Browsing by Subject "peace studies"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Building Bridges Between Cultures in the Nuclear Age: Globalization and the Current World-Wide War
    (2005-08-26) Andregg, Michael M.
    The peace community encourages building bridges between cultures to resolve conflicts and prevent war. Other positive results can be more trade to increase wealth, nation building, and growth of our global civilization by cross-fertilization of ideas and art as well as commerce. The UN asked people of goodwill to consider building bridges during a decade of dialogue among civilizations, rather than engage in destructive clashes. Unfortunately, the current “global war on terrorism” (“GWOT” in American military jargon) highlights some downsides to the building bridges theory. The same mechanisms that move people, money, goods, and information more efficiently can also move murderers, bombs, war plans, and nuclear or biological weapons components. Also, “Globalization” was increasing economic inequalities and tearing up established economies long before the current war. And “cultural hegemony” became a recognizable term long before the “war on terrorism” did. So global tension grows for many reasons. This paper will review these issues and examine three specific cases: South Africa, North and South Korea, and Israel / Palestine to ask whether, on balance, we are moving forward or backward on the road to peace and global harmony. One case appears a clear success, another a failure, and the third remains to be determined.
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    Engaging Intelligence Agencies to Support Sustainable Peace and Development in Failed States
    (Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, 2003-11-07) Andregg, Michael M.
    Relations between the peace community and official intelligence agencies have never been great. Sometimes they are awful. Natural antipathies can get worse in war zones, where peace activists are generally interested in ending the conflict while intelligence agencies are focused on winning it. Nevertheless there is room for real progress if a common ground can be established that enables collaboration on constructive goals. The emergence of “failed states” as an exceptional national security problem has opened a window of opportunity for cultivating that kind of constructive collaboration. One of the most central objectives should be infusing the concept of sustainable development as a national security goal throughout the ‘thinking organs’ of the nation-states, their intelligence agencies. This correlates internationally with the progressive strategy of some local police forces called “community policing.” I have spent over twenty years sponsoring various kinds of collaborative education involving peace and military groups, and in recent years intelligence agencies. It is a delicate business, because not ALL differences of worldview and goals are bridgeable. But when the right people are involved, and the topics are truly within the domain of shared goals, many good results can be obtained including one ultimate goal of cultivating military officers and intelligence analysts who genuinely understand and share some of the peace movement’s longer term and generally more global goals. One example is a panel I am sponsoring next spring at the annual International Studies Association conference in Montreal, Canada. That includes three representatives of a Human Security project headquartered at the University of Hiroshima, Japan, and three representatives of National Security institutions, specifically West Point, the Defense Intelligence Agency and Britain’s Joint Military Intelligence College. The most general difference between those two terms, “Human Security” and “National Security” is the time frame involved (longer versus shorter) and the domain of concern (broader versus more narrow). If accepted, the paper I would present on this topic would elaborate more fully the predictable problems of such endeavors, solutions that have worked in the past, and the manifold benefits for both peace activists and military or intelligence professionals of such collaborations. In addition to getting some rare but real opportunities to influence both worldview and operations on the other side, the peace community benefits from more detailed and timely access to inside information on military and IC (intelligence community) thinking about contemporary problems. This also helps in many ways to make our efforts to affect real policies effective.
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    Engaging Intelligence Agencies to Support Sustainable Peace and Development in Failed States
    (2003-11) Andregg, Michael M.
    Engaging Intelligence Agencies in Supporting Sustainable Peace and Development in Failed States abstract for the 19th annual conference of the Wisconsin Institute, Nov. 6-8, 2003. Relations between the peace community and official intelligence agencies have never been great. Sometimes they are awful. Natural antipathies can get worse in war zones, where peace activists are generally interested in ending the conflict while intelligence agencies are focused on winning it. Nevertheless there is room for real progress if a common ground can be established that enables collaboration on constructive goals. The emergence of “failed states” as an exceptional national security problem has opened a window of opportunity for cultivating that kind of constructive collaboration. One of the most central objectives should be infusing the concept of sustainable development as a national security goal throughout the ‘thinking organs’ of the nation-states, their intelligence agencies. This correlates internationally with the progressive strategy of some local police forces called “community policing.” I have spent over twenty years sponsoring various kinds of collaborative education involving peace and military groups, and in recent years intelligence agencies. It is a delicate business, because not ALL differences of worldview and goals are bridgeable. But when the right people are involved, and the topics are truly within the domain of shared goals, many good results can be obtained including one ultimate goal of cultivating military officers and intelligence analysts who genuinely understand and share some of the peace movement’s longer term and generally more global goals. One example is a panel I am sponsoring next spring at the annual International Studies Association conference in Montreal, Canada. That includes three representatives of a Human Security project headquartered at the University of Hiroshima, Japan, and three representatives of National Security institutions, specifically West Point, the Defense Intelligence Agency and Britain’s Joint Military Intelligence College. The most general difference between those two terms, “Human Security” and “National Security” is the time frame involved (longer versus shorter) and the domain of concern (broader versus more narrow). If accepted, the paper I would present on this topic would elaborate more fully the predictable problems of such endeavors, solutions that have worked in the past, and the manifold benefits for both peace activists and military or intelligence professionals of such collaborations. In addition to getting some rare but real opportunities to influence both worldview and operations on the other side, the peace community benefits from more detailed and timely access to inside information on military and IC (intelligence community) thinking about contemporary problems. This also helps in many ways to make our efforts to affect real policies effective.
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    Intelligence and Migration: Cases from North America, for Need to Know 6 in Sweden
    (Polish Institute for National Remembrance, sponsor of the annual "Need to Know" conferences on intelligence history, 2016-11-17) Andregg, Michael M.
    The USA and Canada receive migrants from every part of the world. Many are legal immigrants and some are illegal or undocumented immigrants (about 11 million in the USA of a population of about 324 million, or ~ 3.4% of the total US population in 2016). Syrians, North Africans, Afghans and Iraqi refugees are the biggest immigration demographics in Europe and each occur here but in North America other ethnicities predominate, especially Latin Americans and Asians. 21st century terrorism has increased concerns about immigrants, especially undocumented or illegal immigrants. There is a long history of such concerns in North America beginning with Native American fears of the tidal wave of Europeans entering after 1492. What happened to them is one lesson security professionals must consider. The natives were nearly wiped out over a period of centuries, often by direct aggression, but more by disease and exile to harsh and barren lands. That lesson is that if large numbers of immigrants with aggressive birth rates come, they can take over entire continents in just a few centuries. But our vigorous and interesting continent has also been “built by immigrants” who remain very important to national economies today. Immigrant populations of special interest to modern US intelligence services include: Cubans (who enjoy a special immigration status and intelligence significance). Somalians (targeted for recruitment for foreign wars by Al Shabaab and ISIS). Colombians (and other South and Central Americans, of special interest in drug wars). Mexicans (the same except that Mexicans and their descendants are also very involved in domestic US agriculture, construction, health care, and every job description). Chinese (of special national security concern for economic and technical espionage). Poles, Romanians, Ukrainians, Russians, Slovenes, Czech’s, and all Eastern European ethnicities (of special relevance during the ‘Cold War,’ now warming up again). We will survey these ethnic groups with respect to three broader themes: A. National security concerns like counterterrorism and counter proliferation (of WMD). B. The drug wars. C. Economic espionage and cybersecurity concerns (related, but also quite different).
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    Nuclear and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
    (University of St. Thomas, 2004-06-25) Andregg, Michael M.
    Nuclear, and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Michael Andregg. St. Paul, Minnesota. June 25, 2004. Weapons of Mass Destruction (often reduced to WMD) are the most terrible weapons yet invented, but they are often neglected by peace activists because they involve many technical issues (which are hard) a lot of secrecy (which is frustrating) and grossly terrifying consequences (which are scary). But serious students must attend these issues anyway, because neither peace nor justice can be achieved unless we master them. The general term "Weapons of Mass Destruction" conveys the broad concepts that such weapons are: a) extremely destructive, and b) not very "discriminate." For example, a bullet can be aimed to kill or incapacitate one very bad guy with guns who is a threat to a community. A nuclear weapon employed in the same setting will kill every one and most living things for miles around. This does not discriminate between the innocent and dangerous killers. WMD come in four categories ranked here by degree of danger they present: Nuclear, biological, chemical, and a group of exotic and emerging technologies which I will lump under the term "information warfare." Most of this essay will deal with nuclear weapons because of space and time constraints, so we'll go over the others briefly first.