Dominique Struye de Swielande became ambassador of Belgium to the United States on December 29, 2006. Ambassador Struye previously served as Belgium's permanent representative to NATO (2002-06), ambassador to Germany (1997-2002), head of cabinet for the state secretary for international cooperation (1995-96), and director-general for administration at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1994-95). In addition, Ambassador Struye was diplomatic counselor and deputy head of cabinet for the prime minister (1992-94), head of cabinet for the minister of foreign affairs (1991-92), director of the European Section at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1990), deputy permanent representative and consul general to the United Nations in Geneva (1987-90), as well as counselor in the cabinet of the foreign affairs minister (1984-87). He has also served postings in Zaire, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Austria.

Ambassador Struye, who joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1974, holds a doctorate in law from the Catholic University of Leuven, a master's of law from the University College London, and a master's of European Law from the University of Ghent.

Event Synopsis:

Ambassador Struye describes the difficulty in defining common security interests between Europe, where ideas of security tend to revolve around individual welfare provided by the state, and the United States, where international terrorism is viewed as the predominant security threat especially after 9/11.

Ambassador Struye then describes three major multilateral institutions and their role in global security: the UN, NATO, and EU. He outlines how the UN has expanded in recent years, both in terms of membership and of issue areas. Belgium has been actively involved in security discussions within the UN, and has shared the disappointment of the US about the limited capacity of the UN to contribute to peace and security in the world. He then addresses NATO's recent evolution in the direction of "out of area" policy, influenced by American pressure for NATO to become a security provider outside of Europe, including as an "instrument of democratization." Finally, Ambassador Struye describes the development of political mechanisms of the European Union which are now moving toward building common foreign and security policy, which the ambassador sees as important even without a European military force.

The ambassador details several challenges, including the difficulty  of evaluating common threats, determining how global a regional organization should be in its policy and how each organization should relate to the others, and a lack of a coherent global vision for how the world should evolve. Two policy areas where Ambassador Struye sees consensus are Afghanistan and missile defense. He concludes that although security policy is hard to define across regions, multilateral organizations are essential and the transatlantic alliance remains indispensable.

A discussion session following the talk included such issues as whether Turkey should be a member of the EU given its UN and NATO membership, how the ambassador views prospects for relations between North Africa and the multilateral institutions he describes, whether sufficient development funding should be available before military interventions in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and whether the EU might come to serve as a world power in its own right.

Lorenz M. Lüthi is an Assistant Professor of the History of International Relations at the History Department at McGill University. Professor Lüthi's teaching interests include the History of International Relations, Cold War, Communist World, Soviet Union, and Communist China. In August of 2006, Professor Lüthi finished a manuscript on the Sino-Soviet Split which is based on Chinese sources and archival research in the former East Bloc and will be published with Princeton University Press in 2007. His current book project addresses the rise of the post-Cold War world in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s.

This seminar is a special International History event cosponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Department of History.

Douglas C. North, John Joseph Wallis, and Barry Weingast will present their new book A Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History.

Neither economics nor political science can explain the process of modern social development. The fact that developed societies always have developed economies and developed polities suggests that the connection between economics and politics must be a fundamental part of the development process. This book develops an integrated theory of economics and politics. We show how, beginning 10,000 years ago, limited access social orders developed that were able to control violence, provide order, and allow greater production through specialization and exchange. Limited access orders provide order by using the political system to limit economic entry to create rents, and then using the rents to stabilize the political system and limit violence. We call this type of political economy arrangement a natural state. It appears to be the natural way that human societies are organized, even in most of the contemporary world. In contrast, a handful of developed societies have developed open access social orders. In these societies, open access and entry into economic and political organizations sustains economic and political competition. Social order is sustained by competition rather than rent-creation. The key to understanding modern social development is understanding the transition from limited to open access social orders, which only a handful of countries have managed since WWII.

About the speakers:

Douglas C. North received the Nobel Prize in economics in 1993 "for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change". Douglas C. North was installed as the Spencer T. Olin Professor in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in Saint Louis in October 1996 and is the Hoover Institution's Bartlett Burnap Senior Fellow. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was elected a fellow of the British Academy in July 1996. He is the author of more than fifty articles and ten books. His current research activities include research on property rights, transaction costs, economic organization in history, a theory of the state, the free rider problem, ideology, growth of government, economic and social change, and a theory of institutional change.

North received his B.A. in 1942 and his Ph.D. in 1952 from the University of California at Berkeley.

John J. Wallis is a Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland, where he has taught since 1983. His field of specialization is economic history, and his major areas of interest are state and local government finances, the New Deal, the 1830s, and explaining institutional change. His current research focuses on understanding early American government and the critical decade of the 1830s. Wallis has authored dozens of academic journal articles and book chapters.

Wallis received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Washington in 1981.

Barry R. Weingast is the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University; where he served as department chair from 1996 to 2001. He is also a professor of economics, by courtesy, at the university and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Weingast is an expert in political economy and public policy, the political foundation of markets and economic reform, U.S. politics, and regulation. His current research focuses on the political determinants of public policymaking and the political foundations of markets and democracy. Weingast is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He co-authored Analytic Narratives (1998, Princeton) and has numerous academic publications.

Weingast received his Ph.D. in economics from the California Institute of Technology in 1978.