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
C00123268 repugnant to a pluralistic society such as the United first time in over 400 years, no major power sought States. Ultimately, instability is not caused by demo- hegemony in Eastern Europe. With visions of a new cratically expressed claims by individuals and Marshall Plan, the nations of Central and Eastern national communities but by the denial of these Europe and the former Soviet Union understandable, claims. if naively, believed that the West would willingly open its doors-and coffers-to their former adversaries. The above solutions should be categorically rejected. Despite rhetorical sympathy, this has not been the Other policy prescriptions offer more traditional solu- case. Perhaps it was inevitable, but new (and age-old) tions. In the name of stability, the Realpolitik school problems-ethnic strife, ultranationalism, and mas- calls for working within the existing state system. The sive migration-quickly replaced Soviet Commu- so-called Sonnenfeld Doctrine of the mid-1970s, in nism as the primary threats to Europe. When the walls effect, accepted the status quo in Europe; that is, came down in the East, economic and other barriers spheres of American and Soviet influence. The propo- were erected in the West. European governments, nents of this school emphasize Principles 3 and 4 of beset by recession, worried more about halting the the Helsinki Final Act, respectively the inviolability of westward flow of goods and people than about inte- frontiers and respect for territorial integrity. What they grating the economies of the East into the European fail to recall is that the Helsinki Final Act is a care- Community. fully balanced document based on centuries of sad European history. Using time-honored Jesuitical logic, Adrift between East and West, the countries of the the Helsinki drafters declared that "all principles are former Warsaw Pact perceive themselves in a politi- equal." The first Helsinki principle, for example, notes cal, economic, and security vacuum. And dema- that "frontiers can be changed by peaceful means and gogues, often seeking ethnic scapegoats, plow fertile agreement. Thus the United States recognized the fields of public discontent. Without a sense of being peaceful unification of Germany in 1990 and the part of a larger community-governed by accepted peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. rules of behavior-neo-Communist and ethnic nation- alist may once again set the rules. 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 The Nation-State and Ethnic Rights much as European statesmen paid lipservice to this ideal at Versailles, it was more honored in the breech What type of state structure can best protect the ethnic than the observance in the interwar period. Moreover, groups of Europe? The European nation-state has carried to its discouragingly logical conclusion, this been both the traditional protector and persecutor of model, like Russian nesting dolls, might well lead to a indigenous ethnic groups. Historically, both Germany state structure composed of increasingly small (and and Russia have assumed a special responsibility for untenable) states-Yugoslavia divided into five or six their ethnic counterparts wherever they might live. states; Bosnia divided into three states; or the Soviet (Even today, Germany grants automatic citizenship to Union divided into 15 states, Russia (or Georgia) all ethnic Germans.) These same nation-states, how- divided into x states, ad infinitum, 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- From Marx to Milosovic ularly in the East, can also lead to increased ethnic tensions, as we have witnessed in the former Yugosla- For many the collapse of the Soviet Union represented via. If the traditional nation-state system has often the ultimate triumph of Western liberal democracy. Marxist-Leninism had been thoroughly discredited as a method of-organizing society. Moreover, for the 180 -
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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.