NATO's new agenda examined
Political studies students host prominent conference
VERONICA CARR STAFF
Various students, instructors and visitors from around Canada gathered at the University of Manitoba last week for the 23rd annual Political Studies Students’ Conference (PSSC), entitled NATO’s New Agenda: From Regional to Global Action.
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is an alliance of 26 counties from North America and Europe that was originally designed to promote the stability of the North Atlantic area and safeguard the freedom of its people through political and military means. The treaty was signed in Washington on April 4, 1949.
NATO has helped to end conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo. Today, NATO armed forces are in Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur and Kosovo.
This year’s conference, which took place from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2, included speakers and delegates from Canadian and U.S. universities, the Institute for National Studies, the Department of National Defence, and Ted Whiteside, the head of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Centre at NATO headquarters.
Three questions were asked by Whiteside in his Thursday presentation: what would the UN Charter look like if it wasn’t signed in June of 1945, but after the explosion of Hiroshima; how is NATO going to fix the transatlantic drift caused by Iraq and the WMD issue; and what does the future hold for WMD?
“WMD isn’t something you can just get rid of, it’s like getting rid of knowledge — once you’ve created it you cannot bury or get rid of it,” Whiteside said during his presentation. “WMD are going to be here for a long time, so how do we manage it?”
Other issues discussed surrounding NATO included its post-Cold War transformation and its relation to specific Eastern European countries.
Fadel Ferzli, a third-year political studies student at the U of M, commented that he was very impressed with the speakers he heard.
“This conference really opened my eyes to issues in NATO and I found Whiteside to be especially profound for me to hear,” Ferzli commented.
James Fergusson of the faculty of political studies at the U of M gave the closing remarks of the conference: “If there is one thing I know for sure, it’s that if NATO didn’t exist, we would create it, because it has something for everyone and we need it. It’s been around before me and surely will be long after [me].”
The PSSC has been organized by political studies students at the U of M since 1985.
