Stanford University

Thinking inside the box needed to secure borders, write CISAC professor and colleague

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Lawrence M. Wein
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The president's border security and immigration reform proposals won't protect Americans from the gravest cross-border threat: the possibility that a ship, truck or train will one day import a 40-foot cargo container in which terrorists have hidden a dirty bomb or nuclear weapon. To tackle this problem, policymakers need to think inside the box, write CISAC's Lawrence M. Wein and colleague Stephen E. Flynn in this New York Times op-ed.

This week President Bush will seek to focus the nation's attention on border security and immigration reform. But the president's proposals won't protect Americans from our gravest cross-border threat: the possibility that a ship, truck or train will one day import a 40-foot cargo container in which terrorists have hidden a dirty bomb or nuclear weapon.

The Bush administration maintains that it has a smart strategy to reduce this risk. A new 24-Hour Rule requires that importers report the contents of their containers to customs inspectors one day before the boxes are loaded on ships bound for the United States. The Department of Homeland Security's National Targeting Center then reviews the data, checking against other intelligence to determine which boxes may pose a threat. Although the containers deemed high risk are inspected at cooperating foreign ports or when they enter the United States, the rest--more than 90 percent--land here without any perusal.

We have two concerns about this strategy. First, it presumes that the United States government has good enough intelligence about Al Qaeda to reliably discern which containers are suspicious and which are not. But our inability to thwart the attacks in Iraq demonstrates that we lack such specific tactical intelligence. And supporting customs inspectors, who must make the first assessment of risk, is not a priority for the intelligence agencies. Inspectors must rely on their experience in spotting anomalies--a company that claims to be exporting pineapples from Iceland, for example.

Second, determined terrorists can easily take advantage of the knowledge that customs inspectors routinely designate certain shipments as low risk. A container frequently makes 10 or more stops between its factory of origin and the vessel carrying it to American shores. Many of the way stations are in poorly policed parts of the world. Because name-brand companies like Wal-Mart and General Motors are widely known to be considered low-risk, terrorists need only to stake out their shipment routes and exploit the weakest points to introduce a weapon of mass destruction. A terrorist cell posing as a legal shipping company for more than two years, or a terrorist truck driver hauling goods from a well-known shipper, can also be confident of being perceived as low risk.

So what needs to be done? A pilot project under way in Hong Kong, the world's largest container port along with Singapore, offers one piece of a potential solution. At an estimated cost of $7 per container, new technology can photograph the box's exterior, screen for radioactive material, and collect a gamma-ray image of a box's contents while the truck on which it is carried moves at 10 miles per hour.

Terrorists can defeat radiation sensors by shielding a dirty bomb with dense materials like lead. But by combining those sensors with gamma ray images, the Hong Kong system allows inspectors to sound the alarm on suspiciously dense objects. Inspectors would need to analyze enough of the scans--perhaps 20 percent to 30 percent--to convince terrorists that there is a good chance that an indistinct image will lead a container's contents to be sent for more reliable X-ray or manual examinations. Images of container contents would then be reviewed remotely by inspectors inside the United States who are trained to spot possible nuclear weapons.

If terrorists were to succeed in shipping a dirty bomb, for example, the database of these images could serve as a kind of black box--an invaluable forensic tool in the effort to identify how and where security was breached. That information could help prevent politicians from reacting spasmodically and freezing the entire container system after an attack.

Such a program could significantly reduce the likelihood that terrorists will smuggle plutonium or a dirty bomb through American ports. But it still would not stop a terrorist from importing highly enriched uranium, which can be used to construct a nuclear weapon. Lengthening the time that a container is screened for radiation would help, and this could be done without increasing waiting times if additional monitors were added to the Hong Kong system near the gate where the trucks must already stop for driver identification checks. Better still would be for the Department of Homeland Security to make the development of new technology that can recognize the unique signature of highly enriched uranium an urgent priority.

Finally, we must find ways to ensure that terrorists do not breach containers before shipments arrive at loading ports. Sensors should be installed inside containers in order to track their movements, detect any infiltration and discern the presence of radioactive material. Where boxes are loaded, certified independent inspectors should verify that companies have followed adequate protocols to ensure that legitimate and authorized goods are being shipped.

Taken together, these recommendations will require new investments and an extraordinary degree of international cooperation. But increased container security will not only help the United States prevent terrorism, it will also help all countries reduce theft, stop the smuggling of drugs and humans, crack down on tariff evasion and improve export controls. What's more, such a program would require an investment of just one one-hundredth of the capital that could be lost if we shut down the global container shipping system after an attack.

Container security is a complex problem with enormous stakes. American officials insist that existing programs have matters well in hand. But we cannot afford to take these perky reassurances at face value while the same officials fail to embrace promising initiatives like the Hong Kong pilot project.

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Saving Face and How to Say Farewell

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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. Henry S. Rowen comments in the New York Times.

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."

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Secret Practices of the War on Terror

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Barbara Olshansky is Director Counsel of the Global Justice Initiative and Deputy Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Barbara's current docket at the Center for Constitutional Rights includes class action lawsuits concerning international human rights; immigrants' rights; race discrimination in employment, education, the environment, and public health; and prisoners' rights. Barbara recently co-authored two books: the most recent, entitled America's Disappeared, discusses the plight of America's "war on terror" detainees; and the second, entitled Against War With Iraq, analyzes the international law ramifications of the U.S. decision to pursue a military campaign in Iraq.

Barbara has also written two other books: Democracy Detained, discussing America's secret practices used in the "war on terror," and Secret Trials and Executions, assessing the military commissions scheduled for Guantánamo detainees. Stanford Law School recently named her 2005 Public Interest Lawyer of the Year.

Stanford Law School, Room 190

Barbara Olshansky Director Counsel of the Global Justice Initiative and Deputy Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Speaker
Lectures

The Antiplague System of the Former Soviet Union

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The USSR's anti-plague system had four main responsibilities: monitor natural foci of endemic dread diseases such as plague, tularemia, anthrax, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever; protect the nation from imported exotic diseases (e.g., cholera and smallpox); protect the nation from biological warfare; and perform tasks for the Soviet offensive biological weapons program. Although the anti-plague system appears to have had successes in public health, its work undoubtedly was compromised by excessive secrecy, which led to anti-plague scientists having to overcome substantial barriers before being able to communicate with colleagues in other Soviet public health agencies, publish the results of their work, and undertake travel to non-socialist countries. This system disintegrated after December 1991, but was resurrected as elements of the newly independent states' health systems.

Reporting on the findings of a recently concluded project carried out by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), I will discuss: (1) the threats that the anti-plague systems' human resources, pathogen culture collections, and equipment pose to international security; (2) the promises these systems hold, should they regain their former level of scientific/technical capability, for enhancing international public health; and (3) current activities by U.S. government agencies to lessen the security and safety threats of these systems and, simultaneously, increase their public health capabilities. As appropriate, I will illustrate the presentation with photos taken by CNS personnel in the course of having visited more than 40 anti-plague institutes and stations.

Dr. Raymond Zilinskas worked as a clinical microbiologist for 16 years, after graduating from California State University at Northridge with a BA in Biology, and from University of Stockholm with a Filosofie Kandidat in Organic Chemistry. He then commenced graduate studies at the University of Southern California. His dissertation addressed policy issues generated by recombinant DNA research, including the applicability of genetic engineering techniques for military and terrorist purposes. After earning a PhD, Dr. Zilinskas worked at the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (1981-1982), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (1982-1986), and University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI) (1987-1998). In addition, he was an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of International Health, School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, until 1999.

In 1993, Dr. Zilinskas was appointed William Foster Fellow at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), where he worked on biological and toxin warfare issues. In 1994, ACDA seconded Dr. Zilinskas to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), where he worked as a biological analyst for seven months. He participated in two biological warfare-related inspections in Iraq (June and October 1994) encompassing 61 biological research and production facilities. He set up a database containing data about key dual-use biological equipment in Iraq and developed a protocol for UNSCOM's on-going monitoring and verification program in the biological field.

After the fellowship, Dr. Zilinskas returned to the UMBI and Johns Hopkins University. In addition, he continued to serve as a long-term consultant to ACDA (now part of the U.S. Department of State), for which he carried out studies on Cuban allegations of U.S. biological attacks against its people, animals, and plants and investigations carried out by the United Nations of chemical warfare in Southeast Asia and the Arabian Gulf region. Dr. Zilinskas also is a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense.

In September 1998, Dr. Zilinskas was appointed Senior Scientist at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), Monterey Institute of International Studies. On September 1, 2002, he was promoted to the Director of the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program at the CNS. His research focuses on achieving effective biological arms control, assessing the proliferation potential of the former Soviet Union's biological warfare program, and meeting the threat of bioterrorism. Dr. Zilinskas' book Biological Warfare: Modern Offense and Defense, a definitive account on how modern biotechnology has qualitatively changed developments related to biological weapons and defense, was published in 1999. In 2005, the important reference work Encyclopedia of Bioterrorism Defense, which is co-edited by Richard Pilch and Dr. Zilinskas, was published by Wiley. He currently is writing a book on the former Soviet Union's biological warfare program, including its history, organization, accomplishments, and proliferation potential, which will be published in 2006.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, East 207, Encina Hall

Ray Zilinskas Director, Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Program Speaker Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute
Seminars

CISAC 2004 Drell lecturer wins Nobel peace prize

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Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, delivered CISAC's 2004 Drell Lecture.

A year after delivering CISAC's Drell Lecture, Mohamed ElBaradei has won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize. He shares the prize equally with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which he directs.

The Nobel committee commended the IAEA and its director-general "for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way."

In "Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Arms Control: The Road Ahead," CISAC's 2004 Drell Lecture, ElBaradei drew lessons from nuclear weapons inspections in Iraq and elsewhere to support a call for politicians, scientists and society to work collectively toward nuclear disarmament. "If we are ever to build a global security culture based on human solidarity and shared human values -- a collective security framework that will serve the interests of all countries equally, and make reliance on nuclear weapons obsolete -- the time is now," ElBaradei said.

The Nobel committee echoed that sentiment in its peace prize announcement. "At a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing, . . . this threat must be met through the broadest possible international cooperation," the committee said. "This principle finds its clearest expression today in the work of the IAEA and its director-general."

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Law, Just War, and the International Fight Against Terrorism: Is It War?

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Allen S. Weiner examines to what degree the global "war on terror" that has erupted since September 11, 2001 fits the "just war" doctrine of international relations or even whether it can properly be considered a war at all in terms of positive international law. Whether or not these labels apply is not merely a matter of academic debate, Weiner notes, but has broader implications for the international legal responsibilities of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and other theaters of the "war on terror

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Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, East 207 Encina Hall

Allen Weiner Warren Christopher Professor of the Practice of International Law and Diplomacy Speaker FSI; Stanford Law School
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The real nuclear threat is to America's bases

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The six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons raise public concerns about whether Pyongyang will indeed dismantle its nuclear weapons program or whether it will pursue long-range nuclear missiles that could destroy Seoul, Tokyo or an American city. Overlooked is the threat to U.S. military capabilities, write CISAC's Michael M. May and colleague Michael Nacht in this Financial Times op-ed.

Amid uncertainty over the outcome of the six-party negotiations on North Korea's nuclear weapons development, public concern is likely to focus on whether Pyongyang will live up to commitments it made to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme (already questionable) and whether it will pursue long-range nuclear missiles that could destroy an American city or, more immediately, Seoul and Tokyo. But the latter concern is not the most effective nuclear threat North Korea or other potential adversaries could pose.

A nuclear threat to American cities, if implemented, would certainly provoke massive US retaliation. There are better options for opponents: credible, cheaper and more suited to the US capabilities that adversaries would face. Since the cold war, the top US military priority, as stated in congressional testimonies, has been to deploy the world's most effective power projection forces. These forces have been used in the Balkans, the Persian Gulf and central Asia. A power projection force operates in or near hostile territory. It must rely on superior training, tactics and equipment. Joint force training, mobile communication and control, soldiers capable of individual initiative and precision-guided munitions have been key to US success.

Any power projection force needs air bases and ports of debarkation and logistics centres for sustained operations. These facilities must be rented or conquered. Their number is limited - a handful in Iraq, and not many more in east Asia, seven or so in Japan, some bases in South Korea, and a few others. These facilities are highly vulnerable even to inaccurate nuclear missile attacks. They are "soft targets", not "hardened" against nuclear weapons.

North Korea, with a couple of dozen warheads mounted on its intermediate-range No Dong missiles, or its longer-range Taepo Dong missiles, could threaten all the US assets mentioned above and have weapons left to threaten Tokyo and Seoul.

The US could destroy those North Korean military and nuclear assets it could locate. North Korean forces could retreat into the mountains and position for a protracted ground war. But would the US then launch a massive attack against North Korea with the threat still hanging over Japanese and South Korean cities?

The Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review envisages a force structure better suited to counter-terrorism and control of the seas and the sky, rather than focused on fighting two land wars simultaneously. The nuclear threat to essential US force-projection assets largely counterbalances the advantage provided by US conventional forces, without necessarily consigning whole cities and industrial bases to destruction. That latter threat can still be held in reserve by our adversaries.

Should this threat mature, it would undercut the credibility of US security guarantees in east Asia that have been the hallmark of US strategy in the region for more than half a century. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan all depend heavily on these guarantees for their security. This credibility has dissuaded each government from acquiring its own nuclear force. Such restraint, in turn, has permitted China to proceed at a more measured pace in its own nuclear weapons development programmes.

If key political and defence officials in Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei no longer believed in US guarantees because of the vulnerability of US military assets in the region to a North Korean nuclear missile attack, the consequences for their own security and for US national strategy could be profound. Although circumstances are quite different in the Middle East-Persian Gulf region, similar consequences could materialise if Iran or another hostile country developed a comparable nuclear missile capability.

A great deal is at stake in constraining the missile and nuclear weapons capabilities of North Korea and other rogue states. The US thus must utilise all the resources at its disposal, working constructively with its allies and other interested parties, to deny these states the capabilities they almost surely seek to acquire. A more resilient forward defence and deterrent posture is essential to an effective American global strategy.

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A Way Forward on Global Security

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While the world has come to a remarkable degree of consensus over the last 10 years on how to grow economies, alleviate poverty, and protect the environment, we are still some way from similar agreement on how to make the world more secure. There, things have, if anything, gotten worse in the last few years.

A moment of global solidarity against terrorism in 2001 was quickly replaced by acrimonious arguments over the war in Iraq, which turned out to be symptomatic of deeper divisions on fundamental questions. How can we best protect ourselves against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction? When is the use of force permissible-and who should decide? Is "preventive war" sometimes justified, or is it simply aggression under another name? And, in a world that has become "unipolar," what role should the United Nations play?

Those new debates came on top of earlier ones that arose in the 1990s. Is state sovereignty an absolute principle, or does the international community have a responsibility to resolve conflicts within states-especially when they involve atrocities?

To suggest answers to such questions, a year ago I appointed a panel of 16 people from all parts of the world and from different fields of expertise, asking them to assess the threats facing humanity today and to recommend how we need to change, in both policies and institutions, in order to meet those threats. On Thursday, they delivered their report, "A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility." Its 101 recommendations are the most comprehensive and coherent set of proposals for forging a common response to common threats that I have seen.

The report reaffirms the right of states to defend themselves, including preemptively when an attack is imminent, and says that in the case of "nightmare scenarios," for instance those involving terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, the U.N. Security Council may have to act earlier and more decisively than in the past. And it offers guidelines to help the council decide when to authorize the use of force.

No less useful is the panel's reaching of consensus on a definition of terrorism. That is something U.N. members have been unable to do because some have argued that any definition must include the use of armed force against civilians by states, as well as by private groups, and some-especially Arab and Muslim states-have insisted that the definition must not override the right to resist foreign occupation.

But the panel members (including several very eminent Muslim representatives) point out that international law as it stands is much clearer in condemning large-scale use of force against civilians by states than by private groups; and they agree that "there is nothing in the fact of occupation that justifies the targeting and killing of civilians." If governments follow their lead-as I hope they will-it will be much easier for the U.N. to develop a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy, and for me to take the lead in promoting it, as the report asks me to do.

The report also contains a welter of practical proposals to prevent a cascade of nuclear proliferation, to improve bio-security and to make the U.N. itself more effective, notably in prevention and peace-building.

Among the most significant recommendations is the expansion of the Security Council from 15 to 24 members, either by adding six new permanent members, without veto, or by creating a new category of four-year, renewable seats, which would be regionally distributed. I believe either formula would strengthen the council's legitimacy in the eyes of the world, by bringing its membership closer to the realities of the 21st century-as opposed to those of 1945, when the U.N. Charter was drafted.

Above all, it clearly spells out the interconnectedness of our age, in which the destinies of peoples and the threats they face are interwoven. Not only is a threat against one nation a threat against all, but failure to deal with one threat can undermine our defense against all the others. A major terrorist attack in the industrial world can devastate the world economy, plunging millions of people back into extreme poverty; and the collapse of a poor state can punch a hole in our common defense against both terrorism and epidemic disease.

Few people could read this report and remain in doubt that making this world more secure is indeed a shared responsibility, as well as a shared interest. The report tells us how to do it, and why we must act now. It puts the ball firmly in the court of the world's political leaders. It is for them to negotiate the details, but I strongly urge them to act on the main thrust of the recommendations.

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University Scholars Play Prominent Role in Charting Reforms for United Nations

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A new united nations report recommending the most sweeping reform in the institution's history offers a global vision of collective security for the 21st century that is as committed to development in poor nations as it is to prevention of nuclear terrorism in rich ones.

A new united nations report recommending the most sweeping reform in the institution's history offers a global vision of collective security for the 21st century that is as committed to development in poor nations as it is to prevention of nuclear terrorism in rich ones.

The point is, according to the report's research director, Stephen Stedman, a threat to one is a threat to all in today's world. "Globalization means that a major terrorist attack anywhere in the industrial world would have devastating consequences for the well-being of millions around the developing world," the document states. The report's value lies in putting forward a comparative framework of collective security that addresses all the compelling threats of the day, Stedman explained. "The recommendations really are the most important possible makeover of the institution in 60 years," he said. "I think something is going to come out of it." Stedman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at the Stanford Institute for International Studies (SIIS), was recruited a year ago by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to direct research for the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change. Stedman is an expert on civil wars, mediation, conflict prevention, and peacekeeping.

Annan created the 16-member blue-ribbon panel, made up mostly of former government leaders and ministers, in the wake of widespread heated criticism of the United Nations following the U.S.-led war in Iraq. In Annan's annual report to the General Assembly in 2003, he said, "Rarely have such dire forecasts been made about the U.N. ... We have reached a fork in the road ... a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the U.N. was founded." The panel was charged with analyzing global security threats and proposing far-reaching reforms to the international system.

On December 2 the panel, chaired by former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun, issued its 95-page report: "A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility." The document identifies six major threats to global security:

-War between states;

-Violence within states, including civil wars, large-scale human rights abuses, and genocide;

-Poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation;

-Nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons;

-Terrorism; and

-Transnational organized crime.

Although states do not face these threats equally, a collective security system must take all member states' threats seriously and deal with them equitably, the report noted. It specifically mentioned the world's appallingly slow response to AIDS.

The report makes 101 recommendations for collective prevention and response to the threats, including ways to reform the United Nations. Annan described these in a December 3 editorial in the International Herald Tribune as "the most comprehensive and coherent set of proposals for forging a common response to common threats that I have seen."

The document also reaffirms the right of states to defend themselves-even preemptively-when an attack is imminent, and it offers guidelines to help the Security Council decide when to authorize the use of force. Stedman said other significant proposals involve improving biosecurity, strengthening nuclear nonproliferation, and defining terrorism. Panel members agreed that any politically motivated violence against civilians should be regarded as terrorism and condemned.

The panel was very critical of the Human Rights Commission, a body that has often harmed the United Nations' reputation by permitting the membership of some of the worst human-rights violators, including Cuba, Libya, and Sudan. The report also discussed the need for new institutions, such as a peace-building commission, that would support countries emerging from conflict.

Scott Sagan, co-director of CISAC, described the report as hard-hitting, although he said he would have tried to extend the withdrawal clause of the nonproliferation treaty from three months to a year. "I think it's the beginning of some major changes that will be helpful," he said. "We need to get states to work together to reform the U.N. rather than sniping at it."

CISAC was closely involved in the panel's work and was named in a cover letter accompanying the report from Panyarachun to Annan. Co-director Chris Chyba served on the panel's 30-member resource group, providing expertise on nuclear nonproliferation and bioterrorism. Bruce Jones, a former CISAC Hamburg Fellow, acted as Stedman's deputy, and Tarun Chhabra, a graduate of CISAC's undergraduate honors program and recent Marshall Scholarship recipient, worked as a research officer. Political science Professors David Laitin and James Fearon, and SIIS Senior Fellow David Victor, provided, respectively, expertise on terrorism, civil wars, and the environment, Stedman said. "There is an immense amount of Stanford influence in the report," he added.

CISAC also hosted a nuclear nonproliferation workshop for the panel on campus last March and helped organize a meeting during the summer in Bangkok. SIIS co-hosted a conference on governance and sovereignty on campus in April and a meeting at Oxford University in June. CISAC provided workspace to give the research team a quiet place to focus on writing the report's first draft in August.

The report has attracted intense international media interest in part because it calls for expanding the U.N. Security Council, its top decision-making group, from 15 to 24 members. The panel was unable to agree on one proposal and offers two options that would make the council more representative and democratic. "I believe either formula would strengthen the legitimacy in the eyes of the world, by bringing its membership closer to the realities of the 21st century-as opposed to those of 1945, when the U.N. Charter was drafted," Annan wrote in the International Herald Tribune.

According to Stedman, the media has highlighted the Security Council's proposed expansion because so many nations have a stake in it. "But in the absence of a new consensus on international peace and security, expansion of the council will not be effective," he explained.

In March, Annan will use the report to inform a series of proposals he will present to the 191 U.N. member states. These, in turn, will be submitted to a summit of world leaders before the General Assembly convenes next September in New York. Stedman said he has been asked to stay on for another year as a special advisor to the secretary general to keep the United Nations "on message" during negotiations.

Engagement by the United States, which has openly questioned the institution's relevance, will be critical to implementing the report's recommendations, said Stedman, who added that the superpower can benefit from a revamped United Nations. "Putting threats to the United States into a global framework makes it more secure," he said.

Stedman noted that one of the most disturbing aspects of the panel's consultations was listening to government representatives from civil-society organizations dismiss the seriousness of bio- and nuclear terror threats against the United States. "They were essentially denying this as a real threat to American security," he said. "I said it's as real a threat to the U.S. as other threats are to you."

When Stedman accepted the job, he thought he would spend 80 percent of his time on research and writing and 20 percent on consultations and negotiating. In fact, he said, it was the other way around. "It's unlike anything I've ever done," he said. "It's been a blast." In contrast to academia, where a researcher presents his or her best findings and defends them, Stedman was faced with 16 people who would push back, reject, or accept his work. "I had to work to change language to include their concerns," he said. "My biggest concern at the beginning was that the report would be based on the lowest common denominator. It's not."

Stedman said the panel members remained open-minded throughout the year. "They showed flexibility, listened to arguments, and changed their minds," he said. "Our job was to be as persuasive, rigorous, and comprehensive in our analysis as we were able to achieve."

In the end, Stedman said, the report belongs to the panel. "Parts of what the exercise shows is that access to those making policy is really important," he said. "If you do really good work and you have access, you have a chance of being heard. Kofi Annan gave me that opportunity."

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Iraq: Lessons (Not) Learned

Authors
Larry Diamond
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs

Among the growing number of recent cases where international actors have become engaged in trying to rebuild a shattered state and construct democracy after conflict, Iraq is somewhat unique. The state collapsed not as a result of a civil war or internal conflict, but as a result of external military action to overthrow it. We are still very much in the middle of an internationally assisted political reconstruction process in Iraq, and we will not know for a year or two, or maybe five or ten, the outcome of the postwar effort to rebuild the Iraqi state. Nevertheless, some important lessons can be identified.

Prepare For A Major Commitment

Rebuilding a failed state is an extremely expensive and difficult task under any circumstance, and even more so in the wake of violent conflict. Success requires a very substantial commitment of human and financial resources, delivered in a timely and effective fashion, and sustained over an extended period of time, lasting (not necessarily through occupation or trusteeship, but at least through intensive international engagement) for a minimum of five to ten years.

Commit Enough Troops

One of the major problems with the American engagement in Iraq is that there were not enough international troops on the ground in the wake of state collapse to secure the immediate postwar order. As a result, Iraq descended into lawless chaos once Saddam's regime fell. The United States Army wanted a much larger force on the ground in order to secure the postwar order, something like 400,000 troops rather than the total invasion force of less than 200,000 that was ultimately authorized. Of course, what is needed is not simply enough troops but the right kind of troops with the proper rules of engagement. It does no good to have troops on the ground if they simply stand by and watch what is left of the state being stolen and burned. One lesson of Iraq is that international post-conflict stabilization missions need to be able to deploy not just a conventional army but a muscular peace implementation force that is somewhere between a war-making army and a crime-fighting police, between a rapid reaction and riot control force.

Mobilize International Legitimacy and Cooperation

In the contemporary era, a successful effort at post-conflict reconstruction requires broad international legitimacy and cooperation, for at least two key reasons. First, the scope and duration of engagement is typically more than any one country-and public-is willing to bear on its own. The broader the international coalition, the greater the human and financial resources that can be mobilized, and the more likely that the engagement of any participating country can be sustained, as its public sees a sense of shared international commitment and sacrifice. Second, when there is broad international engagement and legitimacy, people within the post-conflict country are less likely to see the intervention as the imperial project of one country or set of countries. All other things being equal, international cooperation and legitimacy tends to generate greater domestic legitimacy-or at least acceptance-for the intervention.

Generate legitimacy and trust within the post-conflict country

No international reconstruction effort can succeed without some degree of acceptance and cooperation-and eventually support and positive engagement-from the people in the post-conflict country. Without some degree of trust in the initial international administration and its intentions, the international intervention can become the target of popular wrath, and will then need to spend most of its military (and administrative) energies defending itself rather than rebuilding the country and its political and social order. Unfortunately, these qualities were lacking in the occupation of Iraq, and the Iraqi people knew it. From the very beginning, the American occupation failed to earn the trust and respect of the Iraqi people. As noted above, it failed in its first and most important obligation as an occupying power-to establish order and public safety. Then it failed to convey early on any clear plan for post-conflict transition.

All international post-conflict interventions to reconstruct a failed state on more democratic foundations confront a fundamental contradiction. Their goal is, in large measure, democracy: popular, representative, and accountable government, in which "the people" are sovereign. But their means are undemocratic: in essence, some form of imperial domination, however temporary and transitional. This requires a balancing of international trusteeship or imperial functions with a distinctly non-imperial attitude and some clear and early specification of an acceptable timetable for the restoration of full sovereignty. As much as possible, the humiliating features of an extended, all-out occupation should be avoided.

Hold Local Elections First

One of the toughest issues on which to generalize concerns the timing of elections. Ill-timed and ill-prepared elections do not produce democracy, or even political stability, after conflict. Instead, they may only enhance the power of actors who mobilize coercion, fear, and prejudice, reviving autocracy and even precipitating large-scale violent strife. In Angola in 1992, in Bosnia in 1996, and in Liberia in 1997, rushed elections set back the prospects for democracy and, in Angola and Liberia, paved the way for renewed civil war. There are therefore compelling reasons, based in logic and in recent historical experience, for deferring national elections until militias have been demobilized, new moderate parties trained and assisted, electoral infrastructure created, and democratic media and ideas generated. International interventions that seek to construct democracy after conflict must balance the tension between domination for democracy and withdrawal through democracy. In these circumstances, two temptations compete: to transform the country, its institutions and values, through an extended and penetrating occupation (à la British colonial rule), and to hold elections and get out as soon as possible. The question is always, in part, how long can international rule be viable? In Iraq, for better or worse, the answer-readily apparent from history, and from the profound and widespread suspicion of American motives in the region and among Iraqis themselves-was: not long.

Disperse Economic Reconstruction Funds and Democratic Assistance As Widely As Possible

Both for the effectiveness and speed of economic revival, and in order to build up local trust and acceptance, there is a compelling need for the decentralization of relief and reconstruction efforts, as well as democratic civic assistance. The more that the international administration, as well as private donors, works with and through local partners, the more likely that their relief and reconstruction efforts will be directed toward the most urgent needs, and the better the prospect for the accumulation of political trust and cooperation with the overall transition project. In Iraq there was a particularly compelling need for the creation of jobs, which might have been done more rapidly by channeling repair and reconstruction contracts more extensively through a wide range of local Iraqi contractors, instead of through the big American mega-corporations.

Proceed With Some Humility

This encompasses perhaps the ultimate, overarching contradiction. It is hard to imagine a bolder, more assertive, and self-confident act than a nation, or a set of nations, or "the international community," intervening to seize effective sovereignty in another nation. There is nothing the least bit humble about it. But ultimately the intervention cannot succeed, and the institutions it establishes cannot be viable, unless there is some sense of participation and ultimately "ownership" on the part of the people in the failed and re-emerging state. This is why holding local elections as early as possible is so important. It is why it is so vital to engage local partners, as extensively as possible, in post-conflict relief and economic reconstruction. And it is why the process of constitution making must be democratic and broadly participatory.

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