The Korean Studies Program at the UW (a new course)

          The Middle Eastern Studies Program (a new courses)

          The Russia East European and Central Asian Studies Program 
            (support for speakers, affiliations with PONARS)

          The Political Science Department ($9000 of support for a Ph.D. Student)

IGRSS is presently exploring cooperation projects with the Liu Center for Global Studies at the University of British Columbia and also with the Cato Institute of Washington, D.C.

The Institute of Global and Regional Security Studies of the University of Washington (IGRSS) is developing an academic curriculum for security studies at the UW.

The target audience for this curriculum consists of the following:

1.The Foreign Area Officers (captains in the Armed Services of the United States) who have enrolled in increasing numbers in the area studies and international studies M.A. programs of JSIS. Almost without exception the FAOs are outstanding students, always self-funded, and often on their ways to high-level careers in military and civilian agencies.They also prove excellent colleagues for other graduate students.

2.Graduate students to be supported in part by the National Security Education Program (NSEP), which recently awarded a major multi-year grant to the UW to promote advanced study by UW graduate and undergraduate students of the following languages: Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic.

3.Graduate students in all of the MA programs of the Jackson School and other UW graduate students as well.This includes foreign graduate students, many of whom come from the Asia-Pacific region.

4.Undergraduates in JSIS and the UW.

5.Interested members of the general public.

New Courses at the UW Funded by IGRSS

Winter quarter, 2001 - International Law and Arms Control, SIS 490, taught by Richard Lorenz, Col., USMC (ret), former professor US National Defense University, Fulbright Professor, St. Petersburg (Russia) Faculty of Law.

Ambassador Graham will assume responsibility for teaching this course in subsequent years.

Winter Quarter Task Force on Arms Control SIS 495 (instructor: Christopher Jones) (Payment to JSIS for partial payment of Jones regular salary).Task Force Evaluator:Dr. James Fuller, PNNL.

Spring Quarter, 2001 - International Law and Military Intervention in the Balkans, also taught by Professor Lorenz. Sponsored by REECAS and UW Law School. Col. Lorenz served as a legal advisor to the US military in Somalia and Bosnia; he also served as a legal advisor to the United Nations in Kosovo.

Spring Quarter, 2001 - Security Affairs of the Korean Peninsula, taught by Professor Emeritus (Southern Methodist University) Wonmo Dong, Visiting Scholar, Korean Studies Program, UW. 

Fall Quarter (planned) - Water and Security Issues in the Tigris-Euphrates area. Instructor: Co. Frederick Lorenz, author, The Euphrates Triangle: Security Implications of the Southeast Anatolia Project (National Defense University Press, 1999). 

Workshops and Speakers 

The UW Press and IGRSS are discussing possible publication of the proceedings of the conference, pending revisions by the contributors.

Spring Quarter, 2001 – financial contribution to a /seminar/speaker series developed by UW Center for Ethnic Conflict and Conflict Resolution and taught by Professors Daniel Chirot and Resat Kasaba. The contribution consisted of a $3000 grant to a graduate student who assisted in the planning and management of the ECCR spring program. The course/seminar invited distinguished scholars to discuss cases in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus/Central Asia, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Americas.

Speakers:

• James Huntley and John Ikenberry of the Council for a Community of Democracies. Professor Ikenberry also made a presentation at PNNL. 

• Patrick Morgan (UC-Irivine) 

• Nancy Gallagher (office of the special representative for CTBT, US Department of State). 

• Guy Wilson-Roberts (Center for Strategic Studies, New Zealand) 

• David Rabadan (Office of Global De-Mining, US Department of State). 

Speakers Series, Spring, 2002, IGRSS co-sponsorship of “Putin and Russian Foreign Policy” (primary funder: the Jackson Foundation).This series drew heavily on experts associated with PONARS.

IGRSS Plans for the 2001-2002 Academic Year and Beyond

November 29-30 Conference on NATO Enlargement and the Baltic States

The conference will be sponsored by the following units of the UW: the Jackson School
of International Studies; the Baltic Studies Program; the European Studies
Program; the Russia, East Europe and Central Asian Studies Program; and the
Department of Scandinavian Studies.

Colloquia on Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century, Spring 2001

Four-five related public colloquia (Spring, 2002) at the University of Washington devoted to examination of the strategic and political value of nuclear weapons in the 21^st century for the five nuclear weapons states recognized by the Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1995: the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France.The colloquia will examine the same questions in regard to India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iraq and Israel.

Ambassador Thomas Graham, Jr. will take the lead in inviting speakers to these colloquia, in consultation with the Council for a Community of Democracies (CCD) and IGRSS faculty.The CCD, headed by Robert Hunter, former US Ambassador to NATO, has close ties with present and former officials in countries allied with the United States.

The colloquia will be open to the general public. IGRSS expects several hundred people to attend each of the four colloquia, based the community support from the local organizations in the Ad-Hoc Planning Group for a Puget Sound Nuclear Forum plus the likely interest in the student body at the University of Washington. 

Publication Projects led by Thomas Graham

IGRSS and PNNL are separately seeking outside financial support for the following projects:

World Arms Control Treaties Since 1925: official texts with commentaries by Ambassador Thomas W. Graham. (UW Press/IGRSS)

To be completed in 2002. This will be single volume compendium containing texts of all arms control treaties since 1925 (The Geneva Convention).The treaty texts will take up approximately 750 pages.Amb. Graham will write 10-20 page introductory commentaries to each treaty (approx. 250 pages).The purpose of this volume is to provide a single-volume reference work of arms control treaties with commentaries that not only outline the major points of each treaty but note the legal, political and technological linkages among these treaties. 

No such volume now exists, either as a separate collection of treaty texts or as a study of the treaties themselves.It will support college/ law school level courses on the subject.

Moscow and Arms Control: Bears, Bisons and Pioneers. Edited by Amb. Thomas Graham.Contributors: former Soviet/Russian arms control negotiators. (UW Press/IGRSS).To be completed in 2003.To be based on solicitations by Thomas Graham of 30-50 page monographs by 10-12 Soviet/Russia ambassadors at USSR/Russia at the arms control negotiations from 1967 to the present.These contributions will constitute a Soviet/Russian account of the period described by Ambassador Graham in Disarmament Sketches, 1970-1997: Three Decades of Arms Control and International Law.Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is seeking a contract from the Department of Energy to support the writing of the Soviet/Russian manuscripts (approximately $140,000).IGRSS will work with the UW Press to produce a published version for the general public. 

No such study of Soviet/Russian negotiations at the arms control treaties now exists, either in Russia or the United States, despite the colossal sums spent by both countries on their strategic arsenals and the huge investment of time and energy of each government in arms control negotiations.This volume, too, will support college/law school level courses on arms control.

Spring, 2003 conference or lecture series devoted to analysis of the contents of Moscow and Arms Control. Participants: Soviet/Russian authors, non-Soviet/Russian commentators. Collaboration with CCD, PNNL.To be held in conjunction with the spring, 2003 version of “International Law and Arms Control.”

IGRSS Response to the Terror Attacks of September 11

IGRSS is exploring the possibility of funding a new course offered either in the winter or spring terms of the academic year 2001-2002.Several faculty members are potentially interested in team-teaching such a course with the possible participation of adjunct faculty recruited from PNNL.PNNL has been studying issues of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction from multiple standpoints, including that of how local officials in the US might cope with such threats.

Beyond the Academic Years 2001-2003: The Long-Term IGRSS Agenda

Before the events of September 11, IGRSS planned to place its planned 2001-2003 focus on arms control treaties into a longer term agenda: that of studying security cooperation among the democracies and the possible expansion of the community of democracies to include Russia, other former communist states and other countries as well.The main practical concern of this line of study was and remains the possible proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

IGRSS will continue to pursue this program, with the addition of a focus on how the democracies coordinate and intensify their efforts to respond to the security threats posed by international terrorism, with a special emphasis on the issue of WMD.

IGRSS will also work toward a new course on US-Russian cooperation in non-proliferation projects in the states of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

This course will seek to draw on visiting speakers from PNNL and perhaps Russian scientists as well.

Negotiated arms control agreements were by no means unique to the Cold War or to the present era. What has been historically new has been the willingness of democratic states to accept such treaties as legally binding restraints on the development and deployment of their own military forces, particularly in regard to WMD. 

This reliance on arms control has grown in part out of the unprecedented mutual security reliance of the democracies in the NATO alliance and in the bi-lateral alliances of the US with the Asia-Pacific democracies. In particular, Japan, Germany and other states capable of developing nuclear weapons have relied on the treaty commitments of the United States to deter nuclear threats from potential adversaries. US allies have also relied on the arms control agreements negotiated by the US with potential adversaries, including the multi-lateral treaties signed by US allies.

Equally remarkable, in the period from 1967-1997, democratic states and non-democratic states developed enforcement mechanisms that bound signatory states to compliance with several arms control treaties. Two outstanding examples are the Conventional Forces in Europe agreement of 1990 and the 1995 renewal of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). A follow-on agreement to the NPT – the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty-CTBT—is an equally good example.

For the first time in human history, some nation states- for all practical purposes, the democracies - have cautiously begun to rely on arms control treaties as effective instruments of national security policy. Obviously, such policies also rest on military-technical factors that operate outside the formal legal framework of international law. In any case, many democracies with formidable military potential have accepted the practical utility of international arms control treaties which limit the deployment of national military forces, including weapons of mass destruction. Only non-democratic states have the luxury of treating such treaties and related agencies of international law as disposable rhetorical devices, albeit at the risk of provoking confrontations with the democratic signatories who enjoy great advantages in military-scientific-industrial capabilities.

But as a growing community of democracies has increasingly turned to arms control agreements and other instruments of international law to regulate the development, deployment and use of armed force in international politics and even domestic politics, the United States has become increasingly reluctant to bind itself to new treaties or even to maintain its adherence to existing treaties.

Specifically, the US has rejected the CTBT, the Ottawa Treaty on Land Mines, the establishment of an International Court for Human Rights, the recent treaty on political (rather than legal) restraints on the trade in small arms and a new enforcement protocol for the biological weapons treaty. Furthermore, the Bush Administration has promised to unilaterally abrogate the ABM Treaty of 1972, which some experts claim is the legal/technical basis of a series of other arms control treaties. President Bush has also rejected the multi-lateral Kyoto Treaty on environmental standards to reduce global warming.

Such rejections of international treaties by Washington highlight the post-Cold War relationship between the community of democracies and international arms control agreements. Within the US both opponents and supporters of these treaties regard arms control treaties as placing real limits on the capabilities of US military forces. They also recognize the de-facto accountability of democracies to each other in regard to treaty commitments involving democratic and non-democratic states. Hence the intensity of the debate before September 11, 2001 within the US and within the broader democratic community about the past, present and future of international arms control agreements, whether bi-lateral or multi-lateral, regional or global.

After September 11, the democracies – in particular the NATO alliance – have quickly moved toward multi-lateral cooperation on a series of issues related to terrorism, including non-proliferation policies designed to keep WMD out of the hands of terrorist organizations.

Two recent works by founding members of the Council for Community of Democracies provide a conceptual context for understanding the relationship of democracies to the current debate on terrorism, international law, arms control and US national security policies.

James Huntley’s 1998 monograph, Pax Democratica: A Strategy for the 21^st Century (St. Martin’s 1998 and paperback edition, 2001) makes a case for more developed multi-lateral cooperation among the democracies on current issues of security policy. He also argues that democratic institutions and democratic cultures have developed and strengthened in the course of practical cooperation on pressing policy questions including proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, ethno-nationalist conflicts, failed states and international terrorism. 

John Ikenberry’s After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint and the Building of Order After Major Wars (Princeton, 2001) examines the relationship between 1) developing stable international institutions and stable security relationships in an anarchic world; and 2) the development of a core community of democracies which sets a rule-of-law agenda for the broader world system, including non-democratic states.

Both Huntley and Ikenberry suggest that in pursuing a narrow concept of "national interest" advocated by "realists" who see the world as fundamentally anarchic, the United States places at risk the unprecedented institutional cooperation that developed among the democracies during their Cold War struggle with the USSR and other non-democratic adversaries. Ikenberry warns that although all US allies presently find the cost of leaving existing alliance institutions prohibitively high, the central role of the US gives Washington the option of destroying such institutions and destabilizing the present international order. In his analysis, the US is best served by "strategic restraint". Ikenbbery argues that the US must provide short-term benefits to its allies in exchange for enduring commitments to the international institutions that bind other states to long-term cooperation with US and other leaders of the allied coalition.

Ambassador Thomas Graham, now President of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security (LAWS), has reached a similar conclusion in a forthcoming volume entitled Disarmament Sketches: Three Decades of Arms Control and International Law (University of Washington Press/IGRSS, 2002). He argues that recent US decisions on arms control issues subvert rule-of-law structures of which the US has been the principal architect - and the principal beneficiary as well. He suggests that these treaties constrain potential adversaries of the US – in particular, medium and small-sized states – from acquiring weapons of mass destruction that might be used in a possible confrontation with the US.

In his view, arms agreements also provide incentives for Russia and China to pursue a non-confrontational approach in their recurring disagreements with the United States. Arms control treaties also codify the status of the US as the military leader of the coalition of democratic allies, despite different readings in Paris. In short, these treaties pre-empt regional arms races and undergird stability at the regional and global levels while preserving the superpower status of the United States.

In different ways, Graham, Huntley and Ikenberry have argued that systematic cooperation among democracies, which honor rule-of-law norms in domestic politics, have very recently transformed some multi-lateral institutions such as NATO and the European Union into quasi-federal/democratic communities. Such democratic communities have in turn been powerful enough to collectively insist on effective implementation of a growing number of international arms control treaties. Examples are the treaty of Intermediate Nuclear Forces and the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. Other possible examples of the power of democracies to insist on rule-of-law norms are NATO/EU efforts to halt violations of human rights in Bosnia, Kosovo and other areas of the Balkans. 

Graham, Huntley and Ikenberry also suggest that a new generation of American "unilateralists" conflate democratic multi-lateral communities such as NATO with the multi-lateral organizations which often allow non-democratic states to thwart long-term US goals. Ambassador Graham warns that American "unilateralists" may soon undercut international arms control treaties which he believes are in the long-term common interests of the United States, its democratic allies and their alliances.

However, Ambassador Graham is by no means in complete agreement with the community-building program advocated by Huntley and Ikenberry.In particular, he objects to NATO enlargement – an exercise in expanded multi-lateralism – because he believes it will disrupt cooperation on arms control between Russia and the United States.The trade-off between NATO enlargement and US-Russia cooperation suggests that possibility that “the best” may become an enemy of “the good.”

Before September 11, 2001, the debate had been joined over multilateralism and unilateralism in American foreign policy and over the future of international arms control agreements. After September 11, the US may have re-committed itself to multi-lateral efforts to deal with the security threats of the 21^st century.

The IGRSS agenda is to address the security issues of proliferation, arms control and regional stability- and terrorism. In particular, IGRSS would like to focus on the mechanisms of security cooperation among the democracies. In the future, IGRSS would like also to address security interaction between democracies and non-democracies, particularly in regard to the problems of terrorism, failed states and regional instability. In the long-term, IGRSS would also like to examine the possible underlying causes for failed states, such as ethno-nationalist conflicts and socio-environmental crises – the so-called issues of "human security." 

But the initial point of departure for IGRSS will be security cooperation among the democracies on international arms control.This may be expanded to focus on international cooperation of the democracies and other states to combat international terrorism.