Tsedendamba Batbayar

Former Fellow

Professional Affiliation

Director, Policy Planning Division, Department of Policy Planning, Information, and Monitoring, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Mongolia

Expert Bio

Like many professionals of my generation in Mongolia, I received my university education in the former Soviet Union. I spent the years from 1976 to 1981 at the famous Faculty of Oriental Studies at Leningrad University, and then returned to Mongolia to take up the post of Research Fellow at the then Institute of Oriental Studies. Since becoming the director of the Oriental and International Institute in 1990, I had to lead a peripatetic life, crisscrossing the globe and establishing contacts with numerous academic and other organizations. I have presented papers in places as far apart as Bali and Princeton, New Delhi and Vancouver, and of course in the capitals of East Asia, including Beijing, Taipei, Seoul, and Tokyo. Whenever I was back in Ulaanbaatar, I continued building bridges by helping to organize international conferences, among them the Mongolian-American Bilateral Conference in 1988, the Mongolia-Korea Academic Conference in 1991, and the Conference on Sustainable Development in Central Asia in 1994. The early 1990s were a very challenging time for Mongolia and its people. Because of my intense personal involvement in international affairs, I had to work very closely with a new generation of Mongolian leaders who, since 1990, have seized the opportunity to help their country break out of decades-long isolation. In addition, in 1994 I launched The Mongolian Journal of International Affairs, our country's first English-language academic journal. It turned out to be our most significant contribution to a better world understanding of Mongolia. Since assuming my current position as Director for Policy Planning at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1998, I have worked on an important range of policy issues: Mongolia's membership and participation in the ASEAN Regional Forum; Mongolia's membership in the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC); and the initiation of annual senior level bilateral political and regional security consultations between Mongolia and the United States. My position required me to monitor a wide range of policy issues, including U.S.-Mongolian interactions in many international fora, Russian and Chinese policy initiatives toward Mongolia, Northeast Asian regional security mechanisms, and developments on the Korean Peninsula. Due to its historical and geopolitical realities, Northeast Asia is probably the only sub-region that lacks a mechanism at the governmental level where security issues of concern can be discussed collectively. Various ideas and proposals to this effect have been floating around for some time, but no serious discussion of this issue has taken place at Track I level. The time may have come to start thinking about the possibility of engaging in a dialogue, starting with a free exchange of views on the framework of such discussions.

 

Expertise

International relations in East Asia; politics and security of China, Japan, Korean Peninsula; politics, economics, and security of Mongolia

Wilson Center Project

"The Role of Mongolia in the Peaceful and Stable Development of Northeast Asia"

Project Summary

Mongolia, a land-locked country, surrounded by two huge neighbors, Russia and China, has struggled to achieve democracy and a new regional identity during the last 10 years. The proposed project aims to explore the dynamics of political and legal reforms in the 1990s, economic transition, and the dynamics of Mongolia's regional relations. Mongolia joined the ASEAN Regional Forum in June 1998 and the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) in April 2000 and set a strategic goal to join APEC. Will Mongolia's nascent democracy survive the devastating impact of the dissolution of its ties with the former Soviet Union? How will Mongolia adapt to the growing power and influence of China? What will be the role of the United States, Japan, and other Western countries in making Mongolia's reform a success story in Northeast Asia? The proposed study will attempt to answer these and other questions which have important implications for Northeast Asia.

Major Publications

  • Mongolian Perspectives on Northeast Asian Regional Development. In Politics and Economics in Northeast Asia, edited by Tsuneo Akaha, 207-223. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

     
  • Mongolia and Japan in 1945-1995: A Half Century Reconsidered. In Mongolia in the Twentieth Century: Landlocked Cosmopolitan, edited by Stephen Kotkin and Bruce Elleman, 163-181. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1999.

     
  • Modern Mongolia: A Concise History. Ulaanbaatar: Mongolian Center for Scientific and Technological Information, 1996, 118.