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.
“The Advance”17 pages
Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268 Summary of Discussion General Discussion QUESTION: In your studies of conflict resolution, can you give us some examples of effective outside intervention into situations of aggressive ethnic nationalism. The only good example I can think of is the tremendous commitment that was necessary to stop Nazi Germany, an aggressive ethnic nationalistic state. These kinds of examples are important as we think about getting into the situation in Bosnia. DR. HINKLE: My field is microstates, and I can tell you it worked pretty well in Grenada. But I take your point. That is why I think that the emphasis really should be on prevention, not intervention. That way, you can act more effectively at lower cost and not be in the position where you are dealing with interven- tion. Imagine if Saddam I-Iusayn had actually succeeded. Twenty years from now, he would have effective con- trol of 45 percent of the world's oil reserves and would be industriously working to build nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. If we had the foresight in 1958 to act to facilitate a demo- cratic transition in Iraq, however, we would not have needed the level of resources we used in Desert Storm, and the world might be a happier place. Even in Grenada, if we just had the foresight to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars to preempt the revolution of 1979, we would have saved 108 American casualties in 1983. ' ‘ QUESTION: When there was a bipolar world, it was fairly easy to identify the strategic interests of the United States and the Soviet Union. How would the United States feel in regard to Russia resolving ethnic conflict in the former Soviet Union. DR. GUNDERSEN: We view the issue of conflict and peacekeeping in the former Soviet Union from the outlook of preventive diplomacy. We do not want to see a reenactment of the old view that there is a sphere of influence of Russia over the Soviet Union. As long as Russia’s involvement in its former periphery is mandated by an intemational body—be it the UN or the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe—and as long as certain rules are followed and the interests of all the parties are taken into account, we are not, in principal, opposed to Russian involve- ment. ' We also want to contain any ethnic difficulties before they spill over. In Tajikistan, more people are being killed every day than in Bosnia. We do not hear about it because CNN is not there, but certainly there are Iranian, Chinese, Turkish, and Russian interests in Tajikistan, so we cannot ignore the situation there. I think we should be a little more involved in preventive diplomacy there. We have limited funds, however, so it is difficult going between ends and means. 186 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 above. 205 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.