With more than a million dollars in committed new funding, CDDRL’s Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development marches into its fifth year with a sustainable future and also a new name: the Draper Hills Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development. The program’s new name recognizes the generous commitments of William Draper III and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills to fund the program and enable it to continue its bold vision.

William Draper made his gift to honor his father, Maj. Gen. William H. Draper, Jr.; Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills made her gift in honor of her late husband, Reuben W. Hills.

Maj. Gen. William H. Draper, Jr. was a chief advisor to Gen. George Marshall and chief diplomatic administrator of the Marshall Plan in Germany, where he worked to rebuild the German economy and sort out issues related to industry and agriculture, including decartelization, trade and commerce, price control, reparations and the restitution of assets removed from invaded countries. After the war he became the first under secretary of the Army and later, a special representative of President Harry Truman, for whom he coordinated American military, political, and economic policies in Europe and effectively served as the first ambassador to NATO.

Reuben W. Hills was a San Francisco philanthropist and president and chairman of the board of Hills Bros. Coffee. He was also vice president and director of the San Francisco Opera and trustee of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. In 1992 he and his wife Ingrid started a nonprofit organization, The Hills Project, to connect inner-city youth with visual and performing arts. The project reaches out to 3,300 children in San Francisco and Berkeley schools, offering field trips to the San Francisco Ballet, museums, artists’ studios, and other cultural institutions as well as visits by artists.

The funding commitments from William Draper III and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills generously secure the future of the Draper Hills Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development program, which brings a group of approximately 30 civic, political, and economic leaders from transitioning countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, China, and Russia to Stanford every summer. Draper Hills Summer Fellows are former prime ministers and presidential advisors, senators and attorneys general, journalists and civic activists, academics and members of the international development community. Since the program was introduced in 2005, it has typically received more than 800 applications each year.

The generous support of Bill Draper and Ingrid von Mangoldt Hills enables CDDRL to continue to create a community of democratic activists dedicated to building new linkages among democracy, sustainable development, good governance, and the rule of law in transitioning nations.

Just look at the number of construction cranes around you and you’ll immediately know that you have landed in a petrostate. What’s special about the Caspian oil giant Kazakhstan is the fact that there are two types of cranes—the idle ones and the busy ones. This becomes nowhere more apparent than in the country’s new capital Astana. The idle cranes stand on private construction sites and the busy ones on public construction sites.

Kazakhstan is probably one of the countries worst hit by the global credit crunch. After years of aggressive borrowing on international markets Kazakh banks have had to pull the plug on many domestic projects after their own cash stream evaporated and it became clear that they would need to settle most of the $14 billion in scheduled principal repayments on external debt this year. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been warning about the unsustainability of the ever growing debt ratio for the past two years, but to little avail. Growth rates above 9 percent for the past seven years and great future prospects thanks to ever expanding oil production earned Kazakhstan a credit rating of “stable” from Standard & Poor's rating agency. Now, the bubble burst, the S&P rating turned “negative”, and the private cranes stopped.

The busy cranes—in contrast—run 24/7. No effort is spared to make sure that the fancy new government building, the pavement, the flower-adorned square will be finished in time for the highlight of the year: the birthday of both the President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the capital on July 6 (their 68^th and 10^th, respectively). This simultaneity is no coincident. Astana is largely Nazarbayev’s creation. It was him who anointed the city in the middle-of-nowhere the new capital of the young Republic, who chose its no-nonsense name (“Astana” literally means “capital”), and who caused its population to triple. The upcoming celebrations almost turned into a Nursultan & Nursultan party. If Mr. Sat Tokpakbaye and his fellow parliamentarians had gotten their way, the capital would yet again have undergone a name change—this time to honor its creator more explicitly by endowing it with the President’s first name (there is already an oil field named after him). But out in his modesty, the President declined. With his proposal Mr. Tokpakbayev, achieved the near-impossible: to distinguish himself by loyalty in a Parliament whose members all come from the same Nur-Otan party.

The idle and the busy cranes both stand for different answers to petrostates’ most burning policy question—how to best use the ballooning governmental revenues from the thriving oil and gas sector. Save or spend?—is the 500 billion dollar question (to take the value OPEC earned from net oil export in 2007). Kazakhstan, like 23 other oil and gas producing countries, followed the IMF’s advice and established an oil fund with the goal of sterilizing, stabilizing, and saving governmental oil revenues. The so-called National Fund of the Republic of Kazakhstan (NFRK) has accumulated more than $26 billion in the eight years since inception, and the total value of all oil-related funds around the world is estimated to surpass the astronomical sum of $2.300 trillion. While the theoretical logic underlying the creation of oil funds is compelling, their actual track record in achieving macroeconomic stability and fair intergenerational income distribution is more mixed. As a number of recent studies demonstrate (e.g. Shabsigh and Ilahi 2007; Usui 2007), oil funds are no substitute for the strengthening of all institutions involved in the revenue management and budgeting process. Strong expenditure and deficit control mechanisms are indispensable because such richly endowed funds make it easier for the government to borrow money on international financial markets whereby the fund acts--explicitly or implicitly—as a collateral, which in turn undermines the fiscal prudence that the fund was meant to ensure in the first place. More indirectly, the accumulation of large sums of money creates a moral hazard problem also with respect to private sector spending. The temptation is huge for private (and state-owned) companies to take overly risky decisions in the hope that the oil fund will bail them out in case their speculations turn sour. When oil fund assets correspond to more than a quarter of the country’s GDP—as it is the case in Kazakhstan—this temptation is hard to resist. Recent demands by Kazakh banks to dip into the NFRK for alleviating their liquidity problems provide just one case in point, and the national oil company KazMunaiGas may soon follow suit.

However, spending, rather than saving, does not provide a panacea either and is fraught with its very own set of problems.

First, governments of oil rich countries faces a challenge similar to that of rich parents who want to raise their children to become productive members of society. As the US billionaire investor Warren Buffet was once quoted saying: “a very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.” Political scientists refer to this concern as the risk of a growing “rentier mentality” (Beblawi 1990), i.e. the tendency of citizens in petrostates to expect the government to solve all their problems rather than relying on their own initiative. The resulting societal dependency may actually suit governments very well since who will bite the hand that feeds him/her? Innovation and entrepreneurship are undermined and undemocratic structures perpetuated. Second, pro-cyclical spending of highly volatile oil revenues results in a series of negative macroeconomic consequences ranging from soaring inflation, exchange rate appreciation, and a further accentuation of the crowding-out of private investments. Finally, a massive explosion in government revenues (e.g. the newly introduced oil export tariff alone is expected to add another $1.5 billion per year) makes it close to impossible for the governmental apparatus to identify and supervise a sufficient number of new spending projects with a satisfactory social return. The floodgates are wide open to white elephant projects, mismanagement, and corruption.

The Kazakh government is acutely aware of this dilemma. Like all other oil producing nations around the world, Kazakhstan is desperately trying to navigate safely between Scylla (saving) and Charybdis (saving). As a possible solution to this dilemma a number of scholars and activists are now proposing the direct distribution of oil revenues to all citizens (and thus the ultimate owners of a country’s natural resource endowment), thereby empowering them to decide for themselves how they want to spend the monetized share of their subsoil assets.

The only real world examples of direct distribution arrangements can be found in the US state Alaska and the Canadian province Alberta. This option has also been proposed for Nigeria (Sala-i-Martin and Subramanian 2003), Iraq (Birdsall and Subramanian 2003; Palley 2003; Sandbu 2006), and Kazakhstan (Makmutova 2008).

While direct distribution arrangements may mitigate some of the problems highlighted above, they have to be greeted with some degree of caution. High levels of corruption and patronage-driven politics not only undermine the effectiveness of top-down development projects but can also jeopardize the fair distribution of oil revenues. Furthermore, even if every entitled citizen does receive his or her share of oil revenues, the long-term impact on a country’s economic development may be small or possibly even negative because of increased inflation and spending on unproductive goods and services imported from abroad. These considerations are not of particular relevance in the two existing examples of direct distribution of oil revenues. Alaska and Alberta both enjoy a relatively good record in fighting corruption and in observing the rule of law. They are both part of a larger, highly developed economy which helps to mitigate inflationary pressure and the risk that citizens will spend most of their additional income on goods imported from abroad. But the picture looks very different in most other oil dependent countries.

One possibility for addressing the risk that directly distributed oil revenues will be spent unproductively is to combine the direct distribution scheme with certain conditions that are intended to encourage citizens to invest in ways that boost their own productivity. This approach has so far not been discussed in academic or policy circles, but the conditional distribution of oil revenues (CDOR) offers the potentials of marrying the merits of two programs that are generally considered to be successful, namely the direct distribution of oil revenues and conditional cash transfer programs employed throughout the world to fight poverty in a more targeted and bottom-up fashion. A whole range of different design options are compatible with this overarching concept. CDOR schemes do not have to adopt the exclusive pro-poor focus of conditional cash transfer programs. In fact, both in Alaska and in Alberta oil revenues are deliberately distributed in an income-blind manner, staying true to the logic that citizens are entitled to a share of oil revenues in their capacity as the ultimate owners of these resources. Also in contrast to most existing conditional cash transfer programs (e.g. Oportunidades in Mexico), the conditions attached to the direct distribution of oil revenues would probably be primarily linked to the use of these revenues rather than some pre-qualifying behavior (e.g. taking infants to regular health check-ups). Eligible spending areas would be selected based on their potential to maximize productivity gains and could include education, health, energy efficiency, start-up capital for small enterprises. Additional design options worth examining include the saving and pooling of CDOR money, which would allow citizens to realize a medium to larger scale common project within the approved spending priorities. For instance, the most promising strategy for greater productivity in Kazakhstan’s agricultural sector lies in the creation of larger units (co-operatives, publicly traded agricultural complexes), and specific incentives may therefore be built into the CDOR scheme to promote such a move away from subsistence farming.

The conditional distribution of oil revenues under any of these design options presents a promising discussion platform for a new initiative the World Bank announced in April 2008—tentatively labeled EITI++. This initiative is meant to help resource rich countries to “manage and transform their natural resource wealth into long-term economic growth that spreads the benefits more fairly among their people”, by focusing not only on the transfer of oil revenues from companies to governments (as does the “original” Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI) of 2002) but also on the generation, management, and distribution of oil revenues. The transparency mechanism of double disclosure pioneered by EITI could thereby be used to ensure that all citizens receive the share of oil revenues they are entitled to. Transparency could be further enhanced by tools currently developed by the Google Foundation’s Inform & Empower program.

The implementation of the CDOR scheme could build directly upon the experience gained under conditional cash transfer schemes, including the scientific testing of its effectiveness in a randomized experiment setting. The bottom-up development philosophy underlying the conditional distribution of oil revenues ties nicely in with other approaches to strengthen the consumers of public goods and services that have gained currency over the past decade (e.g. vouchers for health and education services).

With this sketch of a conditional distribution of oil revenues scheme in my pocket (and and unconditional love for the kicking baby in my belly) I navigated my way through yet another construction site to see Mr. Kuandyk Bishimbayev, one of Kazakhstan’s young and rising stars (now the head of the so-called “Division of Socio-Economic Monitoring” within the Presidential Administration). During our meeting I got the impression that my enthusiasm for this novel approach to oil revenue management proved contagious, and since my return to Stanford I have rolled out my networking machinery to spread the virus among my academic colleagues. The time is certainly ripe. With oil prices set to remain high for the foreseeable future Kazakhstan and all other petrostates cannot afford to miss this historic opportunity to promote the diversification of their economies and to create the foundation for a future where oil may lose its dominant position to alternative sources of energy.

Interest in democracy, economic development, and the rule of law is clearly on the rise. Just as global attention in 2005 remained riveted on establishing and protecting the fundamentals of democracy in transitioning societies—the parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, the constitutional vote in Iraq, the threat to civil liberties in Russia—these issues took on increasing prominence on the Stanford campus, for policymakers and students alike.

STANFORD SUMMER FELLOWS PROGRAM

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), the Freeman Spogli Institute’s newest research center, hosted its first annual Summer Fellows Program on campus in August. This innovative program is designed to help emerging and established leaders of transitioning countries in their efforts to create the fundamental institutions of democracy, fight the pernicious problem of corruption, improve governance at all levels of society, and strengthen prospects for sustainable economic development. In contrast to other programs of democracy promotion, which seek to transfer ready-made models to countries in transition, the Stanford program provides a comparative perspective on the evolution of established democratic practices, as well as theoretical and practical background on issues of democracy and good governance, to assist with needed economic, political, and judicial reform.

The three-week 2005 leadership seminar attracted 32 participants from 28 countries for specialized teaching, training, and outreach, including leaders from the Middle East, North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and parts of the former Soviet Union, whose stability is so vital to the international system. The curriculum draws on the combined expertise of Stanford scholars and practitioners in the fields of political science, economics, law, sociology, and business and emphasizes the dynamic linkages among democratization, economic development, and the rule of law in transitioning countries.

DEMOCRACY, DEVELOPMENT, AND THE RULE OF LAW

In the fall quarter of 2005, a new undergraduate course, titled %course1% (PS/IR 114D), examining the dynamic and interactive linkages among democratic institutions, economic development, and the framework of law proved to be an all-star attraction for Stanford students. Conceived by the research faculty and staff at CDDRL as an important introduction to fundamental concepts and team-taught by a number of prominent Stanford scholars—including University President Emeritus Gerhard Casper (Stanford Law School), Larry Diamond (Hoover Institution), CDDRL Director Michael A. McFaul (Hoover Institution and Department of Political Science), and Peter B. Henry (Graduate School of Business), the course attracted a record number of students this fall. Encina Columns recently interviewed Kathryn Stoner, associate director of research and senior research scholar at CDDRL, the course convener, to glean a few highlights.

Q. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO OFFER THE COURSE AT THIS TIME?

A. CDDRL research staff and faculty decided to offer the course in the fall of 2005 as a launch for what we hope will become an honors program. We wanted to use PS/IR 114D as a gateway course into other courses taught by our faculty, as well. For example, Larry Diamond teaches a very popular course on democracy, and we thought our course would be a good way to introduce undergraduates to some of the basic themes of that course, while also introducing them to connections between democracy and economic development and the interplay of these with the rule of law.

Q. DID YOU ENVISION A QUARTER-LONG OR YEAR-LONG COURSE? WHY?

A. The course was always envisioned as just a quarter-long course. This is to provide a launch into the menu of other courses that are offered by our faculty.

Q. WERE YOU SURPRISED BY THE STUDENT RESPONSE?

A. We were very surprised to have 130 students in the course this fall. We ran the course as a “beta test” in the spring of 2005 with just 25 students, but apparently the buzz among undergraduates was good and our enrollment numbers jumped in September when we offered the course again. The political science department was caught a little off guard and we had to hustle to find enough teaching assistants to staff the course.

Q. WHO WERE YOUR MAIN LECTURERS AND WHAT WERE THEIR TOPICS?

A. We had 13 lecturers in all including Gerhard Casper, on what rule of law means and why people choose to follow law or not; Larry Diamond, on meanings of democracy and Iraq; Avner Greif, on how economic institutions are established historically; and Jeremy M. Weinstein, on international aid and development in Africa, to name but a few.

Q. WHAT TOPICAL THEMES HAVE YOU EXPLORED WITH YOUR STUDENTS?

A. The Iraq lecture by Larry Diamond was particularly topical and the students clearly learned a lot from him. They also enjoyed Jeremy Weinstein’s lecture on debates on aid policy in Africa. He set it up in an engaging way so that students had to decide whether “conditionality” was a good idea in providing aid to Africa or not.

Q. DID YOU FIND THAT PARTICULAR ISSUES HAD SPECIAL "RESONANCE" FOR STANFORD STUDENTS?

A. I think that there is growing interest among Stanford undergraduates in how democracy can be promoted and to what extent the United States should be involved in this project. Many students in our course are interested in doing some sort of work in the development field, so they wanted to explore cases of when democracies have become consolidated versus situations where they slid back into dictatorship. They are also particularly interested in when or whether force is appropriate in promoting or establishing democracy in the Middle East and Afghanistan, for example.

Q. WHAT PROVED MOST GRATIFYING TO YOU? DID YOU GAIN NEW INSIGHT?

A. I always gain new insights when I interact with smart students who are deeply interested and engaged in these issues. I also find it a real privilege to actually sit down and listen to my colleagues deliver lectures on areas of their expertise. That is truly a treat.

Q. WHAT'S NEXT? WILL YOU OFFER THIS COURSE AGAIN?

A. Yes, we intend to offer the course every fall quarter. We are also currently planning to launch an honors program, perhaps this spring. As part of that we will offer a seminar for juniors interested in writing theses on the general themes of democracy, development, and the rule of law in the developing world.

A foreign policy firmly grounded in democratic values makes it possible for small states to stand up for their rights in the face of the shifting interests of large states, Estonia’s President Arnold Rüütel said Jan. 20.

“It is precisely action based on values that can provide answers in complicated situations,” Rüütel said. “This also makes it possible to distinguish long-term important issues from short-term changing interests.”

During a lunchtime speech at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Rüütel thanked the United States for maintaining its policy of nonrecognition of the Soviet occupation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania from World War II until 1991, when Baltic independence was restored in a bloodless revolution. “For us, this represents a powerful confirmation of a values-based foreign policy that remains crucial also today,” he said.

Rüütel, a onetime Communist who helped orchestrate Estonia’s transition to independence, spoke to about 100 students, faculty, and donors at an event hosted by management science and engineering Professor William J. Perry, who also is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense, and co-director of the Stanford-Harvard Preventive Defense Project. Accompanied by an Estonian delegation, Rüütel also met with Institute Director Coit D. Blacker and visited the Hoover Institution, where archival specialist David Jacobs had prepared an exhibit of Baltic-related material.

The display included a series of informal photographs from the personal album of Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop taken during his visit to Moscow to sign the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which was concluded just a few days before the beginning of World War II. The pact, which included a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe into Soviet and Nazi spheres of influence, sealed the fate of the Baltic states for a halfcentury. Soviet officials denied the protocol’s existence until 1989. The unpublished photographs, obtained by U.S. forces after World War II, include a rare image of an enthusiastically grinning Stalin taken just after the pact was signed. “That’s a smile from the heart,” Rüütel remarked in Estonian.

Rüütel’s speech, which was translated into English, discussed Estonia’s two-year-old membership in the European Union and NATO. While the union gives opportunities for economic and social development in a globalizing world, Rüütel said, membership also offers Estonia a chance to contribute to international stability. And while NATO offers unprecedented protection, he continued, Estonia also is obliged to contribute to international security.

“NATO is not only a toolbox from which different tools can be taken,” Rüütel said. “It is an important mechanism for political and military cooperation among 26 states. We need it.” Public support for the organization remains at a steady 65 to 70 percent, he explained. “The NATO airspace control operation in the Baltic states certainly plays a role in this context,” he said. “Last year, U.S. planes contributed to it. We are grateful to the U.S. government.”

As a member of NATO, Estonia plans to increase its defense expenditure to 2 percent of gross domestic product by 2010, Rüütel said. The country also has participated in the “coalition of the willing.” Estonian soldiers fighting in Iraq alongside U.S. forces “have proved to be worthy combatants,” Rüütel said. “Responsible tasks lie ahead of us in Afghanistan. The Estonian parliament has decided to send up to 150 soldiers at a time there this year. Allow me to recall that there are 1.4 million inhabitants in Estonia.”

The president said that military operations can help to restore stability in conflict areas by providing security but that long-term success can be achieved only through the establishment of a free society based on democratic principles and the rule of law.

“The more successful the reconstruction and the strengthening of good governance are, the faster our peace forces can be [brought] home.” Arnold Rüütel, President of EstoniaWe need considerably higher capabilities for the strengthening of the civilian component in crisis management and [ensuing] reconstruction than we have today, both at the level of states and international organizations,” he said. “The more successful the reconstruction and the strengthening of good governance are, the faster our peace forces can be [brought] home.”

Rüütel also discussed his country’s role in combating international terrorism. “Estonia is determined to be a credible partner,” he said. “Among other things, this means making sure that our territory [is] not used by terrorists to prepare operations, to move money or for any other purpose.”

After the speech, Blacker asked about Estonia's relationship with neighboring Russia. A border agreement between the two countries remains unsigned. In response, Rüütel offered a history lesson about the consequences of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact after the Soviet Union forcibly annexed Estonia. Many of the country’s leaders were arrested, murdered or sent to death camps in Siberia, he said. Following the Nazi occupation of Estonia during the war, Soviet repression continued after 1945. In a country of 1.2 million inhabitants, about 70,000 people were deported to Siberia and more than 100,000 escaped to the West. As a result of World War II and its aftermath, he said, Estonia lost one out of every five citizens. “Practically, every Estonian family was somehow touched by these events,” he said. “This is something really difficult to forget.” Russia has failed to deal with its history in an honest way, he said.

Although Estonia cannot forget the past, Rüütel said his country is ready to cooperate with Russia and he expressed hope that a border treaty would soon be completed. “I would like to hope that Russia, one day, will understand that we are good neighbors living side by side with each other,” he said.

“Should the United States promote democracy around the world?” Stanford alumna Kathleen Brown, a former FSI advisory board member, former Treasurer of the State of California, and current head of public finance (Western region) Goldman Sachs

How are democracy, development, and the rule of law in transitioning societies related? How can they be promoted in the world’s most troubled regions? These were among the provocative issues addressed by faculty from the Freeman Spogli Institute’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, as part of Stanford Day in Los Angeles on January 21, 2006. Panelists included Michael A. McFaul, CDDRL director, associate professor of political science, and senior fellow, the Hoover Institution; Kathryn Stoner, associate director for research and senior research associate at CDDRL; and Larry Diamond, coordinator of CDDRL’s Democracy Program, a Hoover Institution senior fellow, and founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

The capstone of a day devoted to “Addressing Global Issues and Sharing Ideas,” the CDDRL panel was attended by more than 850 alumni, Stanford trustees, and supporters as part of the nationwide “Stanford Matters” series. Moderated by Stanford alumna Kathleen Brown, a former FSI Advisory Board member, former treasurer of the State of California, and current head of public finance (western region) Goldman Sachs, the panel looked at some of the toughest trouble spots in the world, including Iraq, Russia, and other parts of the former Soviet Union.

“Should the United States promote democracy around the world?” Brown began by asking Center Director Michael McFaul. “The President of the United States has said that the United States should put the promotion of liberty and freedom around the world as a fundamental policy proposition,” McFaul responded, noting “it is the central policy question in Washington, D.C., today.” It is not a debate between Democrats and Republicans, he continued, but rather between traditional realists, who look at the balance of power, and Wilsonian liberals, who argue that a country’s conduct of global affairs is profoundly affected by whether or not it is a democracy. The American people, McFaul noted, are divided on the issue. In opinion polls, 55 percent of Republicans say we should promote democracy, while 33 percent say no. Among Democrats, only 13 percent answer unequivocally that the United States should promote democracy.

“The President of the United States has said that the United States should put the promotion of liberty and freedom around the world as a fundamental policy proposition, and it is the central policy question in Washington, D.C., today.” CDDRL Director Michael McFaulAsserting that the United States should promote democracy, McFaul offered three major arguments. First is the moral issue—democracies are demonstrably better at constraining the power of the state and providing better lives for their people. Democracies do not commit genocide, nor do they starve their people. Moreover, most people want democracy, opinion polls show. Second are the economic considerations—we benefit from open societies and an open, liberal world trade system, which allows the free flow of goods and capital. Third is the security dimension. Every country that has attacked the United States has been an autocracy; conversely, no democracy has ever attacked us. The transformation of autocracies, including Japan, Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union, has made us safer.

It is plausible to believe that the benefits of transformation in the Middle East will make us more secure, McFaul argued. “It would decrease the threats these states pose for each other, their need for weapons, and the need for U.S. intervention in the region,” he stated. Democratic transformation would also address a root cause of terrorism, as the vast majority of terrorists come from autocratic societies. There are, however, short-term problems, McFaul pointed out. Free elections could lead to radical regimes less friendly to the United States, as they have in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and now in Palestine. U.S. efforts to promote democracy, he noted, can actually produce resistance.

Having advanced a positive case, McFaul asked FSI colleague Stoner-Weiss, “So, how do we promote democracy?” Stoner-Weiss, also an expert on Russia, said it is instructive to see how Russia has fallen off the path to democracy. In 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, it seemed to be an exciting time, rife with opportunity. “Here was an enemy, a major nuclear superpower, turning to democracy,” she stated. Despite initial U.S. enthusiasm, the outcome has not been a consolidated democracy. Russia, under Vladimir Putin, is becoming a more authoritarian state, a cause for concern because it is a nuclear state and a broken state—with rising rates of HIV and unable to secure its borders or control the flow of illegal drugs.

“So can we promote democracy?” Stoner-Weiss asked. The answer is a qualified yes, from Serbia to Georgia, and the Ukraine to Kyrgyzstan. But Russia has 89 divisions, 130 ethnicities, 11 time zones, and is the largest landmass in the world, she noted. Moving from a totalitarian state to a democracy and an open economy is enormously complicated. As Boris Yeltsin said in retiring as president on December 31, 1999, “What we thought would be easy turned out to be very difficult.”

Where is Russia today? It ranks below Cuba on the human development index; it is moving backward on corruption; and its economic development is poor, with 30 percent of the public living on subsistence income. Under Putin’s regime, private media have come under pressure, television is totally stated controlled, elections for regional leaders have been canceled, troops have remained in Chechnya, and Putin has supported controversial new legislation to curb civil liberties and NGO’s operating in Russia.

“How did Russia come to this?” she asked. In retrospect, the power of the president has been too strong. Initial “irrational exuberance” in the United States and Europe about what we could do has given way to apathy. Under Yeltsin, rule was oligarchical and democracy disorganized. Putin came to office promising a “dictatorship of law” to rid the country of corruption. Yet Russia under Putin, who rose through the KGB and never held elective office, has become far less democratic. He has severely curtailed civil liberties. The economy, dependent on oil and natural gas, is not on a path of sustainable growth.

“What can the United States do?” Stoner-Weiss asked. We have emphasized security over democracy, she pointed out, and invested in personal relations with Russia’s leaders, as opposed to investing in political process and institutions. We do have important opportunities, she noted. Russia chairs the G-8 group of major industrial nations this year, providing major opportunities for consultation, and wants to join the World Trade Organization. The United States should advance an institutional framework to help put Russia back on a path to democracy, a rule of law, and more sustainable growth, she argued.

Diamond, an expert on democratic development and regime change, examined U.S. involvement in the Middle East, noting that it is difficult to be optimistic at present. “Democracy is absolutely vital in the battle against terrorism,” he stated. The United States has to drain the swamp of rotten governments, lack of opportunity for participation and the pervasive indignity of human life. “The dilemma we face,” he pointed out, “is getting from here to there in the intractable Middle East.” There is not a single democracy in the Arab Middle East. This is not because of Islam, but rather the authoritarian nature of regimes in the region and the problem of oil.

“Can we promote democracy under these conditions?” Diamond asked. We need to get smart about it, he urged, noting that success depends on the particular context of each country. “If we want to promote democracy, the first rule is to know the country, its language, culture, history, and divisions,” he stated. We need to know, he continued, “who stands to benefit from a democratic transformation and, conversely, who stands to lose?” Rulers of these countries need to allow the space for freedom, for civic and intellectual pluralism, for open societies and meaningful participation. The danger is that there could be one person, one vote, one time. A second rule is that “academic knowledge and political practice must not be compartmentalized.” “To succeed,” Diamond stated, “we need to marry academic theories with concrete knowledge of these countries’ traditions, cultures, practices, and proclivities.”

In the lively question-and-answer session, panelists were asked, “Under what conditions is it appropriate to use force to promote democracy?” McFaul answered that we cannot invade in the name of democracy—we rebuilt Japan in that name but we did not invade that nation. We invaded Iraq in the name of national security. We know how to invade militarily, but still must learn how to build democracy. Effectiveness in the promotion of democracy, Diamond pointed out, requires the exercise of “soft” power—engagement with other societies, linkages with their schools and associations, and offering aid to democratic organizations around the world. Stoner-Weiss concurred, noting that we have used soft power effectively in some parts of the former Soviet Union, notably the Ukraine. People-to-people exchanges definitely help, she added.

To combat Osama bin Laden and the threat of future attacks in the United States, Diamond stated, we must halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons. North Korea and Iran are two of the most important issues on the global agenda. And we have got to improve governance in the Middle East in order to reduce the chances that the states of the region will breed and harbor stateless terrorists. A democratic Iran is in our interest, McFaul emphasized. Saudi Arabia must change as well—the only issue is whether change occurs with evolution or revolution. Democracy, economic development, and the rule of law, McFaul concluded, are inextricably intertwined.

Asked by alumnus and former Stanford trustee Brad Freeman what needs to happen to re-democratize Russia, McFaul pointed out that inequality has been a major issue in Russia—a small portion of the population controls its wealth and resources and, therefore, the political agenda and the use of law. Russia has been ruled by men and needs the rule of institutions, said Stoner-Weiss. We should insist that Putin allow free and fair elections, freedom of the press, and freedom of political expression, and re-focus efforts on developing the institutions of civil society, she stated.

Reform is a generational issue, McFaul emphasized. We need to educate and motivate the young so they can change their country from within. The Stanford Summer Fellows Program, which brought emerging leaders from 28 transitioning countries to Stanford in the program’s inaugural year of 2005, provides an important venue for upcoming generations to meet experienced U.S. leaders and others fighting to build democracies in their own countries. Such exchanges help secure recognition that building support for democracy, sustainable development, and the rule of law is a transnational issue.

As the world’s most dynamic and rapidly advancing region, the Asia-Pacific has commanded global attention. Business and policy leaders alike have been focused on the rise of China, tensions on the Korean peninsula, Japan’s economic recovery and political assertiveness, globalization and the outsourcing of jobs to South Asia, Indonesia’s multiple transitions, competing forces of nationalism vs. regionalism, and the future of U.S.-Asia relations.

What is the near-term outlook for change in the region? How might developments in the economic, political, or security sphere affect Asia’s expected trajectory? And how will a changing Asia impact the United States? These were among the complex and challenging issues addressed by a faculty panel from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) and the Eurasia Group at the Asia Society in New York on January 23, 2006.

Moderated by director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Coit D. Blacker, the Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, the panel included Michael H. Armacost, the Shorenstein Distinguished Fellow, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and former Ambassador to Japan and the Philippines; Donald K. Emmerson, the director of the Southeast Asia Forum at Shorenstein APARC and noted expert on Indonesia; Harry Harding, the director of research and analysis at the Eurasia Group in New York and University Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University; and Gi-Wook Shin, the director of Shorenstein APARC, founding director of the Korean Studies Program, and associate professor of sociology at Stanford.

Q. COIT BLACKER: WHAT IS THE MOST DIFFICULT, CHALLENGING ISSUE YOU SEE?

A. HARRY HARDING:

In China, we are seeing a darker side of the Chinese success story. Millions of people have been lifted out of poverty, China's role in international affairs is on the rise, and China is an increasingly responsible stakeholder in an open, liberal global economy. Yet, the world is now seeing the problems China's reform program has failed to resolve. China's new five-year plan seeks to address a number of these issues, providing a plan for sustainable economic development that is environmentally
responsible and addresses chronic pollution problems, for a harmonious society that
addresses inequalities and inadequacies in the provision of medical care, insurance
and pension systems, and for continuing technological innovation, as part of China's
quest to become an exporter of capital and technology.

A. GI-WOOK SHIN:

The world should be deeply concerned about developments on the Korean peninsula. Two pressing issues are U.S. relations with South Korea and the nuclear crisis with the North. It is not clear when or whether we will see a solution. Time may be against the United States on the issue. China and South Korea are not necessarily willing to follow the U.S. approach; without their cooperation, it is difficult to secure a successful solution. The younger generation emerging in South Korea does not see North Korea as a threat. Our own relations with South Korea are strained and we are viewed as preoccupied with Iraq and Iran, as North Korea continues to develop nuclear weapons.

A. DONALD EMMERSON:

In Southeast Asia, a key problem is uneven development, both in and between the political and economic spheres. Potentially volatile contrasts are seen throughout the region. Vietnam is growing at 8 percent per year, but will it become a democracy? It has not yet. Indonesia has shifted to democracy, but absent faster economic growth, that political gain could erode. Indonesia's media are among the freest in the region;
multiple peaceful elections have been held--a remarkable achievement--and nearly all Islamists shun terrorism. Older Indonesians remember, however, that the economy
performed well without democracy under President Suharto. Nowadays, corruption
scandals break out almost daily, nationalist and Islamist feelings are strong, and the
climate is not especially favorable to foreign investment. While Burma's economy
lags, its repressive polity embarrasses the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN). How long can the generals in Rangoon hold on? Disparities are also
international: dire poverty marks Laos and Cambodia, for example, while the
Malaysian and Thai economies have done well.

A. MICHAEL ARMACOST:

Japan is a "good news/bad news" story. The good news is that Japan has found a new security niche since the end of the Cold War. Previously, when a security problem loomed "over the horizon," they expected us to take care of it while, if prodded, they increased their financial support for U.S. troops stationed in Japan. During the first post-Cold War conflict in the Persian Gulf, Japan had neither the political consensus nor the legal framework to permit a sharing of the risks, as well as the costs, and this cost them politically. Since then, they have passed legislation that permits them to participate in U.N. peacekeeping activities, contribute noncombat, logistic, and other services to "coalition of the willing" operations, and even dispatch troops to join reconstruction activities in Iraq. Clearly, their more ambitious role is helping to make the U.S.-Japan alliance more balanced and more global.The bad news is a reemergence of stronger nationalist sentiment in Japan and more generally in Northeast Asia. In part this is attributable to the collapse of the Left in Japanese politics since the mid-1990s. This has left the Conservatives more dominant, and they are less apologetic about Japanese conduct in the 1930s and 1940s, more inclined to regard North Korea and China as potential threats, more assertive with respect to territorial issues, less sensitive to their neighbors’ reactions to Prime Ministerial visits to Yasukuni Shrine, and more eager to be regarded as a “normal” nation. Many Asians see the United States as pushing Japan to take on a more active security role and, in the context of rising Japanese nationalism, are less inclined to view the U.S.-Japan alliance as a source of reassurance.

Q. COIT BLACKER: WHAT ARE THE COMPETING AND CONFLICTING TENSIONS BETWEEN REGIONALISM AND NATIONALISM?

A. HARRY HARDING:

In China, there has been a resurgence of nationalism over the past 10 to 15 years. Since the end of the Maoist era and the beginning of the reform movement, the leadership has embraced nationalism as a source of legitimacy, but this is a double-edged sword. It places demands on the government to stand up for China’s face, rights, and prestige in international affairs, especially vis-à-vis Japan, the United States, and Taiwan, at times pushing Beijing in directions it does not wish to go.

A. DONALD EMMERSON:

In Indonesia, it is important to distinguish between inward and outward nationalism. Outward nationalism was manifest in Sukarno’s policy of confrontation with Malaysia. ASEAN is predicated on inward nationalism and outward cooperation. Nationalist feelings can be used inwardly to motivate reform and spur development. But there are potential drawbacks. Take the aftermath of the conflict in Aceh. The former rebels want their own political party. Hard-line nationalists in the Indonesian parliament, however, are loath to go along, and that could jeopardize stability in a province already exhausted by civil war and damaged by the 2004 tsunami.

A. GI-WOOK SHIN:

Korea is a nation of some 70 million people, large by European standards, but small in comparison to the giants of Asia, especially China, India, and Russia, making Korea very concerned about what other countries are doing and saying. Korea is currently undergoing an identity crisis. Until the 1980s, the United States was seen as a “savior” from Communism and avid supporter of modernization. Since then, many Koreans have come to challenge this view, arguing that the United States supported Korean dictatorship. Koreans are also rethinking their attitudes toward North Korea, seeing Koreans as belonging to one nation. This shift has contributed to negative attitudes toward both the United States and Japan

Q. COIT BLACKER: GENERATIONAL CHANGE IS ALSO A MAJOR ISSUE IN CHINA, THE DPRK, AND JAPAN. WHAT DOES IT BODE FOR POLITICAL CHANGE?

A. MICHAEL ARMACOST:

Japan has had a “one and a half party system” for more than half a century. Yet the Liberal Democratic Party has proven to be remarkably adaptive, cleverly co-opting many issues that might have been exploited by the opposition parties. It is clearly a democratic country, but its politics have not been as competitive as many other democracies. As for the United States, we have promoted lively democracies throughout the region. But we should not suppose that more democratic regimes will necessarily define their national interests in ways that are invariably compatible with ours. In both Taiwan and South Korea, to the contrary, democratic leaderships have emerged which pursue security policies that display less sensitivity to Washington’s concerns, and certainly exhibit little deference to U.S. leadership.

A. GI-WOOK SHIN:

In both North and South Korea, a marked evolution is under way. In the South, many new members of the parliament have little knowledge of the United States. Promoting mutual understanding is urgently needed on both sides. In the North, the big question is who will succeed Kim Jong Il—an issue with enormous implications for the United States.

A. DONALD EMMERSON:

Indonesians have a noisy, brawling democracy. What they don’t have is the rule of law. Judges can be bought, and laws are inconsistently applied. The Philippines enjoyed democracy for most of the 20th century, but poverty and underdevelopment remain rife, leading many Filipinos to ask just where democracy has taken their nation.

A. HARRY HARDING:

China has seen a significant increase in rural protests. There has been an increase in both the number of incidents and the level of violence. People are being killed, not just in rural areas, but also in major cities like Chengdu. We are seeing a new wave of political participation by professional groups, such as lawyers and journalists, galvanizing public support on such issues as environmental protection, failure to pay pensions, confiscation of land, and corruption. A new generation has been exposed to the Internet, the outside world, and greater choice, but it is not yet clear at what point they will demand greater choice in their own political life.

 

WHAT WOULD YOU ADVISE THE PRESIDENT ON U.S. POLICY TOWARDS ASIA?

In the lively question-and-answer session, panelists were asked, "Given the chance to talk to the U.S. President about change and improvement in U.S.-Asia policy, what would you say?"

MICHAEL ARMACOST: I am struck by a mismatch between our interests and our strategy in Asia. In some respects our Asia policy has become something of an adjunct of our policy toward the Middle East-where we confront perhaps more urgent, if not more consequential, concerns. Asia is still the most dynamic economic zone in the world; it is the region in which the most significant new powers are emerging; and it is where the interests of the Great Powers intersect most directly. Also, it is an area where profound change is taking place swiftly. We are adapting our policies in Asia to accommodate current preoccupations in the Muslim world, rather than with an eye to preserving our power and relevance in Asia.

HARRY HARDING: It is striking how much Asian nations still want us around- as an offshore balancer and a source of economic growth. Yet they want us to understand the priorities on their agenda as well as our own. We are seen as obsessed with terrorism and China. We should exhibit more support for Asian institution building, as we have with the European Union. We also need to get our own economic act together-promoting education, stimulating scientific research and technological innovation, and reducing our budget deficits-and quit resting on past laurels. Requiring Japan to accept U.S. beef exports and then sending them meat that did not meet the agreed-upon standards has been a setback for our relations, since the Japanese public regards the safety of its food supply as critically important.

DONALD EMMERSON: Most opinion-makers in Southeast Asia are tired of Washington's preoccupation with terrorism. To be effective in the region, we must deal-and appear to be dealing-with a wider array of economic, social, and political issues, and not just bilaterally. The United States is absent at the creation of East Asian regionalism. For various reasons, we were not invited to participate in the recent East Asia Summit. Meanwhile, China's "smile diplomacy" has yielded 27 different frameworks of cooperation between that country and ASEAN. We need to be more, and more broadly, engaged.

MICHAEL ARMACOST: The establishment of today's European community began with the historic reconciliation between France and Germany. I doubt that a viable Asian community can be created without a comparable accommodation between China and Japan. Some observers believe that current tensions between Tokyo and Beijing are advantageous insofar as they facilitate closer defense cooperation between the United States and Japan. I do not share that view. A drift toward Sino-Japanese strategic rivalry would complicate our choices as well as theirs, and I hope we can find ways of attenuating current tensions.

Discussions began, tentatively at first, as the delegates slipped into the roles they had been assigned and for which they had prepared for several months. The tension mounted as they anticipated meeting with their heads of state, to whom they would propose their country’s goals for the upcoming U.N. Security Council meeting.

Thus began the Third Annual IDL Student Conference in International Security, sponsored by the Initiative on Distance Learning (IDL). IDL offers Stanford courses in international security to nine Russian universities via distance-learning technologies. Its annual conference brings together top students and instructors from each of the participating universities with students and faculty from Stanford. This was the first year that the conference centered on an international security simulation, led by political science professor Scott D. Sagan, director of CISAC, and Coit D. Blacker, director of FSI. Sagan has been conducting such security simulations for eight years at Stanford and other U.S. universities.

This year’s simulation scenario was the referral of Iran to the U.N. Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for failure to fully disclose its nuclear activities. Council delegates convened in the Russian provincial capital of Yaroslavl, 150 miles northeast of Moscow, due to “security concerns”— as they were informed—about U.N. headquarters in New York.

Delegates’ opening statements reflected a wide range of views on Iran’s status with the IAEA. The U.S. delegation called for sanctions and showed little interest in negotiation. “We find the Iranian regime corrupt and repressive,” said Oleg Borisov, head U.S. delegate and a student at Petrozavodsk State University. He added, rather menacingly, “The United States is not intending to use military force unless Iran keeps up its nuclear capability and continues to support terrorism.”

At the other end of the spectrum, Venezuela, Pakistan, and Iraq indicated no willingness to consider sanctioning Iran. China urged delegates to “choose the only right option—diplomacy.”

By the end of the two-day session, delegates had overcome seemingly intractable differences during four intensive legal drafting sessions. The council’s resolution gave Iran three months to comply with IAEA demands and provided for Iran to obtain enriched uranium from Russia, with the production, transport, and waste disposal to occur on Russian soil under IAEA controls.

As a learning experience, the simulation is well matched to the IDL program’s goal of fostering critical analysis among a new generation of students in post- Soviet Russia. FSI director Coit Blacker wants to develop future generations of diplomats and policymakers whose worldview is shaped “by how they think, not what they’re told to think.”

After the session ended, students reflected on what they had learned. Putting themselves in others’ shoes seemed the most valuable aspect for many. Natasha Pereira-Klamath, one of the Stanford undergraduates who participated in the Yaroslavl simulation as a representative of the Russian Federation, said she was surprised at the “extent to which people reflected the views of their (assigned) countries.” This was echoed by other students, who expressed their surprise at how easy it was to begin thinking as a representative of another country, although their official position might be very different from their own.

“I’m glad to see the resolution passed today,” said Homkosol Bheraya, an exchange student from Thailand who attends Ural State University. “I hope that in the real world this can happen someday.” Perhaps she will be in a position to advance that goal. “My dream,” she said, “is to one day work for the IAEA.”

The Forum on Contemporary Europe (FCE) continues a multiyear study of the challenges facing European Union integration and global crisis intervention. The increasingly complex demands straining Europe and its trans-Atlantic relations—labor migration, spending on welfare economies, globalized cultures, and threats of terrorism, coupled with Europe’s struggle to ratify a single constitution—underline the need to measure prospects for unification and the EU’s ability to function as a coordinated international actor. This year, FCE is broadening its work to assess the role an integrated EU can play in addressing the world’s most troubling crises.

EU INTEGRATION: THE CASE OF TURKEY

The forum has explored the question of Turkey’s EU membership with Stanford scholars, European leaders, and the public. In spring 2006, former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer and author Christopher Hitchens offered candid analyses of EU expansion. Hitchens challenged commonplace descriptions of “Christian Old Europe” antagonized by “Islamicized” secular Turkey. Europe and Islam are not newly in contention, he said, but are playing out a centuries-old relationship grounded in the European and Ottoman empires in the Eastern Mediterranean. For Hitchens, the portrait of clashing civilizations obscures the crises facing minority Kurdish and neighboring societies whose survival is at stake in EU expansion.

Delivering the Payne lecture, Fischer noted the dilemma of seeking to achieve popular ratification of a European constitution at a time when public attention is galvanized by the Turkish candidacy. Fischer rejected common comparisons between European state rulings on Islamic traditions and models of U.S. multiculturalism. Fischer found admirable aspects of the U.S. inspiration but questioned its relevance for mediating myriad EU interests. For Fischer, the EU as a supra-state actor holds the promise to democratize conflict resolution in the deliberative model of the European Parliament and legitimate its role as a peacekeeping actor.

EU INTERVENTION: CRISIS MANAGMENT AND COMBATING INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM

The forum’s new focus on EU crisis intervention began with addresses by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain’s Security Services (MI-6), and Alain Bauer, former vice president of the University of Paris–Sorbonne and director of France’s National Institute for Higher Studies in Security, who discussed EU counterintelligence and international early-warning protocols. Greek Ambassador Alexandros Mallias spoke on the Eastern Mediterranean context that frames the Turkish candidacy, the economics of EU integration, and prospects for responding to the tensions in Cyprus. Austrian Ambassador Eva Novotny spoke on Austria’s immediate past EU presidency, evaluating the impact of the EU Council’s intervention in the Israel-Lebanon crisis. Professor Josef Joffe spoke on his new book, Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America, and the prospects for U.S.–EU interaction in global affairs.

The forum’s fall series brought public acclaim when Daniel Cohn-Bendit, co-president of the European Parliament Greens/New Alliance Parties, delivered FCE’s 2006–2007 “Europe Now” address, cosponsored by Stanford’s Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Woods Institute for the Environment. Speaking to an overflow crowd, and meeting separately with faculty and researchers, Cohn-Bendit focused his public remarks on European Integration: Society, Politics, and Islam. A European Parliament leader, Cohn-Bendit spoke on his party’s proposal to deploy Joschka Fischer as the EU representative to Middle East peace negotiations. Expanding and integrating the EU, Cohn-Bendit argued, is the most reasonable strategy for strengthening Europe’s role in international relations and crisis intervention.

The Forum on Contemporary Europe continues to deepen scholarly and public understanding of the EU promise to achieve democratic governance, economic growth, security, and social integration among its member states and in its foreign engagements.

Excerpted from Foreign Affairs, September/October 2006

Preventing the unthinkable ongoing crisis with Tehran is not the first time Washington has faced a hostile government attempting to develop nuclear weapons. Nor is it likely to be the last. Yet the reasoning of U.S. officials now struggling to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions is clouded by a kind of historical amnesia, which leads to both creeping fatalism about the United States’ ability to keep Iran from getting the bomb and excessive optimism about the United States’ ability to contain Iran if it does become a nuclear power.

A U.S. official in the executive branch anonymously told the New York Times in March 2006, “The reality is that most of us think the Iranians are probably going to get a weapon, or the technology to make one, sooner or later.” Military planners and intelligence officers have reportedly been tasked with developing strategies to deter Tehran if negotiations fail.

Both proliferation fatalism and deterrence optimism are wrong-headed, and they reinforce each other in a disturbing way. As nuclear proliferation comes to be seen as inevitable, wishful thinking can make its consequences seem less severe, and if faith in deterrence grows, incentives to combat proliferation diminish.

Deterrence optimism is based on mistaken nostalgia and a faulty analogy. Although deterrence did work with the Soviet Union and China, there were many close calls; maintaining nuclear peace during the Cold War was far more difficult and uncertain than U.S. officials and the American public seem to remember today. Furthermore, a nuclear Iran would look a lot less like the totalitarian Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China and a lot more like Pakistan, Iran’s unstable neighbor—a far more frightening prospect.

Fatalism about nuclear proliferation is equally unwarranted. Although the United States did fail to prevent its major Cold War rivals from developing nuclear arsenals, many other countries—including Japan, West Germany, South Korea, and more recently Libya—curbed their own nuclear ambitions.

THE REASONS WHY

The way for Washington to move forward on Iran is to give Tehran good reason to relinquish its pursuit of nuclear weapons. That, in turn, requires understanding why Tehran wants them in the first place.

Iran’s nuclear energy program began in the 1960s under the shah, but even he wanted to create a breakout option to get the bomb quickly if necessary. One of his senior energy advisers recalled, “The shah told me that he does not want the bomb yet, but if anyone in the neighborhood has it, we must be ready to have it.” At first, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini objected to nuclear weapons on religious grounds, but the mullahs abandoned such restraint after Saddam Hussein ordered chemical attacks on Iranian forces during the Iran-Iraq War.

The end of Saddam’s rule in 2003 significantly reduced the security threat to Tehran. But by then the United States had taken Iraq’s place. In his January 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush had denounced the governments of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea as members of an “axis of evil” with ties to international terrorism. After the fall of Baghdad, an unidentified senior U.S. official told a Los Angeles Times reporter that Tehran should “take a number,” hinting that it was next in line for regime change.

Increasingly, Bush administration spokespeople advocated “preemption” to counter proliferation. When asked, in April 2006, whether the Pentagon was considering a potential preventive nuclear strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, President Bush pointedly replied, “All options are on the table.”

AGREED FRAMEWORK IN FARSI

A source of inspiration for handling Iran is the 1994 Agreed Framework that the United States struck with North Korea. The Bush administration has severely criticized the deal, but it contained several elements that could prove useful in the Iranian nuclear crisis.

After the North Koreans were caught violating their NPT commitments in early 1993, they threatened to withdraw from the treaty. Declaring that “North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb,” President Clinton threatened an air strike on the Yongbyon reactor site if the North Koreans took further steps to reprocess plutonium. In June 1994, as the Pentagon was reinforcing military units on the Korean Peninsula, Pyongyang froze its plutonium production, agreed to let IAEA inspectors monitor the reactor site, and entered into bilateral negotiations.

The talks produced the October 1994 Agreed Framework, under which North Korea agreed to eventually dismantle its reactors, remain in the NPT, and implement full IAEA safeguards. In exchange, the United States promised to provide it with limited oil supplies, construct two peaceful light-water reactors for energy production, “move toward full normalization of political and economic relations,” and extend “formal assurances to [North Korea] against the threat or use of nuclear weapons by the U.S.”

“The way for Washington to move forward on Iran is to give Tehran good reason to relinquish its pursuit of nuclear weapons.”By 2002, the Agreed Framework had broken down, not only because Pyongyang was suspected of cheating but also because it believed that the United States, by delaying construction of the light-water reactors and failing to start normalizing relations, had not honored its side of the bargain. When confronted with evidence of its secret uranium program, in November 2002, Pyongyang took advantage of the fact that the U.S. military was tied down in preparations for the invasion of Iraq and withdrew from the NPT, kicked out the inspectors, and started reprocessing plutonium.

President Bush famously promised, in his 2002 State of the Union address, that the United States “will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.” Yet when North Korea kicked out the IAEA inspectors, Secretary of State Colin Powell proclaimed that the situation was “not a crisis.” Bush repeatedly declared that the United States had “no intention of invading North Korea.” The point was not lost on Tehran.

If Washington is to offer security assurances to Tehran, it should do so soon (making the assurances contingent on Tehran’s not developing nuclear weapons), rather than offering them too late, as it did with North Korea (and thus making them contingent on Tehran’s getting rid of any existing nuclear weapons). As with North Korea, any deal with Iran must be structured in a series of steps, each offering a package of economic benefits (light-water reactors, aircraft parts, or status at the World Trade Organization) in exchange for constraints placed on Iran’s future nuclear development.

Most important, however, would be a reduction in the security threat that the United States poses to Iran. Given the need for Washington to have a credible deterrent against, say, terrorist attacks sponsored by Iran, a blanket security guarantee would be ill advised. But more limited guarantees, such as a commitment not to use nuclear weapons, could be effective. They would reassure Tehran and pave the way toward the eventual normalization of U.S.–Iranian relations while signaling to other states that nuclear weapons are not the be all and end all of security.

Peaceful coexistence does not require friendly relations, but it does mean exercising mutual restraint. Relinquishing the threat of regime change by force is a necessary and acceptable price for the United States to pay to stop Tehran from getting the bomb.

In a 1999 article profiling six of “China’s bright young stars,” the New York Times described Junning Liu as “one of China’s most influential liberal political thinkers.” Today, sitting in a delegate-style conference room, Liu wants to add a point to Thomas C. Heller’s discussion of risk assessment and the role of law in doing business. If assets are not protected by legal institutions, Heller argues, foreign direct investment becomes a riskier prospect and economic growth suffers as a result. Except, he points out, in China. The legal system doesn’t manage risk but China is growing extremely fast.

“There are more businesspeople in Chinese prisons than dissidents,” Liu says evenly, with a suggestion of a smile. “So you see … Chinese people mind the situation more than you [the foreign investors] do.”

Liu is one of 26 change-makers from developing democracies who were selected from more than 800 applicants to take part in this year’s Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program, which is offered by FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). His colleagues in the program are presidential advisors and attorneys general, journalists and civic activists, academics and members of the international development community. They traveled to Stanford from 21 countries in transition, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia, Egypt, and Nigeria. And like their academic curriculum during the three-week program, which examines linkages among democracy, economic development, and the rule of law, their professional experiences and fields of study center on these three areas, assuring that each fellow brings a seasoned perspective to the program’s discussions.

“For most of the fellows … democracy is seen not as a luxury or an option, but rather as a necessity for achieving broad-based development and a genuine rule of law.”The curriculum for the first week focused on democracy, with leading comparative democracy scholars Michael A. McFaul, Larry Diamond, and Kathryn Stoner team-teaching the morning seminars. Using selected articles and book chapters as starting points for discussion, McFaul, Diamond, and Stoner-Weiss began the weeklong democracy module with an examination of what democracy is and what definition or definitions might apply to distinguish electoral democracy, liberal democracy, and competitive authoritarianism. Another question discussed was whether there was such a thing as Islamic democracy, Asian democracy, Russian democracy, or American democracy.

As the week progressed, fellows and faculty discussed institutions of democracy, electoral systems, horizontal accountability, development of civil society, democratic transitions, and global trends in democracy promotion. Fellows led sessions themselves in the afternoons, comparing experiences and sharing insights into how well political parties and parliaments constrained executive power and how civil society organizations contributed to democratic consolidation and/or democratic transitions.

In addition to discussing their personal experiences with democracy promotion, fellows met with a broad range of practitioners, including USAID deputy director Maria Rendon, IREX president Mark Pomar, MoveOn.org founder Joan Blades, Freedom House chairman and International Center on Nonviolent Conflict founding chair Peter Ackerman, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict president Jack DuVall, Otpor cofounder Ivan Marovic, A Force More Powerful documentary filmmaker Steve York, and Advocacy Institute cofounder David Cohen. Guest speakers talked about their fieldwork, offered practical advice, and answered fellows’ questions. This component grounded the classroom discussions in a practical context. “It was important for our visiting fellows to interact with American practitioners, both to learn about innovative techniques for improving democracy practices but also to hear about frustrations and failures that Americans also face in working to make democracy and democracy promotion work more effectively,” explains McFaul. “We Americans do not have all the answers and have much to learn from interaction with those in the trenches working to improve governance in their countries.”

The following two weeks would focus in turn on development and the rule of law, but democracy continued to serve as the intellectual lynchpin of the program, with economies and legal institutions analyzed vis-à-vis their relationship to the development of democratic systems.

“For most of the fellows, who come from national circumstances which once suffered (or still do suffer) prolonged authoritarian rule, democracy is seen not as a luxury or an option, but rather as a necessity for achieving broad-based development and a genuine rule of law,” says Diamond. “Unless people have the ability to turn bad rulers out of office, and to hold rulers accountable in between elections through a free press and civil society, countries stand a poor prospect of controlling corruption, protecting human rights, correcting policy mistakes, and ensuring that government is responsive to the needs and aspirations of the people.”

Among the fellows, this idea of democracy as a “necessity,” a fundamental platform from which to pursue economic and legal reforms, was widely recognized. “It appears that like-minded people were selected to participate,” notes Sani Aliyu, a broadcast journalist and interfaith mediator from Nigeria. “Each of us is interested in the development of humanity, and it appears that we have accepted that democracy seems to be the vehicle through which human development can be accessed reasonably. We share this."

As the program’s curriculum shifted to development issues for week two, the all-volunteer assemblage of Stanford faculty expanded to include professors and professional research staff from Stanford Law School, the Graduate School of Business, and the Department of Economics. Avner Greif established the context for the development module with an overview of institutional foundations of politics and markets, followed by discussions of growth restructuring in transitional economies with GSB professor Peter B. Henry and Stanford Center for International Development deputy director Nicholas Hope. Terry L. Karl analyzed corruption in developing economies and the “resource curse,” and Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, joined Diamond, McFaul, and Karl in discussing how the spectrum of democratic to autocratic systems of government affected a country’s development.

Another salient component of the development module centered on the role of media in promoting democracy and development. The field trip to San Francisco, which included a session with KQED Forum host Michael Krasny, a briefing on international reporting at the San Francisco Chronicle, and a discussion of media strategies at the Family Violence Prevention Fund, provided particularly rich practical content, as did the fellows’ roundtable on maintaining media independence in semi-autocracies.

At KQED Radio, Cuban-born Raul Ramirez, the executive producer of Forum, talked with fellows about the concept of “civic journalism” and KQED’s goal of creating space for civic discussion. Forum host Michael Krasny and Ramirez, who runs workshops on civic journalism at the European Journalism Centre in Maastricht, then fielded a barrage of questions from fellows: How does KQED maintain independence from government and commercial funding? If Rush Limbaugh attacked you, would you respond in your program? Is it possible to have neutral, nonpartisan public radio? How do you manage to deal with political issues, particularly when you start to affect the power structures with your programming? Are there any words, like “terrorist,” that you are banned from using on the air?

“Discussion of this kind is of great importance to both media professionals and the audience,” notes Anna Sevortian, a journalist and research coordinator at the Center for Development of Democracy and Human Rights in Moscow. “It helps you to clarify how a particular newspaper, TV, or radio station is dealing with matters of public policy or of political controversy.”

The third week’s curriculum layered rule-of-law issues onto the conceptual modules of democracy promotion and economic development, drawing on the teaching caliber of constitutional scholar and Stanford president emeritus Gerhard Casper, Erik Jensen, Helen Stacy, Allen S. Weiner, Tom Heller, and Richard Burt. After establishing a theoretical framework through discussions of the role of law, constitutionalism, human rights, transitional justice, the role of law in business and economic development, and strategies for promoting the rule of law, fellows compared experiences defending human rights, met with American immigration and civil liberties lawyers, and had a session with Circuit Court Judge Pamela Rymer on judging in federal courts. Field trips to Silicon Valley-based Google and eBay again put into practical context the free market, rule-of-law components discussed theoretically in the classroom.

Despite the intellectual rigor of the coursework and discussion, and the exploration of practical applicability with guest speakers and field trips, the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program was designed as much to stimulate connections among field practitioners and to provide a forum in which to exchange ideas. Weekend dinners, stretching late into the evening at the homes of Diamond and Stoner-Weiss, helped to gel the collegiality developing in the classroom. Led by Violet Gonda, a Zimbabwean journalist living in exile in London, and Talan Aouny, director of a major Iraqi civil society development program, the fellows organized a multicultural party, a potluck-style affair in which guests made a dish from their home country to share with their colleagues and friends of the program.

Program directors McFaul and Stoner-Weiss hope this social network will endure well into the weeks and months after the program. “We envision the creation of an international network of emerging political and civic leaders in countries in transition who can share experiences and solutions to the very similar problems they and their countries face,” says Stoner-Weiss. To ensure they fulfill their goal of building a small but robust global network of civic activist and policymakers in developing countries, CDDRL recently launched its Summer Fellows Program Alumni Newsletter. The newsletter is based on an interactive website that will allow the center to strengthen its network of leaders and civic activists and facilitate more groundbreaking policy analysis across academic fields and geographic regions, the results of which will be promptly fed back to its activist alumni in a virtual loop of scholarship and policymaking.

Earlier this year, CDDRL also moved to professionalize the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program by hiring a program manager, Laura Cosovanu, an attorney with experience in foundations and other nonprofit organizations, to oversee its advancement. The logistical acrobatics Cosovanu performed throughout the three weeks quickly became the object of good-natured teasing for some of the fellows, all of whom seemed to realize and appreciate the work required to get fellows and faculty into the same room.

As Kenza Aqertit, a National Democratic Institute for International Affairs field representative from Morocco, told program faculty at the graduation dinner, “You’ve done a great job and you should be proud of all your efforts. Plus you’ve won so many friends in so many autocracies and semi-autocracies.