This research project launched in 2009 traces the evolution of militant organizations and the interactions that develop among them over time. Findings have been presented in interactive maps on a separate website.
Twenty years ago, a few months before the Berlin Wall fell, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama predicted "not just the end of the Cold War … but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
He was wrong, of course, as were all the "end of" prophets of the past. Liberal democracy is hardly what inspires current forces like Iranian Khomeinism, global jihadism, the caudillismo of Latin America, or the neo-tsarism of Russia. But what about Europe?
The collapse of the 3.7-meter-tall monster in Berlin on Nov. 9, 1989, did bring about—or, more accurately, complete—a momentous transformation of the Old Continent. For the past 2,000 years, Europe had been the source of the best and the worst in human history. It invented practically everything that matters: from Greek philosophy to Roman law, from the Renaissance to the fax machine, from Brunelleschi to Bauhaus. But this was also where the world's deadliest wars erupted, killing tens of millions. It was in Europe that the most murderous ideologies were invented: communism, fascism, and Nazism, complete with the Gulag, the Gestapo, and Auschwitz.
That history truly ended with the Berlin Wall. Gone are the million soldiers who once manned a line running from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and so are thousands of nuclear weapons. The French and Germans no longer fight over Alsace-Lorraine, and it's impossible to imagine another partition of Poland, or mass murder in the name of the Lord, or a flood of refugees like the tens of millions who crisscrossed Europe in the 20th century. Yes, we recently saw ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, but that was a cottage industry compared with what Hitler and Stalin wrought, and it was quickly bankrupted by the U.S. Air Force.
Post-wall Europe, meanwhile, has come to mean peace, social democracy, and the EU Commission, which has made Karl Marx's prediction come true at last: after the final class struggle, "power over men" would yield to the "administration of things." So it has: regulation has replaced revolution, and the welfare state has trumped the warfare state. Marx got only the timing wrong; it would take 140 years from the Communist Manifesto to the fall of the wall.
But the wait was worth it. The wall fell without bloodshed; the Soviet Union was the first empire that died in bed, so to speak, with barely a shot being fired. The Velvet Revolutions that made Europe whole again truly ended European history as we knew it. Traditional revolutions beget counterrevolutions and new rounds of repression and revolt. That cycle was broken in 1989, a miraculous first that bodes so well for the future. Yes, conflict continues in Europe, but not the kind that sets fire to history. Today the clashes are over taxes and spending, zoning and shop-closing hours, the sway of Brussels and the reserve rights of national capitals, abortion and same-sex marriage. Politics hasn't been abolished, but the really touchy items have been safely outsourced to the courts—far from the streets and even from parliaments.
The fall of the wall did not create this brave new world; it sped it up and ratified it. But as a revolution without victims (except for the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was shot, and a few other leaders who served short prison terms), Nov. 9, 1989, deserves a towering monument in every European capital—a marker of something completely new under the European sun. Unlike in 1789, the promise of peace and liberty was truly delivered. Unlike in 1919, when the continent erupted in revolutions that spawned totalitarian counterrevolutions, 1989 brought an end to the worst part of European history. That's not bad when you consider the origins: a flustered East German functionary looking into the TV cameras and announcing, well, yes, as far as he knew, East Berliners could freely cross into the West—right now.
Elsewhere in the world, history continues in its bloody fashion. But if you want to know how to end it nice and smoothly, check out what Europe managed 20 years ago.
Achilles Zaluar is Minister-Counselor of Political Affairs at the Brazilian Embassy to the United States in Washington, D.C. From 2008-09 Zaluar served as Minister-Counselor of Multilateral and International Security Affairs at the Brazilian Embassy to the United States. Zaluar has previously held positions as Deputy Head of the Division for United Nations Affairs (DNU), 2003-06, and assistant at the Theory of International Relations Chair of the Rio Branco Institute, 2002-03. From 1997-98 Zaluar served as a member of the team that drafted the position papers and presidential message for Brazil’s accession to the NPT. Zaluar has held posts at the Brazilian Embassy to the U.S, Washington, 2006-present; Brazilian Mission to the United Nations, New York, 1995-98; and the Brazilian Embassy to Paraguay, Asuncion, 1998-2001. In 1993 Zaluar served as secretary of the interagency group that drafted Brazil’s export control law. From 1991 to 1994, he worked on non-proliferation and export control, including Brazil’s relations with the MTCR and NSG control regimes, and US-Brazil issues. Zaluar received a Bachelor in Mathematics at Rio Catholic University in 1985, graduated in Diplomacy from the Rio Branco Institute, Brazil’s diplomatic academy, in 1991, and received a Master in Public Administration (MPA/MC) at the Harvard Kennedy School, in 2002.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
This series will examine scholarly and institutional efforts to create new national narratives that walk the fine line between before and after, memory and truth, compensation and reconciliation, justice and peace.
The lecture is preceded by a workshop at 10am in the same location. For additional information please access the DLCL site listing here.
Margaret Jacks Hall (Building 460)
Terrace Room (Room 429)
Anticipating Opportunities: Using Intelligence to Shape the Future
"We spend $45 billion annually to reduce uncertainty, to help us combat threats to our nation, our people, and our security," said Payne Distinguished Lecturer Thomas Fingar in his third Payne lecture on October 21, devoted to anticipating the future -- "not for purposes of prediction but for purposes of shaping it." Noting that strategic intelligence treats the future neither as "inevitable or immutable," Fingar employed real-life examples from his career in national intelligence (most recently as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and chairman of the National Intelligence Council) to explore concrete ways intelligence can be used to move developments in a more favorable direction.
Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World examined the trends which will "drive, shape and constrain" individuals, governments, and nations around the world. Among prominent trends, he cited globalization, which will provide unprecedented prosperity but greater inequality; the rise of the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China; the rise of new powers such as Indonesia, Turkey, and Iran; and the coming demographic boom, which will add 1.2 billion people to the world, with less than 3 percent of that occurring in the West.
The Geopolitical Implications of Climate Change. Instructed by the Congress to provide an assessment of the impact of global climate change, given controversy about the imminence of the threat and man's role in it, the NIC studied which regions and countries would be most dramatically affected by climate change, with a focus on water, food production, and changes in weather patterns. The results remain classified, because of the potential impact on vulnerable countries.
The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. This estimate, attacked from both the right and the left, concluded with a moderate to high degree of confidence that Iran had not obtained sufficient fissile material from external sources (to make a bomb) and that its fastest route to produce a nuclear weapon would be through domestic production of enriched uranium. The NIE also judged that Iran had halted the weaponization portions of its nuclear program in 2003, but had retained the option to pursue a weapon and whether to do so was a "political decision" which could be made at any time.
CISAC is pleased to announce fellows and visitors in residence at the Center during the 2009-10 academic year.
Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has been awarded $500,000 by the National Science Foundation to identify patterns in the evolution of terrorist organizations and to analyze their comparative development.
The three-year grant is part of the Department of Defense's Minerva Initiative launched in 2008, which focuses on "supporting research related to basic social and behavioral science of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy."
Crenshaw's interdisciplinary project, "Mapping Terrorist Organizations," will analyze terrorist groups and trace their relationships over time. It will be the first worldwide, comprehensive study of its kind-extending back to the Russian revolutionary movement up to Al Qaeda today.
"We want to understand how groups affiliate with Al Qaeda and analyze their relationships," Crenshaw said. "Evolutionary mapping can enhance our understanding of how terrorist groups develop and interact with each other and with the government, how strategies of violence and non-violence are related, why groups persist or disappear, and how opportunities and constraints in the environment change organizational behavior over time."
According to Crenshaw, it is critical to understand the organization and evolution of terrorism in multiple contexts. "To craft effective counter-terrorism strategies, governments need to know not only what type of adversary they are confronting but its stage of organizational development and relationship to other groups," Crenshaw wrote in the project summary. "The timing of a government policy initiative may be as important as its substance."
"Mapping Terrorist Organizations" will incorporate research in economics, sociology, business, biology, political science and history. It will include existing research to build a new database using original language sources rather than secondary analyses. The goal is to produce an online database and series of interactive maps that will generate new observations and research questions, Crenshaw said.
The results, for example, could reveal the structure of violent and non-violent opposition groups within the same movements or conflicts, and identify patterns that explain how these groups evolve over time. Such findings could be used to analyze the development of Al Qaeda and its Islamist or jihadist affiliates, including the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, she said.
The findings may also shed light on what happens when a group splits due to leadership quarrels or when a government is overturned, Crenshaw said. "Analysis that links levels of terrorist violence to changes in organizational structures and explains the complex relationships among actors in protracted conflicts will break new ground," the summary noted.
Extensive information on terrorist groups already exists, but it has been difficult to compile and analyze. Despite such obstacles, Crenshaw said, violent organizations can be understood in the same terms as other political or economic groups. "Terrorist groups are not anomalous or unique," she wrote. "In fact, they can be compared to transnational activist networks."
Crenshaw should know. Widely respected as a pioneer in terrorism studies, the political scientist was one of a handful of scholars who followed the subject decades before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She joined CISAC in 2007, following a long career at Wesleyan University, where she was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought. In addition to her research at Stanford, Crenshaw is a lead investigator at START, the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.
End goal
Crenshaw wants to use the findings to better analyze how threats to U.S. security evolve over time. "Terrorist attacks on the United States and its allies abroad often appear to come without warning, but they are the result of a long process of organizational development," she wrote. "Terrorist organizations do not operate in isolation from a wider social environment. Without understanding processes of development and interaction, governments may miss signals along the way and be vulnerable to surprise attack. They may also respond ineffectively because they cannot anticipate the consequences of their actions." The project seeks to find patterns in the evolution of terrorism and to explain their causes and consequences. This, in turn, should contribute to developing more effective counter-terrorism policy, Crenshaw said.
Conflicts to be mapped
The United Nations Association Film Festival was originally conceived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 12th UNAFF will be held from October 17-25, 2009 in Palo Alto, Stanford University, East Palo Alto and San Francisco. This year, the theme is Energy and the World, reflecting the myriad of problems we encounter saving energy around the world and to seek awareness and solutions — through film — to better our lives and save our planet.
This year's festival also features a powerful film on the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Launched in 2002, the ICC is the first international tribunal of its kind, a permanent criminal court created to prosecute individuals, no matter how powerful, for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The Reckoning follows the dynamic and charismatic Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, Deputy Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and Senior Trial Attorney Christine Chung as they issue arrest warrants for the Lord’s Resistance Army leaders in Uganda, put four Congolese warlords on trial at The Hague, challenge the UN Security Council to support the Court’s call for an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan on charges of genocide, and shake up the Colombian justice system. As the Prosecutor tells us, he has to take this tiny court, created by dreamers, and turn it into reality. He has a mandate to prosecute perpetrators around the world for the worst crimes imaginable, whether they are warlords or military brass or heads of state, even as they continue to wreak havoc. But he has no police force—he needs to pressure the international community to follow through, to muster political will. Will it succeed? How will the world make sure that the Prosecutor can fulfill his mandate?
Bechtel Conference Center
In a new Stanford endeavor, FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law has joined with the Bowen H. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society to launch an interdisciplinary Program on Human Rights. Introducing CDDRL's latest program, Director Larry Diamond noted that "today's human rights interact with a number of other urgent global issues including climate change, immigration, security, women's rights, poverty, and child soldiers" to name but a few. The campus-wide Human Rights Program builds on the work of CDDRL's Program on Global Justice by bridging the normative and the empirical.
The October launch featured an interdisciplinary panel on human rights, "Bridging Theory and Practice", combining the work and insights of Senior Law Lecturer, FSI Senior Fellow and Human Rights Program Coordinator Helen Stacy, who also served as moderator, Political Science Professor Terry L. Karl, Stanford Law School Professor Jenny Martinez, Anthropology Professor Jim Ferguson, and Civil and Environmental Professor Ray Levitt.
Observing that each of the panelists works adeptly across several disciplinary fields, Program Coordinator Helen Stacy noted that "they dynamically cycle between high theory and everyday action in a constant arbitrage between principle and practice."
Invoking the French philosopher Michel Foucault, Jim Ferguson observed that "the world is a dangerous place" and we need to be careful, watchful, vigilant, and realistic. Just as "If you want peace, work for justice," he said, "If you want human rights, work to overcome economic inequalities."
A second session featured Philosophy Professor Debra Satz, Director of the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, who introduced the new Undergraduate Human Rights Summer Fellowships, which will allow four undergraduates to immerse themselves in a summer-long internship with a leading human rights organization.
A final keynote address by pediatrician Paul H. Wise, the Richard Behrman Professor in Child Health and a core faculty member of the FSI's Stanford Health Policy center, addressed the aspirational, "Between the Concrete and the Clouds: Living Your Human Rights Principles."
Wise's professional life has been devoted to the real human rights of real children by improving child health-care practices and policies in developing countries. Active in child health projects in India, South Africa, and Latin America, Wise spends each summer in an indigenous village in Guatemala, where he teaches and provides needed care at the village clinic.