Film screening and panel discussion

About the speakers:

Coit D. Blacker (Opening Remarks)

Coit D. Blacker is the director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, an FSI Stanford senior fellow, and a professor of political science, by courtesy.

Professor Blacker is the author or editor of seven books and monographs, including Hostage to Revolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Security Policy, 1985-1991 (1993). During the first Clinton administration, Professor Blacker served as a special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and senior director for Russian, Ukranian, and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council.

Blacker is a graduate of Occidental College (AB, Political Science) and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (MA, MALD, PhD).

Larry Diamond (Moderator)

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; a Stanford professor of political science, and sociology by courtsey; and coordinator of the Democracy Program at the Center for Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). A specialist on democratic development and regime change and U.S. foreign policy affecting democracy abroad, he is the founding co-editor of the Journal on Democracy.

During 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He has written extensively on the factors that facilitate and obstruct democracy in developing countries and on problems of democracy, development, and corruption, particularly in Africa. He is the author of Squandered Victory:The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq; Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation; and Promoting Democracy in the 1990s.

He received a BA, MA, and PhD from Stanford University, all in Sociology.

Charles Ferguson (Film Director and Producer)

Charles Ferguson is founder and president of Representational Pictures, LLC, and director and producer of No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq, which is his first film. Ferguson was originally trained as a political scientist. He holds a BA in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, and obtained a PhD in political science from MIT in 1989. Following his PhD, Ferguson conducted postdoctoral research at MIT while also consulting for the White House, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Department of Defense, and several U.S. and European high technology firms. From 1992-1994 Ferguson was an independent consultant, providing strategic consulting to the top managements of U.S. high technology firms including Apple, Xerox, Motorola, and Texas Instruments.

A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Ferguson is the author of three books on information technology. He is also co-founder of Vermeer Technologies, the developers of FrontPage.

Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Gibson (Panelist)

Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Gibson is a national security affairs fellow for 2006-2007 at the Hoover Institution. He comes to Hoover from the 82nd Airborne Division, U.S. Army, where he commanded the 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne, an assignment that included two tours to Iraq in support of all three national elections there to date. Earlier in his career, Gibson fought in the Persian Gulf War, served in the NATO peace enforcement operation to Kosovo, taught American Politics at West Point, and served two liaison tours with the U.S. Congress. He holds several graduate degrees from Cornell University (MPA, MA, and PhD in government) and was the Distinguished Honor Graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Among his personal awards and decorations are three Bronze Star Medals, a Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman's Badge with Star, and the Ranger Tab. He was recently selected for promotion to Colonel. His research at Hoover focuses on civil-military relations.

David M. Kennedy (Panelist)

Professor David M. Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University. Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American Studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Professor Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history. Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980) used the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system, economy, and culture in the early twentieth century. Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War (1999) recounts the history of the United States in the two great crises of the Great Depression and World War II. In 2000, the book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Francis Parkman Prize, the Ambassador's Prize, and the California Gold Medal for Literature.

About the film:

From the Sundance Film Festival - 2007 Documentary Competition:

"On May 1, 2003, President Bush declared an end to combat in Iraq. More than three years later, 3,000 American soldiers and an estimated 790,000 civilians are dead, and Iraq still burns. What happened? The first film to examine comprehensively how the Bush administration constructed the Iraq war and subsequent occupation, No End In Sight: The American Occupation of Iraq exposes a chain of critical errors, denial, and incompetence that has galvanized a violent quagmire.

Drawing on jaw-droppingly frank interviews with an impressive array of high-level government officials, military personnel, and journalists, many on the ground in 'postwar' Iraq, Charles Ferguson zeroes in on the months immediately before and after toppling Saddam. Despite intelligence strongly warning that transforming Iraq into a democracy would be long and brutal without careful planning, massive troops, and international support, Bush launched the invasion after only 60 days of preparation. Baghdad's infrastructure fell along with the city, leaving large-scale looting, lawlessness, and violent chaos in its wake. Installing neither police forces nor self-governing institutions at this crucial juncture, Rumsfeld's inexperienced team disbanded Iraq's military and intelligence, marginalizing 500,000 armed men--only one of a relentless stream of ill-advised moves that ignited resentment, fomented desperation, and fueled a still-raging Iraqi insurgency.

Ferguson's surgical analysis of the way the U.S. government sparked disaster in Iraq is riveting, information packed, and airtight. In his capable hands, the situation has never been so transparently clear, which makes it even more shocking and tragic."--Caroline Libresco

The 2007 Sundance Film Festival Documentary Jury presented a Special Jury Prize to No End In Sight "in recognition of the film as timely work that clearly illuminates the misguided policy decisions that have led to the catastrophic quagmire of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq."

For more information about the film, please visit:

www.noendinsightmovie.com

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.

About the Event:

President George W. Bush has called the decade before September 11 the "years of sabbatical." The popular misconception that America was too distracted to focus on foreign policy obscures the significant debates both inside and outside government to define a new purpose for the world's lone superpower. The end of the Cold War had a profound impact on the Democratic and Republican parties, and a reexamination of the efforts across the political spectrum to articulate a new grand strategy after containment is instructive for understanding how American elites think about issues like democracy promotion, the role of international institutions, and the use of force.

About the Speaker

James Goldgeier is a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. In 2005-06, he held the Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress. He taught previously at Cornell University, and he has been a visiting scholar at Brookings and Stanford. In 1995-96, he was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow serving at the State Department and National Security Council Staff. His most recent book, Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War, co-authored with Michael McFaul, received the 2004 Georgetown University Lepgold book prize in international relations. He is also the author of Not Whether but When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO (Brookings, 1999) and Leadership Style and Soviet Foreign Policy (Johns Hopkins, 1994), which received the Edgar Furniss book award in national and international security. He graduated magna cum laude in government from Harvard University and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from U.C. Berkeley. He is currently co-authoring a book for Public Affairs on American foreign policy from 1989 to 2001.

Over five years since 9/11, the United States is still struggling to define the nature of the terrorist challenge it faces let alone fully comprehend it. As a consequence, the United States and its partners in the "global war on terror" still lack a comprehensive strategy for responding to the challenge. Drawing on a growing area of social science research relating to "social contagion" phenomena, the challenge posed by "Islamist militancy" will be assessed using the principles and practices of epidemiology. A new more promising strategy emerges as a consequence.

Paul B. Stares is vice president of the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and director of its Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention. He currently focuses on northeast Asian security issues, U.S. post-conflict stability operations, and counterterrorism policy. He has authored or edited nine books in addition to numerous book chapters, articles, and op-eds in leading U.S. and European newspapers. In 2006, Stares led the Iraq Study Groups Strategic Environment Expert Working Group.

Prior to joining USIP in 2002, Stares was associate director and senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. From 1996 to 2000 he worked in Japan, first as a senior research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs and then as director of studies at the Japan Center for International Exchange. At various times, Stares has been a senior fellow and research associate in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution as well as a NATO fellow, a scholar-in-residence at the MacArthur Foundation Moscow Office, a Rockefeller International Relations Fellow, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

He has also held academic posts at the University of Sussex and the University of Lancaster in Great Britain, where he received his PhD.