Deputy Assistant Secretary Of State Research Articles

A Conversation

A Conversation

Report of the Committee of Experts on Nation Rebuilding in Afghanistan

With the destruction of the Taliban regime, the international community is turning its attention toward the establishment of an interim government consistent with the Bonn Accords, and the identification of a process for selecting a more long-term governing arrangement. As is well known, these first steps toward establishing a new government in Afghanistan are the beginning of a long and difficult process for re-establishing peace. Absent a comprehensive and attainable plan for nation rebuilding in Afghanistan, the United States may find that despite its victory on the battle- field, it may be unable to adequately achieve its long term security objectives.While many groups and organizations were working within the shadow of the Bonn Conference to rapidly consider how best to accomplish a myriad of important objectives, such as reinstating the rule of law, promoting economic development, designing a program of agricultural reform, and creating a transparent form of democratic government, on November 30th, 2001 the Public International Law and Policy Group and the New England Center for International Law and Policy convened a Committee of Experts to consider broader questions which might properly shape the international community’s response to nation rebuilding in Afghanistan. In particular, the Committee of Experts examined the opportunity for constructive international community involvement arising from the recent development of contemporary norms of intermediate and evolving sovereignty developed from the recent precedents of Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and East Timor, and the utility of creating a framework of conditionality to guide international involvement in Afghan nation rebuilding.The November 30 meeting of twenty-five prominent foreign policy, military, and international legal experts was held as part of the 'Intermediate Sovereignty' Project, which is funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Participants at the meeting included the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, President Clinton’s Special Envoy to Yugoslavia, the former Deputy Legal Counsel at the United Nations, a former legal adviser to the National Security Council, a former Ambassador, the Chairman of the American Bar Association’s Section of International Law and Practice, and five former members of the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. Also participating were several leading academics, journalists, and experts from the U.S. Institute of Peace, the International Peace Academy, the Coalition for International Justice, the Public International Law and Policy Group, and the American Foreign Policy Council.This report, written by Professors Michael Scharf and Paul Williams, is the product of the November 30 Meeting of Experts. The report should not be taken to reflect the view of any particular participant on the Committee, all of whom served in their individual capacity.The report is divided into the following sections: relevant facts, the U.S. interest in participating in Afghan nation rebuilding, general goals for nation rebuilding, specific objectives for nation rebuilding, and the role of the concepts of intermediate sovereignty and phased recognition in achieving these goals and objectives.

The Political Fragility of the Current Regime in China

Susan Shirk is the Chair of the 21st Century China Center and Research Professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California - San Diego. She is also director emeritus of the University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). Susan Shirk first visited China in 1971 and has been teaching, researching and engaging China diplomatically ever since. From 1997-2000, Shirk served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Eas...

Security Stability in East Asia

Asian Perspective 40 (2016), 147-160 COMMENTARY Security Stability in East Asia William A. Douglas During 2010 to 2012, considerable discussion took place in policy circles about avoiding a putative US-China competition through an East Asia multilateral balance of power in which nei­ ther power would dominate. The discussion was responding to what many observers saw as the prospect of a geopolitical power struggle (Economist 2014) in which the United States would seek to retain its present naval and air dominance in the western Pacific, and China would, at a minimum, seek to degrade US dominance (Gurtov 2013a) or, at a maximum, regain what many Chinese view as China’s historical place as the Middle Kingdom. These US and Chinese goals might well be incompatible in that, as the Chinese proverb puts it, “one mountain cannot be shared by two tigers.” Both governments have repeatedly expressed their desire to avoid such a “Thucydides trap” by prudent managing of the relationship between an established and a rising power. To President Xi Jinping that means establishing a “new type of relationship between the major powers” (Chen 2014b, 2; Wang 2014). The obvious way to prevent a US-China power struggle is to create a regional balance of power in which neither power would dominate the region. The United States would not try to preserve its post-World War II regional hegemony, and China would not seek to gain hegemony in East Asia. For a stable balance ofpower to emerge requires that no major power involved in the region believes itself strong enough to undertake an expansionist policy at reasonable risk and cost, and each nation feels secure from attack or attempts at domination by any of the others. The idea of a US-China balance of power was floated at a conference in the late 1990s, without much response, by the then US deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific 147 148 Security Stability in East Asia Affairs, Susan Shirk. She suggested that China, Russia, Japan, and the United States could “coordinate to keep the peace in Asia,” following the model of the Concert of Europe (Shirk 2007, 106). Early in 2012 Henry Kissinger called for a “Pacific Community” within which the United States and China could accommodate their respective interests. Zbigniew Brzezinski advocated “a U.S.Chinese -Japanese triangle” with the United States playing the role of “regional balancer,” replicating the role of Britain in Europe in the nineteenth century (Brzezinski 2012, 101-102; Kissinger 2012, 52). Similarly, Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell argued that both China and the United States could benefit from “a new equilibrium ofpower, but with a larger role for China” (2012, 46). Australian author Hugh White’s The China Choice (2012) also considers an East Asia balance of power. He argues that it is not feasible for the United States to maintain its military domi­ nance in the western Pacific given China’s burgeoning economic capacity, and therefore says the United States should aim at mov­ ing China to “accept limits to its power and work with America in a new regional order” (White 2012, 81). In 2013 a joint China-US public opinion poll found that Chinese elites favor a “balance of power between Washington and Beijing” (Carnegie Endowment 2013, 3). Perhaps this Chinese view, which implies that there would be no one dominant power in the region, could lead to Chi­ nese support for a broader concert among all the East Asian pow­ ers, adding some specificity to President Xi’s still somewhat neb­ ulous call for a “new type” of great power relationship. Unfortunately, interest in the concert concept seems to have crested. From late 2012 through 2015, books on the East Asian security situation by Timothy Beardson (2013), Steve Chan (2012), Noah Feldman (2013), Jonathan Fenby (2014), Edward Luttwak (2012), Robert Haddack (2014), Thomas Mahnken (2014), Geoff Dyer (2014), Lyle Goldstein (2015), and Daniel Lynch (2015) did not discuss the concert concept. Neither was it covered in articles during the same period by Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner (2014), Elizabeth Economy (2014), Thomas Fingar and Fan Jishe (2013), Avery Goldstein (2013), Mark Leonard (2013), Pei Minxin (2014), Ely...

The United Nations and Development Assistance in the Asia-Pacific Region

The United Nations at Work in Asia: An Envoy's Account of Development in China, Vietnam, Thailand and the South Pacific. By Roy D. Morey Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, 2014. 277 pp., $33.25 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-786-47871-2). The rather formal title of this book belies its rich, varied, and original content. Roy Morey takes the reader on his extraordinary life's journey from US Senate staffer; to junior academic in Granville, Ohio; to the Nixon White House as Ehrlichman's chief public opinion polling officer; to the Department of State as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs; and finally, to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), where a four-month consultancy expanded into a permanent career as UNDP resident representative in the Asia-Pacific region: in Thailand, Samoa and the “Microdots,” China, and Vietnam. Morey's final posting, as Director of the UNDP office in Washington, brings him full-circle, enabling him to look back and, with a wise and critical eye, assess the many strengths, and occasional weaknesses, of the United Nations and, particularly, the UNDP. He evaluates the contributions of these international organizations to each country to which he was posted, and enumerates the critical lessons gleaned from a lifetime's work in development assistance. The book also represents a journey in Morey's personal development, from self-described Republican and (continuing) admirer of Richard Nixon to thoughtful and cosmopolitan citizen of the world, asserting the values and virtues of the United Nations in the face of a skeptical Tea Party critique. Because of the fortuitous timing of his postings, Morey was present at some important turning points in international and developmental politics. Most dramatic was his appointment to China in 1988 and his first-hand experience of the 1989 Tiananmen crisis, when he assumed the critical role of expatriating UN personnel from Beijing. Prior to that time, from 1978, he was involved in …

The United Nations at work in Asia: An envoy’s account of development in China, Vietnam, Thailand and the South Pacific, by Roy D Morey

Roy D Morey The United Nations at work in Asia: An envoy's account of development in China, Vietnam, Thailand and the South Pacific Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. 300 pp., $35.00 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-7864-7871-2, elSBN 978-1-4766-1421-2, www.mcfarlandpub.comThe 1980s and 1990s witnessed profound socioeconomic and political transformations throughout much of East and Southeast Asia. In this book, Roy Morey, whose long and varied career included service as US deputy assistant secretary of state and chair of the Department of Political Science at Denison University, offers a unique and insightful record of the UN's involvement in these tumultuous times. In the interest of full disclosure, the reviewers must reveal that we became diplomatic colleagues and friends of Morey while in China during the dramatic events related in chapter six of his book. Thus, we cannot claim to be impartial about the author but we can attest to his account of the Tiananmen Square events as not only clear-eyed and factual but also eloquent in evoking the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty that gripped Beijing in the spring of 1989.The author's perspective in this book is intriguing for two reasons. First, he was a direct participant in many of the substantive events he discusses and had personal dealings with key Asian leaders. Second, he made the transition from dealing with America's bilateral relationships as a senior US State Department official to representing the multilateral agencies in the countries where he was accredited as the chief UN representative. Morey gives a detailed account of his 22 years of involvement with UN efforts to resolve crises in Asia, including responding to the numbers of Cambodian refugees camped along the Thai border; confronting the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge; trying to rid the Golden Triangle of opium production; striving to promote cooperation among North Korea, South Korea, China, and Mongolia; negotiating the agreement on the Mekong River Commission; and working constructively with reformist leaders in China and Vietnam.Morey's account is both memorable and informative: his narrative carries his audience along with him and at the same time preserves the essential elements of the story. There is no artifice here. This is a man who understands the importance of the historic economic and political changes he witnessed in the region and the impact of a multilateral approach to development and modernization.The book is organized in a way that makes it useful for readers: it unfolds chronologically; the chapter titles are informative and clear; there is a helpful index and an extensive bibliography. Readers interested in researching specific subjects will be able to select material from this tome with ease. Others will prefer to browse through this book for broad edification. Like us, they can enjoy it for what it is: the insightful memoir of a gentleman-scholar who ably fostered international cooperation and economic development wherever he served.For Canadian diplomats of an earlier age, Morey's book will hold special interest because we placed such hope in cooperation with all parts of the new postwar multilateral machinery in the decades he writes about. As citizens of a middle power, we believed that the UN system was the best way to lower international tensions because it allowed countries of every size and political persuasion to play a role in defusing disputes and promoting development. …

Introduction: Global Order, Cooperation between the Superpowers, and Alliance Politics in the Making of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime

Introduction: Global Order, Cooperation between the Superpowers, and Alliance Politics in the Making of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime

Does Swiss Bank Secrecy Violate International Human Rights?

Prof. Stephen Cohen, whose academic specialty is taxation, also has an interest in international human rights and served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights in the Carter Administration. In this comment, Prof. Cohen asks whether states like Switzerland, which provide bank secrecy for the offshore accounts of wealthy citizens of developing countries, violate internationally recognized human rights. The United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights explicitly recognizes rights to adequate food, clothing, housing, health care, clean water, sanitation, and education. Bank secrecy has a significant human rights impact if it deprives developing countries of tax revenues needed to meet basic rights guaranteed by the Covenant. The annual tax gap for developing countries caused by bank secrecy is estimated to range from over $100 billion to several times that amount. Thus, it seems indisputable that bank secrecy impedes the ability of developing countries to fulfill internationally recognized human rights.

Replacing safe havens with a safe system

Article based on a presentation given at the Sixteenth International Symposium on Economic Crime by Jonathan Winer (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Narcotics & Law Enforcement). The author analyses the background to worldwide financial services collapses. Published as part of a Symposium report in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and its Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London.

Republic of Palau

Republic of Palau Donald R. Shuster (bio) President Johnson Toribiong's third year in office was very busy. One of the most important issues was the finalization of negotiations of the Amended Compact of Free Association with the United States. This was done in early September when Toribiong and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Frankie Reed signed a six-page, ten-part agreement with funding support totaling $229 million for fiscal years 2011-2024. It included an additional estimated $36 million in US federal programs and services, but without a cap on the total amount of federal dollars available. Initially there was hope that the US Congress would pass the agreement before the end of 2010, but Mr Toribiong was not able to testify before Congress until June 2011. While his testimony was respectful and comprehensive, he made a case for special consideration by mentioning Palauans serving and making the ultimate sacrifice in the United States' conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Palau's nearly unanimous support for the United States in United Nations voting, and overtures made to Palau by the People's Republic of China. He said, "We all want greater economic interaction with China, but it should be without compromising the close alliance between Palau and the United States." In his testimony before the US Senate, he strongly urged support from the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and from Congress as a whole. At the time of this review, Congress had not acted on the amended compact agreement. President Toribiong hosted two important regional meetings in 2010: one with the Micronesian presidents in July and one with the Micronesian chief executives in December. A communiqué was issued for the first meeting and a 225-page proceedings document for the second. Three key issues addressed at both meetings were the high rates of non-communicable diseases, the depletion of Micronesia's fisheries resources, and adaptation to climate change in the islands. It is generally acknowledged that the pillars of good governance include a public auditor, a special prosecutor, [End Page 163] a free and independent press, and a competent, independent judiciary. By mid-year, Palau had no public auditor (although it has had an acting auditor for over ten years) and no special prosecutor. Furthermore, the president had fired the special counsel hired to prosecute those responsible for the collapse of the Pacific Savings Bank (the so-called People's Bank) in 2006. In February 2011 the president appointed Assistant Attorney General Lucketta McMahon as the new independent counsel. However, McMahon is new to Palau and very new to the savings bank collapse. President Toribiong is a superb speaker and appeared before the UN General Assembly. Mentioning Palau's peacekeeping efforts in Darfur, Timor Leste, and Solomon Islands, he also reported on his nation's efforts to maintain the viability of Pacific fish stocks by limiting purse seine activity as well as on the work being done by the Pacific Small Island Developing States to persuade the world that climate change is not merely a development issue but also a security issue. Toribiong called on the UN Security Council to include Japan in its ranks and requested that the world body also include Taiwan in select UN activities. In response to the president's appeal to the world's conscience, Germany volunteered to assist in the removal of explosives left over from World War II battles on Palau's southern islands of Peleliu and Angaur. In January 2011, the president delivered special remarks to the World League for Freedom and Democracy in Taipei, Republic of China. In those remarks he stressed how his nation has demonstrated its dedication to the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Finally, Toribiong addressed the graduates of Palau Community College in late May, delivering a very personal message that emphasized goals and passion as necessary for success in any endeavor. It was a grand speech that mixed Palauan proverbs with personal experiences. In April, the president presented his third progress report, known as the State of the Republic Address. It was comprehensive and laudatory of his ministries. The president announced that the compact...

Proliferation Logics and Our Nuclear Future in the 21st Century

[ 114 ] asia policy Proliferation Logics and Our Nuclear Future in the 21st Century Christopher A. Ford Both of these valuable books offer country-specific case studies bracketed by more broadly analytical framing essays, but Etel Solingen’s Nuclear Logics is as much a work about international relations theory as an examination of the cases she presents. Nuclear Logics uses its case studies to test specific theories of state behavior against each other in an attempt to explain instances in which countries in East Asia and the Middle East have eschewed, or indeed abandoned, nuclear weapons programs. Solingen critiques traditional approaches to understanding such decisions, makes a case for models in which domestic political dynamics help explain behavior, and offers her own explanatory framework to help explain not only individual national examples but also the differences in overall regional nuclear weapons “trajectory” between a seemingly rapidly arming Middle East and a still (mostly) weaponsfree East Asia outside of China. The Long Shadow, edited by Muthiah Alagappa, is less broadly theoretical, offering a series of separately authored case studies that provide assessment and analysis of the perspectives that today’s nuclear weapons possessors in Asia (here rather broadly construed to include the United States, on account of the enduring U.S. role and alliance commitments along the Pacific Rim) bring to the issue of nuclear weapons policy. Alagappa’s introductory and concluding essays wrap these individual cases together, providing overall context and a lucid interpretation that highlights the continuing salience of nuclear weapons in the approaches that most of these countries adopt toward national security. Between them, these two books offer the reader valuable perspectives on the proliferation and nuclear weapons dilemmas of the 21st century. Interestingly, neither volume has much of anything to say about Europe, a continent that has seen its share of governments both abandoning nuclear weapons programs and maintaining sophisticated nuclear arsenals for long periods of time. It might be too much to infer that Europe is not a particularly interesting or important region from the perspective of how nuclear policy debates will play out in this new century, but the conclusion is tempting. christopher a. ford is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Technology and Global Security at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He previously served as U.S. Special Representative for Nuclear Nonproliferation and as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation. He can be reached at . [ 115 ] book review roundtable • nuclear logics & the long shadow Neither broader issues of nuclear disarmament nor those of proliferation are likely to be resolved or much advanced in Europe itself. European diplomats and national leaders may or may not play significant roles as the international community struggles with these challenges, but the locus of both the main problems and the possible solutions arguably lies elsewhere—in the wide swathe of territory stretching from North Africa across the Asian land mass to the Korean Peninsula, upon which these books focus their attention. Nuclear Logics Solingen’s book is the more ambitious of the two, insofar as Nuclear Logics suggests a theory of how countries make decisions about whether to engage in nuclear weapons development. On the way there, she offers closely reasoned critiques of other theories of state behavior, specifically traditional “neorealist” structural power perspectives that see state behavior as relatively straightforward responses to strategic stimuli, the sort of “neoliberal” institutionalism that regards international institutions as shaping state perspective and choices, “constructivist” understandings that stress the constraining effect of behavioral norms, and “democratization” theses that view behavior through the prism of regime type. It is hard not to agree with Solingen that, as applied at least to nuclear proliferation decisions, these theories do indeed suffer from significant weaknesses. In Solingen’s analysis, these difficulties are both theoretical and practical, insofar as both different outcomes among seemingly similarly situated countries in her case studies and logical weaknesses internal to some of the theories examined together strongly suggest the need to give more attention to domestic political models of behavior. When multiple pathways could plausibly be defended as the “obvious” response to strategic dilemmas (the problem of neorealist “equifinality”), for instance, or further explanation is...

Does China’s Rise Threaten the United States?

ASIANPERSPECTIVE, Vol. 32, No. 3, 2008, pp. 171-182. Commentary DOES CHINA'S RISE THREATEN THE UNITED STATES? Jinghao Zhou Power Transition? Since the Chinese government launched its reforms, the economy has been taking off with extraordinary speed for almost three decades. If the economy continues to grow at such astro­ nomical levels, China will be in position to surpass the United States in the next few decades. China's rise has an immediate impact on every aspect of Western societies, both in opportuni­ ties and in challenges for other countries. In world history, "There have been two great shifts of power on the world stage during the past five centuries: the rise of Europe following the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the United States after its Civil War."1 Power transitions usually come with international conflicts. Rising powers want to gain more authority in the global system, and declining countries are afraid of loss of their dominant position. Thus, conflict, even a war, between a rising power and a declining power is likely to happen. In this sense, Westerners worry that historical tragedies will repeat between the United States and China. Many Americans think that China's rise is weakening Western societies and fostering fears in the United States and the AsiaPacific region, while China is using Western capital to build up 1. Li Yi, Structure and Evolution of Chinese Social Stratification (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2005). 172 Jinghao Zhou its strength,2 As early as 1997, Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro in their book The Coming Conflict with China argued that war between China and the United States was a distinct possibility. In 2005, Robert D. Kaplan contended that whether or not there will be a Sino-American war is no longer a question. The only ques­ tion, he wrote, is how the United States should fight China.3 John Mearsheimer warned that "The United States and China are like­ ly to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war."4 Fareed Zakaria goes further, saying that "When a new power rises it inevitably disturbs the balance of power."5 Susan L. Shirk, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia, suggests that "China needs to reassure the United States that China's rise is not a threat and will not chal­ lenge America's dominant position."6 China is rising, I maintain, but China's rise does not neces­ sarily threaten the United States. The typical power transition is not inevitable, because "not all power transitions generate war or overturn the old order."7 Whether or not China will threaten the United States will be determined not by China's economic strength but by the essence of China's political system. An eco­ nomically strong China is not a threat, but the collapse of China would inevitably disturb the global peace, especially for devel­ oped countries. In March 2007, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said that Washington should not fear China's growing defense spend­ ing, should not fear that Beijing's overseas investments will 2. Jeffrey A. Bader, John L. Thornton, and Richard C. Bush III, "Confronting the China Challenge," The Baltimore Sun, April 20, 2007, online at www. brookings.edu/opinions/2006/0420china_bader.aspx. 3. Robert D. Kaplan, "How We Would Fight China," Atlantic Monthly, April 28, 2005, online at www.theatlantic.com/doc/200506/kaplan. 4. Quoted in John Ikenberry, "The Rise of China and the Future of the West," Foreign Affairs, vol. 87, No. 1 (January-February, 2008), pp. 23-37, online at www.foreignaffairs.org/20080101faessay87102/g-john-ikenberry / the-rise-of-china-and-the-future-of-the-west.html. 5. Fareed Zakaria, "The Rise of a Fierce Yet Fragile Superpower," Newsweek, December 31, 2007-January 7, 2008, online at www.newsweek.com/id/ 81588. 6. Susan L. Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 9. 7. Ikenberry, "The Rise of China and the Future of the West." Does China's Rise Threaten the United States? 173 destabilize the dollar, and should not even fear the successful anti-satellite missile test that the military undertook in January 2007.8 In order...

Latin American Presidencies Interrupted

Almost 25 years have passed since Latin America began what has turned out to be the fullest and most enduring experience it has ever had with constitutional democracy. While dictatorships were the norm in the 1960s and 1970s—only Colombia, Costa Rica, and Venezuela avoided authoritarian rule during those decades—today an elected government rules in every Latin American country except Cuba and Haiti. As David Scott Palmer notes, between 1930 and 1980, the 37 countries that make up Latin America underwent 277 changes of government, 104 of which (or 37.5 percent) took place via military coup. From 1980 to 1990, by contrast, only 7 of the 37 changes of government in the region took place through military interventions, just two of which can be fairly described as clearly antidemocratic in intent. The overall number of coups was the lowest for any single decade in Latin American history since independence in the early nineteenth century. 1 The coups of the 1980s were confined to just four countries: Bolivia, Haiti, Guatemala, and Paraguay. Since 1990, only Haiti and Peru have seen elected constitutional governments successfully replaced by force. In 1989, Argentines witnessed their country’s first transfer of power from one civilian chief executive to another in more than sixty years. In 2000, Mexico marked its emergence as a multiparty democracy after more than seven decades of one-party rule. Most Latin states have never had so many successive elected governments come to power without authoritarian reversals. 2 Nonetheless, the euphoria that accompanied democracy’s rise has begun to wane. Opinion polls show that Latin Americans still broadly Arturo Valenzuela is professor of government and director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University. During the Clinton administration, he was deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs and later senior director for inter-American affairs at the U.S. National Security Council.

Having an Impact: Think Tanks and the NATO Enlargement Debate

There are moments in the evolution of U.S. foreign policy where think tanks have had a decisive influence in reshaping conventional wisdom and setting a new course on a key strategic issue. The debate over NATO enlargement in the early 1990s was one of those moments. U.S. think tanks played a key role in developing and building support for the U.S. decision to enlarge NATO as part of a broader strategy of overcoming the continent’s Cold War divide and building a Europe whole and free and at peace. It was a dramatic period. The collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself two years later, had also left in its wake a vacuum in terms of Western policy in the region. The democratic revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe had taken the West largely by surprise and, as welcome as they were, they nonetheless overturned many of the underlying assumptions that had previously guided Western thinking and policy. Events on the ground were outpacing the ability of many policy-makers to rethink their paradigms. Western governments and bureaucracies were at times behind the curve of history—and they knew it—victims, in a sense, of our own success. Having succeeded in toppling communism without a shot fired in confrontation between East and West, the West was unprepared politically and intellectually to produce a new vision of what kind of post-Cold War Europe and trans-Atlantic relationship was needed for the future. What was NATO’s purpose in a world without communism and a Soviet threat? These questions produced one of the most passionate and divisive foreign policy debates of the 1990s in the U.S. The issue was not only whether or not to enlarge NATO to include Central and Eastern Europe, a question that was in many ways just the tip of the iceberg. Policy-makers were also battling over nothing less than what kind of Europe and U.S.-European relationship the United States should build for the new era. The result was some of the most far-reaching changes in U.S. and NATO strategy in decades. I was fortunate to have a bird’s-eye view of this debate, first as a RAND analyst, subsequently as a deputy assistant secretary of state in the European Bureau, and later as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Why did think tanks play such a key role in this debate? There were several reasons. First, in the early 1990s there was a keen demand for fresh and outside-thebox thinking on both sides of the Atlantic, and governments were often not well

"What's So Terrible about Rape?" and Other Attitudes at the United Nations

Roberta Cohen is a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution specializing in human rights, humanitarian, refugee, and internal displacement issues, and is co-author of Masses in Flight: The Global Crisis of Internal Displacement (Brookings, 1998). During the Carter Administration, she served as deputy assistant secretary of state for human rights, and in 1998, she was a public member of the United States delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. I anyone cares to remember what attitudes toward women were like a quarter of a century ago, take a consulting job with the United Nations (UN). It is like going back twenty-five years in time. Indeed, I was not prepared for the time warp I would enter when in 1993 a United Nations humanitarian agency asked me to review how policies and programs for refugee women were being carried out in the field. I had been briefed about the harmful “cultural” practices of refugee women (feeding their daughters less and keeping them out of school, for example) but not about the out-of-date attitudes of male members of the agency’s staff, which made implementation of the policies on equitable treatment of women at times impossible. It should be underscored that refugee and internally displaced women are among the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in the world. Having been forced from their homes by armed conflict and serious human rights abuses, and in some cases with nothing but the clothes on their back, they turn to the United Nations for support. How the staff responds to their needs for protection and assistance in large measure determines their well-being and sometimes even their survival. I saw this first hand at the Kenya-Somali border, where scores “What’s So Terrible about Rape?” and Other Attitudes at the United Nations

The Middle East Challenge, 1980-1985

Hermann F. Eilts, former Ambassador to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, takes a broad look ahead: The Middle East in 1985Through a Murky Crystal. Eric Rouleau, Le Monde, Prospects for Instability and New Leadership. Michael Sterner, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, counters with Prospects for Stability and New Leadership. William B. Quandt, Brookings Institution, examines American Policy Toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict, while Stephen S. Rosenfield, Washington Post, offers An Alternative View of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. William G. Hyland, Center for Strategic International Studies, discusses The Soviet Union and the Middle East; his view is modified by Robert Legvold, Council on Foreign Relations, in The Soviet Union and the Middle East: Another View. Lawrence R. Klein, Professor of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, explores Oil Prices and the World Economy and is answered by John H. Lichtblau, Executive Director, Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, Inc., OPEC s Pricing Policy and Its Limits. George T. Abed, International Monetary Fund, scrutinizes Development Prospects in Arab Nations, while Odeh F. Aburdene, First National Bank, Chicago, cites The Hard Realities of Arab Development. International Migration, Manpower, and Economic Growth in the Arab Region is the topic of three from the World Bank: J. S. Birks, C. A. Sinclair, and J. A. Socknat. Charles B. Keely, Population Council, discusses Policy Dilemmas for International Migration in the Middle East. John V. James, Chairman, Dressler Industries, discusses Rebuilding America s Productive Capacity. Raymond Garcia, President, GRC Client Services, considers the Outlook for Congressional Action Affecting Middle East Economics. James Noyes, Hoover Institution, concludes with Military Factors Determining Middle East Security in the Eighties.

Canada and the United States: Their Binding Frontier

Without a counterpart for any other country there is in the United States government a deputy assistant secretary of state for Canadian affairs, a post created in December 1972. This, like the lower-level Office of Canadian Affairs established in 1965, was an institutional recognition of the increasing importance of Canadian-American relations. Were these offices also harbingers of increased state-centric attention to relations between the two countries, which until then had been subject primarily to transnational and transgovernmental management of affairs? Or were they rather recognition that in addition to the uniquely complex web of transborder relationships outside of or at levels below those dealt with by high political authorities, state-centric relations were increasing because of the importance of and increase in unofficial and bureaucratic transactions?

The 1961 Serra Award of the Americas

On December 28, 1961, the Academy of American Franciscan History presented the Serra Award of the Americas to Marcel Bataillon, Administrateur of the Collège de France, at a ceremony in the Academy building witnessed by about thirty-five guests, most of whom were Latin American historians. The occasion was dedicated to honoring one of the legendary figures in Latin American historical scholarship and Dr. Arturo Morales Carrion, formerly of the University of Puerto Rico and now Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, spoke briefly on behalf of historians in the field. Americo Castro, Professor Emeritus of Princeton University, spoke brilliantly of Bataillon, the humanist. In his reply, Professor Bataillon discussed with wit and great understanding a topic of special interest to him: the chroniclers of and the actors in the Pizarro Civil Wars.

The International Status of South West Africa

T | 1HE South African Government's mandate in South West Africa has been a subject of discussion at the United Nations for twelve years, and the International Court of Justice has pronounced three advisory opinions about it. Now Britain, the United States, and Brazil have agreed to form a Good Offices Committee I to try, with South Africa, to find a formula agreeable to all concerned that will accord 'international status' to South West Africa. Behind all the political and legal dispute lies a long history, in which Western standards of international law and justice have been put to the test. The tribes of South West Africa, some 330,000 people, live in a land about the size of France. The Herero, Nama, Berg Damara, and Bushmen who once inhabited the southern part of the country are today either living in eight separate reservations, requiring passes to go from one to another, or are segregated in 'locations' in towns. Their menfolk work on the white man's farms and in his mines. It has been so with them for many years. The African inhabitants of South West Africa have experienced both the harshness of German rule and the severity of the South African administration's segregation policies. Their story illustrates the growth of the concept of accountability to an international authority in a period which has seen two World Wars, the birth and defeat of Nazism in Germany, and the rise of Communism in one of the great underdeveloped countries and its spread through a large part of Eastern Asia and Europe. The fate of all these peoples is, humanly speaking, in the hands of the United Nations. For twelve successive years a member State, South Africa, has refused to submit a Trusteeship Agreement for the administration of this territory under the United Nations, as all other nations have done which held a territorial Mandate under the League of Nations. The issue is not merely a legal one. It is no mere abstract point of law whether South Africa has an obligation under the Mandates Treaty of the League or under the Charter of the United Nations. Whether the League Mandate 1 The Good Offices Committee established by the United Nations at its Twelfth Session (A/RES/i I43 of 25 October I957) consists of the following representatives, appointed by the Governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Brazil: U.K.: Sir Charles Arden-Clarke, formerly Resident Commissioner in Bechuanaland and first Governor General of Ghana; U.S.A.: Mr Walter N. Walmsley, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of International Organization Affairs, State Department; Brazil: Sr Vasco T. Leitao do Cunha, Ambassador to Cuba. 3I8