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December 2003
Vol. X, No. 1
INSTITUTE EVENTS SPAN THE WORLD
North Korea
West Africa
Kosovo
Israel
North Korea's Nuclear Gamesmanship
Uncertainties surround North Korea's capacities and intentions, posing unique challenges for policymakers.
The North Korean government continues to make provocative announcements about its nuclear program. What security and diplomatic challenges does North Korea's public declaration that it intends to develop the bomb pose for the United States? In mid-October the Institute sponsored a Capitol Hill briefing to examine these challenges, the potential for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction from North Korea, and possible policy responses to Pyongyang's recent provocations. The briefing was attended by congressional staff and members of the Institute's Korea Working Group.
Much of the continuing instability on the Korean Peninsula arises from the unresolved state of war on the peninsula, said Bill Drennan, the deputy director of research and studies at the Institute. Drennan said that the 50-year-old armistice agreement that suspended—but did not end—the Korean War left the peninsula divided into armed camps. With North Korea developing nuclear weapons, he said, now is the time to work toward a comprehensive peace agreement that addresses the fundamental security needs of both Koreas.
Also giving presentations at the briefing were Charles Pritchard, until recently the State Department's special envoy for negotiations with North Korea and U.S. representative to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, and currently a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Leonard Spector, deputy director of the Monterey Institute of International Studies' Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Paul Stares, the Institute's director of research and studies, served as moderator.
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Preventing State Collapse
The world needs to do more for West Africa's failed states, says UN's representative to the region.
Mutually reinforcing crises are keeping a number of West African countries tottering on the verge of state collapse, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, special representative of the United Nations secretary general to West Africa, recently told a crowded gathering at the Institute.
Ould-Abdallah spoke at a briefing on "Prospects for Peace in West Africa" held at the Institute in late September. David Smock, director of the Institute's Religion and Peacemaking Initiative, introduced the speaker.
Ould-Abdallah noted the paradoxes inherent in West African instability. Most West African states were seemingly well-prepared for the independence they achieved in the early 1960s, he said, with moderately sized populations and well-educated elites. The French states, in particular, were knit together through a common currency and open borders. Yet, in a pattern that would prove common throughout the continent, political freedom yielded all too quickly to turbulent and violence-ridden change. Togo, for example, suffered the continent's first coup d'etat in 1963.
Causes of the region's instability vary by country, said Ould-Abdallah, but several trends are at work. First, he said, has been the irresponsibility of the governing class. Many of the region's presidents, he said, "are running away from their responsibilities," more interested in holding onto power than in ensuring the well-being of their citizenry. Sadly, this is often as true of elected leaders as it is of those who have achieved power through the barrel of a gun. Corruption, too, has been a massive problem. Urbanization—and with it, an exploding population of unemployed youth—is presenting a vast and growing challenge to civil order. Guns from Eastern Europe are flooding into the region, reflecting a heightened local demand for small arms as well as the failure of the international community to staunch the supply.
Despite these challenges, there are glimmers of hope. The British brought order to Sierra Leone with a relatively small military force. The French, similarly, have brought about what may be a durable truce in the Ivory Coast—though the country remains divided, with factions jockeying for position in the run-up to an election planned for 2005. The United Nations has dispatched blue helmets to Liberia and, with U.S. and Nigerian pressure, forced the Liberian dictator Charles Taylor to abdicate.
The fate of Charles Taylor, whom many blame for the recent rash of warfare in the region, received considerable attention during the lively question and answer session that followed Ould-Abdallah's presentation. Though he has been forced into exile in Nigeria, Taylor is continuing to foment unrest in Liberia. Many in West Africa would prefer to see Taylor dispatched to the International Court in Sierra Leone, where he has been indicted as a war criminal. His continuing meddling in Liberia's affairs may yet force Nigeria to hand him over.
But, as Ould-Abdallah cautioned, Liberia's problems go deeper than one man, however detestable. The country remains perilously divided between the so-called "BaKongo," the descendants of the American ex-slaves who colonized Liberia in the 19th century, and the indigenous population. The capital, Monrovia, is in a state of disrepair after a decade of misrule and war. If Liberians are to become invested in the peace process, said Ould-Abdallah, they need to see tangible improvements in their well-being: schools, roads, and hospitals all need urgent attention. Until water and electricity are restored in Monrovia, the return to normalcy will be more of a dream than a promise.
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Training for Democracy
Learning how to negotiate is key to the successful resolution of the Kosovo conflict.
As Kosovo prepares for self-government under the terms of the Rambouillet Accords, a number of complex challenges remain to be worked out, threatening to delay that country's transition to its final status. The Institute has conducted two projects to help prepare the Kosovo Provisional Institutions of Self-Government (PISG) for the negotiations leading up to a final settlement for Kosovo.
In September, George Ward, director of the Professional Training Program, and Daniel Serwer, director of peace and stability operations, provided two intensive negotiation skills workshops, the first for PISG ministers and top-level advisers, including the prime minister, and the second for PISG senior officials. The training was sponsored by the Kosovo mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "We focused on negotiating skills and then on applying them to the relationship between Kosovo and Serbia," said Serwer. "We were able to impress upon the participants the difference between positions and interests and the need to focus negotiations on interests," he said. "No one left the symposium without recognizing that the Albanians have a good deal to gain from talking to Belgrade, and a good deal to lose if they do not prepare carefully."
An Institute grant enabled Paul Williams, law professor at American University, to develop simulations of the negotiations that might occur. "Role-playing is a surprisingly effective pedagogical tool," said Williams. "People do get into their roles and the simulations do a great job of smoking out the differences and sticking points likely to arise during the actual negotiations." Williams held three rounds of simulations in Washington, D.C., in 2001-2002, and then held another round in September 2003 in Kosovo. Among the key issues that emerged: protecting Serbian minority rights; the attraction of redrawing borders—and the potential trouble this may cause; and the difficulty the international community has had in developing a unified approach.
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Dividing Lines
Israel's separation barrier is provoking shart opinions.
The Institute hosted two Israelis with sharply contrasting views on the separation barrier Israel is building to prevent suicide bombing attacks at events held in mid-October. Yehezkel Lein, chief researcher at B'Tselem (Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), spoke of the hardships the barrier will impose on Palestinians, and claimed that it will throw thousands more of them into poverty. In a separate presentation, Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and a political adviser to the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, argued that since peace negotiations had proved fruitless, it was time to build a wall around the country's perimeter to prevent further terrorist attacks. [See the full text of Shoval's presentation.]
The government of Israel is erecting the barrier to prevent the uncontrolled entry of Palestinians from the West Bank into Israel. Current plans call for the barrier to be built around the entire West Bank; much of it, according to B'Tselem, will in fact run through the West Bank, turning many Palestinian villages into isolated enclaves. It will reduce access to hospitals and schools, and separate thousands from their place of work. All told, at least 210,000 Palestinians are likely to be directly affected by the barrier, said Lein.
Shoval, who spoke to a small group of reporters invited to the Institute, focused on the broader picture: The road map to peace, once pushed by President Bush, was not dead, said Shoval, but it was almost certainly comatose. The timetables it proposed were in any case unrealistic, he said, and there had always been a "disequilibrium" between Israel's proposal to recognize the Palestinian state and the Palestinians' refusal to abandon the principle of their "right to return," which would, said Shoval, result in the destruction of the state of Israel. Shoval was pessimistic about future progress on peace negotiations, saying that after the failures of Oslo and Camp David, the prospects for peace probably await a generational change in Palestinian leadership.
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