The Conflict Assessment Forum is an analytic tool for evaluating pre-conflict or conflict conditions and highlighting countries or regions to be targeted by CPA’s preventive action commissions.

This study group will result in a book that examines four major technological revolutions of the past 500 years (Gunpowder, Industrial, Mechanization, and Computerization) and how they transformed warfare and the international balance-of-power. For each military revolution, Mr. Boot will provide dramatic narratives of key conflicts--from the battle of the Spanish Armada to the recent war in Afghanistan--that highlight the effects of changing technologies on strategy. In addition, Mr. Boot applies the lessons of history to current dilemmas, examining crucial questions such as how long America's military advantage will last, and what the United States can do to preserve its hegemony.

This project has been made possible with the generous support from the following:

Smith Richardson Foundation

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Randolph Foundation

Roger and Susan Hertog

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

Carnegie Corporation

John M. Olin Foundation

The Africa program was a co-sponsor of the Corporate Council on Africa-Nigeria Economic Summit Group’s U.S.-Nigeria Investment Conference in Abuja, September 15-17, 2004. The Council’s delegation included Council Senior Fellow Walter Mead, President of the Fund for Peace, Pauline Baker, and the Director. They met with the finance minister, the minister of education, several state governors and local government officials, and others. The Director gave an address on the final day of the investment conference. It indicates the importance, but still tenuousness of economic reform in Nigeria.

The meetings in this project have helped shape what the Council can most usefully do to support the Nigerian reform effort. There is a dedicated and talented reform team in place in Nigeria, but their impact on other Ministries, the Assembly, and subsequently with State Governors is still quite uncertain. There is also considerable cynicism in Nigeria about reform.

The project's efforts to develop an integrated political and economic strategy for debt-relief; election reform; and corruption intensified with the visit of the Nigerian Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in March and the Director’s visit to Nigeria later that month.

During the minister’s visit, the Africa program hosted several meetings in New York and Washington. On March 1, Council member and Nigeria Working Group participant, George Soros hosted a dinner at his home for the minister with policymakers, media and business people. The New York Times ran a favorable editorial on Nigeria’s progress around the minister’s visit. At special Council briefing sessions in New York on March 2 and in Washington on March 3, hosted by our Nigeria project, the minister updated Council members and others on the progress to date of the government’s economic reforms.

Growing out of these sessions, there have been significant developments. With Council help, Nigeria has now developed a more specific and effective debt relief strategy. The project is also heavily invested in addressing the need for electoral reform before the 2007 presidential election. The Director participated in a workshop on electoral reform in Nigeria, March 15-17, sponsored by American University and the Yar’Adua Memorial Center. The workshop developed a set of principles for party leaders and a specific set of needed reforms. The Director also was a speaker at the closing session of the workshop. Electoral reform is critical to stability and continuity in Nigeria after 2007 and it is an important step toward a more comprehensive debt relief strategy with creditors worried about post-2007 developments. Also, the project contributes to the development of the terms of reference and bidding requests for a complete audit of the Nigerian oil and gas sector. Once complete, the audit it will put Nigeria at the forefront of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), endorsed at the last G8 meeting.

In 2004, the project received funding from the Ford Foundation and Shell International. The project is currently funded by a grant from Shell International.

The Director works with Equatorial Guinea, another oil-rich country in the region, to develop mechanisms to assure that oil proceeds are utilized for the benefit of the people in that country.

During the 2005-2006 program year, the project will focus on electoral reform by helping in seminars for the National Conference on Political Reform created by President Obasanjo, the Nigerian Parliament, and the Nigerian NGO community. The first of these should be held within three months and the latter two by the end of 2005 or early 2006.

The Director will visit the region several times in during the course of the year, traveling to the Gulf of Guinea and in other trips hosting small brainstorming sessions in the lead up to the 2007 elections in Nigeria in Abuja.

This endowed lecture series was established in 2002, and is dedicated to the memory of Paul C. Warnke (1920-2001), member and former director of the Council on Foreign Relations. The series commemorates his legacy of public service, his friendship to the Council (he was a director and devoted member), and his unique combination of eloquence, intellect, and pragmatism in the cause of peace and America’s values.

Paul Warnke is best known for serving as the chief U.S. negotiator for the 1978 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. He was one of the first government figures to strongly support arms reductions as a means to security, an idea, radical at the time, which gradually gained currency. He also played a pivotal role in bringing about the Vietnam peace negotiations. The Warnke Lecture honors his ideals, courage, intellect and his belief that America’s power brings with it a special responsibility in world affairs.

The lectures alternate between New York and Washington.

This roundtable series explores current issues at the intersection of U.S. foreign policy and private sector activity. Meetings in the past have focused on the possible effects of anti-Americanism in Europe on U.S. brands, the negotiations between the European Union and the United States over genetically modified foods, and the impact of the European Union's satellite navigation system (Galileo) on U.S. strategic interests. The aim of the series is to inform the current debate on those policies important to both corporate executives and government officials, and to provide them with constructive and thoughtful recommendations.

Project Vice-Chair: Charlotte Ku Co-sponsered by ASIL

The Roundtable Series, “Old Rules, New Threats,” is a project on global governance that brings administration officials together with lawyers, professors and policymakers to look at areas in foreign policy and national security where the rules of the road, formal and informal, may or may not need to be adapted, amended, or replaced to address the challenges currently facing the nation.

The roundtable addresses a broad range of security issues, including threats related to force and war, as well as challenges requiring transnational cooperation. Past sessions have explored the administration’s announced doctrine of preemption; humanitarian intervention; military tribunals and unlawful combatants; use of force and the laws of war; and regulating the movement of black and gray market goods, technology, and people. Memos prepared by roundtable speakers and summary reports of the roundtable meetings are posted below. The roundtable, which met six times beginning in November 2002, will reconvene in the fall of 2003.

The Council and ASIL, with the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, will begin the 2003 season with a one-day conference on September 19. The conference will focus on four areas: intervention and weapons proliferation; global climate change; bringing war criminals to justice; and counterterrorism and transnational law enforcement.

This quarterly meetings series brings together major U.S. and foreign policymakers, business leaders, and independent commentators to discuss and debate current issues in international economics, such as global energy markets, tax policy, global demographic change, and securities regulation.

This meeting series is sponsored by the Corporate Program and the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies.

This series invites scholars, policymakers, and leaders to discuss a wide range of issues related to social, political, and economic development, women's empowerment, and education.

In April 2000, the international community renewed its commitment to achieving universal education in the world’s poorest nations by 2015 – the same commitment it had made ten years earlier without noticeable effect. While there has been considerable strategic effort to promote other development priorities that education furthers – health, democracy, etc. – there has been less emphasis on education itself.

The Center for Universal Education seeks to further strategic thinking on how to achieve universal education by producing accessible policy analysis and facilitating ongoing discussions between donor countries, aid organizations and poor nations on the issues critical to promoting basic education in the developing world. The monthly meetings of the roundtable series bring together experts and advocates from academia, the policy community, and government officials both from the United States and foreign countries. Such diversity insures the broadest range of experience and expertise required for achieving the Center’s goals.

The Kennan Roundtable is an on-going series of meetings that focus on the major policy questions posed by changing U.S. relationships with Russia and the former Soviet states of Eurasia. Whether measured by the near-alliance between Presidents Bush and Putin, the establishment of bases in Central Asia, or Ukraine's decision to seek NATO membership, there has been significant enhancement of these relationships since September 11. Understanding their durability and direction is the principal aim.

Meetings examine areas of expanding cooperation, such as Moscow's unfolding energy strategy and the security of sensitive nuclear materials. We will also look at emerging areas of discord. In the case of Russia, these include the tensions associated with its recurrent pressures on Georgia; in the case of Ukraine and Central Asia, the continuing emphasis placed by U.S. policy on democratization and human rights.

This roundtable series brings together key players from the private markets, government, Federal Reserve, IMF, World Bank, and think tanks to discuss pressing policy issues in international economics. The group, which meets monthly, has so far discussed issues such as the impact of terrorism on economic prospects, the outlook for emerging markets, and U.S. trade policy.

This series, convened after the tragic events of September 11th, examines how best to confront the new security threats to U.S. territory. Sessions grapple with the effectiveness of the White House Office of Homeland Security, lessons learned from other White House offices, and how we can ensure necessary coordination between the FBI and CIA and the flow of information to operating agencies such as the INS and Customs.

The U.S. ability to build productive relationships with Islamic states and people will have a direct and important role in stanching the terrorist threat. This roundtable will continue to focus on the following objectives: to determine how the war is affecting American relations with the Middle East and Islamic world; and provide recommendations to policy makers on how to manage unavoidable differences with key regional partners. Questions addressed throughout the year will be:
• Is the Israeli-Palestinian crisis distracting from the war on terrorism?
• What must Washington ask from key regional partners such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and Jordan in the war on terrorism and what should it offer in return?
• Can the United States effectively deter the export of Islamic radicalism, how and at what cost?

This project helps to foster the study of and debate about an American grand strategy for the twenty-first century. The group examines contending visions of order and seeks to promote a more fertile discussion of desirable outcomes and how policymakers can achieve them.

The first book generated by this study group was The End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century, by Charles A. Kupchan, the project director. The study group played a key role in providing feedback on the book during the drafting of the manuscript. The book addresses how the United States can manage peacefully the transition to a world of multiple centers of power.

The current phase of the study group focuses on understanding the sources of stable peace -- how groupings of countries can form lasting partnerships and eliminate geopolitical competition. A book on this topic, along with several articles, will be the main published product. The book will examine a number of historical case studies of rapprochement, security communities and unions, exploring how zones of peace form and when and why they sometimes unravel. The book will draw policy conclusions relevant to preserving current zones of peace -- such as the Atlantic community -- as well as building new ones -- such as in East Asia.

The Contending Paradigms Study Group is made possible through the generosity of John McCloy.

Tremendous controversy swirls around the issue of whether emerging economies would be better off or worse off by embracing the kind of financial market structures that have been developed in the U.S. and other advanced industrial countries during the past two decades or so. This evolution, which we call the “Americanization of Finance” essentially involves the transformation of a financial system centered around traditional commercial banks to a more free-wheeling system organized around open capital markets.

This project seeks to bring together civilian and military experts for frank and in-depth discussions of issues in the areas of current national security and military affairs. The goal is to identify and define key viewpoints and differences for a select community of policy planners and analysts and is geared to serve Council members belonging to the Washington political/military community. As such, it tries to bridge the gap between civilian and military expertise to arrive at a sophisticated examination of current military/national security issues.

Founded in 2000, the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations works to promote a better understanding among policymakers, academic specialists, and the interested public of how economic and political forces interact to influence world affairs. Globalization is fast erasing the boundaries that have traditionally separated economics from foreign policy and national security issues. The growing integration of national economies is increasingly constraining the policy options that government leaders can consider, while government decisions are shaping the pace and course of global economic interactions. It is essential that policymakers and the public have access to rigorous analysis from an independent, nonpartisan source so that they can better comprehend our interconnected world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other governments. The center pursues its aims through:

• Research carried out by Council fellows and adjunct fellows of outstanding merit and expertise in economics and foreign policy, disseminated through books, articles, and other mass media;
• Meetings in New York, Washington, DC, and other select American cities where the world's most important economic policymakers and scholars address critical issues in a discussion or debate format, all involving direct interaction with Council members;
• Sponsorship of roundtables and publications whose aims are to inform and help to set the public foreign-policy agenda in areas in which an economic component is integral;
• Training of the next generation of policymakers, who will require fluency in the workings of markets as well as the mechanics of international relations.

ADVISORY BOARD Mr. Maurice R. Greenberg, Chair Mr. Richard N. Haass, Ex- Officio Ms. Lisa Anderson The Rt. Hon. Lord Browne of Madingley The Honorable Martin S. Feldstein Dr. Stanley Fischer General John R. Galvin, USA (Ret.) The Honorable Carla A. Hills The Honorable Winston Lord Mr. Donald B. Marron Mr. William J. McDonough The Honorable Peter G. Peterson Mr. David Rockefeller The Honorable Robert E. Rubin Mr. Richard E. Salomon The Honorable Brent Scowcroft Dr. Laura D'Andrea Tyson The Honorable Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León