USIP PeaceWatch - October 1996

Institute People

Lt. Col. Volney James Warner, (left) a career military officer, is the U.S. Army peace fellow in residence at the Institute of Peace for 1996-97. His project focuses on U.S. policy toward intervention with military force. Warner is the special assistant to the U.S. Army chief of staff. He has served in operational units in the United States and in the Federal Republic of Germany, and as operations officer of an armor battalion during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He commanded an infantry battalion in the First Armored Division preparing for deployment to Bosnia, and has served in several senior staff positions, including as a political-military planner in the U.S. Armed Forces Joint Staff. He received his M.B.A. from Harvard and has taught economics and management at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point.

Eileen Babbitt, director of the Education and Training Program, was invited to join the International Negotiation Network (INN) of the Carter Center in Atlanta. The INN is a flexible, informal network of eminent persons, conflict resolution practitioners, and diplomats who work with the Conflict Resolution Program at the Carter Center to coordinate third party assistance, expert analysis and advice, workshops, and other appropriate means to facilitate the constructive prevention or resolution of intra-national conflicts.

An article by board chairman Chester Crocker and former senior fellow Fen Osler Hampson--"Making Peace Settlements Work"--appeared in the fall issue of Foreign Policy.

Joseph Klaits, director of the Jennings Randolph program, attended a conference on "Integration, Regionalism, Minorities: What Is the Link?" held by the Hungarian Institute for International Affairs in Budapest September 6-7. Conferees discussed national minorities in an increasingly integrated and region-focused Europe--both eastern and western--and gave special attention to the minority issues in Central Europe and the Balkans as sources of potential and actual conflict among states of the regions.

Board member Seymour Martin Lipset has been asked by the United Nations Development Program to write an interpretive essay on the results of a public opinion survey that polled over 18,000 individuals in 18 countries of the Americas. Lipset's essay analyzes the implications of the findings for the future of democracy in the region.

In August and September, he attended the annual conventions of the American Political Science Association and the American Sociological Association to respond to panel discussions of his recent book, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, published by W. W. Norton.

Stanley Roth, director of the Research and Studies Program, testified on developments in North Korea at a September meeting of the Subcommittee on East Asia/Pacific Affairs of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. National Public Radio interviewed him in August and September on China and Korea. In September, the Los Angeles Times interviewed him about U.S.-China relations. In August, he appeared twice on CNN International to discuss issues relating to Indonesia and the Philippines.

Tim Sisk, program officer in the Grant Program, traveled for two weeks in South Africa in July to meet with NGOs involved in conflict resolution training, including Institute grantees and former fellows. In August, he presented a paper on power sharing in ethnic conflicts at a meeting organized by the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict in Moscow. In September, Sisk presented a paper on power sharing and preventive action at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.

With former Institute fellow Donald Rothchild, Sisk co-authored a chapter on U.S. foreign policy and conflict management in Africa, which appears in Eagle Adrift: U.S. Foreign Policy at the End of the Century, edited by Robert J. Lieber and published by Longman in September.

Scott Snyder, program officer in the Research and Studies Program, discussed South Korean-American relations at a two-day Council on Foreign Relations workshop in New York July 16-17. He contributed a chapter on South Korean security to the Asian Security Handbook: An Assessment of Political Security Issues in the Asia-Pacific Region, published recently by M. E. Sharpe. © 1996 United States Institute of Peace