," Cuéllar explains. "We have to look at ourselves and what makes our government want to act."

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar. Photo: Steve Gladfelter

No one elsewhere in the world wants to see North Korea wielding an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Why, then, is the United States having so much difficulty leading a response to the Korean nuclear crisis?

That was a major issue raised by Allen Weiner '89, Warren Christopher Professor of the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy, who moderated the panel "It's a MAD, Mad World: Prospects for Security, Diplomacy, and Peace on the Korean Peninsula" at Alumni Weekend 2003. He opened the discussion by noting that the Bush administration had not clearly communicated its aims: "Is the United States intent on a regime change or on putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle?"

That question has caused the longstanding U.S.-South Korean alliance to be the "rockiest" it has ever been, explained panelist Mi-Hyung Kim '89, Executive Vice President of the Kumho Group/Asiana Airlines and an outside adviser to South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun. "South Koreans believe they have the most to lose in the event the North Korean issue does not get resolved peacefully," she said. If preemptive U.S. policy leads North Korea to attack, "thousands of South Koreans will die."

Another panelist, Bernard S. Black '82, George E. Osborne Professor of Law, who has served as an economic policy advisor to the South Korean government, added that the economic prospects of a regime change are terrifying to South Koreans. South Korea would be faced with a migration of hundreds of thousands of people from the north, which is in the grip of a famine.

"South Korea would have to devote 30 percent of its GDP"—or receive roughly $1 trillion in foreign aid—"to bring North Korea up to its standard of living, and that's not sustainable," Black said. "This is a hard problem; South Koreans don't know what to do, and neither do I."