January 2000

Yet another evidence of TFF’s rapidly increasing international prestige is its opinion piece on CNN’s new “In Depth Special on Kosovo” – See http://europe.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/kosovo/stories/present/kfor/. It’s the third time TFF’s expertise is called upon by CNN; first during NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia and then before New Year, a longer conversation about the international community’s peacebuilding failure in today’s Kosovo/a. And now with this website feature “Misguided motives led to the chaos in Kosovo” under CNN*s heading “Missed Opportunities.” In the article TFF director Jan Oberg summarizes the Kosovo crisis through the 1990s and the foundation’s experience with conflict-mitigation there begnning 1991. In a few points, he outlines why NATO’s KFOR mission, the United Nations’ UNMIK mission and the OSCE are unlikely to succeed with building genuine peace in the Balkans. Writes Oberg: “The international community — a euphemism for a handful of top leaders — has historically been an integral party to...

LUND- It’s only a mom and pop shop, and it lives precariously on the edge of financial oblivion, but it is one of the very rare organisations of its kind. Like King Canute, from whose ancient capital it works, it attempts with one hand to hold back the waves of violence, conflict and war, and, with the other, the creditors. The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, (TFF), based in the ancient ecclesiastical and university town of Lund in the south of Sweden, combines research into the origins of human conflict and practical application as mediators in some of the high profile dramas of our age, first and foremost in ex-Yugoslavia, but also in Georgia and, most recently, in Burundi. The creation of an ex-academic political scientist, Professor Jan Oberg and his sociologist wife, Christina Spannar, it runs on a modest budget of $50,000 a year, but with a group...

LONDON- The United Nations mandate for policing the truce in the Congo expired this week, without the 500 military observers requested by the Secretary-General ever being sent into the field. It remains to be seen whether the Security Council’s recent decision to send a 6,000 strong force to police the very tentative truce in Sierra Leone will be acted on. At the moment it seems more than doubtful. The outside world appears to be almost frozen in its tracks when it comes to dealing with African civil wars. In Somalia the UN pulled out, after the grisly death of 18 American soldiers. In Angola, the UN pulled its peacekeepers out last year after years of apparently fruitless wear and tear. And in Rwanda, the scene of the worst genocide since the killing fields of Cambodia, the UN is accused of turning a blind eye in its moment of need. The horror...

By Miroslav Hadzic, Ph.d.,President, Centre for Civil-Military relationsBelgrade timotic@eunet.yu  Lecture given at a joint conference by Institute of Defence, University of Skopje andPfP Consortium Working Group on Crisis Management in SEE Conference“Ten Years After: Democratisation and Security Challenges in SEE” 27-29 October, Ohrid, Macedonia I would like to offer you my personal perception of the critical points of the security of Serbia and the FR Yugoslavia. That should , I hope, make the image of the security challenges in SEE more complete. Convinced that additional explanations would burden this respected gathering, I am free to offer a brief list of these points in the form of theses. The new risk-map of Serbia and the FR Yugoslavia is drawn up byinter-active action of the two basic groups of factors: – first, by the final concentration of the basic causes of the war collapse of the second Yugoslavia into its eastern remnant,...

LONDON- On Sunday the Chilean electorate although going to the polls to elect a new president is also voting to put the past behind it – and the past in Chile is General Augusto Pinochet, the author of the coup that overthrew an elected Socialist president, Salvador Allende in 1973 and instigated 17 years of repression, killings, torture and disappearances. Only four or five months ago I’d have written that the Socialist candidate Ricardo Lagos had to win if Chile was going to have the leader that would enable the Chilean people to close the door on Pinochet. Now I believe Chile has in effect already done this and not even the election of a right wing candidate Joaquin Lavin will undo the rapid progress that has been made nor, for that matter, will Pinochet’s probable release from arrest in England. Chile in a matter of less than half a year...

A TWELVE STEP PROGRAM TO END NUCLEAR WEAPONS ADDICTION The following steps should be taken by the nuclear weapons states prior to the end of the year 2000 to assure that we enter the 21st century with a full commitment to ending the nuclear weapons threat that now hangs over the heads of all humanity and clouds our future: 1. Publicly acknowledge the weaknesses and fallibilities of deterrence: that deterrence is only a theory and is clearly ineffective against an enemy who is irrational, unlocatable, or suicidal, and cannot assure against accidents, misperceptions, miscalculations, or terrorists. 2. Publicly acknowledge the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons under international law as stated by the International Court of Justice in its 1996 opinion, and further acknowledge the obligation under international law for good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament in all its aspects. 3. Publicly acknowledge the immorality of threatening...

INTRODUCTION Traditional peacekeeping operations have become less common in the current international climate. United Nations records show that the number of peacekeeping troops decreased from 75,000 in mid-1994 to 25,000 in mid-1997. The pattern of conflict has changed from inter-state to intra-state, where political and humanitarian complexities prevail. Between 1948 and 1987, the United Nations initiated 13 peacekeeping operations but only five of them were still in existence in 1988, of which four were related to inter-state conflicts and only one to an intra-state dispute. Out of 28 operations established between 1988 and 1996, only eight may be referred to as conflicts of inter-state character and the rest considered as intra-state. As a result, the international community is more concerned with the major causes of systemic and intractable violent conflict such as ethnic, religious and socio-enconomic factors, with less emphasis on preventing or containing conflicts between nations. Experience indicates that...

America has experienced a horrific tragedy, thousands of innocent civilians have met a terrible death. The terrorist acts in New York and Washington have further extended the boundaries of destruction, setting in motion a new spiral of violence. The world is once again moving in a dangerous direction. 1. Terrorism – lethal disease Terrorism undoubtedly is one of the most dangerous enemies of democratic order, of decent life itself. It successfully combines pre-modern fanaticism and the destructive power of post-modern technology. By killing innocent civilians it simultaneously destroys the “soul of society”, creating and recreating a state of permanent fear, provoking and legitimising authoritarian answers. Spectacular terrorist actions will strongly stimulate alienated and frustrated individuals to undertake their personal “wars” in order to settle their grievances. 2. Inappropriate therapy Responses to this cancerous disease have, by and large, been inappropriate for at least three reasons. Firstly, terrorism invariably appears as...

Three truths – the future matters,nuclear weapons are eviland life is a miracle We are at the beginning of a new century and millennium. If there was ever a time for reflection, this should be it. In the spirit of Ernest Hemingway, who said that he always wrote about the truest things that he knew, I would like to make three points that I believe are true, obvious, and seriously under-appreciated. The future matters First, the future matters. Life is not only for today. We are linked to all that has preceded us and to all that will follow. What we do today will affect the future. If we live only for ourselves, we cut off possibilities for the future. If we think only about ourselves, we will undoubtedly shortchange the future. If the future matters, we must live as though it matters. We must live with concern for those...

LONDON- The last century found, willynilly, it had goals aplenty. There was always the social goal of ending unemployment, a purpose that fired people as varied as John Maynard Keynes and Adolf Hitler. There was the goal of spreading capitalism or building socialism, depending on which side of the fence you were on. Later there was the goal of defeating fascism and later still communism. Then there was the goal of ending war and the creation of a United Nations. Not least there was the goal of spreading democracy and, hard on its heels, ending colonialism. Finally, and most recently, there was the goal of spreading human rights. It was appropriate that just before the century ended on July 17th 1998, 120 nations voted (but not the U.S., China, India and Israel) to adopt a statute creating an International Criminal Court to try war crimes. What goals are left for this...