The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) was one of the first multilateral bodies where its members states, including the US, Russia, all other post-Soviet and European countries, agreed that democracy, rule of law, and human rights were an indivisible part of security. In the mid-1990s the star of the OSCE was on the rise: the organization deployed large multi-disciplinary field missions throughout the former Yugoslavia; it was involved in the protection of rights of ethnic minorities in the Baltics; it was designated to lead conflict-resolution efforts in the post-Soviet space. In addition, the OSCE was conducting election observation and democracy-promotion efforts in the region. With time, however, the consensus of the 1990s has eroded and the effectiveness of the organization is increasingly put into question by some of its member states. What can be learned from the OSCE's experiences? Can multilateral organizations effectively promote democracy in absence of consensus among its member states? The presenter will give a practitioner's perspective on these questions.

About the speaker
Dr. Vladimir Shkolnikov has served as the Head of Democratization Department in the Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (ODIHR/OSCE) since spring 2004. He is responsible for direction and management of ODIHR's democracy-promotion technical assistance programs in areas of rule of law, parliamentary support, political party development, gender equality, and migration policy development in the former Soviet states and in Southeastern Europe. Prior to assuming his post he held positions of migration adviser and election adviser at the ODIHR. He has traveled extensively, including to most of the conflict areas in the post-Soviet space. Prior to joining the ODIHR he was resident research consultant at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, CA. He received his Ph.D. in public policy analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School of Policy Studies.

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

Carol Atkinson (speaker) retired as a lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Air Force in 2005. While in the military she served in a wide variety of management and operational positions in the fields of intelligence, targeting, and combat assessment. During the Cold War she flew on the Strategic Air Command's nuclear airborne command post as a target analyst. During Operation Desert Storm (1991) she worked on the intelligence staff in Riyadh, and, subsequently, on the contingency planning staff in Dhahran/Khobar, Saudi Arabia. While in the military, she taught at the Air Force Academy and the Air Force's Command and Staff College.

Atkinson holds a PhD in international relations from Duke University, an MA in geography from Indiana University, and a BS from the United States Air Force Academy (5th class with women). She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California. Atkinson's primary research focuses on U.S. military-to-military contacts as channels of international norm diffusion. She is also working on a project examining the influence of educational exchange programs on democratization and a project on the social construction of the biological warfare threat in the United States.

Jessica Weeks (respondent) is a doctoral candidate in the Stanford Department of Political Science. Her research interests include foreign policy decision-making in non-democratic regimes, the settlement of military crises, and the effects of foreign military interventions on target states. She will be a pre-doctoral fellow at CISAC during 2007-2008. Jessica received her BA in political science from The Ohio State University, and an MA in international history and politics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.