Sources of Conflict: Highlights from the Managing Chaos Conference
Peaceworks No. 4
The choice of the term "chaos" could hardly be regarded as a choice beyond controversy. The choice was made in part to acknowledge the debate surrounding the term that surfaced during 1994 and continues apace. Spurred primarily by events in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda (and the international community's less-than-perfect responses to them), this debate centers on the question of whether the forces of order in the world are not in fact being overwhelmed by increasing and increasingly novel forces of disorder.
Identity and Conflict
G. M. Tamás
Samuel P. Huntington
"The Coming Anarchy" and the Nation-State under Siege
Robert Kaplan
Jessica Tuchman Mathews
On November 30 and December 1, 1994, the United States Institute of Peace convened a major conference to address the vexing problem of how to manage post–Cold War international conflict. In an effort to stimulate discussion, the event was titled "Managing Chaos: Coping with International Conflict into the Twenty-First Century."
The choice of the term "chaos" could hardly be regarded as a choice beyond controversy. The choice was made in part to acknowledge the debate surrounding the term that surfaced during 1994 and continues apace. Spurred primarily by events in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda (and the international community's less-than-perfect responses to them), this debate centers on the question of whether the forces of order in the world are not in fact being overwhelmed by increasing and increasingly novel forces of disorder.
Samuel P. Huntington is Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at the Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. In 1977-78, he served as coordinator of security planning for the National Security Council. Huntington's association with Harvard University dates from 1950. He was also associate director of the Institute of Was and Peace Studies at Columbia University from 1959 to 1962.
Robert Kaplan is the author of "The Coming Anarchy," which appeared in Atlantic Monthly, where he is a contributing editor. Kaplan is the author of four books: Surrender or Starve: The Wars Behind the Famine, Soldiers of God: With the Mujahidin in Afghanistan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History, and The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite.
Jessican Tuchman Mathews is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a columnist for the Washington Post. In 1993, she was deputy to the undersecretary of state for global affairs. In 1982-83, Mathews was vice president of the World Resources Institute, a policy research center working on the management of national resources and the environment. Mathews was also the Institute's research director from 1982 to 1988.
G.M. Tamas is a reader in philosophy at the University of Budapest and formerly a member of the Hungarian parliament. He is also director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and, since 1990, vice president of the Hungarian Philosophical Society.
