The military campaign unleashed in Chechnya in September 1999 was portrayed by the Russian leadership as a limited and carefully targeted counter-terrorist operation aimed at eliminating the threat to Russia posed by "international terrorism." In a 14 November article in the New York Times, then Prime Minister Putin sought to deflect American criticism of Russian actions and to win acquiescence, if not sympathy, by likening Russias effort in Chechnya to U.S. anti-terrorist actions. The Russian military, he insisted, had chosen "accurately targeted strikes on specifically identified terrorist bases" to avoid direct attacks on Chechen communities.
But the radical discrepancy between the initial rationale and the actual conduct of the campaign makes it clear that what we are seeing is in fact a deliberate resumption of the 1994-96 war by the Russian Government--and a unilateral abrogation of the agreements that terminated it--now pursued with even greater determination and brutality, with even less regard for civilian casualties, and with a more sophisticated military and public relations strategy.
Not only is there a massive chasm between the professed aims of the campaign and its actual conduct; there appears to be a major disconnect between the real problems of the region and the Russian Government's response. Indeed, the attempt at military subjugation and occupation of Chechnya by Russian forces is likely to exacerbate rather than solve the deeper problems of the Northern Caucasus.
This analysis focuses on three broad issues: (a) the challenge facing Moscow in Chechnya more broadly, and in particular why the opportunity for a political solution of the conflict afforded by the Khasaviurt and other peace agreements was squandered; (b) the assumptions that appear to underlie the actions of the Russian Government and why some of these assumptions appear to be questionable; and (c) the prospects for a political resolution of the conflict and for establishing longer-term peace and stability in the region.
Reprinted in Central Asia and the Caucasus, no. 4, August 2000.
Chapter in Chechnya: The International Community and Strategies for Peace and Stability, edited by Lena Jonson and Murad Esenov.
In 1975Ð76 the fall of Saigon was followed by national reunification and the establishment of the Socialist Republic. Access to the Mekong Delta was widely expected to facilitate rapid neo-Stalinist industrialization and the appearance of a powerful military threat to capitalist SEA. But this did not happen. By 1981 partial reforms had permitted all state enterprises to operate in markets and some degree of agricultural decollectivisation. In the second half of the 1980s there was a clear de-Stalinization of everyday life. And by 1989Ð90 a recognizable market economy had emerged. Since then the Vietnamese Communist Party has, with some success, negotiated a major opening-up of the country to foreign contacts. Vietnam has joined ASEAN, and has seen the emergence of land, labor, and capital markets, and the confused processes by which classes form. Fundamental economic and political change has therefore occurred. Growth has been rather fast and the use of state violence minimal. Politically, for the still-Leninist VCP, the shift from Plan to Market has been a great success. What is the political economy basis for this? Despite emergent capitalist classes and a market economy, the political economy of "post-transition" Vietnam is heavily marked by its recent history, and remains very different from other ASEAN members. Notwithstanding revolutionary change, dualities common to both the traditional and modern political economies have offered great potential for political restructuring. In this sense "development doctrines" are perhaps less exotic and more indigenous than elsewhere in SEA. This facilitates relatively harmonious political adaptation and is the key to understanding change. For example, wide rural land access, with a collective tinge in the most densely populated areas, has a strong and pervasive effect upon the macro political economy. "Voice and exit" are enhanced. Thus we see rather high levels of migration, and risk bearing be farmers. Rural GDP has grown fast through the 1990s. Also, real wages in urban areas tend to be higher and the labor regime less brittle. What are the political implications of such a land regime? At the end of the day, one reason for the lack of extensive state violence against the population seems to be that the party/state has sufficient sources of support and power for tense economic issues in the rural areas to be fought out without property rights needing violence to enforce them. These issues are fought out locally (within cooperatives and communes) and in macro contexts (access to world markets). But in the rural areas the state does not, apparently, need to support particular economic interests for its survival. One reason for this is that the "land issue" has been addressed through the adaptation of socialist models, so that large-scale land property is not (yet?) a major issue. Dominant groups in the rural areas do not depend upon land access for their incomes. Adam Fforde is a development economist. He holds an Oxford MA (Engineering Science and Economics), a London MSc (Economics) and a Cambridge PhD (Economics). He studied Vietnamese in Hanoi during 1978/79 and was a visiting scholar at the National Economics University (Hanoi) in 1985Ð86. He lived in Vietnam from 1987 to 1992 while working as an advisor to the Swedish aid program, and in Australia from 1992 to 1999, where he was a visiting fellow at the ANU and Chairman of Aduki Pty Ltd (Consultants). He is now senior fellow at the SEA Studies Programme, National University of Singapore. He has published on topics including the economic development of north Vietnam prior to 1975, agricultural cooperatives, and the transition from plan to market. He is currently working on class formation and the emergence of factor markets in the 1990s, industrial reform since the early 1960s, and Vietnamese development doctrine.
Okimoto Conference Room, Encina Hall, East Wing, Third Floor
On January 1 Sweden assumed the rotating chairmanship of the European Union. While serving as the Swedish EU Commissioner from 1995 to 1999, Gradin was in charge of immigration, home affairs and justice. She will discuss Sweden's priorities for the EU, and the results of the December EU summit in Nice, France, with its associated Treaty of Nice. Gradin has a distinguished career: she was Vice-Chair of the national Federation of Social Democratic Women in Sweden, Chair of the Council of Europe's Committee on Migration, Refugees and Demography, and Minister with responsibility for immigrant and equality affairs at the Ministry of Labor (1982-86). From 1968 to 1992 she was a member of Parliament and a member of the parliamentary Standing Committees on Education and on Finance, as well as a delegate to the Council of Europe. From 1986 to 1991 Gradin was Minister with responsibility for foreign trade at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and from 1992-94 she was Sweden's ambassador to Austria and Slovenia and to IAEA and UN in Vienna.
Oksenberg Conference Room
As part of a response to growing government concern over the threat of cyber attacks directed against critical national infrastructures, the National Security Agency (NSA) contracted with Stanford University in 1998 to undertake a multi-track program to provide a forum, develop information, and to analyze options for addressing this threat.
The book is intended for a wide audience and has been written in a style which is readily accessible to people from many different disciplines.
Cappelen Akademisk Forlag (a leading Norwegian Publisher) are pleased to announce the publication of a new and highly challenging book on the rise of New Public Financial Management (NPFM) reforms. Edited by Olov Olson, James Guthrie and Christopher Humphrey, the book is the outcome of a unique two year collaborative project involving 24 senior accounting academics from eleven different countries, including Australia, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and United States of America. The book is intended for a wide audience and has been written in a style which is readily accessible to people from many different disciplines. As John Meyer, Professor of Sociology at Stanford University, observes in his foreword to the book: "This book is about the rise and international impact of a social movement trying to reform public management around the world along rational and rationalistic lines. The roots of the movement are in professional accounting, especially in the private sector, and has gained considerable force in the last two decades, and has had widespread effects on the ways public organizations are perceived, on policies governing them, and sometimes on organizational practices.
The Russia that emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 is a new country, conducting a new foreign policy. This book surveys Russia's relations with the world since 1992 and assesses the future prospect for the foreign policy of Europe's largest country. Leon Aron examines the changing domestic basis of Russian policy toward other countries. Sherman Garnett traces Russian relations with the former republics of the Soviet Union that are now independent states to Russia's west, in particular Ukraine and the three Baltic countries: Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Rajan Menon analyzes the rather different set of policies the new Russia has pursued toward its new neighbors to the south, in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Finally, Coit Blacker discusses the evolving Russian approach to the West.
Together these essays offer an authoritative summary and assessment of Russia's relations with its neighbors and with the rest of the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
On March 4 and 5, 1996, the Stanford Center for International Security and Arms Control, in conjunction with the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, convened a research planning conference on "Police Reform in States under Transition." The conference was unusual in that its primary purpose was to foster an ongoing discussion between academics working in the area of democratization and police reform, and policymakers running police reform programs in countries such as Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, South Africa, and EI Salvador. Our primary goal for the conference was to construct a research agenda that would allow continued dialogue between scholars and policymakers, and would focus on questions of theory and practice immediately applicable to policymakers in the field.
Participants in the conference included Robert Perito, Special Advisor to the Director of the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), U.S. Department of Justice; Frederick Mecke, Director, Office of International Criminal Justice, U.S. Department of State; Arnstein Overkil, Police Major General of Asker and Baerum Police Headquarters in Norway, and advisor to the Palestinian Authority on policing; Diana Gordon, Chair of the Department of Political Science at City College of New York; Louise Shelley, professor in the Department of Justice, Law and Society at American University; William Stanley from the Department of Political Science at the University of New Mexico; Jeffrey Ian Ross, a fellow at the National Institute of Justice; and faculty and staff from Stanford University and the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict.
Western analysts have become increasingly alarmed with Russia's assertive foreign policy -- in both the economic and the political/strategic spheres -- toward the new states of the former Soviet Union. Many have cited Russia's military interventions in Georgia, Tajikistan, and Moldova as signals of Russia's new imperialist designs. Russian policy toward the Baltic states has also spurred alarm. While Russian troops pulled out of the Baltic states as planned, the Russian Foreign Ministry has nonetheless threatened economic sanctions against Estonia and Latvia if citizenship rights for Russians are not further delineated in these states. Beyond the territory of the former Soviet Union, Russian assertiveness regarding sanctions against Serbia, NATO expansion, and arms trade with developing countries has compelled several analysts to speak of a renewal of Russian expansionist tendencies and hence a return of Cold War tension between West and East.
Chapter in Democratic Reform and the Position of Women in Transitional Economies, edited by Valentine Moghadam.
Exploring the effects of the post-1989 developments in Eastern and Central Europe on the social and economic position of the women of the region, Valentine Moghadam explains how the economic crisis and subsequent development, social breakdown, and changing institutions and practices of the state have an impact upon women's roles and status. The volume combines a theoretical analysis of fundamental gender specific issues and empirical studies on aspects such as educational attainment, social security provisions, political representation, and level and type of employment. Several papers use comparative analysis, drawing on previous research into women's position during development in the Third World, and under socialism in the years prior to 1989. Countries covered in empirical case studies are Russia, Estonia, Poland, the Czech and Slovak republics, the former East Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The authors draw the conclusion that women are among the principal losers in the restructuring process, both through the rise in conservative cultures, and through the economic imperatives of competing in a market-based system.