The increasing sectarian conflict in Iraq and the rise of Islamist parties like Hamas and Hezbollah have put American efforts to democratize the Middle East on hold and raised doubts among experts and policy makers about whether democracy is compatible with the Muslim faith. But in a campus appearance yesterday afternoon, former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim offered an ardent defense of democracy in the Muslim world, telling a standing-room-only crowd in Bechtel Conference Center that "men and women are born free, even in the Islamic construct."

Alternating between serious and sporting through his two-hour speech, Ibrahim broached many of the issues aggravating relations between Islam and the West, including gender relations, American foreign policy, cultural assimilation in Europe and Pope Benedict XVI's recent comments about Islam. However, he was most outspoken regarding his home country - he was a political prisoner in Malaysia for over four years - and rejected the race - and religious-based affirmative action policies that benefit the Malay majority there.

Returning repeatedly to the topic of Muslim democracy, Ibrahim drew from historical references and personal experiences, citing the democratic regimes of Indonesia and Iran of 1950s.

"There was no debate then whether democracy was compatible with Islam," he said. "Fifty years later, we have our leaders in the Muslim world telling us we're not ready."

The fundamental nature of democracy and human rights is universal, Ibrahim emphasized, adding that problems begin with cultural miscommunication.

"We have to debunk and reject the notion, held by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, that to support democracy and freedom is to support America, "he said. "And it is important for Americans to realize democracy is a value cherished as much by Muslims as it is by Americans."

"Misperceptions are unfortunate," he added, elaborating on his impressions of American culture. "This is a country full of contradictions. The level of sophistication and intellectual flavor is unparalleled. So why must people be so prejudiced? Why is misunderstanding so pervasive? To say that Muslims are entirely anti-America is wrong."

Ibrahim offered scathing criticism of his fellow Muslims for violent reactions to both the publication of caricatures of Mohammad in a Danish newspaper in 2005 and to the more recent comment by Pope Benedict XVI referring to elements of Islam as "evil and inhuman." The cartoon spawned riots killing 139 in Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan, while the Pope's remarks fueled a maelstrom of controversy, including the firebombing of Catholic churches throughout the Middle East and the shooting death of a nun in Somalia.

"There is a right to disagree but no one has the right to cause destruction or destroy life," he said. "No one has the right to call for the banning of newspapers."

Acknowledging that his comments were not necessarily indicative of Islamic public opinion, he said, "This view may not be shared by all Muslims, but I am prepared to confront them."

Ibrahim's penchant for speaking his mind and sticking to his principles has dogged the leader through a career of controversy. As a young Malaysian activist in the 1970s, he was arrested during a student protest and spent 20 months in a detention camp. Following a meteoric political ascent, he was named Deputy Prime Minister in 1993, and many expected that he was Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohammad's chosen successor.

But their relationship turned sour, and in Sept. 1998 Ibrahim was stripped of party membership and incarcerated under charges of corruption and sodomy. The charges were eventually overturned and he was released in Sept. 2004.

Regarding Malaysian politics today, Ibrahim expressed distaste toward his nation's system of bumiputera - a system of economic and social policies designed to favor ethnic Malays.

"I reject affirmative action based on race," he said. "Our policies should benefit the poor and the marginalized."

Finally, he described the need for engagement between the Islamic world and the West, criticizing the "extreme" foreign policy of the United States and its refusal to negotiate with regimes like Hamas.

"That policy is flawed," he said, adding that "to refuse to engage is a recipe for disaster."

The U.S. visit this week by South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun offers yet another opportunity to bemoan the crisis of confidence in our alliance. Anti-American views, particularly among the young, remain widespread in South Korea. On an official level, there are strains over the role of U.S. troops based in Korea and a stark divergence in approaches toward North Korea.

This portrait of a troubled alliance is often contrasted with a supposed golden age in U.S.-Korean relations during the Cold War. But that view obscures a history of sharp disagreement between the two allies. It is a mythical past that stands in the way of repairing our alliance today. In reality, Korean nationalism and American strategic policy goals have often clashed. Differences over North Korea have arisen repeatedly. And anti-Americanism has been a feature of Korean life for decades.

This was true from the earliest postwar days, in a relationship born out of a fateful and poorly considered decision to divide Korea, after decades of Japanese colonial rule, into American and Soviet zones of occupation. Syngman Rhee, South Korea's first leader, was often at odds with his American backers. Washington feared Rhee would provoke a war with the communist North, even after the end of the Korean War.

Relations with Park Chung Hee, who came to power in a military coup in 1961, were even thornier. Park was a fierce Korean nationalist and, according to a close former aide, uncomfortable with Americans. The two countries collided over North Korea policy, economic goals, human rights and democracy.

In the 1970s, South Koreans developed deep doubts about the durability of the alliance, an uneasiness fed by the Vietnam debacle and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea. Park defied U.S. pressure in declaring martial law in 1972, junking the constitution and jailing leading opposition figures. He launched a secret campaign of influence-peddling and bribery of American congressmen to counter U.S. criticism of his policies.

While Park feared abandonment by the United States, North Korea's Kim Il Sung worried that China, after developing ties to Washington, might sell him out. Thus Park, even though he had been the victim of two assassination attempts by North Korea, reached out to Pyongyang. During high-level talks in 1972, there was a remarkable shared belief that the major powers were the obstacle to Korean reunification.

The most alarming sign of an alliance in crisis was Park's dangerous decision to develop nuclear weapons, made in secret in 1971 after Richard Nixon's withdrawal of one of the two American infantry divisions. According to my research, American officials became alarmed over the seriousness of this effort when a young CIA agent provided evidence of a crude design for a nuclear warhead.

In the spring of 1975, my father, the late ambassador Richard Sneider, sent a top-secret cable to Washington calling for an urgent review of the U.S.-South Korean alliance. Korea was "no longer a client state," he wrote, but was "well on its way to middle power status with ambitions for full self-reliance including its own nuclear potential."

Sneider recommended creation of a new partnership, one more akin to our alliances with NATO or Japan. He also pushed for quiet but tough diplomacy to dissuade Park from heading down the nuclear road. That campaign succeeded finally, but not before my father warned Park that the entire security alliance was jeopardized.

Park was assassinated in 1979 by his own intelligence chief, who claimed to have acted at American instigation. The charge was false, but it remains widely believed in Korea. The perilous state of our alliance reached a peak with the Kwangju uprising against military rule the following year, when hundreds of Koreans were killed by troops deployed with the alleged acquiescence of the United States.

Dispelling the myth of the previous golden era in U.S.-Korean relations does not mean that our relations lacked a foundation of shared interest or that the difficulties we face today are not serious. The gap over how to handle the threat from the North is certainly wider and more evident than in the past. And the democratization of South Korea makes our differences visible and harder to manage.

As policymakers from both countries meet this week, they need to take a deep breath and remember that our alliance survived tremendous stresses in the past. The task before us is not to focus on our divergence but to pick up the challenge left unmet 30 years ago -- to define the basis for a long-term relationship that is durable and reciprocal and that finally sheds the shackles of dependency.

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University has concluded its second year of Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development. This year's fellows - 26 outstanding civic, political, and economic leaders from 21 countries in transition - were selected from more than 800 applications.

The summer fellows program brought leaders from important, transitioning countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, China, and Russia to Stanford for three weeks (this year, July 31 to August 18). The new summer fellows included presidential advisers, prominent journalists, key figures in human rights and democracy movements, academics, and representatives of international governmental and non-governmental organizations. The fellows participated in morning seminars with leading Stanford faculty, including CDDRL director Michael A. McFaul, Kathryn Stoner, Larry Diamond, Avner Greif, Erik Jensen, and Stanford President Emeritus Gerhard Casper. In the afternoons, fellows attended talks by keynote speakers and led class sessions themselves, sharing insight into how reform progressed (or failed to progress) in their home countries and exchanging ideas for positive change. This year's keynote speakers included Carl Gershman, the president of the National Endowment for Democracy; Joan Blades, co-founder of MoveOn.org; Marc Pomar, president of the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX); and Judge Pamela Rymer, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) seeks to promote innovative and practical research to assist transitioning countries design and implement policies that will foster democracy, promote balanced and sustainable growth, and advance the rule of law. It supports specialized teaching, training, and outreach to assist countries struggling with political, economic, and judicial reform, constitutional design, economic performance and corruption.

Iran has climbed to No. 1 on the Washington crisis hit parade. The question of how to stop Iran's nuclear program has unleashed a torrent of punditry. Advocates of diplomacy and a military strike spar on television and in op-ed pages.

Iran's nuclear ambitions deserve our attention. But even by the most alarmist estimates, Iran is years away from being able to build a nuclear warhead.

Meanwhile, over in Northeast Asia, North Korea now has enough fissile material for five to seven weapons and is quietly churning out enough plutonium to build at least one warhead a year, according to rough intelligence estimates. More ominously, work is moving ahead on a new reactor that could potentially produce enough separated plutonium for up to 10 weapons a year.

Somehow this danger prompts no sense of urgency in Washington. After a promising breakthrough last September, the six-party talks to halt the program have lapsed into a stalemate that is close to total collapse.

The Bush administration seems unconcerned. Diplomacy has ground to a halt. The North Koreans refuse to return to the six-party talks. The White House has barred its chief negotiator from talking directly with them, despite Pyongyang's desire to meet and the urging of our six-party partners.

Administration officials have recently floated a report that they are considering a new initiative to negotiate a peace treaty with North Korea. This is a smoke-screen to conceal an empty North Korea policy. According to administration officials, the peace treaty idea has been kicking around for months without going anywhere. South Korean officials tell me that they have been waiting, so far in vain, for any serious detailed discussion of this proposal.

It is the president himself who opposes direct negotiations with Pyongyang, over anything, including a peace treaty. He sees direct talks with North Korea or Iran as an act of weakness. "Somehow,'' he said last month, "the world ends up turning the tables on us.''

In reality, the administration is content to pursue a strategy of going after North Korean counterfeit currency and production of amphetamines and cigarettes, hoping to cut off the flow of funds from these activities. According to administration officials, Under Secretary of State Robert Joseph, the driving force behind this policy, gleefully talks about ``turning out the lights'' in Pyongyang.

Administration officials claim they are drying up slush funds that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il uses to buy the loyalty of his subordinates. Some even suggest this could trigger a coup against Kim, with the Chinese pulling the strings.

But American intelligence experts who monitor North Korea closely see little evidence to support the conclusion that North Korea is being brought to its knees. Even if the measures are drawing blood, it is self-delusional to believe that this will bring down a regime that has already proven it is willing to starve its own population to stay in power.

The administration seems intent as well on pressing China and South Korea to curb their trade and investment with the North. The administration's special envoy on human rights in North Korea, Jay Lefkowitz, seems to spend most of his time attacking the South for setting up an industrial park in Kaesong in the North. He portrays it as exploiting slave labor. The South Koreans defend it as a vehicle to bring capitalism into the communist North.

The Bush administration's combination of attempted coercion and diplomatic freeze has only two visible effects so far.

First, it lends credence to North Korean claims that the United States, contrary to the joint statement issued last September, is still intent on overthrowing their regime.

Second, it undermines gains made by allowing chief envoy Christopher Hill to hold direct talks with his North Korean counterparts. That demonstrated a flexibility and confidence that disarmed critics, particularly in South Korea, and isolated the North. It strengthened coordination with China and South Korea, the two players with the most leverage over the North.

Now officials in both those capitals again question American readiness to seriously negotiate. Beijing and Seoul are even more convinced that pushing market reforms is the only route to bring the North to give up its nuclear option. Next month former South Korean President Kim Dae Jung will revisit his historic summit with the North Korean leader in 2000.

This growing gap with our allies and partners is deadly. Even if we wanted to opt for coercion, the United States can't do so alone. For that reason, it is urgent that the United States regains the diplomatic upper hand.