“The aim of this project is ambitious and urgent: to launch a new reform effort for the global security system in 2009 ... For the global system is in serious trouble. It is simply not capable of solving the challenges of today. You all know the list: terrorism, non-proliferation, climate change, pandemics, failing states ... None can be solved by a single government acting alone.”
      -- Javier Solana, MGI Advisory Group Member

Project Summary >> (PDF)

Ambassador Carlos Pascual is vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Pascual joined Brookings after a 23 year career in the United States Department of State, National Security Council (NSC), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). His immediate previous position was Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization at the United States Department of State. Prior to serving as Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, Mr. Pascual was Coordinator for U.S. Assistance to Europe and Eurasia. From October 2000-August 2003, Mr. Pascual served as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. During his time at the NSC, Mr. Pascual served first as Director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs, and then as Special Assistant to the President and NSC Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. Prior to his work at the NSC, Mr. Pascual held several positions at USAID.

Bruce Jones is a Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Center on International Cooperation (CIC) at New York University and leads research on the evolution of multilateral security institutions and on the UN. In 2003-04, Dr. Jones served as Deputy Research Director for the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. In 2004-05, he served as deputy to the Special Advisor to the Secretary-General, and supported the Assistant-Secretary-General for Strategic Planning on negotiations on security issues during the ‘In Larger Freedom’ reform effort. During this period he also served as Acting Secretary of the Secretary-General’s Policy Committee. From 2002-2004, as Deputy Director of CIC, Dr. Jones undertook research on US and UN security policy, as well as research and evaluations commissioned by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. From 2000-2002, Dr. Jones served as the Chief of Staff to the United Nations' Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. Previously, Dr. Jones was a member of the UN's Advance Mission in Kosovo and of the planning team for the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor. He has been a lecturer at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School and at New York University. He is the author of Evolving Models of Peacekeeping; Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure; of The UN and post-crisis aid: towards a more political economy and several articles on the Middle East, Central Africa, and UN post-conflict, transitional authority, and humanitarian operations.

Stephen J. Stedman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and Freeman Spogli Institute (FSI), and is director of the Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies at Stanford University. In 2003-2004 Professor Stedman was Research Director of the United Nations High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. In 2005 he served as Assistant Secretary General and Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations, with responsibility for working with governments to adopt the Panel’s recommendations on strengthening collective security and for implementing key changes within the United Nations Secretariat, including the creation of a Peacebuilding Support Office, a Counter Terrorism Task Force, and a Policy Committee that acts as a cabinet to the Secretary General. Professor Stedman is a leading expert on civil wars and conflict management. His recent books include Ending Civil Wars, which examines the determinants of successful implementation of peace agreements, and Refugee Manipulation, which studies how warring parties and states attempt to manipulate the international refugee regime.

March 2008 >> (PDF)

Advisory Group Meetings

Managing Global Insecurity (MGI) Advisory Group Meeting
Ditchley Park, February 13-14th
The Managing Global Insecurity (MGI) Project, with the generous support of the Finnish government in partnership with the Ditchley Foundation, held its fourth Advisory Group meeting at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, England on February 13-14th, 2008. The meeting gathered MGI Advisory Group members together with policy-makers from across Europe and around the globe. MGI presented for feedback recommendations for how to strengthen international cooperation across six key threat areas (nuclear proliferation, civil strife and regional conflict, climate change, global poverty, biological terrorism and deadly disease, and terrorism). MGI also outlined initial proposals for necessary institutional reform to promote a strengthened multilateral architecture including an expanded and reconceptualized G8 - a new G16 – to create opportunities for pre-negotiation on global issues and for forging cooperative arrangements between major and emerging powers. Discussion also focused on the role a new U.S. administration could play in shaping the agenda. Discussants emphasized the importance of prioritizing and sequencing MGI’s proposed policy reforms in order to maximize the project’s impact.

MGI Advisory Group Meeting
Singapore, December 9-10
MGI, in partnership with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, held its third Advisory Group meeting in Singapore on December 9-10th, 2007. The session brought MGI Advisory Group members together with regional experts and policy-makers from across Asia to discuss priorities, challenges, and opportunities for a strengthened multilateral security system. In particular, the session focused on international cooperation to address nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament, global climate change, and energy security. Participants also discussed regional security arrangements in Asia. The goal of the session, MGI’s first of a series of international meetings across diverse regions, was to ensure perspectives from Asia are incorporated into MGI’s final recommendations.

MGI Advisory Group Meeting
New York City, October 1
MGI convened its second Advisory Group meeting in New York City on October 1, 2007. The session included the introduction of “responsible sovereignty” as a potential animating principle for a strengthened multilateral security system. Participants discussed how this principle might be applied to design a multilateral response to the threat of global climate change. Advisory Group members also explored how multilateralism could be employed to address the “hard cases,” such as a possible role for the United Nations in Iraq and the need for an effective regional architecture to respond to crises in the Middle East. A lunch panel with Samuel Berger and Thomas Pickering, chaired by Javier Solana, focused on “The U.S. and Multilateralism: Problems and Prospects.” Over 50 PermReps and UN officials were in attendance.

MGI Advisory Group Meeting
Washington, D.C., June 11
On June 11, 2007 the MGI held its first Advisory Group meeting at The Brookings Institution in Washington DC. The session gathered an impressive cross-section of MGI’s U.S. and International Advisory Groups. Participants affirmed that the current international system is not adequate to respond to today’s global security challenges, ranging from climate change and nuclear proliferation to internal conflict and terrorism. While recognizing the ambitiousness of the MGI Project, participants underscored that a comprehensive vision of multilateral reform must be realized to address today's threats.

Additional Consultations

On the margins of the Advisory Group meeting at Ditchley Park, MGI conducted roundtables and consultations in London to engage UK and European stakeholders. Sessions included a meeting with UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband, a workshop on MGI’s climate change recommendations hosted by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a roundtable at the Center for European Reform, and a meeting with the Foreign Policy Staff of the Economist. In addition, MGI conducted a panel at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha where participants discussed priorities for multilateral security reform in the context of the Middle East.

In an effort to continue to forge a constituency and dialogue on the needed U.S. role in a strengthened multilateral system, MGI conducted consultations in Washington D.C. November 27-28, 2007. Sessions held included a workshop hosted by the U.S. Institute of Peace on lessons from other multilateral reform initiatives, a Deputy Chief of Mission Focus Group hosted by the Finnish Embassy, and a roundtable on multilateral approaches to global poverty. Meetings were also held at the U.S. Department of State, the National Security Council, and with Presidential campaign staff. Also in November, MGI met with officials in Paris and London to discuss French and British perspectives on a multilateral reform agenda.

In late October 2007, Stanford University convened a session at Stanford Sierra Conference Center, entitled "New Challenges for International Regimes." The event gathered theorists of international regimes, experts on key international policy issues, and policymakers from governments and international organizations to inform MGI’s recommendations on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, human rights, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and climate change. In August, 2007, Managing Global Insecurity Project Co-Directors gathered at Stanford University for discussion of the MGI manuscript.

On June 12, 2007 in Washington DC, the Embassy of Denmark hosted a MGI Focus Group session with Deputy Chiefs of Mission that included representatives from across Europe, Japan, Brazil, and South Africa. In late June, MGI attended a session at Ditchley Park hosted by International Advisory Group member, Jeremy Greenstock, on the future of the United Nations that gathered a number of UN experts and international policy-makers. On the 29th of March, Australian Ambassador to the UN, Robert Hill, hosted a lunch for MGI and key UN Permanent Representatives and Deputy Permanent Representatives to introduce the project and solicit guidance.

Looking Ahead

Toward Domestic and International Outreach in 2008
Consultations on MGI recommendations and the development of a comprehensive reform agenda will continue throughout 2008, as well as additional focus group sessions with congressional staff, journalists, and UN PermReps and staff. With the completion of the manuscript and its release in late summer 2008, the final component of the project, an ambitious domestic and international outreach effort, will begin in earnest. The MGI team will be in Beijing in late March and consultations will be conducted this spring in Mexico City and Addis Ababa. The Finnish Institute of International Affairs will host an MGI session in Helsinki in May 2008 and MGI's final Advisory Group Meeting will take place this summer in cooperation with the Salzburg Global Seminar.

Ahead of U.S. Presidential elections in November, MGI will launch a U.S. book tour, including releases in Washington DC and New York, as well as at Universities and policy centers across the country. A series of policy briefs and opinion pieces on MGI findings will be distributed to members of congress, the Executive Branch, as well as candidates and their staff. MGI will also target the new UN Secretary General and the Secretariat Staff as an additional audience for institutional reform recommendations. A series of regional launches in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Europe targeting regional policy makers and issue experts will follow.