The Caspian Basin has emerged in recent years as a major focus of international affairs for a combination of political, economic, and geostrategic reasons. In the immediate aftermath of the Soviet Union's dissolution in the early 1990s the region's newly independent states were overshadowed by Russia and attracted little Western and U.S. attention. But over the past several years this region has attracted growing attention from Western policymakers and scholars, as well as the media and the private sector. One of the main reasons for this new focus on the Caspian is its sizable energy reserves. In addition to its potential as a significant oil producer, however, it is also the Caspian's geostrategic location, its diverse mix of ethnic groups, and its unsettled intrastate and interstate conflicts that make it both an enticing and challenging region.

In May 1999, CISAC's Project on Ethnic Conflict and Conflict Management in the Former Soviet Union convened an international conference to examine emerging geopolitical issues of the Caspian Basin region. Scholars, policymakers, and energy executives from around the world gathered to examine the sometimes contending interests, both political and economic, focused on the region, and to seek to develop a comprehensive approach for enhancing political and economic development, mitigating and resolving conflicts, and promoting security and stability in the region. Panelists examined conflicting political and economic approaches to the region and explored strategies for energy development that might facilitate regional economic growth and democratization. They also offered diverse views about whether energy development could promote regional cooperation and integration or was likely to exacerbate existing conflicts.

The conference was part of the Project on Ethnic Conflict's ongoing activities in the Caspian region. Project director Gail Lapidus and others at CISAC have been working closely with scholars and policymakers in the region for a number of years on issues of nationalism, conflict resolution, and regional security. One of the project's central goals has been to encourage and facilitate regional cooperation on a broad range of humanitarian, economic, and political issues. In support of that objective, the project has engaged in joint efforts with key political actors in the region in attempts to develop fresh approaches to conflict management and to construct new regional security arrangements.

The Cox Commission of the U.S. Congress was established in June 1998 to investigate concerns over Chinese acquisition of sensitive U.S. missile and space technology in connection with the launching of U.S. civilian satellites using Chinese launchers on Chinese territory. The investigations were broadened in October 1998 to include alleged security problems and possible espionage at the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories. Some conclusions were released in January 1999 by the White House together with the administration's response. The full declassified (redacted) version of the report of the Cox Commission was released on May 25, 1999.

The U.S. Senate's rejection of the CTBT in October 1999 does not free the United States from the Treaty's norm against nuclear-weapon test explosions. Nor does it mean that the Senate will never approve the Treaty. But it does mean that the final U.S. position on the Treaty almost certainly will not be known until after the next U.S. presidential election in November 2000. Moreover, a debate to build domestic and international support for U.S. adherence to the Treaty's norm could help to produce eventual Senate approval.

The nuclear nonproliferation regime was challenged in 1998 by nuclear-weapon tests in India and Pakistan, by medium-range missile tests in those countries and in Iran and North Korea, by Iraq's defiance of UN Security Council resolutions requiring it to complete its disclosure of efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and by the combination of "loose nukes" and economic collapse in Russia. Additional threats to the regime's vitality came in 1999 from the erosion of American relations with both China and Russia that resulted from NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia--with additional harm to relations with China resulting from U.S. accusations of Chinese nuclear espionage and Taiwan's announcement that it was a state separate from China despite its earlier acceptance of a U.S.-Chinese "one China" agreement. Major threats to the regime also came from the continued stalemate on arms-control treaties in the Russian Duma and the U.S. Senate, from a change in U.S. policy to favor building a national defense against missile attack, and from a Russian decision to develop a new generation of small tactical nuclear weapons for defense against conventional attack.

This paper will discuss the effect some of these developments had on the 1999 Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meeting of Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) parties to prepare for review of the NPT in 2000, and speculate about their likely future effect on the regime.

This article addresses two central questions: First, why have Chinese efforts over the last half century to create a modern air force failed? Second, what lessons have the Chinese gleaned from these failures? Based on their findings, the authors conclude that China's air force has moved away from a strategy based on "active defense" and no first strike, adopting along the way Western notions of the role of air power in combat.

This report outlines the changes in energy supply that will be required over the next fifty years. I describe the ultimate objective of controls on greenhouse-gas emissions and set a stabilization target for greenhouse-gas concentrations that is designed to achieve this objective. I translate this target into limits on the emission of carbon dioxide and the burning of fossil fuels over the next century, and estimate requirements for carbon-free energy supply over this period. Finally, I describe options for achieving this transformation in world energy supply and outline near-term research and development priorities.