As the conflict in Iraq reminds us, nation building confounds its architects' designs with almost predictable regularity. Investments of time, resources, and specialized knowledge have not enabled large-scale political engineering. Instead, would-be nation builders have been frustrated by a proliferation of unintended consequences and their inability to elicit societal participation in their projects. Results depend more upon initial conditions prior to an intervention than the nation builder's exertions upon arrival.

Hence, the U.S. has performed most poorly when its mission required the most work (e.g., Somalia, Haiti, Iraq). Conversely, it has done best where it did less (Germany, Japan), deferring to old-regime civil servants and upgrading already functional institutions. Given the humbling record of Western powers at navigating the perils of macro-level political planning, the "how" of nation-building should be considered, in the formulation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a known unknown.

More likely, it is a known unknowable. The extent of unintended consequences and contingency in largescale political engineering makes disappointment certain and disaster likely.

Twentieth-century experiences belie the notion that nation-building successes will solve the problem of state failures. Forces trying to impose regime change and raise new state structures immediately grapple with societal inertia and their own deficit in understanding local politics.

This dilemma pushes would-be nation builders down one of two undesirable paths. Either they recognize their inability to restructure indigenous political arrangements or they attempt to do so in vain. Despite plans of change at the outset of nation building, those executing the project soon embrace a change of plans.

Thus, even the most committed states have been hampered by an inability to develop political capacity on the ground and improve upon the initial endowments of the country being occupied. Institutional value-added has been minimal, reflecting the problem of state instability back upon those who expected to solve it.

These patterns raise serious doubts about the chances of success in even the most well-intentioned of regimechange missions. They demarcate the limits of projecting state power abroad, whether for humanitarian or security purposes. The failures of imposed regime change lead to the conclusion that indigenous gradual political development-with all of its potential for authoritarianism and civil unrest-may be the optimal path for sustainable democratization and state building.

When comparing the uneven history of post-colonial development with the poor record of nation building we are left paraphrasing Churchill's endorsement of democracy as the worst kind of government except for the alternatives: Sovereign political development may be the worst form of government except for all those kinds of nation building that have been tried.

Infrastructural weakness is not a technical problem surmountable through systematic review of prior experiences. Indeed, the notion of "learning past lessons" deceptively implies that the current generation of academics and policymakers can succeed where their predecessors failed. The idea that nation building is a flawed but salvageable project prejudges its fundamental viability.

Once we have set our sights on rescuing an enterprise that has repeatedly frustrated its architects and their subjects, we screen out alternatives that more effectively serve the same development goals. We also risk funneling research down an intellectual cul-de-sac, at great cost in time, resources, and lives lost for those participating in failed regime-change missions. Therefore, a more productive direction for contemporary interest in nation building may mean backing up and reassessing the core problem of weak states, on one hand, and the limits of foreign intervention, on the other. Ensuring a positive impact on the country considered for intervention requires orienting the enterprise away from the takeover of state functions and toward the short-term provision of aid to local communities.

Apart from the futile pursuit of infrastructural power or the doomed deployment of despotic power (coercion), one can envision a third kind of influence, "regenerative power," which is exercised during relief efforts, such as emergency assistance following natural disasters.

Regenerative power involves neither the adoption of domestic state functions nor physical coercion. It denotes the ability of a state to develop infrastructure under the direction of the local population. For example, it means rebuilding a post office, but not delivering the mail. It is typified by the U.S. response to natural disaster relief within its own borders and abroad.

Regenerative power turns nation building on its head. Rather than imposing a blueprint from outside, participants respond to the needs of the affected community. It is restorative rather than transformative. There is no preexisting master plan for what the "final product" will be, but rather an organically evolving process in which the assisting group serves at the direction of the people being assisted.

The exercise of regenerative power is inherently limited in scale since it depends on local engagement rather than elite planning. It is inimical to macro-level ambitions but it also acquires a bounded effectiveness that imposed regime change lacks. Where nation building attempts to overwrite existing organization and only belatedly incorporates local understanding, disaster relief efforts and regenerative projects begin from the assumption that local communities know best their own needs. Existing social networks and patterns of authority are an asset, not a hindrance, and local know-how offers the principal tool for resolving local crises.

Rather than pursuing the often destructive delusion of interventionist state transformation, regenerative power starts from an interest in using state power for constructive purposes and a sober assessment of the limits of that aim. The assisting foreign groups serve under the direction of indigenous political leaders toward the achievement of physical reconstruction and emergency service provision.

With remarkable prescience Rumsfeld commented in October 2001, "I don't know people who are smart enough from other countries to tell other countries the kind of arrangements they ought to have to govern themselves."

The experience of twentieth century U.S. interventions and ongoing operations in Iraq supports his insight. Proponents of nation building or shared sovereignty arrangements have exaggerated the ability of powerful states to foster institutions in developing countries. The empirical record, from successful outcomes in Germany and Japan to dismal failures across the global south, shows the societies alleged to be most in need of strong institutions have proven the least tractable for foreign administration. Rather than transmitting new modes of organization, would-be nation builders have relied upon existing structures for governance.

This dependence on the very context that was intended for change reveals how little infrastructural power nation builders wield. They are consistently unable to implement political decisions through the local groups. Contrary to recent arguments that sustained effort and area expertise can enable success, nation building has foundered despite such investments.

Understanding that nation building is a "known unknowable" is crucial for redirecting intervention where it can be more effective. Advocates of humanitarian assistance should consider the merits of smaller, regenerative projects that can respond better to uncertainty and avoid the perils of large-scale political engineering.

Hans Blix, chairman of the International Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction and former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, said at the Stanford Institute for International Studies' International Day, "Challenges in a New Era," on May 6 that he does not think the world faces a new nuclear arms race. Nuclear risks posed by terrorists and nations like Iran and North Korea could trigger a new nuclear arms race, warned CISAC Co-Director and Stanford professor Scott D. Sagan.

Blix said that there need not be a new arms race if the world diligently pursues diplomacy. Blix's speech attracted a strong response from Sagan, who participated in the same plenary panel titled "Looking Ahead: A New Nuclear Arms Race?" "I think there already is a new and very different kind of nuclear arms race going on," Sagan said. "It is a race between terrorists trying to develop a nuclear weapon and national and international efforts to stop that." As North Korea "race[s] ahead with its own persistent and provocative nuclear program," Sagan said the likelihood that the impoverished country will want to test its weapons or sell them to the highest bidder will increase. "I think Dr. Blix's paper greatly underestimates the threat of nuclear terrorism today," he said.

The exchange was one of many during the one day International Day that attracted hundreds of diplomats, policymakers, faculty and students. Other speakers included Oxford professor Paul Collier, the State Department counselor, Philip Zelikow, and Stonebridge International chairman, Samuel Berger. Zelikow and Berger both spoke on U.S. foreign policy.

The SIIS International Day also included discussion session on topics such as Russia's future, U.S. policy on the Korean peninsula, climate change, our energy future, United Nations reform, responses to infectious diseases, U.S.-European relations, and international criminal justice and security. Participants included both Stanford faculty and invited scholars, policymakers, and journalists.

Coit D. Blacker, director of SIIS, said the International Day, an annual event, will become part of the university's newly launched International Initiative that promotes interdisciplinary research and teaching. He also said the Stanford Institute for International Studies will be renamed the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, effective September 1, in recognition of alumni Bradford Freeman, a member of the university's Board of Trustees, and Ronald Spogli, a member of the SIIS board of visitors, who together donated a lead gift of $50 million to help launch the initiative last month.

Fifty years ago, in April 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, the country's then-president Sukarno hosted a meeting that became a global icon of anti-colonial solidarity. The 29 African and Asian states represented at that first Bandung Conference swore their support for sovereignty and self-determination. Their priority was on national not individual freedom. The final declaration mentioned human rights. But it ignored the danger that foreign colonialists might be replaced with indigenous dictators. Democracy, corruption, and good governance were issues for the future.

This year in Indonesia, from 18 to 24 April, some 87 delegations, including 40 heads of state or government and more than 100 ministers, celebrated the "golden jubilee" anniversary of the Bandung Conference. In a series of summit, ministerial, and other meetings they sought to "reinvigorate the Bandung spirit" and forge "a new Asian-African strategic partnership" for the 21st century. The week climaxed on 24 April on the same day and in the same hall where the original conferees had launched the "Bandung spirit" of solidarity against imperialism half a century before.

Some of the leaders gathered for the celebration -- Bandung II -- were content to repeat the nationalist pieties of the past, or to redirect them from European colonialism to American unilateralism as the enemy of the day. But the current president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, known as SBY, struck a different note. His theme was not independence but introspection, not sovereignty but self-reform. He gently urged his fellow rulers to replace the old dogma of national liberation with a commitment to "good governance" as the latest and highest priority for developing countries -- in effect, self-reform as the new spirit of Bandung. At that moment, in Blitar, East Java, where he is buried, the nationalist firebrand Sukarno must have rolled in his grave.

"Good governance" did not and will not become the buzzword of Bandung II. The only other speaker who mentioned it, to my knowledge, was Singapore's prime minister Lee Hsien Loong. Fewer voices were raised in favor of self-reform than were aimed at American unilateralism. North Korea's Kim Yong Nam was among the latter. So was "Comrade R. G. Mugabe," as Zimbabwe's dictator called himself.

An Iraqi delegate, unable to insert in the ministers' communique a paragraph supporting his country's embattled transition to democracy, told me privately and bitterly, "The spirit of Bandung has not changed at all." In his view, most of the conferees in Bandung II preferred the odious sovereignty of Saddam Hussein to the induced democracy that followed, just as the leaders of the anti-colonial movement had tolerated tyrants in their ranks.

Yet SBY's speech did not fall on wholly deaf ears, and Iraq is not a good test case. More than a few delegates in Bandung supported democracy but opposed democracy-by-invasion. In developing countries, as representative government has spread, so has the desire to make it less corrupt and more effective. Over time, a new Asian-African agenda could give more prominence to democratization, religious moderation, the rule of law -- and honest, accountable governments as means to these ends.

But even if this does not happen, even if SBY's challenge is forgotten, the prestige of successfully hosting Bandung II already has strengthened his otherwise vulnerably "American" position inside a country whose future will help tip the balance of extremism and moderation in the Muslim world.

SBY is John F. Kennedy-esque: tall, handsome, young for a head of state, and able to project a democratic vision for Indonesia. A retired army general, he received American military and civilian training, including a master's in management from Webster University. No president before him has had more American exposure. This background will be in the spotlight when he pays his first presidential visit to the United States at the end of May.

Indonesia is the largest Muslim society, the third-largest democracy, and a tropical archipelago where defenders of the Bush administration are as scarce as snow. Indonesians will appreciate SBY's American experience if it enables him to deal with the world's only superpower in ways that help Indonesia. But if he is seen as too enamored of supposedly "American" values, he will create an opening for his political opponents.

In Bandung on the last day of the commemoration, crowds lined the streets, smiling and waving at the VIPs. Through the closed windows of air-conditioned limos and busses, the VIPs waved back. Compared with the week's grand abstractions -- sovereignty and self-reform -- this third spirit of Bandung was fleeting and local. But unless Asian-African solidarity becomes more than a slogan, or the vision of a better-governed Indonesia comes true, it may have been the most real.