Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency conference report, numbered RTT 95-10039 and dated October 1995, presents the proceedings of a conference held 30 September to 1 October 1993. The CIA's Geographic Resources Division sponsored the conference. In it, academic geographers, anthropologists and US Government officials examined ethnic conflict by region, covering Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. The report also discusses what these conflicts mean for US policy. It does not deal with UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena.
“Nevers”25 pages
Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268 repugnant to a pluralistic society such as the United States. Ultimately, instability is not caused by demo- cratically expressed claims by individuals and national communities but by the denial of these claims. The above solutions should be categorically rejected. Other policy prescriptions offer more traditional solu- tions. In the name of stability, the Realpolitik school calls for working within the existing state system. The so-called Sonnenfeld Doctrine of the mid-1970s, in effect, accepted the status quo in Europe; that is, spheres of American and Soviet influence. The propo- nents of this school emphasize Principles 3 and 4 of the Helsinki Final Act, respectively the inviolability of frontiers and respect for territorial integrity. What they fail to recall is that the Helsinki Final Act is a care- fully balanced document based on centuries of sad European history. Using time-honored Jesuitical logic, the Helsinki drafters declared that “all principles are equal.” The first Helsinki principle, for example, notes that “frontiers can be changed by peaceful means and agreement. Thus the United States recognized the peaceful unification of Gennany in 1990 and the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Wilsonian model, on the other hand, stresses the promotion of ethnic rights through national self-deter- mination. It has certain academic allure. However, as much as European statesmen paid lipservice to this ideal at Versailles, it was more honored in the breech than the observance in the interwar period. Moreover, carried to its discouragingly logical conclusion, this model, like Russian nesting dolls, might well lead to a state structure composed of increasingly small (and untenable) states—Yugoslavia divided into five or six states; Bosnia divided into three states; or the Soviet Union divided into 15 states, Russia (or Georgia) divided into x states, ad infinitum. From Marx to Milosovic For many the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the ultimate triumph of Western liberal democracy. Marxist-Leninism had been thoroughly discredited as a method of-organizing society. Moreover, for the first time in over 400 years, no major power sought hegemony in Eastern Europe. With visions of a new Marshall Plan, the nations of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union understandable, if naively, believed that the West would willingly open its doors——and coffers—to their former adversaries. Despite rhetorical sympathy, this has not been the case. Perhaps it was inevitable, but new (and age-old) problems—ethnic strife, ultranationalism, and mas- sive migration—quickly replaced Soviet Commu- nism as the primary threats to Europe. When the walls came down in the East, economic and other barriers were erected in the West. European governments, beset by recession, worried more about halting the westward flow of goods and people than about inte- grating the economies of the East into the European Community. Adrift between EEt_?aEd West, the countries of the former Warsaw Pact perceive themselves in a politi- cal, economic, and security vacuum. And dema- gogues, often seeking ethnic scapegoats, plow fertile fields of public discontent. Without a sense of being part of a larger community—govemed by accepted rules of behavior—neo-Communist and ethnic nation- alist may once again set the rules. The Nation-State and Ethnic Rights What type of state structure can best protect the ethnic groups of Europe? The European nation-state has been both the traditional protector and persecutor of indigenous ethnic groups. Historically, both Germany and Russia have assumed a special responsibility for their ethnic counterparts wherever they might live. (Even today, Germany grants automatic citizenship to all ethnic Germans.) These same nation-states, how- ever, have a melancholy history regarding the treat- ment of'other minority ethnic and religious groups. By the same token, the decline of the nation-state, partic- ularly in the East, can also lead to increased ethnic tensions, as we have witnessed in the former Yugosla- via. If the traditional nation-state system has often 180 ' _ Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 205 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.