Month: July 2014

Categories
CSS Blog

Mediation Perspectives: Security Arrangements Key to Justice

Photo:Flickr/Stein Ove Korneliussen

Peace processes – and the mediators that shepherd them – increasingly address the legacy of large-scale human rights violations.  They can provide a crucial ‘moment’ for addressing the causes and consequences of an earlier conflict. To this end, peace agreements often include justice provisions: attempts to begin to deal with the past through a range of judicial and non-judicial measures such as amnesties, prosecutions, truth-seeking and reparations. While ‘justice provisions’ such as these are important, the argument here is that security arrangements in peace agreements are as important, if not more so, for accountability. Mediators’ influence on the content of a peace agreement may be limited, but there are still ways in which they can contribute to more effective security arrangements.

Continue reading “Mediation Perspectives: Security Arrangements Key to Justice”

Hacking Defense: Changing How DoD Innovates

The Pentagon, January 2008. Image: Wikimedia Commons

This article was originally published June 23, 2014 by War on the Rocks.

Product innovation in the U.S. Department of Defense follows an implicit rule: “Better, cheaper, faster—pick two.”

Today, the military is simultaneously confronted with declining budgets, skyrocketing system development costs, and a diverse spectrum of rapidly evolving, complex military threats. To mitigate this challenge, the Pentagon should place renewed emphasis on its corporate approach to technology innovation in order to identify and exploit opportunities to do more with less.

The Better Buying Power initiative focuses on DoD’s innovation problem, but to be successful, such efforts must eschew traditional notions of defense system development. From iterative, design-based product development approaches to open, distributed ecosystems of partners and suppliers, the techniques employed by Silicon Valley and the most innovative sectors of the global high-tech economy should inform a new model of defense innovation that enables better, cheaper, and faster outcomes.

Continue reading “Hacking Defense: Changing How DoD Innovates”
Categories
Regional Stability

Are Security and Energy Concerns Moving Turkey and Israel Toward Reconciliation?

German Patriot Missiles in Turkey, courtesy of Medien Bundeswehr/flickr

This article was originally published June 20, 2014 by IPI Global Observatory.

Earlier this month, about 3,000 people marched through the streets of Istanbul in memory of the eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American killed by Israeli Defense Forces when the Mavi Marmara ship, known as the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, tried to break through Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip in May 2010. The incident marked a nadir in Israel and Turkey’s strained relationship in recent years, and neither country’s ambassador has since returned to his former post.

Four years later, a possible reconciliation agreement between these former allies has fueled speculation of a normalization of relations between the two countries. The agreement would entail reparations for the Mavi Marmara victims’ families; a mechanism to rescind all legal claims against Israeli Defense Force officers implicated in the attack; and approval
to facilitate Turkish civilian aid to the Gaza Strip.

Continue reading “Are Security and Energy Concerns Moving Turkey and Israel Toward Reconciliation?”