The second nuclear nonproliferation conference sponsored by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Russian Academy of Sciences was held in Moscow, March 18-20, 2009. CISAC's Siegfried S. Hecker and David Holloway, with Nikolay P. Laverov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, co-chaired the conference, which was held to discuss cooperation regarding nuclear nonproliferation, arms control and disarmament. According to the organizers, the nonproliferation regime is under great strain and could take another step backward when START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) expires in December 2009. Despite longstanding grievances on both sides, organizers said the conference environment reflected "cautious optimism" and that the two former superpowers may have reached a turning point in bilateral relations.
In recent years, the United States and its European Union partners have often diverged in their policy outlooks towards the wider European periphery—the diverse region stretching from the Balkans and Turkey, to the Westernmost former-Soviet republics and Russia. Whether a temporary hiatus or a more profound strategic divergence, this state of affairs reflects a departure from the mission of extending peace, freedom and prosperity to the European continent that the two sides have pursued in the post-Cold War period.
Event Synopsis:
Dr. Tassinari's talk draws upon his recent book, "Why Europe Fears its Neighbors" (Praeger Security International, 2009), which attempts to survey and quantify the many challenges facing Europe with respect to its borders. Tassinari describes Europe's position toward neighbor countries as being influenced by the threat of immigration. He describes a "security-integration nexus" in progress since 1945, involving a gradual economic opening of Europe's borders to promote stability. While the EU today maintains to some degree its enlargement policy toward Turkey and the Western Balkans, other border-region states are classified under a "European neighborhood policy" with no prospects for EU membership. Recent policy discourse has decoupled security concerns from integration. The neighborhood approach, undermines EU policy by keeping neighbor states at too great a distance.
Next Tassinari offers Turkey and Russia as case studies. The debate within Turkey is leaning away from EU membership as the primary path toward modernization. Recent dialogue focuses less on meeting technical standards for EU membership and more on reckoning with issues of religion, identity and history within Turkey. With regards to Russia, in the past decade the country has become more assertive abroad and moved away from cooperation with the EU, preferring not to be grouped with countries like Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia in the EU's approach to foreign policy.
In addressing the transatlantic relationship, Dr. Tassinari reflects that the US and EU have long disagreed about EU membership for Turkey, the direction of state building in the Balkans, and integration of some of Europe's neighbor states into NATO.
Finally, responding to the question of whether this divergence comes from a conflict over the "European power constellation" or rather is simply the result of issue-specific philosophical differences, Dr. Tassinari offers three arguments:
A Q&A session following the talk raised such issues as: Will the EU’s problems with “deepening” its relationships with neighbors hurt its prospects for “widening” through enlargement? What are the reasons for the mixed signals to Turkey from the EU? Do arguments about the EU’s denial of Turkey’s membership being based on racism hold any merit? If the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, what cross-border policy areas will remain the prerogative of nation-states and which might fall under EU Commission jurisdiction?
CISAC Conference Room
Twenty years ago, in November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern history’s most miraculous occurrences, communism imploded – not with a bang, but with a whimper. In circumstances eerily reminiscent of our own day, the establishments in Eastern Europe had borrowed large huge amounts of money (in hard currency), which they had no way to pay back (except by taking more hard currency loans). As the loan crisis deepened, they did . . . nothing.
Stephen Kotkin teaches history and international affairs at
Princeton University. He is the author of "Armageddon Averted: the Soviet
Collapse, 1970-2000" (new edition 2008).
Jan T. Gross also teaches history
at Princeton. He is the author of the acclaimed "Neighbors" (2001) and, most
recently, "Fear" (2006).
Jointly sponsored by the Forum on Contemporary Europe, Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and the Center for European Studies.
Oksenberg Conference Room
Jakob Tolstrup is a CDDRL visiting scholar from August-December 2009 and will be doing research on his dissertation External Actors and Democratization: Russia and the EU Competing for Influence in Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus. He expects to obtain his PhD from Aarhus University, Denmark, in 2011.
Prior to coming to CDDRL, he worked as an interpreter (Russian-Danish) and interned in the office of Anne E. Jensen, Danish Member of the European Parliament (on EU-Russia and EU-Belarus relations).
Tolstrup received a B.A. in Russian language and a B.A. in Social Science, both from Aarhus University.
Encina Ground Floor Conference Room
CDDRL
616 Serra St.
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Jakob Tolstrup was a CDDRL visiting scholar from August-December 2009, doing research on his dissertation External Actors and Democratization: Russia and the EU Competing for Influence in Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus. He expects to obtain his PhD from Aarhus University, Denmark, in 2011.
Prior to coming to CDDRL, he worked as an interpreter (Russian-Danish) and interned in the office of Anne E. Jensen, Danish Member of the European Parliament (on EU-Russia and EU-Belarus relations).
Tolstrup received a B.A. in Russian language and a B.A. in Social Science, both from Aarhus University.
Jeremy M. Weinstein, an associate professor of political science, has been appointed Director for Democracy at the National Security Council (NSC). He will be responsible for democracy and governance-related issues and formulate broader U.S. government policies on global development.
"Jeremy brings a brilliant mind, inexhaustible energy, political savvy, and superb social science skills to his new position at the National Security Council," said Larry Diamond, director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). "In addition, his recent service on the Committee on the Evaluation of USAID Democracy Assistance Programs and his field research and experiments on governance in Africa should help him bring a creative approach to U.S. policies to advance democracy and improve governance around the world."
Weinstein's new position follows four other Stanford FSI appointments to the Obama administration. Political Science Professor Michael McFaul and Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a former senior research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), also work at the NSC as special assistants to the President. McFaul heads Russian and Eurasian affairs and Sherwood-Randall is responsible for European affairs. Law Professor Mariano-Florentino Cuellar serves on the White House Domestic Policy Council in charge of directing criminal justice and immigration policy, and Paul Stockton, a former CISAC senior research scholar, is an assistant secretary of defense responsible for homeland defense and Americas' security affairs.
Weinstein, who is on leave from Stanford, is a faculty member at CDDRL and CISAC. His academic research focuses on civil wars, ethnic politics, the political economy of development, democracy and Africa.
Political Science Professor Scott D. Sagan, CISAC co-director, said although Weinstein is one of the nation's leading scholars on African politics his interests and expertise are much broader. "Jeremy has written compelling studies of the causes of civil war and the roots of conflict resolution and democratic reform," he said. "He will bring important insights from social science and history to help Washington policy-makers address complex policy problems throughout the developing world."
FSI Director Coit D. "Chip" Blacker, the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies, who served under former President Bill Clinton, said the Obama administration is fortunate to have someone of Weinstein's caliber. "Jeremy's intellectual drive, his field experience with conflict-ridden countries, and his passion for democracy and better governance will help strengthen U.S. relations with states in transition and improve prospects for political and economic advance."
In 2008, during Obama's campaign, Weinstein served as an advisor on development and democracy. He continued working during the transition as a member of the National Security Policy Working Group and the Foreign Assistance Agency Review Team.
Weinstein, 34, is the author of Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence, which received the 2008 William Riker Prize for the best book on political economy. His most recent book is Coethnicity: Diversity and the Dilemmas of Collective Action, published in 2009. He has also published articles in a variety of journals including Foreign Affairs, the American Political Science Review (APSR), the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy and the Journal of Democracy. Two articles in APSR, titled, "Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War" and "Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision," received, respectively, the 2005 Sage Prize and 2007 Gregory Luebbert Award, and the 2008 Heinz Eulau Award and the 2008 Michael Wallerstein Award. In 2008, Weinstein also received the Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching at Stanford.
Weinstein earned a bachelor's with high honors from Swarthmore College in 1997, and a master's and doctorate in political economy and government from Harvard University in 2001 and 2003, respectively. He is a native of Palo Alto, California.
Jeff Richardson is an affiliate and former visiting scholar at CISAC. He came to CISAC after a 35-year career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. At LLNL he held a variety of program management positions, including Division Leaders of Chemistry and later of Proliferation Prevention. He spent two tours in Washington DC, supporting NNSA in Nonproliferation R&D and DoD in the USAF Directorate of Nuclear Operations, Plans and Requirements. He recently completed 4-year assignment working for CRDF as the U.S. Science Advisor for the ISTC program, administered by the Office of Cooperative Threat Reduction, State Department. At CISAC he is focused on science diplomacy, using science as a tool for international engagement and promoting regional security.
Jeff earned his BS degree in chemistry from CalTech and his PhD in organic chemistry from Stanford University. His work at LLNL included chemical and materials science research, energy research, materials development for nuclear weapons programs, radiation detection for border security, nuclear materials protection, and proliferation detection, science cooperation for international security, and support for the Chemical Weapons Convention. He has authored over 100 papers. More recent papers include LLNL and WSSX, a contribution to Doomed to Cooperate: How American and Russian scientists joined forces to avert some of the greatest post-Cold War nuclear dangers, and Shifting from a Nuclear Triad to a Nuclear Dyad, which explored an alternate future strategy for the US nuclear arsenal.
CDDRL
616 Serra St.
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055
Jakob Tolstrup was a CDDRL visiting scholar from August-December 2009, doing research on his dissertation External Actors and Democratization: Russia and the EU Competing for Influence in Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus. He expects to obtain his PhD from Aarhus University, Denmark, in 2011.
Prior to coming to CDDRL, he worked as an interpreter (Russian-Danish) and interned in the office of Anne E. Jensen, Danish Member of the European Parliament (on EU-Russia and EU-Belarus relations).
Tolstrup received a B.A. in Russian language and a B.A. in Social Science, both from Aarhus University.
Rising leaders from some of the world’s most complex and challenging nations, including China, Russia, Ukraine, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have just completed a three-week seminar at Stanford as Draper Hills Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development. This year’s extraordinary class of fellows included members of parliament, government advisors, civic activists, leading jurists, journalists, international development experts and founders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Each year, several hundred applicants apply to FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), the convener of the program, for the 26-28 slots available to study and help foster linkages among democracy, economic development, human rights, and the rule of law. Now in its fifth year, the program has received generous gifts from William Draper III, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, in honor of his father, Maj. Gen. William H. Draper, Jr., a chief advisor to Gen. George Marshall and chief diplomatic administrator of the Marshall Plan in Germany, and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills, a former journalist, in honor of her husband, Reuben Hills, a leading San Francisco philanthropist and president and chairman of the board of Hills Bros. Coffee.
Draper Hills Summer Fellows are innovative, courageous, and committed leaders, who strive to improve governance, enhance civic participation, and invigorate development under very challenging circumstances," said CDDRL Director Larry Diamond. “This year’s fellows were absolutely extraordinary, learning from us we hope, but also teaching all of us about the progress they are making and the obstacles they confront in a diverse set of countries. We were not only sobered by the difficulties they must address on a daily basis but also uplifted by their accounts of programs that are working to deepen democracy, improve government accountability, strengthen the rule of law, energize civil society, and enhance the institutional environment for broadly shared economic growth.”
The three-week seminar is taught by an all star faculty, which in addition to Diamond, includes CDDRL Deputy Director Kathryn Stoner, Stanford president emeritus and constitutional law expert Gerhard Casper, FSI Deputy Director and political science professor Stephen D. Krasner, Erik Jensen and Allen S. Weiner from the Stanford law school, Avner Greif from the Department of Economics, Peter Henry from the Graduate School of Business, FSI Senior Fellow Helen Stacy, former FSI Director and current Program on Food Security and the Environment deputy director Walter P. Falcon, Mark C. Thurber, acting director of FSI’s Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, and Nicholas Hope, director of the Stanford Center on International Development.
Other leading experts and practitioners who engaged the fellows included democracy and governance expert Francis Fukuyama, who joins CDDRL as Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow in July 2010, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, United States Court of Appeals Judge Pamela Rymer, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict founding chair Peter Ackerman, the center’s president, Jack DuVall, former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo, and former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Condoleezza Rice.
Faculty devoted the first week of the seminar to defining the fundamentals of democracy, good governance, economic development, and the rule of law, and in the second week turned to the issue of transitions and the feedback mechanisms between democracy, development, and a predictable rule of law. The third week examined the critical – and often controversial – role of international assistance to foster and support democracy, judicial reform, and economic development, including the proper role of foreign aid.
Against this backdrop, fellows emphasized domestic imperatives for fostering growth, social inclusion, and transformation, centering on the importance of political will and sound institutions. In session after session, they wrestled with the concrete and all too common impediments to progress—from corruption, cronyism, and authoritarian regimes, to the fragility of conflict-ridden, multi-ethnic polities. As an activist from strife-torn Iraq said, “Democracy is not just a way of governing. It is a way of living, a way of thinking about life.”“Democracy is not just a way of governing. It is a way of living, a way of thinking about life”
In spirited debates, in the formal seminar sessions and beyond the classroom to the Munger residence where the fellows stayed, the fellows stressed how they had all taught and learned from each other. A rising leader from South Africa aptly summarized, “We have dispelled each other’s myths.”
As the Draper Hills Fellows expressed their profound gratitude to their faculty and mentors, they reinforced the importance of staying in touch through a virtual online community – a “common space” as defined by a member of parliament from Ukraine, that would let them look forward and look back, perhaps a decade from now, at case studies of success and failure, and the all important roles that political will and leadership played in determining outcomes. “Stay tuned,” said Diamond and Stoner-Weiss. “Important lessons are still to come.”
Fariz Ismailzade, Azerbaijan, is director of the Advanced Foreign Service Program at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy (ADA) within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Prior to joining ADA, Fariz worked for 10 years in the NGO sector of Azerbaijan, most recently as director of political programs at the International Republican Institute. Fariz has also conducted research at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. His research mainly focuses on the geopolitics of the Caucasus region and CIS affairs. Fariz is a regular correspondent for Eurasianet.org, Transitions on Line, Jamestown Daily Monitor and Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst and has written on the politics and economics of Azerbaijan and the Caucasus region for Institute for War and Peace Report, East-West Institute, Analysis of Current Events, Freedom House, CaucasUS Context, Azerbaijan International and Collage. Fariz has also presented at international conferences, including the Middle Eastern Studies Association, NATO Advanced Research Workshop in Kiev, Ukraine, and the Association for Studies of Nationalities in New York. Since 2006, he has been a recipient of the International Policy Fellowship Research Award. Fariz earned his BA in political science from Western University in Baku and holds a Masters in social and economic development from Washington University in St. Louis.
Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan, is Azerbaijan’s first Consul General to Los Angeles, California with personal rank of Envoy Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. Prior to that he served as Senior Counselor at the Foreign Relations Department, Office of the President in Baku, Azerbaijan and as Press Officer of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Washington, DC. Before joining diplomatic service, Mr. Suleymanov worked with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Azerbaijan and with the Open Media Research Institute in Prague, Czech Republic. A graduate of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Massachusetts, Mr. Suleymanov also holds graduate degrees from the Political Geography department of the Moscow State University, Russia, and from the University of Toledo, Ohio. Mr. Suleymanov speaks Azerbaijani, English, Russian and Czech languages.
CO-SPONSORED BY CREEES
CISAC Conference Room