Diplomacy and International Institutions

Conflict Prevention

  • Libya
    Post-Qaddafi Instability in Libya
    Overview In June 2015, the author wrote an update to this memo to reflect recent developments in Libya. Read the update. Multiple threats to Libya's stability and public order could emerge if the Qaddafi regime falls. Scenarios range from Qaddafi loyalist forces launching a violent resistance to internecine warfare breaking out among the rebel factions. This instability in Libya could lead to a humanitarian disaster, the emergence of a new authoritarian ruler, or even the country's dissolution. Given these potential consequences, Daniel Serwer recommends in this Center for Preventive Action Contingency Planning Memorandum that the European Union lead a post-Qaddafi stabilization force in Libya. The force preferably should fall under the United Nations umbrella with modest participation from the African Union and Arab League. The United States should support the stabilization effort with the aim of helping to establish a united and sovereign Libya with inclusive democratic institutions.
    Contingency Planning Memorandum by Daniel P. Serwer August 10, 2011 Center for Preventive Action
  • International Law
    Drugs and Thugs: U.S. Running to Stand Still
    A Colombian navy soldier collects packages of cocaine in Cartagena after they were shown to the media September 12, 2010. Around 1,133 kg of drugs were seized during an operation near Cartagena, according to authorities (Jairo Castilla/ Courtesy Reuters). This week the White House released an ambitious Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime. It promises a massive U.S. policy response to a burgeoning global threat, but the Internationalist feels sorry for whoever must implement it. For, President Obama’s cover letter observes—without irony— “this strategy sets out 56 priority actions.” The strategy reminds me of the Red Queen, who told Alice in Through the Looking Glass, "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Still, there’s much to applaud in the strategy, beginning with its threat assessment. Transnational organized crime (TOC) has been a prime beneficiary of globalization. Once hierarchical and specialized, TOC groups are increasingly decentralized, able to hopscotch across sovereign jurisdictions and adapt products and supply chains. Their fluid and networked structure allows them to sidestep interdiction efforts and renders traditional law enforcement obsolete. As the strategy makes clear, TOC is driving a “convergence of transnational threats” that undermine global security and prosperity.  From Colombia to Afghanistan to Myanmar, insurgencies increasingly rely on illicit arms and drug revenues for financial support. Criminal syndicates foster corruption to skirt legal structures, weakening fragile states from Guatemala to Guinea-Bissau. (Actually, my latest book Weak Links devotes an entire chapter to the link between TOC and fragile states. While it is more uneven than often presumed, it is certainly a salient challenge.) Criminals and terrorists are appropriating each others’ strategies—and forming alliances. Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah support themselves through narcotics and other illicit commodities, even as WMD proliferators exploit black market routes through the Caucasus. Finally, traffickers engage in cybercrime, money laundering, and intellectual property theft, all of which undermine confidence in the global economic and financial system. The strategy sets out 56 “priority actions,” grouped into six clusters. Start at Home: Too often, transnational crime has been depicted as an evil from abroad visited upon American shores. Refreshingly, the White House strategy takes a more honest approach, declaring a mission to “reduce the demand for illicit drugs in the United States, thereby denying funding to illicit trafficking organizations.” This is a laudable goal, but how this administration will succeed where others have failed remains unclear. The strategy is also less than innovative in its orthodox treatment of drug criminalization, which counterproductively increases profit margins for traffickers. Enhance Intelligence and Information Sharing: Following 9/11, the U.S. intelligence community shifted its overwhelming focus to counterterrorism. The administration lays out a welcome change of tack, pledging to allocate more resources towards TOC. Enhanced intelligence sharing with foreign partners, as well as among federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, acknowledges the globalized threat, and that no agency can tackle TOC in isolation. Protect the Financial System and Strategic Markets: The strategy also acknowledges TOC groups’ infiltration into legitimate commerce and how it undermines confidence in financial systems and the global economy. To address the threat, the Obama administration commits the U.S. government to monitor “strategic and emerging markets,” alert businesses if they are threatened by criminal enterprises, and design safeguards to protect investments. The strategy also outlines a special focus on combating cybercrime and intellectual property right (IPR) violations, as well as designating foreign TOC threats and their government supporters. These concrete goals are promising, but they will be truly effective only if they are implemented multilaterally—and broadly enough for commercial actors to regain confidence. Strengthen Interdiction, Investigations, and Prosecutions: Combating transnational organized crime requires providing law enforcement officials with innovative tools. To this end, the strategy envisions a new executive order to block property of major TOC groups, a presidential proclamation barring entry into the US of designated TOC targets, an augmented reward program leading to the arrest and conviction of major TOC figures, and a raft of legislative proposals providing new statutory authorities “to investigate, interdict, and prosecute the activities of top transnational criminal networks.” Expanding these executive branch authorities is critical, but it will require careful negotiations with relevant congressional committees. Disrupt Drug Trafficking and Its Facilitation of Other Transnational Threats: Forty years after it was declared by President Nixon, the “War on Drugs” lives on. The new strategy recommits the United States to working with other countries to “support for drug crop reduction, promotion of alternative livelihoods, and partner nation capacity building”—including “complementary and comprehensive assistance programs across the prevention, intervention, and enforcement spectrum.” Alas, little here is new. Past experience suggests that successes in one country (as in Colombia, where coca production declined 15% in 2010), are often offset by production surges elsewhere (most recently, in Peru, which now rivals Colombia as a producer)—a phenomenon scholars of the drug trade term “the balloon effect.” Build International Capacity, Cooperation, and Partnerships: Finally, the strategy promises a “renewed commitment to multilateral diplomacy,” as well as efforts to build the capacity of “nations that have the will to fulfill their international law enforcement commitments but lack the necessary means.” The document is disappointingly vague, however, on what form this renewed multilateralism will take—merely offering a laundry list of global and regional institutions with which the United States will continue to work. It is also silent on how the United States will address those countries—from Myanmar to Venezuela—that have the capacity but lack the will to attack TOC. In the end, the most daunting task outlined by the strategy may be interagency coordination within the United States—and among financial institutions, law enforcement agencies, and national security apparatuses across the world. The strategy is an essential step in the battle against TOC, if only because it updates national policy by acknowledging how much the threat has evolved. It might not stymie TOC, but at least we’re running to stand still instead of falling behind.
    Blog Post by Stewart M. Patrick July 28, 2011 The Internationalist
  • Conflict Prevention
    U.S. Foreign Policy on Weak States: Time to Look at the Facts
    People stand near their belongings at a bus station in Mogadishu (Shabele Media/ Courtesy Reuters). My friend Joseph Siegle of the National Defense University recently published an interesting article about “Stabilizing Fragile States” in order to protect against their “grim dangers to the international community.” In this, he echoes U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s claim that we must prevent Libya from becoming a giant Somalia. U.S. foreign policy has been infused with these arguments since 9/11, when weak and failing states were catapulted from their place as humanitarian concerns on the foreign policy agenda to top national security concerns. Under the first Bush administration, yours truly worked on the policy planning staff at the U.S. State Department, considering strategies to combat this threat of failing states. But the Internationalist just published a book that empirically analyzes the transnational threats emanating from weak and failing states—and concluded that our conventional wisdom is based on isolated anecdotes that don’t accurately reflect the danger of all failing states. I was interviewed by Eric Felten on Voice of America’s On the Line about this recent book, Weak Links: Fragile States, Global Threats, and International Security: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeiD9GDyQws Some highlights from the discussion: The notion of a failed state as a safe haven is a contradiction. It turns out that ethnic conflicts, lack of basic communications, crumbling roads and transportation systems, and the absence of banks or their inability to transfer money frustrate terrorists just as much as they frustrate citizens or aid workers. (Watch to hear about some stunning cables from al-Qaeda complaining about this.) International drug traffickers will accept a slightly higher degree of risk to be in functioning societies that are geographically and logistically more convenient-- and where they can make higher profits. It’s easier to corrupt a weak regime than be entirely responsible for their security. (Watch to hear about one nation where cocaine shipments exceed GDP.) Policymakers must look beyond institutional capacity of the country, and also consider the will of the ruling regime. Consider that Osama bin Laden was discovered to be hiding miles from a military academy where the state was relatively strong. Countries like South Africa or Mexico that possess stronger institutions, but governance gaps, represent greater threats to the international community in the issue areas of: epidemic disease, terrorism, global crime, weapons of mass destruction and energy insecurity. Pandemics don’t fester in failing states and later engulf entire regions. The most fragile states bear a disproportionate disease burden, but they’re endemic diseases: measles, malaria, cholera. Acute, fast-moving pandemics that endanger international health, like SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) or influenza,  bypass failed states because they’re not linked with the global economy. Simply because weak and failing states are not of security concern to the United States does not mean they should not be of humanitarian and development concern. However, when the United States misperceives a humanitarian challenge as a security threat,  it unwittingly empowers regimes that obscure oppression as combating terrorism.
    Blog Post by Stewart M. Patrick July 14, 2011 The Internationalist
  • Conflict Prevention
    Growing Shadows in an Unsettled Iraq
    A rise in Iraq’s violence and sectarian tensions--and the highest U.S. monthly combat deaths since 2008--come amid mounting concerns over the government’s role and questions about the U.S. troop presence, says expert Sean Kane.
    Interview with Sean Kane and Bernard Gwertzman June 28, 2011
  • Conflict Prevention
    Enhancing U.S. Crisis Preparedness
    Introduction The Obama administration was caught flatfooted by the recent Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Not only did the intelligence community fail to warn senior officials of the combustible situations in Tunisia and Egypt, but evidently little or no forethought was given to how the United States might respond to popular uprisings or other forms of political instability in those countries of clear importance to U.S. interests and regional goals. As a result, the administration struggled to manage the unfolding crisis, largely improvising its responses without a clear sense of their implications or the overarching strategic objectives. The Obama administration can reduce its chances of being blindsided and unprepared in future crises by instituting a regular national security risk assessment of potential threats and challenges while also elevating the role of strategic planning to provide high-level policy guidance as to how they may be managed and better still averted. The capacity of the National Security Council and the State Department to handle complex contingencies should also be upgraded. The Obama administration was caught flatfooted by the recent Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Not only did the intelligence community fail to warn senior officials of the combustible situations in Tunisia and Egypt, but evidently little or no forethought was given to how the United States might respond to popular uprisings or other forms of political instability in those countries of clear importance to U.S. interests and regional goals. As a result, the administration struggled to manage the unfolding crisis, largely improvising its responses without a clear sense of their implications or the overarching strategic objectives. The Obama administration can reduce its chances of being blindsided and unprepared in future crises by instituting a regular national security risk assessment of potential threats and challenges while also elevating the role of strategic planning to provide high-level policy guidance as to how they may be managed and better still averted. The capacity of the National Security Council and the State Department to handle complex contingencies should also be upgraded. The Challenges Crisis preparedness can be considered a function of three factors--early warning, pre-planning, and the availability of ready and adaptable resources. Each has its own set of challenges. Early Warning As numerous cases of strategic surprise have demonstrated, early warning can be impeded by a failure to identify critical signals amid background noise, counter various analytical biases that can distort the interpretation of incoming information, and minimize the bureaucratic barriers to the timely alerting of senior decision-makers. The United States has invested heavily in intelligence gathering and analytical capabilities to address these challenges, but the sheer complexity and randomness of the many factors and interactions that can precipitate a major crisis makes accurate and timely warning immensely difficult. It is hard to imagine how any early-warning system could have predicted the chain of events triggered by the self-immolation of a lowly fruit vendor in Tunisia in January 2011. The difficulty of looking far into the future reinforces the tendency for senior policymakers to demand short-term "current intelligence" to help them manage events that could occur next week rather than next year. The need to warn of potentially catastrophic terrorist attacks and support current military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan has further accentuated this short-term focus. Thus, other than the annual unclassified global threat briefing by the director of national intelligence (DNI) to Congress, there is no regular and systematic process of "scanning the horizon" for either potentially threatening developments and contingencies or political opportunities that could arise. Pre-Planning Busy policymakers are understandably reluctant to expend precious time on planning for potential crises that may never materialize, especially those that seem particularly remote or seemingly inconsequential. With every crisis, there is also a natural resistance to make plans that may be irrelevant to the specific circumstances or quickly rendered meaningless. Policymakers also like to retain maximum freedom of maneuver in a crisis, which pre-planning threatens to restrict. As a result, while the Defense Department and Combatant Commands conduct extensive operational planning for specific military contingencies, very little strategic planning takes place within the U.S. government. The small policy planning bureau at the State Department is primarily used to support special initiatives or the day-to-day needs of the secretary, while the even smaller strategic planning directorate at the National Security Council (NSC) does more or less the same for the national security adviser. Recent efforts to improve the level of strategic planning in the U.S. government have not fared well. A 2005 presidential directive authorizing the State Department "to coordinate interagency processes to identify states at risk of instability, lead interagency planning to prevent or mitigate conflict and develop detailed contingency plans for integrated United States Government reconstruction and stabilization efforts" largely failed because the new coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization (S/CRS) tasked with this responsibility was never given the necessary resources or bureaucratic backing. Similarly, an NSC-led interagency group formed in the late stages of the George W. Bush administration to consider potential strategic challenges--the National Security Policy Planning Committee (NSPPC)--never gained traction within the mainstream policy process, and its work was largely ignored. The Obama administration chose not to reconstitute it or replace it with a similar interagency planning mechanism. Ready and Adaptable Resources Because crises are considered rare events, maintaining dedicated personnel and resources on standby to help manage them is generally deemed excessive. Preparing senior policymakers for specific contingencies through simulations and exercises is also exceedingly hard given the press of daily events. And Congress has traditionally resisted appropriating funds for unspecified emergencies. As a consequence, crises are typically managed in a makeshift manner: personnel are pulled from their regular assignments, responses are hastily prepared, and funds are hurriedly reprogrammed if they can be. Once the crisis is over, whatever the lessons or valuable experience gained in the process usually dissipates as life returns to "normal." Some parts of the U.S. government are better prepared for crises than others. The Defense Department has considerable military and civilian resources at the ready as well as flexible contingency funding to draw on at short notice. Even the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has a modest capability to respond to humanitarian and other emergencies. The State Department, however, continues to be hobbled by a limited crisis "surge capacity" and insufficient emergency funds. At the White House, the newly modernized Situation Room, with its state-of-the-art video conference facilities, has significantly enhanced high-level crisis management and coordination, but the NSC remains chronically understaffed. Valuable experience and operationally relevant guidance for future crises is not retained due to the regular turnover of personnel, especially between administrations. Improving U.S. Crisis Anticipation, Planning, and Management U.S. crisis preparedness can be enhanced by implementing these three recommendations: Conduct a comprehensive U.S. national security risk assessment every two years at the behest of the national security adviser. This would evaluate potential threats and other plausible strategic challenges over a twelve-to-eighteen-month time frame using agreed-upon criteria for assessing their relative likelihood and impact. A useful model is the UK government's National Security Risk Assessment (see here [PDF]). This effort would be overseen by a newly created and properly staffed deputy national security adviser for strategic planning and carried out in partnership with the Office of the DNI. The Strategic Futures Group at the National Intelligence Council, which has recently been formed from the disbanded National Warning Office, should be tasked to support this effort. Using the techniques of strategic foresight analysis, plausible scenarios of consequence to U.S. interests would be assessed on the basis of identifiable risk factors (e.g., autocratic regimes, demographic imbalances, prior history of conflict) as well as known crisis triggers (e.g., coups, a rigged election, food price spikes) and drivers (e.g., opportunities for public mobilization, regime fracturing, external intervention). The goal would be to not only anticipate potential risks but also envisage possible strategic opportunities. Revive and elevate the status of the currently moribund NSPPC for the purpose of directing and coordinating interagency policy planning. The new deputy national security adviser for strategic planning would chair the committee, which would meet at the assistant secretary level. A list of planning priorities based on the findings of the national security risk assessment would be generated and approved by the principals committee of the NSC. The principal planning departments of the relevant bureaus would conduct the bulk of the planning under the direction of the deputy national security adviser. The intent would not be to develop detailed operational plans but rather identify broad policy options to lessen the likelihood of a specific threat or undesired crisis from materializing and mitigate the potential negative consequences if it did. These planning documents would be reviewed twice a year by the deputies committee of the NSC, which would recommend revisions and direct follow-on action. Establish a separate Directorate for Complex Contingency Operations within the NSC to oversee and coordinate humanitarian relief and crisis stabilization missions across the U.S. government. Its directing staff should preferably not be short-term political appointees. Reforms identified in the 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review to enhance in-house capacity for crisis prevention and response at the State Department and USAID need to be implemented and fully funded by Congress. These include the development of an interagency International Operational Response Framework to facilitate government coordination, a roster of on-call experts with proven functional and regional expertise that can be assembled and even deployed at short notice, and a Complex Crises Fund for unforeseen contingencies.
    Policy Innovation Memorandum by Paul B. Stares June 22, 2011
  • United States
    The True Threat of Terrorist Safe Havens
    Afghan President Hamid Karzai presents U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates with the Ghazi Wazir Mohammad Akbar Khan Medal, Afghanistan's highest governmental award, in Kabul, Afghanistan, June 4, 2011. DOD photo by Cherie Cullen.  Gen. David Petraeus, Commander of the American and international forces in Afghanistan, is expected to provide his recommendation to the White House for how many of the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be withdrawn starting in July. While Petraeus has refused as recently as yesterday to specify how many troops could be withdrawn, it is widely expected that his recommendation will be modest (3,000-5,000 troops) and involve non-combat forces. On Saturday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, after receiving the Ghazi Wazir Mohammad Akbar Khan Medal, Afghanistan’s highest governmental award, noted that Obama would “consider some modest draw-downs beginning in July…in short, there will be no rush to the exits.” A fundamental issue for the White House to consider in this debate is whether Afghanistan requires a large number of U.S. troops on the ground to prevent the reemergence of a terrorist safe haven. After all, the first objective articulated by President Barack Obama in his December 2009 Afghanistan strategy speech was to “deny al Qaeda a safe haven.” Last week, Gen. Petraeus further clarified that the ultimate U.S. goal is “to ensure that Afghanistan does not become an attractive alternative to [Al Qaeda] for, again, a safe haven in which they might plot attacks such as those of 9/11.” According to the State Department’s latest annual Country Reports on Terrorism, there are thirteen such terrorist state havens, defined as “ungoverned, under-governed, or ill-governed areas of a country and non-physical areas where terrorists that constitute a threat to U.S. national security interests are able to organize, plan, raise funds, communicate, recruit, train, and operate in relative security because of inadequate governance capacity, political will, or both.” Some of the thirteen terrorist sanctuaries have obvious connections to international terrorist plots, such as Pakistan and Yemen, while others are much less directly involved with threats to U.S. interests, such as the Tri-Border Area (Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay), where: “No corroborated information showed that Hizballah, HAMAS, or other Islamic extremist groups used the Tri-Border Area (TBA) for military-type training or planning of terrorist operations.” Since the State Department first began naming safe havens in its 2007 Country Reports on Terrorism, only one has been removed, Indonesia in 2008. (The Afghanistan-Pakistan border region was also collectively removed in 2009, but both countries remain listed individually.)  On Friday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report, which warned that the Obama administration could not provide the congressionally mandated “comprehensive, governmentwide list of U.S. efforts” intended to combat terrorist safe havens. More interesting than the GAO study faulting the performance of the federal government was an appendix attached to the report. In the appendix, GAO investigators asked terrorist subject experts to determine which of the five safe havens named in the 2010 Country Reports on Terrorism “posed the greatest risk to U.S. national security.” Not surprisingly, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq received the most votes. Meanwhile, fully six of the thirteen safe havens received no votes (Colombia’s Border Region, Northern Iraq, Southern Philippines, Sulu/Sulawesi Seas Littoral, Tri-Border Area, and Venezuela; all locations where Al Qaeda does not have a presence), and some terrorist subject experts refrained from even listing five. Apparently, the extent to which certain alleged safe havens pose a “threat to U.S. national security interests” varies greatly; policymakers should calibrate resources and attention accordingly.   The issue of combating terrorist safe havens in Afghanistan and elsewhere is covered in an important and timely new book by my colleague, and director of the CFR International Institutions and Global Governance program, Stewart Patrick. (Patrick is also the author of a new CFR blog, The Internationalist, which should answer any question you have about rising world powers, tensions between globalization and traditional national sovereignty, and the evolving role of multilateral institutions in the world.)  In his book, Weak Links: Fragile States, Global Threats, and International Security, Patrick challenges the conventional wisdom regarding the alleged connections between state weakness and transnational terrorism, noting that terrorist attacks have been planned in Yemen and Somalia, as a well as Germany and Spain (and I would add the United States). Patrick makes his argument by comparing relative measures of state weakness with evidence of terrorist activities, as measured by datasets collected and published by the State Department and the National Counterterrorism Center. The findings suggest that “state weakness correlates only imperfectly with exploitation by transnational terrorists,” because states that are too weak “may lack even minimal levels of security or predictability” that are required to reliably plan and oversee terrorist attacks. In short, Patrick concludes, “The most attractive states for transnational terrorists are weak but functioning states where state structures have not collapsed but remain minimally effective, in the context of a permissive cultural and ideological environment.” This characterization sounds alarmingly like much of Afghanistan outside of the Kabul District. Based upon his findings, Patrick recommends that the United States should focus primarily on the handful of locations that might be predisposed to indigenous Salafi terrorist movements as well as the presence of Al Qaeda. He advocates avoiding “an overly militarized response (such as a reliance on drone attacks),” while bolstering “broader civilian-led efforts to promote democratic governance, address social and economic grievances, and discredit extreme ideologies.” In addition, to avoid implementing counterterrorism efforts that have a “made in the USA” stamp, Patrick also calls on the United States to integrate more states, international organizations, and regional organizations into the effort. President Obama should keep these recommendations in mind as he decides how quickly to begin the end of the Afghan surge.
    Blog Post by Micah Zenko June 6, 2011 Politics, Power, and Preventive Action
  • Sudan
    Why Sudan’s Peace Is in Jeopardy
    Hostilities in Sudan might be relieved by a deal hammered out by former South African president Thabo Mbeki, but ethnic and religious divides, resource battles, and looming southern independence remain contentious issues, says CFR’s John Campbell.
    Expert Brief by John Campbell May 31, 2011 Africa Program
  • Democratic Republic of Congo
    Crisis in the Congo
    Overview Crisis in the Congo describes the Democratic Republic of the Congo's near-term vulnerability to convulsive electoral violence and renewed rebellion on its periphery. In this Contingency Planning Memorandum, Joshua Marks argues that the most prudent steps the United States can take to reduce the likelihood of these contingencies are to increase coordinated international pressure on President Joseph Kabila not to compromise the legitimacy of the electoral process and to support a more robust UN presence during the electoral period. He recommends greater electoral oversight for the purpose of more effectively conditioning international support to the Congolese government and utilizing both incentives and increasingly stiff economic and diplomatic penalties in the event of destabilizing regime behavior.
    Contingency Planning Memorandum by Joshua Marks May 18, 2011 Center for Preventive Action
  • Defense and Security
    Mexico Not A ’Failed State’ As It Faces Drugs, Guns and Violence
    Former Ambassador James Jones discusses U.S.-Mexico relations and Mexico’s most pressing problems as President Felipe Calderón continues his "War on Drugs" and combats the resulting violence.
    Explainer Video with James R. Jones April 13, 2011
  • Ivory Coast
    Ending Ivory Coast’s Stand-Off
    Conflict in Ivory Coast appears to be nearing a head, with internationally recognized presidential winner Alassane Ouattara poised to triumph. But CFR’s Jendayi Frazer notes that inaction by the Security Council is "hypocrisy," particularly in light of its stance on Libya.
    Interview with Jendayi E. Frazer and Aimee Rawlins April 1, 2011
  • Human Rights
    Egypt in Turmoil: CFR Analysis by Isobel Coleman
    Having just returned from Egypt, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Isobel Coleman sat down with CFR Director of Studies James Lindsay to discuss the recent turmoil in the country.  
    Explainer Video with James M. Lindsay and Isobel Coleman April 1, 2011
  • Conflict Prevention
    Military Escalation in Korea
    Overview Further provocations by North Korea as well as other dangerous military interactions on or around the Korean Peninsula remain a serious risk and carry the danger of unintended escalation. Moreover, changes underway in North Korea could precipitate new tensions and herald a prolonged period of instability that raises the possibility of military intervention by outside powers. This Center for Preventive Action Contingency Planning Memorandum by Paul Stares analyzes potentially dangerous crises that could erupt in Korea due to the atmosphere of recrimination and mistrust that exists between North and South; the possibility of provocative, domestically driven North Korean behavior; and the potential for a troubled succession process in Pyongyang. Stares concludes that the United States has a strong and abiding interest in ensuring that another Korean war not be ignited and provides recommendations to reduce the risk of unwanted military escalation on the Korean Peninsula. Download the list of clashes in the Korean Peninsula between 1955 and 2010 [PDF].
    Contingency Planning Memorandum by Paul B. Stares November 9, 2010 Center for Preventive Action
  • Kashmir
    Solving the Kashmir Conundrum
    As violence surges in Indian-administered Kashmir, four experts say confidence-building measures between India and Pakistan are the only way to begin solving the territorial dispute.
    Expert Roundup by Jayshree Bajoria, Daniel S. Markey, Siddiq Wahid, Prem Shankar Jha and Zia Mian October 14, 2010
  • Sudan
    A Trip Report: Sudan
    Play
    Upon their return from Sudan, please join George Clooney and John Prendergast to assess the in-country situation in advance of southern Sudan's independence referendum this January.
    Event with John Prendergast, George Clooney and Tami Hultman October 12, 2010
  • Sudan
    A Trip Report: Sudan
    Play
    Upon their return from Sudan, George Clooney and John Prendergast assess the in-country situation in advance of southern Sudan's independence referendum this January.
    Event October 12, 2010