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Apr 6

Eye in the Sky: New War, Old Problems

Guest post by Jon R. Lindsay.

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A Royal Air Force Reaper at Kandahar Airfield. Photo by Defence Images.

Hollywood action flicks are increasingly likely to feature drones as a technological novelty, but they usually overplay the stereotype of remote control combat as a video game. By refreshing contrast, the new film starring Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman, Eye in the Sky, offers a serious cinematic treatment of the robotics revolution in modern warfare. Shattering a number of myths about drones, this film is about the people behind the robotic cameras and, most especially, the moral dilemmas of combat and the fog of war that technology cannot dispel.

The plot follows a single tactical reconnaissance mission in the Horn of Africa that morphs into a fleeting opportunity to kill high-value al-Shabab terrorists who are about to stage a suicide bombing. Before the committee of stakeholders watching from afar can make up its mind whether to pull the trigger, a little girl shows up to sell bread within the anticipated blast radius of the strike. Most of the film concerns the efforts of various actors to avoid or spin this ‘collateral damage’ risk, which makes it seem more like a courtroom drama than a war movie. Is the life of one innocent child worth the chance to save many more? This conundrum comes right out of an ethics textbook, but watching it play out in real time across a global communications network is both compelling and surreal.

Everyone, including the audience, experiences war through a glowing rectangle, except, of course, for the potential victims of the Reaper’s Hellfire missiles. Operators may be bodily remote from the action, but as MIT historian David Mindell shows in his book about underwater, aerial, and spacefaring robotics, remote experience has an intimacy and immediacy to it that belies the physical separation. It is a myth that participants in precision warfare are inured to the consequences of their interventions. The greenhorn pilot and sensor operator in the film, flying together for the first time and untested in combat, may be safely protected from enemy fire in their control van in Nevada, but they agonize over their orders and the changing situation on the ground. Indeed, drone pilots in the real world, who may follow their victims for days before firing on them, are not insulated from post-traumatic stress disorder and may even experience it at higher rates.

No military robot is truly autonomous, but rather is part of a sprawling sociotechnical network, in this case commanded from Britain, flown from Nevada, analyzed in Hawaii, and authorized from several other locales. Military weapons may be able to range further and strike more precisely than ever before, but this capacity depends on a dramatic increase in the complexity of organizations that control them. The film dramatizes two particularly striking aspects of this development: the increasing involvement of senior leaders in tactical decisions and the increasing legalization of warfare. When tactical action can have strategic effects, civilians and commanders have strong incentives to make sure that military means advance strategic goals and that they accord with the rules of engagement (ROE).

Yet the ability for civilians to intervene and the presence of lawyers at the trigger also sets the stage for certain pathologies in civil-military relations. Law can be used as a tool to limit military action or to justify it. Political opponents of an action can use law instrumentally to block it even when it seems desirable by some criteria, and backers of the same option can search for loopholes in the law to press forward with ethically questionable actions. The movie sets up a dichotomy between dithering civilians and determined commanders on the British side, but on the American side it is the reverse, with callous civilians pressing for action and more emo airmen who hesitate to commit (ruthlessness and compassion know no gender boundaries in this film either). The accuracy of technical intelligence and precision munitions contrasts profoundly with the political and ethical ambiguities of warfare by distributed legal committee. Indeed, the reduction of some kinds of uncertainty only magnifies other kinds.

Another myth of drone warfare the movie counters is the idea that it can be waged completely from afar. The effectiveness of bombing operations from Vietnam to Afghanistan, regardless of whether or not the bombers have been manned or unmanned, has often turned on the presence or absence of ground forces who can identify and designate targets. Strikes based on signals intercepts and other remote signatures are prone to error, which may be unacceptable in a politically sensitive environment (in the movie British officials are reticent to strike a target in Kenya where they are not at war). Even with sophisticated technical surveillance, including cool drones that look like birds and insects, you still need agents on the ground to emplace and operate sensors or interact with the locals. When things go wrong with fancy gadgets, it is helpful to have someone who can blend in with the local population and think on his feet.

Eye in the Sky challenges many stereotypes of drone warfare and highlights some of the associated problems in modern civil-military relations. It showcases the professionalism of the operators and analysts involved in modern distributed combat operations, and it provides no easy answers to the problems of intelligence-driven targeted killing. Moral choices in war are rarely, if ever, between good and bad, but rather between bad and worse. Technology changes none of this; it merely shifts the institutional venue in which these dilemmas emerge. The movie should be valuable for encouraging discussion in the classroom and, potentially, for furthering the broader conversation about the automation of war.

Jon R. Lindsay is Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Global Affairs at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

Apr 5

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The “Politics of Naming” and the Genocide Debate

By Marie Berry for Denver Dialogues

File picture from Bosnian police records show Radovan Karadžić when he was arrested for war crimes in November 1984. Via: Wikimedia.

File picture from Bosnian police records show Radovan Karadžić when he was arrested in November 1984. Via Wikimedia.

Last week the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić of genocide for his role in the atrocities in Srebrenica in 1995. The court acquitted him of genocide in seven other municipalities.

The Karadžić verdict came on the heels of Secretary of State John Kerry’s declaration that ISIL is committing genocide against minority groups in Iraq and Syria.

These two events reveal the continued political salience of the term “genocide” and have renewed debates about the international community’s responsibility to intervene in foreign atrocities. They also reveal some of the complications with naming certain conflicts to be “genocide,” implicitly relegating other types of violence to the somehow less morally abhorrent “crimes against humanity”—or further still, to the problematic arena of “legitimate war.”

I’ve written more extensively elsewhere about the problems related to this “politics of naming”—to use Mahmood Mamdani’s term—but there are a few key points to note here related to these recent events.

The 1948 UN Genocide Convention describes genocide as “an odious scourge” that must be condemned by the “civilized world,” establishing genocide as violence that is evil, amoral, and barbaric. For many other genocide scholars and activists, genocide is “worse than war”; as such, they view the international community as having a moral obligation to intervene. The R2P doctrine formalized this responsibility, establishing that the international community had a “responsibility to protect” that trumped state sovereignty in the case of genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes.

Naming a conflict to be genocide can play a powerful role in generating international attention. Yet I reject the idea that genocide is violence that is evil or amoral, while war is considered within the normal—and acceptable—purview of state behavior (see related critiques by Mamhood Mamdani or Dubrovka Zarkov). This framing elevates the suffering of victims of genocide over victims of other forms of violence. Further, it can create a moral hierarchy that demonizes perpetrators of violence labeled as genocide, while allowing the perpetrators of other forms of violence to avoid condemnation and justice. In short, the politicized process of “naming” has allowed human-rights discourse to provide cover for political agendas and obscure the fact that, in practice, as Mamdani notes, the distinction between war, counter-insurgency, and genocide is blurred.

The Karadžić verdict provides a critical example of how labeling certain episodes of violence to be genocide can create a hierarchy of victimhood. Bosnian Serb forces, led by Karadžić, Ratko Mladić, and other war criminals, began a campaign of aggression in 1992 against non-Serbs in Bosnia. In the northwest region of the country around Prijedor, an estimated 5,000 non-Serbs were murdered and thousands more were sent to concentration camps where they were starved, tortured, raped, and subjected to other inhumane treatment. On the Drina river in the east, thousands more were killed, burned alive, raped, and otherwise tortured in places like Višegrad or Foča. In Srebrenica, more than 8,000 men and boys were murdered.

Yet, according to rulings by the ICTY and International Court of Justice, only the Srebrenica massacre should be considered “genocide.” This implicitly elevates the suffering of those in Srebrenica over the suffering of those in other parts of the country.

This hierarchy of victimhood has real implications for ordinary people. For example, the area around Srebrenica has received tremendous amounts of foreign aid that has been used to rebuild houses, provide urgent services to survivors, and fund the memorial pictured below. Dozens of local and international NGOs work with widows from the massacre through psychosocial therapy, job creation programs, and community initiatives (although there remains a tremendous amount of unmet need). The international attention to Srebrenica is ongoing—in July 2015, Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright, and dozens of other world leaders came to Srebrenica to commemorate twenty years since the massacre.

The Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial in Gornji Potočari, circa 2013. By Marie Berry.

The Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial in Gornji Potočari, circa 2013. By Marie Berry.

Contrast that with this image of Trnopolje (below), a former transit camp near Prijedor, as it looked in 2013. Or Omarska, perhaps the most notorious of the camps, which is now an active iron ore mine owned by steel giant ArcelorMittal. In short, while Srebrenica is now recognized globally, sites of other atrocities across Bosnia not considered genocide lie in disarray; local politicians in the Republika Srpska prevent the families of Bosniak war victims from erecting any formal memorials to their dead; foreign dignitaries are nowhere to be seen. Prijedor is subsumed to Srebrenica in the moral hierarchy of victimhood, and people killed in Prijedor are implicitly seen as second-class victims. This has created new social divisions within Bosnia between people from these different regions.

Trnopolje, a former detainment camp during the Bosnian War, near Prijedor in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina. By Marie Berry.

A 2013 image of Trnopolje, a former detainment camp during the Bosnian War, near Prijedor in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina. By Marie Berry.

The politics of naming can also create a hierarchy of perpetrators. If genocide is “worse than war,” it is at least in part because it deliberately targets civilians, and particularly civilians from a specific social group. Targeting civilians is, of course, counter to the Geneva Conventions and every other “rule” of war. Yet one only has to look at the high rate of civilian deaths during wars in the 20th century to note that the targeting of civilians—or at the minimum, the acceptance of civilians as collateral damage—is a defining feature of recent conflicts, which have moved from clearly delineated battlefields to more densely civilian environments. Civilian casualties have climbed from an estimated 5 percent in 19th century wars to perhaps between 50 and 90 percent in recent wars of the 1990s (estimates are complicated; see discussion here). My point is to make clear that despite our western sensitivity to civilian casualties, we generally are less aware of the relatively higher rates of civilian casualties in major conflicts today. Indeed, civilian deaths in current wars—including in Iraq, Syria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo—are suspected to rival or outnumber combatant deaths (see evidence for this claim here, here, and here). One could argue that this makes these conflicts as morally troubling as genocide.

Mamdani provides an example of the hierarchy of perpetrators by noting the irony of the Save Darfur movement in the U.S. in the early 2000s. While college students, Hollywood actors, religious organizations, and other Americans rallied against genocide in Darfur—during which between 200,000 and 400,000 civilians were killed—perhaps 200,000 or more Iraqi civilians were dying as a result of the U.S.-led invasion. This illustrates that it is the term’s embeddedness within structures of power that allows those with power to conduct “legitimate” wars or counter-insurgency campaigns targeting certain groups, while simultaneously labeling violence committed by others as genocide. These same power holders labeled Rwanda and Darfur as genocide, but neglected to label cases like East Timor and Guatemala as such, not because they were not genocide, but because it was not in U.S. foreign policy interest to do so (or, because U.S. foreign policy emboldened or facilitated genocidal processes in these places—see here or here). As such, the term “genocide” lets perpetrators of certain types of violence comparably off the hook. By elevating genocide as the “crime of crimes,” human rights activists and genocide scholars implicitly view violence that is perpetrated by states or insurgents against civilians for reasons other than to destroy an “ethnic, national, racial, or religious group” as somehow less offensive than genocide.

This problematization of “the G-word” does not mean that organizations like ISIL are not committing genocide; they are, and it is atrocious. Nor does this discussion mean that we should not use labels when discussing mass atrocities. Instead, we should consider who has the power to employ certain labels, why they are applied in certain cases but not others, and what the ramifications of those labels may be on the lives of those directly affected. Asking how it serves U.S. interests to call ISIL’s atrocities against minority groups “genocide” but not, say, Myanmar’s persecution of the Rohingya, or widespread sexual violence in South Sudan, will begin to reveal how the term “genocide” can have normative power to compel international attention, while simultaneously facilitating the creation of hierarchies of victims and perpetrators that can minimize other forms of violence. The genocide debate in Bosnia has meant that survivors from Prijedor and elsewhere feel shortchanged by the Karadžić verdict; they are once again seen as survivors of less horrific violence than their counterparts in Srebrenica. If genocide is to remain a useful category of practice and analysis, we must pay more attention to how power shapes when, how, and why the term is deployed, and to what ends.

Apr 3

Weekly Links

By Sarah Bakhtiari

To what degree are the Russian economy’s woes a consequence of international factors? Andrey Movchan argues the international sanctions or even the counter-sanctions Russia has levied against the EU and Turkey aren’t having much of an impact on the Russian economy, rather it’s the Russian government’s failed import substitution strategy that’s taking the toll.

Who becomes a terrorist? The profiles of the Brussels terrorists and the San Bernardino terrorists are dramatically different, for example. The bottom line is that there has not been any even mildly conclusive political science on the matter, prompting authorities to grasp for indicators that might allow identification in advance. This desire has led to the development of government checklists and grants by the U.S. Justice Department for “rapid assessment” tools that might help authorities identify extremists a priori, even though checklists will result in false positives more often than accurate detection.

Is there a significant potential for immunity for state agents of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Colombia, via the government-FARC agreement on a Special Jurisdiction for Peace? Human Rights Watch thinks the state-issued guidelines for the Special Jurisdiction for Peace will enable the transfer of many conflict-related cases from the state to the Special Jurisdiction itself, potentially allowing prosecution to be waived or permitting the granting of suspended sentences—including for “false positive cases” (Colombian Army brigades’ execution of civilians across the state).

Closer to home, an old civil-military debate has resurfaced: should the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs be a part of the operational chain-of-command that runs from the U.S. President through the Secretary of Defense to the Combatant Commanders? The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 sought to make civilian control a central feature of the redesign effort, intentionally leaving the Chairman out of the chain. Doing so enables the Chairman to perform in an objective advisory role that would otherwise be confounded by the demands of operational necessity and subordination. Not a bad idea, it seems.

Speaking of debates, Secretary of the U.S. Treasury’s speech this past week might prompt another one—this time, over America’s use of economic sanctions. The speech outlined some basic parameters for U.S. use of economic sanctions, which includes multilateralism, credible commitments for both enforcement and relief, and the imperative to avoid the unintended but potentially disastrous effects of their over- or misuse.

In case you missed it, the fourth and final nuclear security summit (#NSS2016) took place in Washington this week. Here’s a quick graphic that illustrates the gains made since the summit’s inauguration in 2010—but the gains have been limited to nuclear material in civilian use, not under military control, which leaves many stockpiles unaddressed. Furthermore, the end of this summit potentially signifies the end of the process, leaving a patchwork of informal agreements. But the President of the United States is still hopeful that the world can be free of nuclear weapons in the future. Read Obama’s op-ed here, in which he lays out the progress the U.S. has made in moderating the risk of nuclear proliferation and use.

Finally, Rodney Hero, former APSA President, advocates for a greater role for political science in sorting out class inequality and racial diversity in the United States, in his article in Perspectives on Politics.

Mar 29

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Beyond ‘Methodological Nationalism’ in Global Security Studies

By Fiona B. Adamson for Denver Dialogues

The fountain at the Kenosha Municipal Center, Wisconsin. By Mike Mertz.

The fountain at the Kenosha Municipal Center, Wisconsin. By Mike Mertz.

Last week’s news of terrorist attacks in Lahore and Brussels followed only days after similar news from Istanbul. And before that Ankara, Jakarta, and Paris. The list goes on. Attacks on cities around the world are part of the new reality of global insecurity that transcends state and national borders. In addition to the terrible human devastation and fear caused by each incident, they are also examples of how traditional models of “national” security are not sufficient for understanding contemporary patterns of political violence.

In my recent article for the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Security Studies (JoGSS) I make a case for moving beyond a “methodological nationalist” bias in security studies. Methodological nationalism is a critique developed by sociologist Andreas Wimmer and anthropologist Nina Glick-Schiller. Although the national state seems to be a “natural” unit, this is partly the result of how the social sciences have treated it. When “security” is assumed to be about how states respond to threats of violence from other states, scholars miss the multiple ways in which political violence is used by non-state actors, but also by states against segments their own populations. For example, in the United States, a national security frame post-9/11 allowed for the militarization of the police across the country in ways that turned military force against unarmed civilians. Similar national security frames allow for deaths of migrants around the world to be ignored as a pressing global security issue—because policy-makers perceive no direct threat to the state. Even many of our datasets on violent conflict such as Correlates of War (COW) rely on this assumption. Uncritical acceptance of methodological nationalism can shape scholars’ normative orientation. Indeed, there are arguably few fields of study in which scholars are as identified with their own state’s interests as in security studies—especially the most vocal of those advocating policy-relevance.

This doesn’t mean that we should throw out the state or refrain from trying to affect policy. But we should pay greater attention to thinking about other spaces in which security might be important. Globalization has in many ways increased the power of states through technological tools like global surveillance and remote control warfare. But globalization also highlights the importance of non-national spaces such as cities, the high seas, cyberspace and various “holding areas” such as refugee camps, detention centers and prisons. In my article I illustrate how the field could benefit from a “spatial turn” by using a “non-national” frame to look at cities, cyberspace, and even the globe itself.

Cities, for example, are important symbols and sites of power in the global economy—many of them contain populations and resources greater than those of some states. They act as nodes that connect transnational networks of capital, culture and politics, as well as functioning as global media hubs. Remarkably, as H. V. Savitch highlights, three out of four incidents labeled as “terrorism” in the past four decades have occurred in cities, with a total of 12,000 incidents altogether. The range of cities that have been targeted—from New York to Abuja, Jakarta to Paris to Istanbul—is an indication that security scholars should be paying attention to cities themselves as entities in world affairs, rather than analyzing such attacks through the lens of “national security.” A national security frame views each incident as an attack against a particular state that only happens to take place within a city. A “spatial turn” instead focuses attention more broadly on cities as new spaces in the changing landscape of global security.

Cities are increasingly significant because new information and communications technology (ICT) allows us to know what is happening around the world in an instant. New ICT however also creates virtual political spaces that transcend national borders—the world of cyberspace. Cyberspace can function as a non-national space where actors fight it out (think here of the hacker group Anonymous issuing threats to everyone from ISIS to Donald Trump). Perhaps more significant, however, is cyberspace’s effect on how we construct narratives of “us” vs. “them.” De-humanizing groups of people is one of the easiest ways to justify violence, and in the past states and other actors could get away with this by tightly controlling public narratives. While actors still employ de-humanizing language to try to justify political violence, this practice is something that can now be challenged and contested on-line through the use of counter-narratives.

We could also be thinking about how increased connectivity means that the most important space for understanding security is actually the globe itself—as a single, integrated space. Violent conflicts in “peripheral” regions of the global economy have consequences in major global cities—what happens in Syria affects what happens in Paris. These connections are missed when we approach the study of political violence as simply about events that happen “over there.” At the same time, suggestions that building walls will keep violence at bay misunderstands how deeply connected we all are now due to globalization—it is not possible to turn back time or technology, and simply reinforcing borders is a retrograde “methodological nationalist” response to complex problems that are essentially global in nature.

How we think about security shapes policy and action. Scholarly analysis might aim to be more self-conscious of this. The rise of global security challenges us to move beyond the methodological nationalist lens that has dominated traditional security studies. A “spatial turn” allows us to see more clearly where security takes place—not just, or even primarily, between states. It directs our attention to the non-national spaces of global security. Cities, cyberspace and our planet itself are just three such spaces; we should look at these and others so as to ensure policy responses that fit the problem.

Fiona B. Adamson is an Associate Professor of International Relations at SOAS, University of London (@FionaAdamson).

Mar 27

Weekly Links

By Patrick Pierson.

Georges Seurat (French, 1859 - 1891 ), Peasant with a Hoe, c. 1882, oil on panel, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon 2014.18.49

Georges Seurat, “Peasant with a Hoe,” c. 1882. Via National Gallery of Art.

A recent report from UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Defenders Michel Forst highlights the dangers faced by activists in Honduras. This report from 2015 suggests Honduras is the most dangerous country in the world for environmental activists. While the government is certainly responsible for the protection of its citizens, development banks may also be implicated in the violence. In an effort to address drug-related violence in the country, the Honduran Naval Force is conducting operations with US Marines in an effort to more effectively combat trafficking. Similar trainings are also taking place in neighboring Guatemala.

In Africa, Ivorian musicians and performers crafted a unique response to recent terror attacks in the country. Meanwhile, the government announced over a dozen arrests in connection with the attack. On a related note, the detention of a suicide bomber in Cameroon turned heads this week when the young girl claimed to be one of the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014.

The recent killing of a senior Burundian army officer raises fears of fracturing within the security forces, portending that a bad situation may become even worse. The stalemate between Nkurunziza and the AU in Burundi has some questioning the Union’s ability to respond adequately to crises on the continent. In nearby Uganda, refugees are pouring in from both Rwanda and South Sudan, placing stress on a country with plenty of its own problems regarding poverty and inequality. While often overlooked amidst a myriad of challenges, the fighting in South Sudan has also placed an enormous burden on higher education in the country. And despite ongoing conflict in eastern DRC, farmers are now exporting coffee to none other than Starbucks.

It’s been a big week for the International Criminal Court. In a landmark case that included sexual violence as a war-crime conviction, former Congo VP Jean-Pierre Bemba was held “criminally responsible” for the actions of his troops. The court also ordered the trial this week of Dominic Ongwen, a former member of Joseph Kony’s LRA militia in Uganda. In addition, the ICC will proceed with a full trial against Malian terrorist Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi for his attacks on the world heritage site of Timbuktu. Also of note in the realm of international justice, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison this week by a UN tribunal. Despite such victories for justice, this report highlights a number of gross human rights abusers who still remain at large.

Mar 24

3 Comments

Is Democracy Eroding?

Guest post by Jeff Colgan.

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Former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Photo by Bernardo Londoy.

It is fashionable to compare Donald Trump to fascists like Hitler. Trump is certainly a vile candidate. But Hitler’s rise was made possible by the Weimar Republic, a regime set up after a devastating war against the wishes of much of the German populace. It was barely a decade old before Hitler took power. Its institutions never took root. The United States is not the Weimar Republic.

A better historical analogy is Venezuela. In the 1990s, Venezuela was an established democracy with entrenched civil rights and a well-functioning rule of law. For decades, its government had a president, a bicameral Congress, and a Supreme Court. Unfortunately, it also had two political parties that alternated in government and shared power in ways that benefitted the elite to the detriment of the country. Sound familiar?

Frustrated with the persistent hypocrisy of the governing elite, Venezuelans elected the populist leader Hugo Chavez in 1998. In office, Chavez played on the country’s polarization and gradually eroded the rule of law. He also ruined the economy by undermining the institutions and policies that supported prosperity. He did so from the Left, but a populist from the Right accomplishes the same just as easily – just look at Kansas or Louisiana.

The United States is not the same as Venezuela, but the point is that established democracies can and do erode – so swiftly they catch most citizens by surprise. What gets a democracy into a mess like the one Venezuela is in now? Two basic ingredients seem to be sufficient. First, the incumbent political parties take advantage of their position through greed and hypocrisy. Second, the country experiences a nasty economic shock, like the one Venezuela had starting in the late 1980s. When I was doing research in Caracas in 2008, one Venezuelan told me “look, GDP per capita went down by 25 percent. Voters were ready to write a blank check to anyone who promised to make it better.”

The United States has the first ingredient; it only awaits the second. Regardless of whether he wins, Trump’s rise is scary because it reflects the rot in America’s democracy. The Great Depression crushed democracy in Germany but not the United States because America had a strong democratic system. It doesn’t anymore. And eventually bad economic times will come. It is a mistake to think democratic erosion couldn’t someday happen here.

Indeed, the recurring violence already associated with Trump’s campaign might do considerable damage to American democracy. Several observers argue that the violence might get considerably worse. Scholars like Paul Staniland and Inken von Borzyskowski have investigated the causes and consequences of electoral violence in the developing world. In 2016, electoral violence is an American problem, too.

Many Democrats are smugly saying that Trump is the Republicans’ problem. In a sense, he is. The NY Times provides the best one-sentence description of the GOP: “It is a party of white people that protects its richest members and feeds off the anxiety of its poorest members by directing their anger at minorities, immigrants and women.” That kind of political Ponzi scheme was bound to run into trouble.

But the Democrats have been slow to grasp the implications of mass disillusionment and polarization. The dream is that Clinton will thrash Trump, the GOP will change its ways, and all will be well. This is false hope. The Sanders campaign shows how widespread the frustration has become. At some point, fixing governance isn’t just an issue, it’s the only issue.

The risks for America’s future are intimately tied to today’s political gridlock. Elites across party lines are failing to provide enough benefits to average people to justify the pains associated with national progress. Want to make progress on climate change or immigration reform or international trade?  Fine – but it comes with costs, and they aren’t distributed evenly. To make it happen politically, enough people have to believe that the country’s wealth is both growing and well-distributed. Good leaders know that any decent social contract has to offer enough benefits to their followers to make the costs of change worth bearing. America does not have those leaders right now. Too many Republicans are fear-mongering and hiding an agenda for the rich; too many Democrats want to force social progress without building the kind of trust and mutual benefit that make progress possible.

Plenty of people are saying that elites need to listen to the popular frustration that is fueling the Trump and Sanders campaigns. Not enough people are precise about what that message is. Some say it’s about overly scripted candidates or political correctness or the evils of Obamacare. No. The message is that for too long, elites have said “the system is broken” as a way of getting elected and perpetuating that system. Eventually you have to stop complaining about the system and actually fix the damn thing. Campaign finance reform won’t solve the problem on its own, nor will open primaries, nor will ending gerrymandering, nor will reducing the incumbency advantages in Congress. But some of those things, in combination, would make a pretty good start.

More importantly, leaders need to re-establish a culture of political decency, a respect for expertise, and a level of political dialogue that appeals to our better angels, not our basest nature.

Business elites, big donors, and party elders must drive the process of renewal. Individual politicians will never do it on their own, because they gain too much from the current system. But there are people in both parties who want to see a functioning democracy that actually governs – people like Tom Steyer and George Soros among Democrats, and Bloomberg and Paul Singer on the GOP side. America’s best hope is that this election convinces those people to demand necessary political reforms, notwithstanding a short-term partisan price.

The country has invisible assets called trust, decency, and faith in our institutions. It is possible to consume those assets for private gain, for a while, but eventually the whole system comes crashing down.

Jeff Colgan is the Richard Holbrooke Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at Brown University and author of “Petro-Aggression: When Oil Causes War.” On Twitter, he is @JeffDColgan.

Mar 23

3 Comments

Why Nuking ISIS is a Really Bad Idea

By Barbara F. Walter.

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Brussels, Belgium. Photo by Antonio Ponte.

After every terrorist attack on a major Western city I hear the same thing: “why don’t we just nuke them?” Donald Trump was asked this question two days ago by a reporter for the Washington Post. My very smart brother-in-law asked me this question after he survived the 9/11 attacks.

Wanting to use our superior fire-power on an enemy like ISIS, especially after attacks like the ones on Brussels, Paris, or New York, is tempting. Our large military makes us believe that we can easily defeat our enemy if only we had the political will.

But the reality is that nuclear weapons – or any massive retaliation – won’t work. In fact, it would just play into the hands of ISIS.

ISIS’s strategy of bombing countries like Belgium works based on how the world responds to these attacks. Right now, ISIS needs powerful countries in the West to do one of two things. It needs them to stop bombing ISIS targets in Syria, Iraq, and Libya so that it can re-gain territory lost since the airstrikes began last summer. Or it needs them to go in the other direction and launch heavier, more indiscriminate attacks against innocent Muslims that radicalizes them.

Western countries aren’t going to stop bombing ISIS. No politician of a democratic state that’s been attacked by ISIS will survive in power if they fold in the face of an attack. That means that the only way ISIS wins is if countries like Belgium, France, Russia, and the US start killing lots of innocent Muslims. Nothing radicalizes people faster than having someone try to kill them, especially with nuclear weapons.

So how should countries like Belgium respond?  First and foremost, they should continue to carefully target ISIS with airstrikes – something that has been very effective in hurting the organization to date. Second, and more importantly, they should resist the urge to escalate or widen the attacks in any way that could harm civilians. The more civilians that are killed, the more popular ISIS is likely to become.

Eliminating ISIS with one nuclear bomb may seem appealing, but it’s a pipe-dream, and one that would only turn the rest of the Muslim world against us.

Mar 22

1 Comment

Send in the Clowns: Opposing Anti-Migrant Citizen Patrols in Finland

By Steven T. Zech for Denver Dialogues

A Loldiers of Odin graphic. By Loldiers of Odin.

A Loldiers of Odin graphic. By Loldiers of Odin.

State repression, armed conflict, and a variety of humanitarian crises have generated mass migration from places like Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Eritrea. More than a million migrants and refugees made their way to Europe in 2015 in search of asylum and opportunity. Some countries initially greeted migrants with open arms. For example, Germany pledged to facilitate the asylum process and accepted hundreds of thousands of migrants. However, recent events, such as a wave of sexual assaults and robberies on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and elsewhere, have fueled anti-migrant sentiments. Many Europeans have voiced concerns about strained resources, challenges related to cultural immersion, and the potential for new incidents of Islamic terrorism.

In some cases these concerns have brought out the worst in people. For example, when a fire broke out at a building that was to be used to house migrants in eastern Germany, some onlookers cheered and others attempted to prevent firefighters from extinguishing the blaze. Incidents of direct violence against refugee shelters in Germany increased five-fold in 2015. A sharp rise in the number of migrants, along with the perception that migrants pose an economic burden and security threat, appears to have negatively affected public attitudes toward immigration. Many western and northern European countries that had previously held positive views about the desirability of immigration are beginning to question the feasibility and desirability of current policies.

The Emergence of Anti-Migrant Vigilante Patrols in Finland

The challenges related to migration trends faced by Finnish cities are not imagined. Although Germany received nearly 15 times as many asylum applications as Finland in 2015, Finland actually received slightly more migrants as a per capita figure. Finland contends with many of the same economic, cultural, and security challenges as other high migrant-receiving countries in Europe. Although local reactions to the European migration crisis have differed drastically, fear and suspicion have led to the formation of far-right vigilante groups in some Finnish towns and cities, as well as other parts of Europe. Citizen groups calling themselves the Soldiers of Odin keep watch, patrol the streets, and protect locals from immigrant threats, both perceived and real. The Soldiers of Odin leader from Tampere, Finland explained, “We are a patrol group looking out for the safety of people, the safety of women.” The Tampere group formed following dozens of crimes and incidents of harassment linked to asylum-seekers, including the alleged rape of a local Finnish woman. Over 4,000 migrants arrived in Tampere in the latter part of 2015, mostly from Iraq. In comments to a variety of news outlets, citizen patrol participants have expressed concerns about asylum-seekers’ cultural differences and the need to protect “our women” from harm. One Soldiers of Odin participant in Tampere insisted that they do not have a problem with “good” refugees, while another participant described all asylum-seekers as a “bunch of animals.”

Although in some cases citizen patrol groups might provide a welcome deterrent to crime and offer additional community security, allegations of participant links to neo-Nazism and previous criminal behavior are worrisome. Xenophobia and aggressive rhetoric have generated new tensions in Finland’s third largest city. Members of the Tampere branch of the Soldiers of Odin wear black jackets with the group’s name and logo when they patrol. To some they appear to be more “menacing biker gang” than “neighborhood watch.” The patrols are not illegal as long as they simply report possible incidents to the police. However, police and state officials fear the patrols may interfere with law enforcement. Finland’s interior minister Petteri Orpo told Reuters, “These kinds of patrol clearly have anti-immigration and racist attributes and their action does not improve security. Now the police must commit its scarce resources to (monitoring) their action.”

Many migrants in Tampere are afraid following an incident of arson at a refugee center and another incident where a group of Finnish men stabbed an asylum seeker. Actions from both migrants and local Finns have generated a tense climate of fear and distrust. In fact, thousands of Iraqis are leaving Finland voluntarily, citing hostility from locals as one reason. And more recently, a report claims that an Islamist counter-movement called the Soldiers of Allah has formed in Oslo, Norway in response to a Soldiers of Odin branch there. These types of developments promise to escalate tensions and make violent confrontation between vigilante groups and migrant populations more likely. A counter-movement by Islamist actors only validates many of the fears that originally inspired vigilante mobilization and led to the proliferation of citizen patrol groups across European cities. What can communities do to counteract xenophobia?

Humor in the Face of Hostility: Clowning Around or Important Political Acts?

On the first night that the Soldiers of Odin patrolled the streets of Tampere, they met an unexpected form of resistance: clowns. A group calling themselves the Loldiers of Odin (a play on the acronym l.o.l. – laugh out loud) use humor and performance as a means to confront what they view as hostile anti-migrant forces. The clowns use “tactical frivolity” as a nonviolent means to combat xenophobia and intimidation. And it’s proven to be surprisingly effective.

On this particular night, the Loldiers surrounded the anti-migrant citizen patrol, made jokes, played in the snow, and shook tambourines. A large group of costumed activists, which included an imposing Odin dressed in a purple-striped bathrobe, sought to counteract the anti-migrant message. One clown carried a flag with a misshapen swastika that read, “Sieg Fail!” The Soldiers of Odin remained quiet and eventually disbanded and went home. The clowns bid them farewell.

The Loldiers’ first action developed into a nonviolent showdown over public space. They believe that Finland’s streets can become either an environment of fear and hate or laughter and love. They share a message of tolerance as an alternative to intimidation and nationalist sentiment. Their actions provide a counter-narrative for Finns, as well as the migrant population in Tampere. Loldier protests have become an important way to exchange ideas and share viewpoints on diversity in Finnish society. They hope to influence public opinion about the migration crisis. The clowns have also caused public disturbances and their actions have been criticized by law enforcement. However, part of their broader message appears to affirm public faith in the ability of the police and government to address challenges related to migration. The Loldiers criticize the extra-legal nature of anti-migrant citizen patrols and communicate support for existing state institutions that uphold the rule of law.

Is Laughter the Best Medicine?

Other groups have employed similar tactics to deal with similar issues. For example, a the San Diego branch of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) initiated a “Boredom Patrol” to counteract and mock what they described as racist vigilante patrols by the Minutemen along the U.S. and Mexico border in 2007. The group of clowns proudly noted that, “Our only weapons are feather dusters, baguettes and bubbles.”

I am not naïve. Clowns are certainly not a fix-all policy prescription for anti-migrant hostility in Europe. However, as European countries continue to face security challenges tied to migration, states will need to come up with better policies to address citizen safety concerns. Citizen patrols are one form of autonomous security provision when the state is either unwilling or unable to guarantee community safety. Non-state actors all over the world provide for their own security. For example, self-defense forces in rural Peru and the urban “catch your thief” movement confront rampant criminality that has overwhelmed the state. There is nothing inherently wrong with citizen patrols in Finland or elsewhere. However, the police in Finland are capable of meeting these security concerns related to the migration crisis and some of the citizen patrols hold worrisome xenophobic beliefs. Current citizen patrols should coordinate with other civil society groups and create a broader coalition of support to limit the potential for anti-migrant violence. The clowns provide an effective deterrent against abuse and impunity by making actions visible and questioning citizen patrol motivations. The anti-migrant protestors also question the clowns, and in a New York Times article on the Loldiers, citizen patrol group participants dismiss their antics. They believe that just as in Batman’s Gotham City, the heroes are the vigilantes, and the clowns are the villains. We will see.

Steven T. Zech is a post-doctoral fellow at the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy at the University of Denver.

Mar 20

1 Comment

Weekly Links

By Sarah Bakhtiari

"Winter Beach." By Bill Strain.

“Winter Beach.” By Bill Strain.

Last month U.S. Cyber Command took on a new role outside of its original mandate when given direction to degrade the Islamic State’s online social media presence, rather than just disrupting capabilities during armed conflict. This is a very big deal, according to Peter Singer. Why? Because the move to offensive cyber operations is as of yet unprecedented for the U.S., which has until now restricted operations to those of defensive nature. Another major development is the transparency with which the U.S. is conducting the attacks, perhaps a signal to adversaries other than the Islamic State.

While you were attending endless #ISA2016 panels this week, there was some churn in the press regarding trade, on the heels of Sander’s primary win in Michigan. It all started with Paul Krugman’s column that pointed out trade agreements have multiple ends, and mutual gains are often not as big nor beneficial all-around as most would expect—nor as bad as the protectionists (ahem, Trump, Sanders) suggest. This prompted Brad DeLong’s response to Krugman, who made the point that the most promising path to reduce cross-border income inequality is to diffuse technology from the Global North to the Global South via free trade, enabling export-led growth. In the next volley, Krugman used the case of Mexico’s liberalization and export turn in the mid-1980s as evidence that, while DeLong’s argument makes intuitive sense, the purported outcomes don’t always obtain. Note the effective graph Krugman uses to show Mexico’s per capital GDP declining after its opening, even as exports relative to GDP are rising.

Speaking of opening… Critics of Obama’s Cuba policy are pointing to the regime’s failure to improve its human rights record, jailing (and, in some cases, physically abusing) more than 1,400 independent activists in the month of January alone. But others find more potential in the contact and commerce that the political opening enables, with hopes for a long-term trajectory toward greater civil and political rights in Cuba. And in the event you need a basic refresher on the key bilateral political developments between the U.S. and Cuba, check out this CFR timeline.

Maybe you’ve already picked up a copy of Alexander Wendt’s latest book (published in the spring of 2015), The Quantum Mind and Social Science, but if not, here’s a great investigation into the main claims the book explores.

Finally, in the spirit of “exploring peace,” the ISA convention theme this year, I’ll point you to the introduction of two new datasets in the current issue of the Journal of Peace Research: one measures changes in the source of leader support across countries with populations larger than 500,000 from 1919-2008, and the other measures the reputation of more than 400 terror groups over 31 years.

Mar 15

Ukraine: Cold Peace, Rising Tensions, and Multilateral Mediation

By Timothy D. Sisk for Denver Dialogues with Ambassador Fred Tanner

Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, Alexander Hug (c), and two generals from the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination discussing situation in Shyrokyne, 4 July 2015. By OSCE/Evgeniy Maloletka.

Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, Alexander Hug, and two generals from the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination discussing situation in Shyrokyne, 4 July 2015. By OSCE/Evgeniy Maloletka.

Ukraine’s civil war, which appears to have settled into a cold-peace “frozen conflict” following the February 2015 Minsk II ceasefire agreement, threatens to erupt anew. Just one year after Minsk, shelling, cease-fire violations, cyberattacks, and saber rattling by the protagonists threaten the fragile agreement. Underlying the threat of new violence is the sober fact that as a territorial dispute the “final status” of the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the final sovereignty status of Crimea (seized by Russia), remain unsettled.

Scholarly research shows that peace agreements—particularly “cease-fires without comprehensive settlements” like Minsk[1]—are inherently vulnerable to commitment dilemmas on the part of the protagonists in war. In such contexts, the parties suffer from an inability to unilaterally provide credible commitment to implementation of the agreement, and the incentives to maintain the cold peace may be stronger than those that portend further movement in negotiation toward a comprehensive settlement addressing the “final status” dimensions of talks.[2] In sum, in “frozen conflicts” a perception of a “mutually hurting stalemate” and “ripeness” that leads parties to agree to cease-fire terms is a fleeting moment as conditions change on the ground: cease-fires may perversely reduce the perception of “hurt” that motivates parties to make the difficult and often existential compromises needed to solve sovereignty differences in territorial disputes.[3]

Similarly, scholars have shown that outside mediators face cooperation and coordination problems in mediating final-status negotiations following initial cease-fires. Mediation in such conflicts today is a highly complex, typically multilateral affair in which a network of states and international organizations seek to monitor conflicts, react to non-compliance to interim agreements, prevent conflict recurrence, and to help forge lasting or comprehensive settlements.[4] Whether in Ukraine or other conflict contexts today such as Libya, South Sudan, or Syria, multilateral mediation has become a modal form of peace-agreement negotiation, monitoring, and implementation.

In Ukraine, this multiparty mediation is seen in the formation of the Normandy Contact Group, or Normandy “format,” which includes the principal state-level protagonists in the conflict—Ukraine and Russia—together with France and Germany. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) supports the work of the Normandy group in practice, and, critically, has deployed its Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in the conflict region, which reports to the OSCE Chair (presently, for 2016, Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier) and the organization’s Ministerial Council.

For insights into the Ukraine imbroglio, and for lessons learned in managing such crises through multilateral mediation, I turned to Ambassador Fred Tanner of Switzerland, a highly regarded European security analyst and presently a senior-level advisor to the OSCE Secretary-General. Below, Tanner offers insights into the Ukraine conflict and whether and how contact-group mechanisms can help overcome the ceasefire-without-settlement dilemmas seen in the Ukraine.

The Ukraine crisis, first in Crimea and then in the Donbas region, seems to have escalated unexpectedly for many observers. From the frontlines of observing security in Europe over these years, how do you see origins and outbreak of this conflict? Could it have been prevented?  

Tanner: The annexation of Crimea came as a surprise to most observers, whereas there were sufficient early warnings regarding conflict escalation in Kiev (especially during the Maidan-square protests that led to a change of government) and then in the Eastern Ukraine regions. The origins of the conflict rest on a complex mix of factors—both internal as well as external. The internal factors included existing divisions in Ukrainian society due to long-term cultural and socio-economic cleavages between the Eastern and the Western parts and a need to search for state and communal identities and prerogatives that were present, more or less, in all countries that became independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

External interference equally contributed to the outbreak of the conflict. Pressures on political and economic orientations trapped Ukraine in an increasingly zero-sum game between Russia and the West, as did the geopolitical reflex of Russia perceiving the enlargement of Euro-Atlantic institutions into the post-Soviet space as a direct threat to its national security.

It is difficult to say if the conflict could have been prevented. There are several divergent narratives in this regard. In the Final Report of the Panel of Eminent Persons on European Security (2015), the Russian narrative argues that the conflict could have been prevented if the West would have exercised more restraint when it came to the expansion of both NATO and the EU eastwards and especially with regards to the Western support of the “Maidan regime change movement.” According to the Western narrative, Russia decided to resort to force by first annexing Crimea and then intervening into other parts of Ukraine, “because they had abandoned the basic principles of international order: sovereignty, territorial integrity and the non-use of force.”

How do you evaluate the Minsk II Agreement itself, both in terms of the process it outlines and the pathway to some resolution of a conflict that many observers now refer to as “frozen”?

Tanner: During the late spring of 2014, the conflict in Eastern Ukraine region became increasingly militarized. The OSCE acted as a facilitator and negotiator together with Russia and Ukraine in the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) that was established by the Normandy Group in June 2014. The OSCE—as a status-neutral actor—was able to reach out and involve the separatist groups in talks with the TCG and later the Minsk negotiations.

The first cease-fire was agreed in Minsk in September 2014, but broke down rapidly with renewed fighting towards the end of the year. The so-called Minsk II agreement of February 2015 was negotiated under tremendous pressure as the armed conflict was continuously escalating, with thousands of casualties and over a million refugees and IDPs.

The Minsk II agreement contains three categories of commitments: measures for cease-fire implementation (withdrawal of heavy-weapons etc.), provisions on amnesties and exchange of detainees, and provisions for future negotiation of a more comprehensive political settlement (constitutional reform, special status for Donbas, and local elections). The cease-fire and withdrawal provisions were the less controversial parts of the Minsk II regime; but even there, in view of continued violations and the moving of the front line, an additional separation of forces and weapon free zones agreement had to be negotiated as an addendum to the Minsk II implementation measures.

I think that Minsk II provides a very solid basis for a sustainable cease-fire that can pave the way toward a sustainable political solution to this conflict. It outlines very concrete measures and steps that all sides have to implement. The problematic part is the sequencing of commitments since there are different interpretations regarding the order in which various measures should be implemented. Another challenge that Kiev can accept only reluctantly is the agreed constitutional change and election laws that would require a “droit de regard” if not consensus from the separatists that Kiev still considered “terrorists.”

According to the Minsk agreement, constitutional change would provide the Donbas republics with a “Special Status” with a high degree of regional autonomy. Such an exceptionalism of power devolution encountered fierce opposition in the Ukrainian parliament. If there is no breakthrough in this question, there exists a serious danger that the Minsk regime could fall apart. This complex situation was slightly defused by the creation of an inclusive negotiation process under the auspices of the TGC that would deal with all aspects of the conflict through political, security, humanitarian and economic working groups.

The literature on mediation and credible commitment has explored the key role of a global coalition of “custodians” of the peace, a role which the Normandy Group plays. What is your assessment of the nature and actions of a concert-approach to guide implementation of the Minsk II framework?

Tanner: The role of “custodians” or “friends of” are essential with regard to peace implementation. Peace arrangements often contain deliberate ambiguities and such groups can help with the implementation by offering processes and guidelines, but also political pressure.

From an OSCE perspective, the Normandy Group has been instrumental in the process leading up to the Minsk II agreement; OSCE representatives were invited to attend and contribute to a number of preparatory meetings in various capitals at both expert and senior official levels. The Normandy Group, in turn, has provided a number of tasking to the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission and the working groups of the Trilateral Contact Group.

One of the advantages of the Normandy format is that within its confines the parties to the conflict are deterred from inserting new conditions into the political process and from widening the scope of negotiations beyond the Minsk parameters. One Normandy country (Russia) also introduced a United Nations Security Council Resolution 2202 (2015) to endorse the Minsk Agreements globally. In its Final Report, the Panel of Eminent Persons recommended that the Normandy Group be enlarged to include the remaining signatories of the Budapest Memorandum (the United States and the United Kingdom). Such an enlarged “Normandy Plus” group would be able to “help deal with political and se­curity issues arising in the implementation of the Minsk agreements,” according to the language of the report.

How­ever, not all OSCE participating States are keen to support the contact group model, as contact groups are by definition not inclusive, and can be reminis­cent of cases where great powers have collaborated to “carve up” the world as was the case historically with the Congress of Vienna or the Yalta Conference.

Is there hope for a satisfactory political solution or way forward, and what role does the OSCE play in generating momentum toward a more comprehensive peace?

Tanner: The full implementation of Minsk agreements, including the withdrawal of foreign armed forces and the restoration of full control of its border to the Government of Ukraine, is the only way forward towards a sustainable political solution. A failure would either lead to a new eruption of armed violence with unknown consequences or to transform the crisis into a frozen conflict. Finally, Minsk was not designed to solve the broader political and economic questions. As the Final Report of the Panel of Eminent Persons notes: “The fulfillment of Minsk would not be the end of a process, but the starting point for the development of a sustainable political, military and economic settlement of the crisis in and around Ukraine.”

Going forward, the OSCE will continue to play a critical role as a regional actor in international efforts to peacefully resolve the armed conflict in the eastern regions of Ukraine. The OSCE is able to negotiate in the Trilateral Contact Group and its four working groups with all parties to the conflict; it monitors the cease-fire and disengagement of forces commitments; it monitors two border crossings on the Russian side of the Russian-Ukrainian border and also observes the various elections at the national and local levels. Furthermore, the OSCE office in Kiev pursues projects, together with civil society organizations to create a culture of inclusive national dialogue, power-sharing and the building of trust. However, the OSCE as a soft security organization has no enforcement authority and relies on continuous support of all 57 participating states.

In your experience and in a personal capacity, what recommendations are there for keeping the context in the Ukraine “ripe for resolution” for progress on the thorny final-status issues?

Tanner: In the short term it is important to salvage the Minsk Agreement. It is rapidly losing support in the Ukrainian Parliament and in the population at large. Concrete measures under Minsk are now the consolidation of the cease-fire, the holding of elections in the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and the creation of “election security,” which may require the deployment of a police mission in the area. The election law is being negotiated in the TCG political working group under the lead of French diplomat Pierre Morel. A key issue includes the question who will be entitled to participate in the elections-there are more than 2 million Ukrainian refugees in Russia and about 1.5 million IDPs in Ukraine.

But the political process continues to be hampered: The Normandy meeting of 3rd March in Paris was not able to move the peace process ahead. Russia continues to insist on elections, constitutional reform and a law on amnesty, whereas Ukraine’s priorities are “security first,” withdrawal of Russian forces, and return of full control of its state borders in the East.

Regardless of the pace of implementation of the Minsk agreement, the process of dialogue and peace negotiations between Ukraine and the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk need to continue. For this purpose the TCG and its four working groups represent an important peace implementation platform. It would also be desirable to have a structured exchange between Ukraine and Russia. Finally, broad structural economic and political reform will help Ukraine to modernize its economy and strengthen its political institutions.

Ambassador Fred Tanner is the Senior Advisor to the OSCE Secretary-General.

[1] The Minsk agreement includes provisions for a subsequent political process calling for dialogue on local elections in the disputed region in line with a temporary autonomy framework and further negotiation on the final status of the territories.

[2] See, for example, Barbara Walter, Committing to Peace: The Successful Settlement of Civil Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) Virginia Page Fortna, “Scraps of Paper? Agreements and the Durability of Peace,” International Organization 57 (3) (2003): 337-372, and Karl deRouen, Jr. et al., “Civil War Peace Agreement Implementation and State Capacity,” Journal of Peace Research 47 (3) (2010): 333-346.

[3] See I. William Zartman, “The Timing of Peace Initiatives: Ripeness Theory and Beyond,” The Global Review of Ethnopolitics 1 (1) (2001): 8-18.

[4] See Siniša Vuković, International Multiparty Mediation and Conflict Management: Challenges of Cooperation and Coordination, Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015.

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