In the old popular song about the rout by Americans at New Orleans during the War of 1812, the British "ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch 'em." Even allowing for patriotic hyperbole, it can hardly be argued that the British extricated themselves with a great deal of dignity, particularly given that another battle in the same war inspired the American national anthem.

The impact of that defeat on the British national psyche is now obscure, but nearly two centuries later, as the Americans and their British allies seek to extricate themselves from Iraq, the story of how a superpower looks for a dignified way out of a messy and often unpopular foreign conflict has become a historical genre of sorts. As the pressure to leave Iraq increases, that genre is receiving new and urgent attention.

And in the shadow of the bleak and often horrific news emerging from Iraq nearly every day, historians and political experts are finding at least a wan hope in those imperfect historical analogies. Even in the absence of a sudden and dramatic shift on the battlefield toward a definitive victory, there may still be a slight opening, as narrow as the eye of a needle, for the United States to slip through and leave Iraq in the near future in a way that will not be remembered as a national embarrassment.

Most of the recent parallels do not seem to offer much encouragement for a confounded superpower that wants to save face as it cuts its losses and returns home. Among them are the wrenching French pullout from Algeria, the ill-fated French and American adventures in Vietnam, the Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan and the disastrous American interventions in Beirut and Somalia.

Still, there are a few stories of inconclusive wars that left the United States in a more dignified position, including the continuing American presence in South Korea and the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. But even those stand in stark contrast to the happier legacy of total victory during World War II.

The highly qualified optimism of these experts about what may still happen in Iraq - let's call it something just this side of hopelessness - has been born of many factors, including greatly reduced expectations of what might constitute not-defeat there. The United States already appears willing to settle - as if it were in a relationship that had gone sour but cannot quite be resolved by a walk out the door, punctuated with a satisfying slam.

Alongside the dampening of hopes, there has also been a fair amount of historical revisionism regarding the darker tales of conflicts past: a considered sense that if the superpowers had made different decisions, things could have turned out more palatably, and that they still might in Iraq.

Maybe not surprisingly, Vietnam is the focus of some of the most interesting revisionism, including some of it immediately relevant to Iraq, where the intensive effort to train Iraqi security forces to defend their own country closely mirrors the "Vietnamization" program in South Vietnam. If Congress had not voted to kill the financing for South Vietnam and its armed forces in 1975, argues Melvin R. Laird in a heavily read article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Saigon might never have fallen.

"Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975," wrote Mr. Laird, who was President Nixon's defense secretary from 1969 to 1973, when the United States pulled its hundreds of thousands of troops out of Vietnam.

In an interview, Mr. Laird conceded that the American departure from Vietnam was not a pretty sight. "Hell, the pictures of them getting in those helicopters were not good pictures," he said, referring to the chaotic evacuation of the American embassy two years after Vietnamization was complete, and a year after Nixon resigned. But on the basis of his what-if about Vietnam, Mr. Laird does not believe that all is lost in Iraq.

"There is a dignified way out, and I think that's the Iraqization of the forces over there," Mr. Laird said, "and I think we're on the right track on that."

Many analysts have disputed the core of that contention, saying that large swaths of the Iraqi security forces are so inept they may never be capable of defending their country against the insurgents without the American military backing them up. But Mr. Laird is not alone in his revisionist take and its potential application to Iraq.

William Stueck, a history professor at the University of Georgia who has written several books on Korea, calls himself a liberal but says he buys Mr. Laird's basic analysis of what went wrong with Vietnamization.

Korea reveals how easy it is to dismiss the effectiveness of local security forces prematurely, Mr. Stueck said. In 1951, Gen. Matthew Ridgeway felt deep frustration when Chinese offensives broke through parts of the line defended by poorly led South Korean troops.

But by the summer of 1952, with intensive training, the South Koreans were fighting more effectively, Mr. Stueck said. "Now, they needed backup" by Americans, he said. By 1972, he said, South Korean troops were responsible for 70 percent of the front line.

Of course, there are enormous differences between Iraq and Korea. Korean society was not riven by troublesome factions, as Iraq's is, and the United States was defending an existing government rather than trying to create one from scratch.

Another intriguing if imperfect lesson can be found in Algeria, said Matthew Connelly, a Columbia University historian. There, by March 1962, the French had pulled out after 130 years of occupation.

That long colonial occupation, and the million European settlers who lived there before the bloody exodus, are major differences with Iraq, Mr. Connelly noted. But there were also striking parallels: the insurgency, which styled its cause as an international jihad, broke down in civil war once the French pulled out; the French, for their part, said theirs was a fight to protect Western civilization against radical Islam.

Like President Bush in Iraq, President Charles de Gaulle probably thought he could settle Algeria in his favor by military means, Dr. Connelly said. In the short run, that turned out to be a grave miscalculation, as the occupation crumbled under the insurgency's viciousness.

Over the long run, though, history treated de Gaulle kindly for reversing course and agreeing to withdraw, Mr. Connelly said. "De Gaulle loses the war but he wins in the realm of history: he gave Algeria its independence," he said. "How you frame defeat, that can sometimes give you a victory."

The Americans in Beirut and the Soviets in Afghanistan are seen, even in the long view, as cases of superpowers paying the price of blundering into a political and social morass they did not understand.

For the Soviets, that mistake was compounded when America outfitted Afghan rebels with Stinger missiles capable of taking down helicopters, nullifying a key Soviet military superiority. "I don't think they had a fig leaf of any kind," said Henry Rowen, a fellow at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford who was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1989 to 1991. "They just left."

In Beirut, the Americans entered to protect what they considered a legitimate Christian-led government and ended up, much as in Iraq, in the middle of a multipronged civil conflict. In October 1983, a suicide attack killed 241 American servicemen at a Marines barracks, and four months after that, with Muslim militias advancing, President Ronald Reagan ordered the remaining marines withdrawn to ships off the coast, simply saying their mission had changed. The episode has been cited by Vice President Dick Cheney as an example of a withdrawal that encouraged Arab militants to think the United States is weak.

Today, even as expectations for Iraq keep slipping, some measure of victory can still be declared even in a less-than-perfect outcome, said Richard Betts, director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia. For example, he said, an Iraqi government that is authoritarian but not totalitarian might have to do.

The key point, he said, is that under those circumstances, the outcome "doesn't look like a disaster even if it doesn't look good."

Faced with the deadly menace posed by transnational terror organizations, the nations of the world must redouble their cooperative efforts. The tasks ahead -- to disrupt terror groups and preempt their attacks -- require intense coordination among a multitude of national intelligence, national law enforcement, and military organizations. Unprecedented cooperation among all of the nuclear powers is needed to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terror groups.

Yet, paradoxically, the two nations that have suffered the worst terror attacks -- the United States and Russia -- are regressing more and more to national strategies. They have been unwilling to make the extra effort to reap the benefits of real international cooperation.

I believe that the United States' strategic vision of the war on terrorism is flawed. I fear it is following the isolationist path of the United States after World War I rather than pursuing the broad international programs it successfully undertook to protect its security interests after World War II.

The terrorists posing the greatest threat to the United States and to Russia are transnational, with cells in many different countries. To support their training and operations, they raise funds in many countries and maintain these in international bank accounts. They use satellite-based television as their principal means of propaganda, the World Wide Web as their principal means of communication and international airlines as their principal means of transportation. Their efforts to get weapons of mass destruction are based on penetrating the weakest security links among the nations possessing these weapons, and their successful guerrilla operations depend on their ability to get support from sympathizers among the more than 1 billion Islamic people around the world.

An international operation is clearly needed to successfully deal with this threat. But the United States is not making full use of other nations and international institutions to dry up the terrorists' funds in international bank accounts, to gain intelligence on their planning for future attacks, to penetrate their cells so that it has a chance of preempting these attacks, to organize all nuclear powers with effective security of their nuclear weapons and fissile material, and to conduct counterinsurgency operations wherever they are needed. Dealing effectively with transnational terror groups that operate with impunity across borders requires an international operation with the full cooperation of allies and partners in Europe and Asia.

This is not "mission impossible." In 1993, the United States was able to get all of the former members of the Warsaw Pact to join up with NATO in forming the Partnership for Peace to cooperate in peacekeeping operations. In 1994, the United States with the full cooperation of Russia was able to negotiate an agreement by which all nuclear weapons were removed from Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kazakhstan and by which substantial improvements were made in the security of nuclear weapons in Russia. In 1995, the United States was able to get an agreement under which NATO took responsibility for the peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, an operation that was believed at the time to be as dangerous and filled with religious and sectarian strife as Iraq today, and it was able to get dozens of non-NATO nations -- notably including Russia -- to join it in that operation.

Securing Russian cooperation required listening to Russian views and making accommodations wherever possible. As U.S. defense secretary, I had to meet with my Russian counterpart four different times before I came to understand how to structure the command in Bosnia in a way acceptable to both Russians and NATO. The general lesson from this example, which is still applicable today, was best expressed by Winston Churchill, who observed during World War II, "The problem with allies is they sometimes have ideas of their own." But in reflecting on that problem, he also said, "The only thing worse than fighting a war with allies is trying to fight a war without allies."

What lessons can we learn from Churchill today? Had the Bush administration understood better the dangers of the post-conflict phase, surely it would have worked harder to get the support of those countries before invading Iraq. In any event, after the war it would have reached out to them and tried to achieve an accommodation that would have allowed their support during the reconstruction phase.

Instead, the administration took the position that any nation that was not with the United States during the war would not have a role in the reconstruction. To compound the problem, the United States did not seek meaningful assistance from the United Nations. Today, in the light of the difficulties experienced in restoring security in Iraq, the administration is reaching out to the United Nations and requesting that it play a major role in the political reconstitution of Iraq, but it is still not working effectively with the governments of France, Germany and Russia.

Just as the United States erred in believing that it did not need more international support in Iraq, so did the Russian government err in believing that it did not need more international support as it reconstituted its government after the Soviet era. The Putin administration believed -- correctly -- that it could turn around the Russian economy without significant assistance from other countries, and it believed that it could deal most effectively with its terrorist threat without interference from other countries. It also apparently believed that moving toward a level of democracy conflicted with the controls necessary for economic recovery and for fighting its terror war. So today we see a Russia that has enjoyed a healthy 7 percent growth rate each of these past five years, but has stopped -- indeed reversed -- its move towards becoming a liberal democracy. This reversal over the long term will have profoundly negative consequences for the Russian economy and for the Russian people, and unquestionably it is setting Russia on a course that will alienate it both from the United States and the European Union.

Both the Bush administration and the Putin administration have apparently made the decision that they can achieve their goals without broad international support. Both governments have erred in that judgment. But it is not too late to correct the judgment, and I fervently hope that both of governments will do so. The most important step in that process is reviving cooperation between the United States and Russia.

October 12th will be the first anniversary of the Bali blasts which killed a total of 202 people --mostly foreign tourists. And in a move to show regional defiance against the terrorist attack on Indonesia's holiday island, leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations decided last year to hold their annual meeting in Bali (7 to 8 October). Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, which is already reeling from two devastating bomb blasts in less than a year, the other being Jakarta's JW Marriott Hotel bomb blast, is determined to make this years ASEAN summit significant. As current chair of ASEAN, a role which is rotated alphabetically among the ten nations, Indonesia is well aware that the international community and media will be playing close attention to the outcome of this years ASEAN Bali summit. Which is why the Indonesians, building on Singapore's proposal that ASEAN evolves into an Economic Community by the year 2020, have proposed the creation of an ASEAN Security Community. For an assessment of this proposal, I spoke to Professor Donald K. Emmerson, Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Institute for International Studies. "The idea of a security community is an idea that so far as I know has originated not as a sort of deliberate doctrine of the Indonesian government but rather has been circulated in particular by an academic Rizal Sukma who wrote a paper and was invited to give the paper in New York by the Indonesian mission to the United Nations. "And I think its one of those rather serendipitous cases where an idea that has been circulating if you will in the academic world, on a track three basis if I can use that phrase, has been taken over. And it looks as though depending upon what happens at the summit in Bali, it will become a kind of distinctive contribution that Indonesia would make in the period when Indonesia will be running ASEAN, that is have the chairmanship. And so I think the first thing that needs to be said is as we know from past experience every chair of ASEAN by and large you know asks themselves what can we do that is distinctive. How will our chairmanship be remembered? And I think this is at least initially how Indonesia would like its Chairmanship to be remembered." Professor Emmerson, who is also Director of the Southeast Asia Forum at Stanford feels it does not necessarily follow from this that the Indonesian government has a clear and detailed blueprint for exactly what such a security community would entail. "That this is an idea that is still somewhat vague and properly so. After all the summit has not yet convened. We're still in the phase of position papers being circulated. If this is to become an ASEAN idea as opposed to just an Indonesian idea, then it taking ownership of the idea, ASEAN has to make its contribution because obviously there are ten countries involved, not just one, not just Indonesia. And so in a way, I think its unfair for us to ask too much detail from the host of the summit because after all the whole purpose is to socialize this idea within ASEAN and to get contributions from around the region". As to the reasons why this idea has risen to a fairly high position on the Indonesian agenda for ASEAN, Professor Emmerson feels "what we ought to think of is in more general terms how this could represent a meaningful contribution by Indonesia which has traditionally been identified obviously as the largest and by implication most important country in ASEAN, as a country that sets the tone, well this is the tone they're trying to set and I think it is not's surprising that it should not be a terribly detailed proposal at this early stage". There are existing instruments or mechanisms - one is the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation which basically serves as a foundation. The renouncement of the threat or use of force. Do you think these would be built upon and serve as a foundation for the ASEAN Security Community? "Well certainly such a use of the treaty would bethoroughly compatible with a broad understanding of what a security community might entail. But it is my impression that this idea is should we say at the same time also inward looking. That is to say if we look at it, what is first obvious is that the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which is of course a much larger body, and it is not limited to South East Asia, it includes a variety of governments. That by implication, there is an idea here that the ASEAN Regional Forum is insufficient. That it alone cannot manage if you will the security problems that exist inside South East Asia. And it is certainly the case that the security agenda of the ARF has tended to be dominated by issues in North East Asia rather than in South East Asia. Concerns over the Korean peninsula. The Chinese of course have traditionally shied away from any multi lateral discussion of the Taiwan question which they consider to be a domestic issue. "But nevetheless the involvement of China in the ARF is of critical importance. And needless to say, if we look at the region leaving aside the issue of terrorism, which has risen obviously with particular force since the Bali bombing and then now most recently with the Marriot bombing in Indonesia. But leaving that aside one would have to say that the real security threat come not from the south but conversely from the north. "And so it is entirely plausible that Indonesian policy makers would take stock of the situation inside South East Asia and say we need a venue which is suitable for managing security inside the region. And obviously that would privilige the ASEAN Summit, the members of ASEAN rather than involving outside powers. Indeed one maybe highly speculative and here I admit I'm being extremely speculative - one might even argue that there is a logic here that says that if ASEAN can begin to organize its own house with regards to security now, then it will not have to cede the power to do so to an outsider. Whether that outsider be the United States, China, Japan or some other power". Right, looking at the summary of the Indonesian recommendations, they're proposing the idea of ASEAN Security Community by 2020. They're hoping that this will build on existing ASEAN principles and cooperation. The Indonesians hope to have an ASEAN Centre for Combating Terrorism, ASEAN Peace Keeping Training Centre, and ASEAN Maritime Surveillance Centre. Are these all feasible in the future you think? "I think they are feasible especially if the deadline is as far off as 2020. I think they are entirely feasible. Lets remember that although the idea of ASEAN being a security community is innovative because the language has not been used. If we go all the way back to the birth of ASEAN, we have to understand that there are inside the origins of ASEAN if you will, the DNA of ASEAN, there are concerns for security. The high council that was to meet to resolve inter-mural disputes among members. "The empirical fact that ASEAN's success in defending Thailand as the front line state against the Vietnamese penetration of Cambodia, which represented a signal victory given the outcome of that struggle in which the Vietnamese finally around 1989 pulled their troops back. So there was a kind of an irony at the beginning of ASEAN although it put forward a face of economic cooperation, in fact its real success was precisely in the security realm. And that's another reason why it seems to entirely feasible that some proposals, not too elaborate perhaps and not too likely to run up against the sensitivities associated with national sovereignty, might well be feasible in the future. And that yes indeed, ASEAN could become a security community. Not fully fledged, not like NATO and certainly not like SEATO which was in any case in retrospect a failure. And also not a Deutschian, you know Karl Deutsch - the American professor who really coined the phrase 'security community ' - not that kind of deep security community. But a security community that has its own techniques and instruments for conflict resolution and for conflict prevention. Including this very controversial issue which we face at the moment as to how to fight terrorism in South East Asia. "And once again I want to emphasize that traditionally Indonesian thinking with regard to the security of South East Asia has been very different for example in comparison let's say to the thinking that we associate with the view of South East Asia that tends to characterize Singaporean policy makers. The Indonesians have been much more inclined as the largest country in South East Asia to look at the region and say we don't need outsiders, we don't need a check and balance as used to be the case during the Cold War. "What we need are institutions that are domestic to the region and by implication therefore which Indonesia could influence, that will be effective in solving our problems among ourselves. I think there is a bit of that behind this proposal. And frankly I'm rather encouraged. I will say this that in so far as this proposal implies that South East Asians would take increased responsibility for their own security, including maritime security. I mean what waters on earth are the most pirate infested. We all know the answer. The answer is waters that are Indonesian or at least that border Indonesia. This is a very serious problem. And so quite apart from the issue of terrorists blowing up buildings in the name of Jihad, there are a range of security issues that South East Asians I think can constructively address. And therefore I'm quite encouraged by this proposal and I hope it will be given serious consideration in Bali."

Since the Iron Curtain came crashing down, American and Russian diplomats have been searching for a special relationship between their countries to replace Cold War animosity.

Security matters have not yielded much. On issues such as the expansion of Nato, stabilising Yugoslavia and the war in Chechnya, the two have sought each other's tolerance more than co-operation. Nor have the two nations developed much economic interaction, as a result of Russia's weak institutions and faltering economy. Thus, by default, "energy" has become the new special topic in Russian-American relations.

This enthusiasm is misplaced, however. A collapse of oil prices in the aftermath of an invasion of Iraq may soon lay bare the countries' divergent interests. Russia needs high oil prices to keep its economy afloat, whereas US policy would be largely unaffected by falling energy costs. Moreover, cheerleaders of a new Russian-American oil partnership fail to understand that there is not much the two can do to influence the global energy market or even investment in Russia's oil sector. The focus on oil has also eclipsed another area in which US and Russian common interests could run deeper: nuclear power. Joint efforts to develop new technologies for generating nuclear power and managing nuclear waste could result in a huge payoff for both countries. These issues, which are the keys to keeping nuclear power viable, are formally on the Russian-American political agenda, but little has been done to tap the potential for co -operation. Given Russia's scientific talent and the urgent need to reinvigorate nuclear non-proliferation programmes, a relatively minor commitment of diplomatic and financial resources could deliver significant long-term benefits to the United States.

On the surface, energy co-operation seems a wise choice. Russia is rich in hydrocarbons and the US wants them. Oil and gas account for two-fifths of Russian exports. Last year, Russia reclaimed its status, last held in the late 1980s, as the world's top oil producer. Its oil output this year is expected to top eight million barrels per day and is on track to rise further. Russian oil firms also made their first shipments to US markets last year - some symbolically purchased as part of US efforts to augment its strategic petroleum reserve. In addition, four Russian oil companies are preparing a new, large port in Murmansk as part of a plan to supply more than 10 per cent of total US oil imports within a decade.

Meanwhile, the US remains the world's largest consumer and importer of oil. This year, it will import about 60 per cent of the oil it burns, and the US Energy Information Administration expects foreign dependence will rise to about 70 per cent by 2010, and continue inching upwards thereafter. Although the US economy is much less sensitive to fluctuations in oil prices than it was three decades ago, diversification and stability in world oil markets are a constant worry.

War jitters and political divisions cast a long shadow over the Persian Gulf, source of one-quarter of the world's oil. In Nigeria, the largest African oil exporter, sectarian violence periodically not only interrupts oil operations but also sent Miss World contestants packing last year. A scheme by Latin America's top producer, Venezuela, to pump up its share of world production helped trigger a collapse in world oil prices in the late 1990s and ushered in the leftist government of President Hugo Chavez. Last year, labour strikes aimed at unseating Mr Chavez shut Venezuela's ports and helped raise prices to more than US$ 30 (HK$ 234) a barrel. Next to these players, Russia is a paragon of stability.

The aftermath of a war in Iraq would probably provide a first test for the shallow new Russian-American partnership. Most attention on Russian interests in Iraq has focused on two issues: Iraq's lingering Soviet-era debt, variously measured at US$ 7 billion to US$ 12 billion, and the dominant position of Russian companies in controlling leases for several Iraqi oilfields. Both are red herrings. No company that has signed lease deals with Saddam Hussein's government could believe those rights are secure. Russia's top oil company, Lukoil, knew that when it met Iraqi opposition leaders in an attempt to hedge its bets for possible regime change. (Saddam's discovery of those contacts proved the point: he cancelled, then later reinstated, Lukoil's interests in the massive Western Kurna field.)

Russian officials have pressed the US to guarantee the existing contracts, but officials have wisely demurred. There would be no faster way to confirm Arab suspicions that regime change is merely a cover for taking control of Iraq's oil than by awarding the jewels before a new government is known and seated.

Of course, the impact of a war on world oil supply and price is hard to predict. A long war and a tortuous rebuilding process could deprive the market of Iraqi crude oil (about two million barrels a day, last year). Damage to nearby fields in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia could make oil even more scarce. And already tight inventories and continued troubles in Venezuela could deliver a "perfect storm" of soaring oil prices.

The most plausible scenario, however, is bad news for Russia: a brief war, quickly followed by increased Iraqi exports, along with a clear policy of releasing oil from America's reserves to deter speculators. A more lasting Russian-American energy agenda would focus on subjects beyond the current, fleeting common interest in oil. To find an area in which dialogue can truly make a difference, Russia and the US should look to the subject that occupied much of their effort in the 1990s, but that both sides neglected too quickly: nuclear power.

With the end of the Cold War, the two nations created a multi-billion-dollar programme to sequester Russia's prodigious quantities of fissile material and nuclear technology. The goal was to prevent these "loose nukes" from falling into the hands of terrorists or hostile states.

The Co-operative Threat Reduction programme also included funds to employ Russian scientists through joint research projects and academic exchanges.

Inevitably, it has failed to meet all its goals. In a country where central control has broken down and scientific salaries have evaporated, it is difficult to halt the departure of every nuclear resource. Nor is it surprising that US appropriators have failed to deliver the billions of dollars promised for the collective endeavour. Other priorities have constantly intervened, and Russia's uneven record in complying with arms control agreements has made appropriation of funds a perpetual congressional battle. Various good ideas for reinvigorating the programme have gone without funding and bureaucratic attention - even in the post-September 11 political environment, in which practically any idea for fighting terrorism can get money.

Russia has opened nuclear waste encapsulation and storage facilities near Krasnoyarsk, raising the possibility of creating an international storage site for nuclear waste. This topic has long been taboo, but it is an essential issue to raise if the global nuclear power industry is to move beyond the inefficiencies of small-scale nuclear waste management.

Russia should also be brought into worldwide efforts to design new nuclear reactors. The global nuclear research community, under US leadership, has outlined comprehensive and implementable plans for the next generation of fission reactors. The Russian nuclear programme is one of the world's leaders in handling the materials necessary for new reactor designs. Yet Russia is not currently a member of the US government-led Generation IV International Forum, one of the main vehicles for international co-operation on fission reactors and their fuel cycles. Top US priorities must include integrating Russia into that effort, endorsing Russia's relationships with other key nuclear innovators (such as Japan), and delivering on the promise made at last summer's G8 meeting of leaders of the world's biggest economies - to help Russia secure its nuclear materials.

For opponents of nuclear power, no plan will be acceptable. But the emerging recognition that global warming is a real threat demands that nations develop serious, environmentally friendly energy alternatives. Of all the major options available today, only nuclear power and hydroelectricity offer usable energy with essentially zero emissions of greenhouse gases.

Neither government should be naive about the sustainability of this endeavour. Russia is not an ideal partner because its borders have been a sieve for nuclear know-how and because its nuclear managers are suspected of abetting the outflow. Thus, plans for nuclear waste storage, for example, must ensure that they render the waste a minimal threat for proliferation. The US must also be more mindful of Russian sensitivity to co-operation on matters that, to date, have been military secrets.

Another difficult issue that both nations must confront is Russia's relationship with Iran. A perennial thorn in ties, Russia's nuclear co -operation with officials in Tehran owes much not just to Iranian money but to the complex relationship between the two countries over drilling and export routes for Caspian oil. This link to Iran cannot be wished away, as it is rooted in Russia's very geography. Any sustainable nuclear partnership between the US and Russia must develop a political strategy to handle this reality.

The world, including the US, needs the option of viable nuclear power. Yet Russia's talented scientists and nuclear resources sit idle, ready for action.