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Africa's Revolutionary Deficit

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Somalia is once again on the front page--and the news isn't pretty. Since 2003, the country's seaside capital of Mogadishu has served as an arena for a battle of gladiators, pitting U.S.backed warlords against guntoting Islamic revolutionaries. With no capable or legitimate state to counter it, the Union of Islamic Courts emerged victorious last June, only to be felled in December by an enfeebled transitional government, formed in exile and backed by the Ethiopian military. A recent spate of assassinationstyle killings and suicide bombings herald the arrival of a new resistance movement intent on ejecting these foreign forces and the African Union troops now being dispatched to the country. Caught in the midst of this violent morass is Somalia's longsuffering population of 8.5 million, seeking order from whomever can provide it, simply hoping that the bully who comes out on top will care enough to reverse the country's economic collapse.

Somalia may be garnering headlines today, but the country's strife parallels the bloodshed in far too many of Africa's struggling nations.

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Foreign Policy
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A Diplomatic Offensive for Iraq

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While the debate to "surge" or "withdraw" troops continues, Larry Diamond, Coordinator of the Democracy Program at CDDRL, along with Carlos Pascual, writes on the need for a diplomatic strategy to achieve a sustainable peace in Iraq. Diamond asserts that U.S. troops should aim to provide security needed to create an environment to negotiate a peace agreement to end the war and warns that if the parties in Iraq cannot reach a political settlment to reduce the violence and achieve peace, then military force must be redeployed to contain the regional spillover from the conflict.

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Policy Briefs
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The Brookings Institution
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Larry Diamond

Explaining Democratic Survival Globally (1946-2002) - Institutional and Non-institutional Causes

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This research aims at explaining the apparently higher breakdown rate of presidential democracies over parliamentary ones. It shows that the alleged greater negative effect of presidential regimes on democratic breakdown than parliamentary democracies would disappear, not just when military legacy is considered, but also when the effectiveness or power of legislatures is taken into account.

Speaker Bio

Ming Sing is Associate Professor at the Department of Public and Social Administration, City University of Hong Kong. He is a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego (2006-07).

His current research interests are comparing political culture in Asia and institutional engineering in the world. He joined the Asiabarometer Survey Team in 2006 exploring political culture of all Asian societies in relation to democracy He has been doing research on institutional and non-institutional factors shaping global democratic breakdown longitudinally.

He has published on various aspects of democratization in Hong Kong and is the author and editor of three books: Hong Kong's Tortuous Democratization: a Comparative Analysis (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), and Hong Kong Government & Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). His third book (University of Hong Kong, 2007) focuses on the institutional engineering and governance problems in Hong Kong. He has also published articles in Government & Opposition, Democratization, East Asia, China Information, Chinese Law & Government, Journal of Contemporary Asia, International Journal of Public Administration and elsewhere.

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Ming Sing Associate Professor, City University of Hong Kong; Visiting Fulbright Scholar, UCSD Speaker
Seminars

Russia's Foreign Policy: The Substance behind the Tough Talk

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Dmitri Trenin is a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment, the deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and chair of its Foreign and Security Policy Program. He has been with the Center since its inception in 1993.

From 1993-1997, Trenin held posts as a senior research fellow at the NATO Defense College in Rome, a visiting professor at the Free University of Brussels and a senior research fellow at the Institute of Europe in Moscow. He served in the Soviet and Russian armed forces from 1972 to 1993, including experience working as a liaison officer in the External Relations Branch of the Group of Soviet Forces Germany and as a staff member of the delegation to the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms talks in Geneva from 1985 to 1991. He also taught at the Defense University in Moscow.

Among the books Trenin authored are Getting Russia Right (2007, forthcoming); Russia's Restless Frontier: The Chechnya Factor in Post-Soviet Russia (2004; with Aleksei V. Malashenko) and The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border Between Geopolitics and Globalization, (2001). He edited, with Steven Miller, The Russian Military: Power and Policy (2006).

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES).

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Philippines Conference Room

Dmitri Trenin Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment and Deputy Director of the Carnegie Endowment Moscow Center Speaker
Seminars

The Future of International Law in an Age of Genocide and Terrorism

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Luis Moreno-Ocampo was unanimously elected by the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on April 21, 2003. Between 1984 and 1992, as a prosecutor in Argentina, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo was involved in precedent-setting prosecutions of top military commanders for mass killings and other large scale human rights abuses.

He was assistant prosecutor in the "Military Junta" trial against Army commanders accused of masterminding the "dirty war," and other cases of human rights violations by the Argentine military. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo was the prosecutor in charge of the extradition from investigation and prosecution of guerrilla leaders and of those responsible for two military rebellions in Argentina. He also took part in the case against Army commanders accused of malpractice during the Malvinas/Falklands war, as well as in dozens of major cases of corruption.

In 1992, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo resigned as Chief Prosecutor of the Federal Criminal Court of Buenos Aires, and established a private law firm, Moreno-Ocampo & Wortman Jofre, which specializes in corruption control programs for large firms and organizations, criminal and human rights law. Until his election as Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo worked as lawyer and as Private Inspector General for large companies. He also took on a number of pro bono activities, among others as legal representative for the victims in the extradition of former Nazi officer Erich Priebke to Italy, the trial of the chief of the Chilean secret police for the murder of General Carlos Prats, and several cases concerning political bribery, journalists' protection and freedom of expression.

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo also worked with various local, regional, and international NGO's. He was the president of Transparency International for Latin America and the Caribbean. The founder and president of Poder Ciudadano, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo also served as member of the Advisory Board of the "Project on Justice in Times of Transition" and "New Tactics on Human Rights."

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo has been a visiting professor at both Stanford University and Harvard University.

Sponsored by the Stanford Law School, the Program on Global Justice, the Forum on Contemporary Europe, the Stanford Film Lab, VPUE, and the Introduction to the Humanities Program.

Building 260, Room 113
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305

Luis Moreno-Ocampo Chief Prosecutor Speaker the International Criminal Court, the Hague
Lectures

Where Mistakes Were Made: The Politics and Psychology of Blame for Iraq

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Andrew Bennett is a professor of government at Georgetown University. He is the co-author, with Alexander George, of Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (MIT, 2005), and the author of Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism 1973-1996 (MIT Press, 1999). Bennett served as a Council on Foreign Relations fellow at the Department of Defense in 1994-1995, and is a former fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University and the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

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CISAC Conference Room

Andrew Bennett Professor, Department of Government Speaker Georgetown University
Seminars

International Law, Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court

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Luis Moreno-Ocampo was unanimously elected by the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on April 21, 2003. Between 1984 and 1992, as a prosecutor in Argentina, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo was involved in precedent-setting prosecutions of top military commanders for mass killings and other large scale human rights abuses.

He was assistant prosecutor in the "Military Junta" trial against Army commanders accused of masterminding the "dirty war," and other cases of human rights violations by the Argentine military. Mr. Moreno-Ocampo was the prosecutor in charge of the extradition from investigation and prosecution of guerrilla leaders and of those responsible for two military rebellions in Argentina. He also took part in the case against Army commanders accused of malpractice during the Malvinas/Falklands war, as well as in dozens of major cases of corruption.

In 1992, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo resigned as Chief Prosecutor of the Federal Criminal Court of Buenos Aires, and established a private law firm, Moreno-Ocampo & Wortman Jofre, which specializes in corruption control programs for large firms and organizations, criminal and human rights law. Until his election as Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo worked as lawyer and as Private Inspector General for large companies. He also took on a number of pro bono activities, among others as legal representative for the victims in the extradition of former Nazi officer Erich Priebke to Italy, the trial of the chief of the Chilean secret police for the murder of General Carlos Prats, and several cases concerning political bribery, journalists' protection and freedom of expression.

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo also worked with various local, regional, and international NGO's. He was the president of Transparency International for Latin America and the Caribbean. The founder and president of Poder Ciudadano, Mr. Moreno-Ocampo also served as member of the Advisory Board of the "Project on Justice in Times of Transition" and "New Tactics on Human Rights."

Mr. Moreno-Ocampo has been a visiting professor at both Stanford University and Harvard University.

Sponsored by the Stanford Law School, the Program on Global Justice, the Forum on Contemporary Europe, the Stanford Film Lab, VPUE, and the Introduction to the Humanities Program.

Faculty Lounge
Stanford Law School
Stanford University
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305

Luis Moreno-Ocampo Chief Prosecutor Speaker the International Criminal Court, the Hague
Lectures

Taiwan's Current Political Dilemma and the Prospects of the Cross-Strait relations

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This is a Special Seminar within the CDDRL Taiwan Democracy Program (co-sponsored with Shorenstein APARC).

Tang Fei was the first premier of Republic of China on Taiwan under the current Chen Shui-bian Government in 2000. Before he was appointed premier, Tang served as minister of national defense (1999-2000), chairman (1998) and vice chairman (1995-98) of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander-in-chief of the Air Force. He also served overseas as a deputy military attaché to the United States (1972-75) and as chief military attaché to South Africa (1979-82).

Premier Tang was a visiting scholar with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 2002.

In this special seminar, Premier Tang will address the internal conflicts and external challenges that Taiwan has faced since power transition in 2000.

Philippines Conference Room

Tang Fei Former Premier of Republic of China on Taiwan Speaker
Seminars

Iraq: Comparing Explanations for America's Failure

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Lawrence F. Kaplan is senior editor at The New Republic, where he writes about U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. At this seminar, he will discuss military operations in Iraq, the implications for politics here at home, and competing explanations for what went wrong. On this last point, the speaker hopes to engage in a dialogue with the audience.

Encina Basement Conference Room

Lawrence Kaplan Senior Editor Speaker The New Republic
Seminars

Russian Resilience as a Great Power

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Two political scientists comment on Thomas Ambrosio's The Geopolitics

of Demographic Decay: HIV/AIDS and Russia's Great-Power Status (Post-Soviet

Affairs, 22, 1, January-March 2006).

Ambrosio's three indicators of great-power capacity, Russia's society, military, and economy, are reviewed in terms of his argument about how the projected effects of HIV/AIDS weakens each factor.

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Post-Soviet Affairs
Authors
Michael A. McFaul
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