Gail Lapidus of Stanford University assesses the factors leading to Moscow's decision in December 1994 to use military force to crush Chechnya's resistance to the authority of the Russian leadership. Exhaustively researched and documented, Lapidus's study traces the evolution of the secessionist struggle through six stages. At the heart of the conflict, she says, was the Chechens' growing desire for sovereignty and territorial integrity sparked by Mikhail Gorbachev's political liberalization initiatives and further fueled by the establishment of a number of new states after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Lapidus also considers the role of Western governments and international institutions first in preventing the outbreak of hostilities and then in mitigating and, finally, terminating the conflict. She concludes that when the behavior of a major power is at issue, the potential for outside intervention is limited, which in turn raises a host of troubling questions about the prospects for future internal conflict resolution.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

If high-performance computing (HPC) export control policy is to be effective, three basic premises must hold:

This study applies and extends the methodology established in Building on the Basics [1]. Its objective has been to study trends in HPC technologies and their application to problems of national security importance to answer two principal questions:

· Do the basic premises continue to be satisfied as the 20th century draws to a close?

· In what range of performance levels might an export-licensing threshold be set so that the basic premises are satisfied?

The study concludes that export controls on HPC hardware are still viable, although much weaker than in the past. In particular, while applications of national security interest abound, it is increasingly difficult to identify applications that strongly satisfy all three basic premises, i.e. are of extreme national security importance and would likely be effectively pursued by countries of national security concern and would be severely retarded without levels of computing performance that could be effectively controlled.

From the preface:

"Events in recent years have caused heightened concern about the security of weapons-usable nuclear material. The possibility of illicit trafficking in, or seizure of, such material, leading to nuclear terrorism, is a worry for all states and their citizens. And given the relatively small quantities required, material obtained in one part of the world could be made into a weapon in another and threaten lives in a third. It is truly a global problem.

Since the beginning of the nuclear era, the physical protection of fissile material has been a responsibility of the individual states possessing the material. These states have different organizational approaches for providing physical protection; and while cognizant of recommended general standards, they tend to follow their own practices, shaped by custom, costs, and threat perception. Moreover, the existence of military as well as civil programs in some states adds another dimension
to the physical protection issue.

Because physical protection is a sovereign matter and not part of an international regime (except for transit of civil material across borders), there has been less attention in much of the world community to the issues of physical protection than to the other elements of nuclear safeguards and controls. (An important exception to this situation is the effort being made to assist the states of the former Soviet Union in the disposition of their weapons-usable nuclear materials.) The lack of a general dialog about a problem of growing concern motivated us to hold a three-day workshop at Stanford University to develop a better understanding of some of the important underlying questions and issues, and to undertake a comparative examination of states' approaches to physical protection. We were pleased to have knowledgeable participants from a number of the countries and regions where physical protection of fissile materials is, or will become, a day-to-day matter.

The results of the workshop are reported in these Proceedings. It is our hope that this work will stimulate further analysis and discussion, and lead to greater interest in international standards, cooperation, and supporting programs.

James E. Goodby
1996-1997 Payne Distinguished Lecturer
Stanford University

Ronald F. Lehman II
Director of the Center for Global Security Research
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

William C. Potter
Director, Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Monterey Institute of International Studies"

China’s attitude toward the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korea alliances, particularly the former, has drawn a lot of attention in the post–Cold War era. How China views the utility and function of these two security alliances and reacts to them could well shape the dynamics of the alliances. From a historical perspective, however, this is not a new issue. China has lived with these alliances for almost half a century. To better understand China’s current concerns about the alliances and to predict its future posture, we might look for clues in what China has done in the past. This paper attempts to provide a broad survey of Chinese perceptions of the two security alliances in the Cold War period to elucidate Beijing’s post–Cold War policy orientation. By tracing the evolution of the Chinese calculus of the U.S.-Japan and U.S.- Korea alliances, it hopes to find answers to the following questions. What are some of the important variables or conditions that defined China’s attitudes and approaches to dealing with these two alliances? How do these variables or conditions interact with each other? Have they been constant or changing over time? Are they still relevant in the post–Cold War era, and to what extent?

The paper draws its findings mainly from the Chinese official media. While this may not be an ideal source, it nevertheless provides a systematic data basis for a historical analysis of continuity and change. There is no question that the official Chinese media, particularly before the 1980s, was full of rhetoric and propaganda. There has always been a gap between rhetoric and behavior in Chinese foreign policy, as in other countries. Nevertheless it is equally true that behind rhetoric always lie perceptions, self-serving or not, that provide “diagnostic propensities” and “choice propensities” of the Chinese leaders and elites, and thus have policy implications.

The findings of the paper suggest that China’s perceptions of the targets, internal structures, and functions of the U.S.-Japan and U.S.-Korean alliances have changed remark- ably over time, from extreme hostility to high tolerance. These changes resulted from the interactions of such factors as China’s assessment of the world balance of power, the well- being of its relationship with both indigenous and outside powers, and the priority of its national policy. The evolution of Chinese perceptions also illustrates that China need not view the two security alliances as inherently hostile to its interests. Under some circum- stances they can be considered useful or at least harmless. Beijing’s attitudes are often determined not by the two alliances per se but rather by its perception of the sources of threat to its security and whether these security alliances can alleviate or aggravate the threat. On the other hand, given the nature of China’s foreign policy, Beijing does not have intrinsic love for these alliances. Since the 1980s, China has not particularly endorsed any bilateral or multilateral military alliance in the region. Normatively China is also uneasy with the reality of the American military presence in the region and tends to see it as a short-term arrange- ment rather than a long-term phenomenon. During the Cold War, the Chinese perceived the two security alliances as either against China or with China. In the post–Cold War period, they have yet to be convinced that the function of the two alliances could be neither.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

By almost any criterion of success—be it cost-effectiveness, risk-reward ratio, multiplier
effects, or sheer longevity, the Japan America Security Alliance (JASA) stands out as one of
the most successful alliances in twentieth century history. For the United States, chief
architect of a global network of military relationships, JASA is arguably the most important
of its many bilateral alliances. In terms of historic impact, JASA is comparable to the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a multilateral alliance that restructured the European
security landscape in 1949. For nearly a half-century, JASA and NATO have functioned
as the bedrock on which the Cold War security systems of Asia and Europe have been
constructed.

Published as part of the "America's Alliances with Japan and Korea in a Changing Northeast Asia" Research Project.

The global trend that Samuel P. Huntington has dubbed the "third wave" of democratization has seen more than 60 countries experience democratic transitions since 1974. While these countries have succeeded in bringing down authoritarian regimes and replacing them with freely elected governments, few of them can as yet be considered stable democracies. Most remain engaged in the struggle to consolidate their new and fragile democratic institutions.

Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges that they face. In addition to the complete hardcover edition, Consolidating the Third Wave Democracies is available in two paperback volumes, each introduced by the editors and organized for convenient course use. The first paperback volume, Themes and Perspectives, addresses issues of institutional design, civil-military relations, civil society, and economic development. It brings together some of the world's foremost scholars of democratization, including Robert A. Dahl, Samuel P. Huntington, Juan J. Linz, Guillermo O'Donnell, Adam Przeworski, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Alfred Stepan.

The second paperback volume, Regional Challenges, focuses on developments in Southern Europe, Latin America, Russia, and East Asia, particularly Taiwan and China. It contains essays by leading regional experts, including Yun-han Chu, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, Thomas B. Gold, Michael McFaul, Andrew J. Nathan, and Hung-mao Tien.

Georgia--The Search for State Security

David Darchiashvili's working paper traces the attempts of the modern Georgian state to deal with issues of national security since independence. Darchiashvili outlines the nature of contemporary national security dilemmas for post-Soviet Georgia. The paper examines Georgia's present security threats, as well as its current relationships with Russia and the other countries of the region. The paper also presents an in-depth discussion of the situation of civil-military relations in Georgia and the impact of these relations on state security. The author analyzes the roots of Georgia's problems in developing a coherent and practical security policy. He proposes that the ad hoc character of current security policy has resulted in passivity in dealing with threats such as ethnic conflicts, including the war in Abkhazia. In his conclusion Darchiashvili makes a recommendation for the elaboration of a consistent national security concept for Georgia. The author proposes that this security concept will need to include a framework for relations between society and the military. According to Darchiashvili, in order to attain this goal Georgia needs to maintain internal stability and to secure support from international institutions.

European Security and Conflict Resolution in the Transcaucasus

Nerses Mkrttchian's working paper examines the issue of security in the Transcaucasus since the fragmentation of Europe's international landscape, and the emergence of a new cooperative European security system that followed the disappearance of the continent's political line of separation. Mkrttchian proceeds to analyze the security issues in the Transcaucasus region within broader European, Eurasian, and post-Soviet contexts. The paper examines the current security structure of Europe, its relationship to Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and how these new security structures can affect the regional conflicts in the Transcaucasus. Mkrttchian analyzes the prospects for establishing regional cooperation on security issues in the Transcaucasus, and the role of international organizations in this process. The author points to the need for the development of "cross-dimensional" cooperation as a way to resolve conflicts in the region.

There is a growing logjam of arms control treaties waiting for approval in both the Russian State Duma and the U.S. Senate. Without decisive action, this logjam will probably prevent approval by the world's two largest military powers of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) of 1993, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty of 1996 (CTBT), amendments to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and the protocols of the Treaty of Pelindaba (creating an African nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ)) and the Treaty of Rarotonga (creating a South Pacific NWFZ) before the end of the century. It will also prevent progress towards START III and further bilateral nuclear reductions.

Whether China can achieve its economic and political goals depends very much upon whether PRC's domestic stability can be maintained and large-scale devastating military conflict, either internally with Taiwan or externally with major foreign powers, can be avoided. This article will speculate on China's security role in the region and in the world ten to fifteen years hence, and assess China's likely intentions, capabilities, and strategies in domestic and foreign affairs, in light of the changes in China's geopolitical environment.