Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency conference report, dated October 1995, contains the proceedings of a conference on ethnic conflict held 30 September to 1 October 1993. The CIA's Geographic Resources Division sponsored it. Academic geographers, anthropologists and US Government officials presented papers on ethnic and territorial conflict in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. They also discussed what these conflicts mean for US policy. The document contains no UFO material.
“Anderson”6 pages
C001232 68 Summary of Discussion you pointed out, and, where the countries are very strong, there are more national states than nation- states. They clearly are very important actors and, in General Discussion most states, they are not forcing people into a single form. Clearly, that is the case in the United States, in QUESTION: Do you think that political arrangements Britain, and in France. National identity is important, have very little to do with the consolidation of nation- but it is not necessarily an identity that requires every- alism of our nation states? body to be the same. As we look at the newer states of the world, the states that have been created after DR. POULSEN: Geographers are concerned with World War II, virtually none of them come anything things that give character to territory; we look at close to the nation-state. They are national states. nations as one of the critical components of such. DR. POtLSEN: Well, we obviously differ on this. The way governments adjust their institutional One of the fundamental facts is that the world is parti- arrangements to accommodate the national diversity is tioned into states, and this cannot be ignored. The a question more properly in the province of a political states are very significant in determining what is pro- scientist. Nevertheless, many geographers will agree duced, how. people do things, and the like. But at the that one of the most important characteristics ofter- same level, we have, in fact, national identities so that tory is the prevailing national identity in that territory. within a state there may be two quite different simul- taneously operating systems based upon this identity. One cannot understand this section of the United States without knowing that English is the common If we go the way of the anthropologist and look at language and that Americans share a lot of common every single grouping of people-and this is cer y images and values that help make the country go. a valid way of looking at things-we do not get to Where you have diversity within the state, serious some of the big problems that generate conflict. The problems exist. I made a particular point of-distin- interrelationships between nations within states and guishing between nations and other groups; the caste also of national interests between states are the key system in India, for instance, is a very fundamental ingredients in conflict. part of understanding India and really does not fit into this otherwise useful framework. DR. HONEY: I would suggest that our notion of the nation-state is really oversimplified and that we would be better off if we adopted Tilly's definition of the national state. There are few really national states, as 174
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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.