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George Shultz Discusses Current Issues

George Shultz George Shultz (center), former secretary of state, briefed a small group of government officials and policy experts on recent international developments at a U.S. Institute of Peace meeting on October 1. Shultz is honorary chair of the Institute?s Capital Campaign Committee, which is gearing up to raise $50 million for the Institute?s permanent home on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Flanking Shultz are board chairman Chester A. Crocker (left) and President Richard H. Solomon.

The Institute Welcomes Sonenshine

George Shultz
The Institute recently welcomed Tara Sonenshine as senior adviser to president Richard H. Solomon. She will focus on projects related to programmatic outreach and growth, as well as the role of journalists and news media in international affairs. Previously, Sonenshine served as special adviser to National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. She has served in various White House capacities, including transition director for the National Security Council (NSC). In that position, she was responsible for coordinating an interagency process to review foreign policy goals and priorities for the Clinton administration?s second term. Before that, Sonenshine served as special assistant to President Clinton and deputy director of communications for the NSC (1994?95). She spent most of the past year at the Brookings Institution studying foreign policy and communications.

Sonenshine?s career began in broadcast journalism in 1982 at ABC News in New York, where she served as assistant to the vice president of news. She went on to become editorial producer of ABC News Nightline, where she worked for over a decade. She was also off-air reporter at the Pentagon for ABC?s World News Tonight. During her tenure at ABC News, Sonenshine earned ten News Emmy Awards for coverage of China, Iran, the Philippines, and South Africa. She is also the winner of the Columbia-DuPont Award for coverage of the Los Angeles riots. A former contributing editor for Newsweek magazine, Sonenshine is the author of numerous articles on foreign affairs published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, and Newsday. She holds a B.A. in political science from Tufts University.

Patrick Cronin, director of the Institute?s Research and Studies Program, published a review of recent books on peacekeeping in the Summer-Fall 1998 issue of the SAIS Review. He also edited a book on U.S.-Japan relations entitled The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Past, Present, and Future, forthcoming from the Council on Foreign Relations in December. In July, Cronin lectured for a week at Fudan University in Shanghai, which hosts an annual workshop of security experts from China?s leading policy and educational centers. In August, he lectured on ?The United States and the Future of Asian Security? and ?Preserving Stability on the Korean Peninsula? at a conference of senior U.S. government officials in Maryland.

At the request of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Jeffrey Helsing, program officer in the Education and Training Program, organized two panel discussions for the association?s annual meeting in Boston in September. Pamela Aall, acting director of the Education and Training Program, chaired the first session, which was based on case studies of the mediation of violent international conflicts. Three of the panelists were academics who have been intimately involved in significant mediation efforts: Andrea Bartoli of Columbia University and San Egidio, Ian Townsend-Gault of the University of British Columbia, and Michael Salla of American University. In addition, former fellow Fen Osler Hampson presented a theoretical overview of multiparty mediation in international conflicts. The second panel, chaired by Helsing, focused on ?The Contribution of Conflict Studies to International Relations.?

David Little, senior scholar in religion, ethics, and human rights, traveled to Bosnia July 20?31 to attend a day-long meeting of the year-old Inter-Religious Council in Sarajevo. The meeting was attended by religious leaders, deputies from the various communities, representatives of various nongovernmental organizations, and press and TV. He also traveled throughout Bosnia to gather information on the state and future of inter-religious cooperation in the country.

On August 11?15, Little discussed ?Religion and U.S. Foreign Policy? at a conference on ?Freedom of Religion or Belief? in Oslo, Norway, sponsored by the Norwegian government. One objective of the conference was to strengthen the United Nations Office of the Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance. The Norwegian government pledged $1.5 million for the special rapporteur, and other governments may soon follow suit. An ?Oslo Coalition? for the purpose of supporting and publicizing the work of that office was also formed.

The Institute recently welcomed Moo-Hong Moon as a guest scholar for one year in the Research and Studies Program. He formerly was assistant minister of unification in the Republic of Korea. In that capacity, he attended the first two Four Party Talks in Geneva in December 1997 and March 1998. Moon has also served under three South Korean presidents as presidential press secretary. In addition to his own work on Korean peace and reconciliation, he will be assisting program officer Bill Drennan with the Institute?s Korea Reconciliation project.

Bob Schmitt, information systems manager, discussed ?Information as an Instrument of U.S. Statecraft? at the National Defense University September 4.

Lauren Van Metre, program officer in the Research and Studies Program, and Kristine Herrmann, research assistant in the Jennings Randolph Program, served as international election supervisors in the September 12?13 elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Both worked in Republika Srpska?Van Metre in Banja Luka and Herrmann in Zvornik?for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which supervised the elections for both federal and entity-level bodies. At the federal level, people voted for the tripartite presidency and the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the entity level, in the Bosniak-Croat Federation, they voted for the House of Representatives of the Parliament and the Canton Assembly. In Republika Srpska, they voted for president and vice president and the National Assembly.

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