Documents / FOIA release

(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

Central Intelligence Agency · 1995-10-01 · 205 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 9 …Looking at ethnic conflicts from a comparative basis and viewing consequences for the United States and…
  • p. 30 …Intemational Boundaries Research Unit. Cohen, S. B. “Global Geopolitical Change in the Post-Colonial War Era…
  • p. 35 …Most serious for Europe and the United States, how- ever, are those that deal with territorial…
  • p. 75 …i Most autonomous units of the Soviet federation declared their sovereignty immediately following the declarations of…
  • p. 77 …Durham, UK: " University of Durham International Boundaries Research Unit (IBRU) Press (Territory Briefing 2), 1992. ideologiya…
  • p. 85 …Liberia ECOMOG, the Economic Community of West Afri- can States (ECOWAS) peacekeeping force, has sup- pressed…
  • p. 87 …In Zaire, the inevitable politi- cal transition may yield an explosion of long-sup- pressed ethnic…
  • p. 95 …When these issues affect mestizo peasant farmers and laborers, as they often do, Indians may unite…
  • p. 106 …The Trinidadian press is quite con- cerned with the general upswing in violence. Is it your…
  • p. 118 …Not only have the “official” minorities in China begun to more strongly assert their identities, pressing…
  • p. 192 …A united and prosperous European Community, they believed, could be protected from the economic and political…
Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
The second question is: how do we evaluate the poli-
cies of individual states in relation to minority groups,
in particular, tenitorial policies? There was an
extended discussion in the paper of the Basque situa-
tion, where power has been devolved to regions of a
quasiautonomous nature. Despite this devolution, a
continuation of fairly strong anti-Madrid bias can still
be seen in voting pattems in Spain. At the same time,
overt violence has been reduced. This raises questions
about the impact of state policies that acknowledge
the existence of ethnic concentrations and use territo-
rial policies to incorporate ethnic groups in the deci-
sionmaking process. It may mean—as has happened
to a degree in the Basque case—that bringing a sepa-
ratist group into the decisionmaking structure may
marginalize the more violent elements of the group.
General Discussion
QUESTION: With regard to ethnic issues, what poli-
cies are likely to best promote US interests in the
region? ,
_ __
DR. MURPHY: The United States has an interest in a
stable and economically vital Europe. This would sug-
gest that it is in the US interest to promote the kind of
policy options that lead to stability from an ethnic
standpoint. That may mean some of the kinds of terri-
torial policies that I suggested. It also means that the 4
United States should promote the idea of a European
Community that does not just look like a much more
centralized community but one that actually facilitates
the kinds of regional linkages that Dr. Williams has
outlined. We should be not be scared of the fact that
the nation-state is changing. It is in the US interest to
promote the kind of regional arrangements that will
lead to a more stable and outward~looking Europe.
58
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.