The Balkans: Regional Trauma, Structural Context, and Great Power Rivalries

None of the security caps imposed on the Balkans since 1878 has held. Will the current one be any different?

On Wednesday, April 18, 2018, Fletcher Initiative on Religion, Law and Diplomacy was pleased to welcome back Fletcher PhD Dr. David Kanin to discuss this question, as well as the intersection of jihadism, Russia, China, and the US in the Balkans.

David B. Kanin is an Adjunct Lecturer at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, and Analytic Director with Centra Technology.  In 2010 he retired as a senior analyst after a 31- year career with the Central Intelligence Agency.  He spent much of his last decade at the Agency as founding member of the Red Cell, an alternative analysis and brainstorming group.  Dr. Kanin’s responsibilities included challenging Agency judgments on topics worldwide and presenting alternative worldviews to senior policymakers.  From 2007-2009, Dr. Kanin served as Director of Long-Range Identity Studies on the National intelligence Council.  He served as senior political analyst on the Director of Intelligence’s Interagency Balkan Task Force during the wars that followed the collapse of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.  From 1993-1996 he was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Europe, in which capacity he managed the production of National Intelligence Estimates and other Community products on Balkan and wider European issues.  Before then Dr. Kanin worked as an analyst on European security issues, Yugoslavia, North Korea, and counterintelligence.  He was a member of the US delegation to the Madrid Review conference of the conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1981 and the Rambouillet peace talks on Kosovo in 1999.  Dr. Kanin was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.  

This event was co-hosted by the Fletcher Eurasia Club.