Monday, November 30, 2015
Renewed Violence In The Central African Republic: The Roots Of A Political Crisis –United States Institute of Peace
Time: 12:30-2pm
Location: US Institute of Peace2301 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. (map)
Leaders and citizens of the Central African Republic, with the support of the international community, are currently focusing resources and energy on laying the groundwork for a peaceful constitutional referendum and elections in the coming months. But sustained peace in in the country will require longer-term efforts as well, because the recent crisis is rooted in decades of poor governance and persistent insecurity. After the elections, Central African Republic policymakers and the international community will be challenged to lay the groundwork for the new government by addressing the longstanding grievances that contribute to the cyclical nature of the violence in CAR. The panel will bring together some of the foremost experts on the Central African Republic’s recent history of rebellion and instability, including the two most recent coups, international intervention efforts, the country’s political economy, and the ongoing series of United Nations and regional peacekeeping efforts. The experts will draw on their contributions to Making Sense of the Central African Republic, published by Zed Books, to make policy recommendations for the crucial remaining steps in CAR’s political transition and beyond. Pose questions for the panel on Twitter with #CARUSIP.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
3-D Printing The Bomb? The Challenge For Nuclear Nonproliferation –Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Time: 10:30am-12pm
Location: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036 (map)
3-D printing has opened the world to a revolution in manufacturing. But this new technology may enable the most sensitive pieces of a nuclear weapons program to be more easily produced and transferred undetected around the globe. The United States should lead an international effort to prevent a 3-D printing-enabled cascade of nuclear weapons proliferation before it is too late.
Tristan Volpe and Matthew Kroenig will launch their new article, “3-D Printing the Bomb? The Nuclear Nonproliferation Challenge,” and explore how the United States can adopt both top-down and bottom-up strategies to combat this threat to international security. Bruce Goodwin will moderate.
Policing in America –Cato Institute
Time: 9am-5pm
Location: Cato Institute1000 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001 (map)
The highly publicized officer-involved killings of Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and others have prompted renewed discussions about American law enforcement. Police departments face increasing criticism from protesters, the media, and the federal government. President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing published its recommendations earlier this year, but what do they mean for officers and the communities they patrol? Is sweeping reform necessary? With approximately 18,000 police agencies operating in the United States, is such reform even possible? American policing is changing. Emerging technologies provide new methods both for police accountability and surveillance capabilities. Law enforcement scholars and practitioners continue to develop innovative strategies to address crime and disorder. In many cities, police agencies are wrestling with how to increase public safety while respecting the dignity of individuals, particularly in minority communities. An array of law enforcement experts will explore these issues and more at the Cato Institute’s conference “Policing in America.” We hope that you will join us for a lively discussion of the developing changes and looming challenges in American law enforcement policy.
The ISIS Apocalypse– Foreign Policy Research Institute
Time: 11:30am
Location: FPRI1528 Walnut Street Suite 610 (map)
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Launch Of The Final Report Of The Harvard-LSHTM Independent Panel On The Global Response To Ebola –Global Health Council
Location: Center for Strategic and International Studies1616 Rhode Island Ave., NW (map)
In early 2015, the Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) convened an Independent Panel to analyze the major weaknesses in the global health system exposed by the Ebola outbreak, and offer concrete recommendations for reform in several areas: leadership, coordination, and advocacy; international rules; financing; operational response and operational research; and health technology research and development. Please join us for the Washington D.C. rollout of the final report of the Harvard-LSHTM Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola and a discussion of its main recommendations.
Time: 7:30 am
Location: Merion Cricket Club325 Montgomery Avenue (map)
Time: 12:30-2pm
Location: Elliott School of International Affairs1957 E Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20052 (map)
Alongside the rise of new state and transnational mechanisms to aid the enormous numbers of displaced and disinherited victims of mass violence and disaster during the twentieth century, other actors continued a most basic kind of social ordering: carrying out the proper burial of the dead. As warfare became more politicized, the nation-state and global regimes alike tightened controls over living and dead displaced persons. Nonetheless, the longstanding experience of lineages, native-place associations, religious groups, and charities was still necessary to ameliorate such problems. At the conclusion of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), private citizens expended enormous efforts to repatriate the known, lost dead to their original hometowns, or to rebuild community through the rewriting of genealogies. During a time when the central government floundered to meet its political promises, and the conclusion of one conflict hastily gave way to the prolonged mobilization of the Chinese Civil War and Cold War, socio-religious organizations and individuals worked to re-establish moral and cosmic order by emplacing the displaced dead.
Friday, December 4, 2015
What Is The State Of America’s Global Counterterrorism Campaign?– Heritage Foundation
Time: 12-1:30pm
Location: Heritage Foundation214 Massachusetts Ave NE, Washington, D.C. 20002 (map)
In 2011, The Heritage Foundation criticized the Obama Administration’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism as a document that “profoundly misreads the nature of the global transnational threat.” The Obama counterterrorism strategy treated terrorism as a law enforcement problem and relied on a “small footprint” strategy for overseas operations. According to Heritage’s analysis, implementing this counterterrorism strategy would result in a resurgent security threat as dangerous as that shortly after 9/11. Join us as a panel of experts revisits this critique and explores what the results from the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism strategy may imply for the next president.
The Islamic State Vs Al Qaeda : The War Within The Jihadist Movement –New America Foundation
Time: 12:15-1:45pm
Location: New America Foundation740 15th Street NW, Suite 900 Washington, DC 20005 (map)
The rise of the Islamic State and its competition with al-Qaeda has fundamentally reshaped the global jihadist movement. Al-Qaeda, the once-dominant force within the movement, which adopted a strategy focused on fighting the United States in a competition between two actors, has faltered as the Islamic State’s strategy designed for war both with the United States and al-Qaeda has demonstrated results. Rather than competing with the Islamic State’s loud campaign trumpeting its brutality and military success, al-Qaeda has instead sought to avoid attention and rebrand itself as “moderate.” What is the future of the jihadist movement? Whose strategy will succeed – al Qaeda’s or the Islamic State’s? How should the United States analyze and respond to the new environment? In a new policy paper from New America, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and his coauthors explore these questions. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, the co-author of the policy paper, is the CEO of Valens Global, a security consulting firm and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. An adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, his research focuses on the challenges posed by violent non-state actors, with a concentration on al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations. He holds a Ph.D. in world politics from the Catholic University of America and a J.D. from the New York University School of Law. Douglas Ollivant is an ASU Future of War Senior Fellow at New America. He is a managing partner of the strategic consulting firm Mantid International and a contributor to Al-Jazeera America. A retired Army officer, he spent a total of three years deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, both in uniform and as a contractor, and was Director for Iraq at the National Security Council during both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. New America is pleased to welcome Dr. Gartenstein-Ross and Dr. Ollivant for the launch of New America’s new policy paper The Islamic State v. Al Qaeda. Join the conversation online using #ISISvAQ and following @NatSecNAF
The Pandora Report 