Wednesday, October 17, 2018 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
Room 505
The Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E Street, NW Washington, DC 20052
The Sigur Center for Asian Studies and the Elliott School Book Launch Series cordially invite you to a book launch discussion with Professor Paul Heer about his latest publication, “Mr. X and the Pacific.”
About the Book:
George F. Kennan is well known for articulating the strategic concept of containment, which would be the centerpiece of what became the Truman Doctrine. During his influential Cold War career he was the preeminent American expert on the Soviet Union. In Mr. X and the Pacific, Paul J. Heer explores Kennan’s equally important impact on East Asia.
Heer chronicles and assesses Kennan’s work in affecting U.S. policy toward East Asia. By tracing the origins, development, and bearing of Kennan’s strategic perspective on the Far East during and after his time as director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff from 1947 to 1950, Heer shows how Kennan moved from being an ardent and hawkish Cold Warrior to, by the 1960s, a prominent critic of American participation in the Vietnam War.
Mr. X and the Pacific provides close examinations of Kennan’s engagement with China (both the People’s Republic and Taiwan), Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Country-by-country analysis paired with considerations of the ebb and flow of Kennan’s global strategic thinking result in a significant extension of our estimation of Kennan’s influence and a deepening of our understanding of this key figure in the early years of the Cold War. In Mr. X and the Pacific Heer offers readers a new view of Kennan, revealing his importance and the totality of his role in East Asia policy, his struggle with American foreign policy in the region, and the ways in which Kennan’s legacy still has implications for how the United States approaches the region in the twenty-first century.
About the Speakers:
Paul Heer is an adjunct professor at The George Washington University, where he received his Ph. D. in diplomatic history in 1995. During 2007-15 he served as the National Intelligence Officer for East Asia—the senior analyst of East Asian affairs in the US Intelligence Community—in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A career officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, he began that career in 1983 as a political and foreign policy analyst on Southeast Asia before specializing on China as an analyst and analytic manager. He served on the staff of the President’s Daily Brief, and as a member of the CIA’s Senior Analytic Service and the Senior Intelligence Service. He is a recipient of the CIA’s Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal and the DNI’s National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal. Dr. Heer was a Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during 2015-16. He was the Visiting Intelligence Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations during 1999-2000 and was subsequently elected a Life Member of the Council. He holds a B.A. degree in history from Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa; and an M.A. in history from the University of Iowa. He is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2018).
Bernard Adeney-Risakotta was born in China of British and American parents. He was founding director of the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS) at Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta. He studied in Wisconsin, London, and Berkeley, where he taught for nine years before moving to Indonesia in 1991. Among his many publications is Strange Virtues: Ethics in a Multicultural World.
Zhongtian Han, is a history Ph.D. student interested in modern East Asia and strategic studies. His research focuses on the strategic history of modern China and Japan.
Shweta Krishnan, is a PhD Candidate in the department of Anthropology at George Washington University. Her research interests include the anthropology of religion, science and the environment. Her current project explores religious revival amid riverine erosion in the island of Majuli, Assam.
Ichhya Pant, works at the intersection health, evaluation, data and information and communication technologies (ICTs) with a focus on vulnerable population such as immigrants, refugees, women and children. Currently, she serves as a Research Scientist focusing on monitoring and evaluation on the RANI Project which aims to 
We will be joined by guest speaker director Wei Te-Sheng (魏德聖), who is also the producer of “Kano.” Born in Tainan, director Wei graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, and only started his entertainment career after he completed the mandatory military service in Taiwan. His first directed movie “Cape No. 7” not only was a hit, but successfully brought life back to the Taiwan film industry. Director Wei will join us at the event and answer questions in the Q&A session after the film.
A former Nieman Fellow at Harvard, James M. Scott is the author of Target Tokyo, which was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize finalist and was named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus, The Christian Science Monitor and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. His other works include The War Below and The Attack on the Liberty, which won the Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award. His fourth book, Rampage, will be released on October 2, 2018. Scott lives with his wife and two children in Mt. Pleasant, SC.
