President Bush has claimed a renewed mandate, and has begun to reshuffle his national security team. Condi Rice will move to State; Steve Hadley will move up at the NSC. Rich Armitage and Jim Kelly, who have borne much of the day-to-day responsibility for U.S. policy in Asia, are leaving along with Colin Powell. What might we expect of the Bush administration in its second term?

Generally speaking, continuity rather than change is likely to be the watchword in foreign policy. Above all, the Middle East and South Asia are likely to remain the principal preoccupations of American concerns. In Iraq, Washington will seek to acquit its commitments - to hold elections, train Iraqi security forces, and accelerate reconstruction projects - with whatever measure of dignity and honor it can muster in the face of excruciatingly difficult choices. With Yassar Arafat's death, American engagement in Israeli-Palestinian issues is destined to increase. And Iran's bid for nuclear weapons will continue to challenge the United States and Europe.

Thus Asia will not have pride of place on the Bush agenda. Yet it will continue to command Washington's attention. Why? Because it is in Asia that the interests of the great powers intersect most directly. Asia is the world's most dynamic economic area, and it is becoming more tightly integrated. Washington cannot afford to neglect South and Southeast Asia, for in these areas Islam presents a relatively moderate face. And North Korea, of course, poses a direct and growing challenge to the administration's nonproliferation policy.

Fortuitously, the United States is better positioned in Asia than in most other regions. Our military presence remains sizable and retains mobility and flexibility. Our economy continues to generate solid demand for Asian exports and is a robust source of direct investment. While criticism of American policy is widespread in the region, it is not expressed with the virulence that is seen in Europe and the Middle East. Above all, Washington has cultivated the Asian great powers assiduously, and has managed to improve relations with Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, and New Delhi - a substantial accomplishment. It remains to be seen whether it can work in concert with others to ameliorate the sources of discord on the Korean Peninsula and over the Taiwan Straits.

The United States, to be sure, confronts some daunting challenges in Asia. If the U.S.-Japan alliance is in excellent condition, defense cooperation with Seoul remains troubled by the sharp divergence in U.S. and Korean perspectives on North Korean aims and strategy. Nor have we found a solid basis for pursuing with Pyeongyang's neighbors a coordinated approach to the six-nation talks. Regional economic cooperation is taking shape along pan-Asian rather than trans-Pacific lines. Developments in the Middle East threaten to "Arabize Islam" in Southeast Asia. And the "Johnny One Note" quality of American diplomacy - i.e. its preoccupation with international terrorism - often plays poorly against Beijing's more broadly based effort to provide regional leadership.

Nor is America unconstrained in its policy efforts in the region. Our military forces are stretched thin globally, impelling some downsizing of deployments in Asia. Huge fiscal deficits loom, and with growing bills falling due in both Iraq and Afghanistan, resources available for policy initiatives elsewhere are likely to be tight. The president has succeeded in pushing negotiations with North Korea into a multilateral framework, yet Washington is being pressed by its negotiating partners to adopt a more conciliatory posture. The democratization of Asian nations, while welcome, does not automatically facilitate U.S. diplomatic objectives. Recent elections in South Korea and Taiwan were decisively shaped by a new generation of voters. Governments in Seoul and Taipei are increasingly accountable, yet viewed from the United States, they are not extraordinarily sensitive to Washington's views, let alone deferential to its lead.

With these considerations in mind, one should expect President Bush and his foreign policy team to continue cultivating close ties with the Asian powers. Whether Washington can effectively utilize those relationships to roll back North Korea's nuclear program and avert crises in the Taiwan Straits will depend heavily on its relationships with the governments in Seoul and Taipei. And at the moment South Korea appears determined to expand economic ties with the North virtually without reference to Pyeongyang's nuclear activities. Taipei remains preoccupied with efforts to assert its own identity while counting on American protection.

In the end, of course, foreign policy rarely sees carefully laid plans bear fruit. Someone once asked a new British prime minister, Harold MacMillan, what would drive foreign policy in his government. He answered without hesitation, "Events, dear boy, events." I expect the same may be true for Mr. Bush.

President Bush's 2002 nuclear posture differs sharply from its predecessors and is relevant to the President's recently repeated assertion that he will strike first against any country that might pose a threat of using weapons of mass destruction.

The main new trend in the posture is that the US will be prepared to use nuclear weapons in a much wider range of circumstances than before. Such an emphasis has not been seen since the days of "flexible response" forty or so years ago, when tactical nuclear weapons were deployed in Europe and elsewhere.

Yet, nuclear weapons don't help much with the kinds of missions the US prepares for, including the ones noted in the posture, such as digging out deep underground facilities that might contain bio-warfare agents. Deep underground facilities are difficult or impossible to destroy without large nuclear explosions that create large amounts of fallout. Nuclear weapons are more suited for use against shallow-buried facilities (of the order of ten meters deep) but even in those cases, Hiroshima-type yields are needed, and complete destruction of the bio-agents cannot be guaranteed. Other uses mentioned to justify the posture are even more marginal in their feasibility.

Given the overwhelming US conventional advantage and the relative invulnerability of the US to all but nuclear weapons, the US nuclear posture should aim at minimizing the chances of nuclear weapons spread rather than seeking marginal gains with tactical nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are equalizers. Why bring them back into the forefront of regional problems, whether in the Middle East or anywhere else?

Increasing the US nuclear threat will increase the motivation of adversaries, big or small, to improve and extend their own nuclear force, or to get one if they don't already have one. The US cannot subsequently be confident that it will be the only power to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. There are now several demonstrations of the relative ease with which states can acquire nuclear weapons. North Korea, a poor nation of 17 million people, made and separated with little help enough plutonium for perhaps one or more weapons. South Africa made at least six weapons with essentially no help. Other cases tell the same tale.

The nuclear genie is long out of the bottle and the relative stability that characterized the Cold War is also gone. Instead, the US has been pursuing an aggressive strategy of military expansion around the world and ever closer to other states' vital interests. Quite apart from the wisdom of that strategy, is it wise to couple it with an increased nuclear threat to possible adversaries, as the posture does?

In the past, the existence of a real or putative nuclear threat has been a serious motivation for states to improve and extend their own nuclear force, or to get one if they didn't already have it. That was true of the US, USSR, China, and others. The US, as the world's strongest and least vulnerable major power, should pursue a strategy that minimizes the most serious risk rather than increase it for marginal, and questionable, benefits. The posture implies a strategy that does the opposite.

A nuclear posture better suited to our times would recognize these changes. It would lay the policy basis for the following difficult, long-term, but necessary steps:

1. Minimizing the demand for nuclear weapons, focusing on Asia. Asia contains most of the world's population and might, in a few decades, have most of its wealth. Three states there (four if Israel is included) have nuclear weapons; several more could readily have them. The US nuclear posture should provide US initiatives toward a more stable security order there, one in which peaceful states will not be threatened by nuclear or potentially nuclear rivals. The Non-Proliferation Treaty provides a basis -the only existing basis- for such an order, but it needs to be updated with more inducements in the way of technical cooperation and reassurance, and more clearly defined internationally agreed sanctions if the treaty is disregarded. The US nuclear posture in essence forswears the lead in this endeavor.

2. A pattern for nuclear arms reductions that would include eventually limitations on all arsenals. Openness here is as important as numbers. The US and Russia have most of the weapons but, after the first hundred or so survivable weapons, it matters less and less how many a state has. An internationally recognized framework is needed that can be applied to the regions of the world where nuclear rivalries threaten. Instead, the US has gone the other way, with a sketchy US-Russia agreement that delays the time scale for reductions and does not provide any precedent for international agreements on inspections.

3. A strategy for addressing the problem of nuclear terrorism. The most serious dimension of that problem--the possibility of a terrorist nuclear weapon --is closely related to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and capabilities. Any strategy to avoid that has an important international dimension. Hundreds of tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, most of it surplus in the US and former Soviet Union from the Cold War, need to be better secured and accounted for. A solution to the problem of keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of the tens of millions of shipping containers that crisscross the world requires international cooperation on standards, procedures, cost sharing, and inspections. A good start has been made toward these goals, mainly through the Nunn-Lugar programs, but more money and agreements are needed. A modern nuclear posture should establish the policy basis for securing those resources and agreements. There is at present no comprehensive global strategy for securing such vital agreements and establishing the institutions to enforce them. Consistent, high-priority US participation is vital to secure other countries' participation.

4. A strategy for reducing the risks of accidental nuclear launch while at the same time maintaining invulnerability of the reduced deployments. The nuclear posture briefly mentions the "rigorous safeguards" on US weapons systems and proposes to deal with the problem of accidental or unauthorized launch of "certain foreign forces" via nuclear missile defense. That is at best a partial and certainly a distant remedy. Maintaining the human and financial infrastructure for nuclear weapons system will become more difficult in the US as well as elsewhere. Given the relationship among nuclear deterrent forces, the problem cannot be solved unilaterally. A program that would use US technical leadership to improve warning and control for all states threatened by nuclear weapons is also needed. It is needed now in South Asia. Later, it could help limit crises with or among Russia and China, and help prevent proliferation in the Middle East. President Reagan, with a portion of Star Wars, and, before him, President Eisenhower, with Open Skies, had something of the kind in mind. It is time to begin thinking about how this would look in modern form.

In summary, a nuclear posture for a world with more dispersed power centers and more widely available nuclear technology should have more, not less, emphasis on international agreements. President Eisenhower stated fifty years ago that "Only chaos will result from our abandonment of collective international security." That is even truer in today's world than it was then. The present administration seems to have a bias against such agreements, which are slow to bear fruit and do not win votes. That is shown in the posture itself, which states that arms control measures will not stand in the way of nuclear weapons development.

Yet these and other agreements are essential to deal with the dangers of proliferation to unstable states, with the possible use of international trade for terrorism, and with the risk of accidents and unauthorized launch. Nuclear deterrence continues to be needed, but the last thing a modern posture should do is to bring nuclear weapons back into the forefront of regional deterrence.

Ironically, when it has committed itself to the task, the US has used international agreements more effectively than any other nation. The Cold War-- better called a Cold Peace perhaps, since the military lines of demarcation never changed while the safeguarding of Western values and collapse of the Soviet Union were brought about mainly by economic and political instruments-- saw a rise in US power and influence in good part through the use of US-led international agreements in the areas of trade and security, areas that are necessarily related. Now is not the time to give up that approach, especially not in matters relating to nuclear weapons.

Even when the European-Iranian agreement to halt Iran's uranium-enrichment program looked solid, the United States was blunt in its disapproval. The ink was barely dry on the accord when the Bush administration, it appears, began trying to derail it.

First, rather than endorse the accord, Secretary of State Colin Powell essentially accused the Iranians of lying when they said their nuclear program was for peaceful purposes. He announced that new intelligence showed Iran is developing a nuclear warhead to arm its Shahab-3 ballistic missiles. Then, at a Nov. 20 meeting of heads of state in Santiago, Chile, President Bush stated unequivocally that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Why would the administration take such a combative stance? Because hard-liners within the administration thought Tehran would use the settlement to buy time for building nuclear weapons, and that the United States would be better off bombing Iran's suspected weapons sites.

Proponents of using military force against Iran have not yet won the argument within the Bush administration. But the past two weeks of strong pronouncements about the threat Iran poses suggest that the military option may be gaining ground. And Iran's last-minute attempts to maintain some enrichment capabilities -- which by press time Friday were threatening to kill the European agreement -- no doubt strengthened the hard-liners' hand.

Before the United States even considers such a drastic step as airstrikes against suspected nuclear weapons sites -- or even trying to compel the United Nations to endorse new economic sanctions against Iran -- it is essential that our leaders be clear about what they are trying to accomplish in Iran and whether such actions will help or hurt.

If the ultimate goal is to create a democracy -- one that would not fear the United States and therefore have less use for the bomb -- then dual-track diplomacy with Iran's government and with its people is more likely to work than military action.

Probably the most important question the administration's leaders should ask themselves is whether Iran, even a nuclear-armed Iran, poses a direct threat to the United States and its allies.

The answer, we believe, is no.

The mullahs who rule Tehran long ago gave up their ideological quest to "export'' revolution. Like the last generation of octogenarians who ruled the Soviet Union, Iran's leaders today want nuclear weapons as a means to help them preserve their power, not to help them spread their model of theocratic rule to other countries.

Deterrence works

In other words, even if Iran's rulers succeeded in building nuclear bombs, they would be very unlikely to take on the United States and its vast nuclear arsenal or to attack Israel. (The mullahs in Tehran understand that any nuclear attack against Israel would trigger full retaliation from the United States.) In dealing with Iran, deterrence works.

Tehran would also be unlikely to pass a bomb to Islamist terrorists, despite its support of Arab terrorist organizations that continue to attack Israel. One reason, again, is deterrence. Iran's rulers know that the United States would probably be able to trace the weapon back to them and retaliate.

The threat of a nuclear Iran comes, instead, from the reaction it is almost sure to spark in the region and the world, possibly sending Egypt and Saudi Arabia on their own quests for nuclear weapons.

Such an arms race would undermine the longstanding Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, an agreement signed by nearly 190 countries, that has proved indispensable in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Bush administration hard-liners want to save that arms-control treaty by using arms. In advocating a "surgical'' military strike against Iran's most important nuclear facilities, including the once hidden enrichment plant in Natanz, they cite Israel's airstrike against Iraq's nuclear complex at Osirak in 1981 as a model of success. They argue that an American (or Israeli) strike would not end Iran's nuclear aspirations, but would dramatically slow its program and make the mullahs reconsider the costs of trying to restart it.

Attack would backfire

But a pre-emptive military strike would instead do just what the hard-liners in Tehran hope for: It would unite their people behind them.

Even a precise bombing campaign would kill hundreds if not thousands of innocent Iranians; destroy ancient buildings of historical and religious importance; trigger an Iranian counterstrike, however feeble, against American targets and friends in the region, and spur the mullahs to increase their direct support for American enemies in the Shiite part of Iraq.

Even more important, an attack would only encourage Tehran to redouble its efforts to build a bomb, just as Saddam Hussein sped up his efforts after the 1981 strike. It would also hurt the democratic opposition movement inside Iran, which is already in retreat and cannot afford another setback. After an attack, Iranians, not unlike Americans, are sure to rally around the flag and their government.

If the administration decides, in the end, that American military options are limited and counterproductive, the only serious way to impede the development of Iranian nuclear weapons is through negotiation. Iran's recent accord with France, Britain and Germany is only temporary, and negotiations are expected to continue.

If the United States were to jump in now, it could try to ensure that our European allies accept nothing less than a permanent and verifiable dismantling of Iran's enrichment capabilities, as well as banning any plutonium production.

Allowing the Iranians to enrich even some uranium, which they say will be used merely to feed their nuclear power plant, makes it too easy to cheat. To make the deal work, the United States would need to join with Europe, Russia and China in pledging to guarantee Iran a permanent and continuous supply of enriched uranium. To make the deal even more attractive, the fuel could be offered at reduced prices.

Even under the strictest inspection regime, Iran's leaders will cheat, as they have often done in the past, and they will eventually divert enriched uranium from peaceful to military purposes. But the harder and more transparent the allies can make it, the longer it will take Iran to begin building bombs.

In the long run, the world's only serious hope for stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons is the development of a democratic government in Tehran. A democratic Iran will become an ally of the Western world no longer in need of a deterrent threat against the United States.

Democracy in Iran therefore obviously serves U.S. national interests. Yet Bush administration officials (as well as their predecessors in the Clinton, Bush and Reagan administrations) have not succeeded in developing a strategy for advancing the cause of Iranian democracy.

New strategy

What is needed is a radical new approach that would nurture change from within the country, in alliance with Iran's democratic movement, rather than impose change from without.

A first step would be to establish an American presence in Tehran, as many in Iran's democratic opposition have proposed. Now decades old, the U.S. policy of isolating Iran has not weakened but instead strengthened its autocratic government.

Of course, we are not suggesting that the United States open an embassy in Tehran and turn a blind eye to human rights abuses; that would only contribute to the further consolidation of the mullahs' hold on power. But we are suggesting a new strategy that would allow American government officials, as well as civic leaders, academics and business people, to engage directly with Iranian society.

This engagement cannot occur on a widespread scale without some level of diplomatic relations and some revision of the American sanctions against Iran. Then, more Western foundations would be able to make grants to pro-democracy Iranian organizations, while business people -- and especially the Iranian-American business community in the United States -- would be able to leverage their capital and know-how to influence economic and political change inside Iran. A U.S. presence in Iran would, not incidentally, also enhance the West's ability to monitor Iran's nuclear program.

Critics of engagement argue that diplomatic relations with Iran will reward this "axis of evil'' member for years of supporting terrorism and pursuing nuclear weapons. In fact, an American presence in Iran is the mullahs' worst nightmare.

Iran's government has long used its ongoing tensions with the United States, as well as the embargo, as an excuse for the economic difficulties that are, in fact, the direct results of the regime's incompetence and corruption. Tehran's leaders have conveniently labeled nearly all of their opponents as "agents of America.''

Most important, part of the regime's self-declared legitimacy lies in its claim to be the only Muslim country fighting what it sees as U.S. imperialism. If the United States could prove it's not an enemy of the Iranian people, the legitimacy of Iran's leaders would diminish.

Reagan's course

In the first years of his presidency, Ronald Reagan labeled the Soviet Union the "evil empire'' and went out of his way to avoid contact with such a regime.

Over time, however, Reagan charted a new course of dual-track diplomacy. He engaged Kremlin leaders (well before Gorbachev) in arms control, while also fostering contacts and information flow between the West and the Soviet people in the hope of opening them up to the possibilities of democracy.

In the long run, it was not arms control with the Soviets, but democratization within the Soviet Union, that made the United States safer.

If George W. Bush desires a foreign-policy legacy as grand as Reagan's, now is the time to think big and change course as dramatically as Reagan did.

Earlier this month, the so-called EU Three--Britain, France and Germany-- achieved an important victory for global security, convincing Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing activities pending further negotiation on its nuclear question. Though Iran claims that it does not desire a nuclear bomb, the West has long been skeptical of the oil-rich state's contention that it seeks a nuclear fuel cycle for energy purposes alone. Europe and the United States (and of course Israel) will sleep better knowing that Tehran is not pursuing enrichment activities, whatever their alleged purpose.

But the EU3 agreement, which fails to discuss consequences for Iran if it breaks the deal, is vulnerable to being undermined not only by Iran but also by the United States; both have already raised eyebrows in the wake of the accord. Iran raced to produce uranium hexafluoride, a gas that can be enriched into bomb fuel, before it began to observe the temporary suspension on Monday. And both President George W. Bush and outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell have publicly aired their suspicions that Iran will continue its drive for nuclear weapons under cover of the deal.

At the moment, administration hawks are pressing to confront the mullahs at the United Nations Security Council, where economic sanctions could be considered; calls for using force and for regime change are likely to follow.

Military action is inadvisable at this point, because of a dearth of solid intelligence and the secretive, geographically diffuse nature of Iran's nuclear sites. If the issue reaches the Security Council with the United States and Europe continuing along divergent paths, the inevitable deadlock will deal a severe and lasting blow to international security. Therefore, the agreement must be fortified to keep the Iranians honest, the Europeans effectively engaged and the U.S. hawks bridled.

This can be achieved through a U.S.-European accord laying out trigger mechanisms for specified consequences if Iran violates certain benchmarks. For example, if Iran fails to allow inspectors the access accorded by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty's additional protocol--which Iran is provisionally observing pending ratification--or resumes enrichment and centrifuge-building activities, it could face severe economic sanctions, censure by the Security Council (necessitating cooperation from Russia and China), or in the event of hostility, a forceful response.

We don't know yet whether Tehran will play by the rules. The regime has mastered the art of behaving badly and then seeking rewards for getting back into line. To date, the Europeans have played into its hands, offering carrots for compliance without wielding sticks to punish violations.

Therefore, the Bush administration's apparent comfort with a military option can serve as an important deterrent against Iranian cheating, arming the EU3 agreement with teeth that it would not otherwise have. Iran desires economic incentives but does not yet desperately need them; without a credible threat of U.S.-backed sanctions imposed by the international community, the mullahs can simply decide one day that the restrictions have ceased to be worth their while, and break any deal as though it were merely a business contract.

For the United States, accepting the EU3's carrot-based approach (provided the benchmarks are added) will show the world that it still supports negotiated diplomacy and multilateralism, even in cases where military threats loom. Participating in this framework will also send a message to Iran that the United States is not ruling out renewed relations. This would resonate with the largely pro-American Iranian populace, who despise their regime and are seeking inroads to break free of it.

But if the United States instead presents itself as a unilateralist maverick, it will hinder its own interests; the only thing Iranians disdain more than the mullahs is outside meddling with their deeply nationalistic desire for self-determination. The more overtly hostile the United States acts toward Iran, the more the mullahs are able to spin America's posture to alienate Iranians against the "Great Satan."

The way to keep the Iranian regime in check while speeding its demise is to insure the nuclear agreement through benchmarks and triggers, and then give the mullahs exactly what they ask for in terms of increased access to international institutions like the World Trade Organization.

Such carrots can also be Trojan Horses, allowing the forces of democratic reform within Iran to blossom by enabling pro-democracy elements to make global connections. The U.S. and Europe should saddle up those horses together.

The post-1970 crisis in the Islamic world and Pakistan's role

It is possible to trace today's crisis in the Islamic world back to the time of the Prophet (pbuh) and the four Righteous Caliphs. Many Salafists among Muslims and many so-called Orientalists among Westerners do just that. Opposed in every other way, they both believe in an Islamic "essence" unchanged since then. Others go back to the 19th century CE, to the onset of Western domination over much of the Muslim 'umma. Yet it seems to me that to understand today's crisis adequately we need go no further back than the years around 1970 in Islam's old Arab and Iranian heartlands. Admittedly a number of factors had to come together to produce the dilemmas we still live with.

The 20th century struggle against colonialism raised high hopes that the departure of the colonisers would usher in a new era of dignity and prosperity for Muslims. The main ideology of these hopes was the kind of republican nationalism associated with Gamal 'Abd al-Nasser in Egypt and Muhammad Mossadeq in Iran. By about 1970 these hopes had collapsed.

Not only had Israel persisted as a reminder that decolonisation did not mean an end to subordination, but the 1967 Six Days' War was such a catastrophe that its casualties were not just military: it discredited the republican nationalist ideology as well. The Arab world was rent by rivalries between republicans and monarchists, with the Cold War protagonists egging them on and paying them rents for friendship. Worst of all, the postcolonial regimes turned out to be authoritarian and corrupt.

Nor was that the whole story. There had also been much economic and social development, yet it was of very special kinds. State-led industrialisation had been based mainly on oil and gas, and oil and gas are special commodities. The iron and steel that drove earlier Western growth had created new middle and working classes; oil and gas do not, and their profits are easily captured by sitting elites. To pay for industry, moreover, states ran down agriculture. Within decades this drove millions from farms and small towns into cities that then exploded their infrastructures. The states offered education, particularly at higher levels - at one point Egypt was producing 75,000 graduates a year - but beginning about 1970 states were withdrawing from the economy and turning responsibility for growth over to captive and anaemic private sectors. So more and more first-generation graduates were entering increasingly slack economies with no real prospects for jobs or dignity.

All this was a recipe for political radicalism, and the ideological vacuum left behind by discredited republican nationalism was filled by the dream of recreating the unity and purity of the original 'umma in the 7th century CE. That dream had been part of Islamic discourse almost from the beginning, but it had mainly appealed to the 'umma's fringes, the Bedouin soldiers of the Khariji movement, the small townsmen of Islam's middle years who had then become Shi'a or Sufis. Now, around 1970, the dream had been modernised by thinkers like Sayyid Qutb in the Arab lands, 'Ali Shariati in Iran, and Maulana Abu-l-'Ala Maududi in this country, and in that form it entered the Islamic mainstream. It became the chief ideology of opposition to the authoritarian and corrupt postcolonial regimes.

The result has been thirty years of savage and bloody civil war among Muslims. It has struck Westerners and Israelis too, but most of the victims have been Muslim, because the regimes were now headed by Muslims. When Syrian leader Hafez al-Assad retook the city of Hama from Sunni insurrectionists in 1982, he killed at least 10,000 people, three times the casualties of September 11.

What would it take for Muslims to transcend this crisis? Time after time in their history they have overcome huge challenges by creating marvellous new syntheses of thought and feeling and practice. I have no doubt that they have the spiritual and intellectual and physical resources to do so once again. But what would be the elements of renewal at this new stage?

Some elements have already been moving into place.

As the civil war has proceeded, there has been covert movement on both sides toward a new centre. Regimes have been Islamising themselves. They have been introducing some Islamic law and some Islamic practice into their governance. Conversely, Islamists have been entering the political system. They now run for election; they enter cabinets; they serve in parliaments; they function as (more or less) loyal oppositions.

The process has been drenched in bad faith on both sides, but movement has been real.

Concurrently, more and more Muslims who might have become Islamist political revolutionaries two decades ago are now forsaking politics for community action in the 'umma. Rather than bombs and guns, the name of the game is now schools, clinics, charities, and the Islamic piety of individual Muslims and their families.

Moreover, with the end of the Cold War sitting regimes can no longer collect rents from the USSR, and they find it harder to collect rents from the US now that competition with the USSR is over. Even the new rents the US is paying since September 11 will never match Cold War largesse. There will never again be enough official assistance to keep regimes in power by sustaining their growth rates.

Now they must rely instead on private foreign direct investment (PFDI). This is because all over the world production of knowledge is replacing production of things as the engine of economic growth. PFDI flows mainly on economic grounds. It is not attracted by the archaic, state-dominated, information-shy economies of the Arab Middle East and Iran. Their share of world PFDI has fallen from 12 percent in 1990 to 3-4 percent today. To attract it, they need reforms that will make them less rigid, less state-dominated, and less information-shy. Such economic reforms typically lead to demands for political reforms too. That is their quandary.

Such pressures will not end Islamist radicalism. The conditions that give it birth are often still there. But such pressures do tend to force radicalism to the margins of the 'umma once again. Osama is a perfect example: through the 1990s he was forced step by step back to the only place in the world where he now had a double layer of protection and hence the space and time needed to mount an operation like September 11.

Nor will such pressures automatically generate the new Islamic synthesis the planet needs. But they do create a new opportunity for Muslims to fashion an authentically Islamic modernity that is adequate to their history and their hopes.

I would argue that September 11 did not change this basic picture. It came as a shock to most Muslims, and even Islamists asked themselves whether Osama's methods were the best path to the common goal. Iraq, of course, has been much more problematic. There military defeat was so rapid and complete that it rekindled the usual Arab feelings of helplessness and rage, and the botched aftermath has given these feelings time to swell and take political form. Radicalism is reconstituting itself, but - it should be noted - on a new basis.

For Osama, for Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, Islam may still be the banner of revolutionary overthrow. For younger Muslims, Islam is increasingly the badge of membership in national communities. It is no longer just an ideology for outsiders. More and more it is the ideology of outsiders and deprived or threatened ruling ethnic elites: Sunni Tikritis in Iraq, Pushtuns in Afghanistan. Driven toward the margins by repression, cooptation or military defeat, Islamism is re-entering the body politic through the service entrance of Islamo-nationalism.

The consequences can be unhealthy. If only Muslims should be citizens, Christians and Jews are excluded in ways quite novel in Islamic experience, and quite dangerous. But there may also be a new and exciting opening for an Islamic legitimation of the modern nation-state that is valid for Sunnis.

So far, the only place in the Islamic heartlands to produce such a legitimation has been Iran. Not long before he died in 1989, Imam Khomeini ruled on religious grounds that in emergencies national interests can take precedence over the shari'a. It helps explain how Iran has emerged from the charismatic phase of Islamic rule without widespread violence. But Iran's special Shi'i traditions make it hard to transpose to Sunni-majority societies. Taliban rule in Afghanistan was perhaps an effort to create a version for Sunnis, but it ended before it succeeded. In both cases, moreover, the effort took place within a theocratic framework, direct rule by 'ulema.

Theocracy is not a mainstream Islamic tradition and will not appeal in most Muslim countries. A broader version of religious legitimation of the nation-state could be taking shape now in Iraq. It may be that the Americans are needed both as a parameter and as a target. But the outcome is very uncertain, the circumstances very special. And Iraq too has a majority of Shi'a.

Where does Pakistan fit in this picture? I see some similarities and more differences.

Like some Arab states, Pakistan inherited a postcolonial security threat that has absorbed disproportionate resources and has thereby reinforced older socio-political structures and a traditional sense of political irresponsibility: someone else is always to blame.

Although Pakistan was founded as an Islamic nation-state by modern means and modern people, here too modernity is so associated with the West that it must be denied as un-Islamic.

And Pakistan too has been stranded by the end of the Cold War and the onset of the IT era in economics. New rents from the war on terrorism will not restore the levels of official assistance Pakistan attracted before 1990, and private foreign direct investment has not rushed in to fill the gap.

But Pakistan is also different from the Arab world and Iran in relevant ways. Some are counterintuitive; most are to Pakistan's advantage.

First, Pakistan is not dependent on oil and gas, and can be better off for it. Pakistan is dependent on cotton, and compared to oil and gas, cotton and cotton textile production makes for larger middle and working classes, better attuned to modern political and economic needs than Middle Eastern elites.

Second, Pakistan is less developed than the old Islamic heartlands - more agricultural, less urbanised, less educated - and that too can help. It has not destroyed its agriculture. Except for Karachi, rural outmigration has not exploded its cities, and even there civil war has been on an ethnic and not a religious basis. And the graduating cohorts entering the limp economy have been relatively small. In other words Pakistan has not yet produced the conditions that brought Islamist radicalism to the centre of Middle East politics. It therefore has a window of opportunity to create better structures less conducive to civil war.

Third, Pakistanis have been struggling for over half a century to bring religion and politics together in a functioning system of governance. The need to experiment came with Pakistan's original mandate; it has led through the Ahmedi riots, the Objectives Resolution, the MRD in 1977 (sic: PNA is meant), and various Islamisation steps thereafter. Certainly, however, experimentation has been particularly intense since 2002. Its outcome is also quite uncertain.

What this means, though, is that Pakistanis have a wealth of lived experience wrestling with issues that are newer and more destructive in other Muslim societies, and of doing so mainly without violence. They should therefore be better able to integrate the religious impulse into a basically democratic political system without first establishing theocracy. If they can, it will be a first version of religious legitimation for the modern nation-state in a society with a recognisably Sunni majority. Where Pakistan fits in todayís Islamic world is as a major test case. Not for Americans: for Pakistanis. And for all the other members of the 'umma.

*Footnote: This essay draws on themes from the writer's book on Islam and a talk he gave at the Administrative Staff College in Lahore on May 24, 2004.

Those advocating nuclear arms control and nonproliferation have few reasons for optimism and many reasons for concern, with obstacles including a lack of public interest in the issue; inadequate security controls at facilities storing nuclear-weapons materials; the threat posed by rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea; and the Bush administration's opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty banning nuclear weapons testing.

These and other challenges were explored at a special CISAC workshop on "Arms Control and Nonproliferation: Past Triumphs, Future Prospects," held June 1 at SIIS. The event honored George Bunn -- a nuclear nonproliferation pioneer and consulting professor at CISAC -- on the occasion of his 79th birthday. The workshop, which drew more than 120 attendees, was moderated by CISAC co-director Christopher F. Chyba and featured presentations by four expert panelists who have worked closely with Bunn. They included his son Matthew, a senior research associate for Harvard University's Project on Managing the Atom.

As the first presenter, Matthew Bunn discussed the problem of inadequate security systems to prevent the theft of weapons-grade nuclear materials. Because there are no worldwide standards for protecting such materials, many nations devote inadequate resources to the task. Bunn showed slides of nuclear materials storage facilities with primitive locks, flimsy seals and broken-down fences. He cited Russia as the largest threat, because it has the world's biggest stock of unguarded nuclear-weapons materials. He urged international standards for safeguarding nuclear materials; renewed discussion with Russia on the issue; and the removal of nuclear material from sites where adequate security is not feasible.

In the second presentation, Thomas Graham -- a senior U.S. diplomat who has negotiated numerous major arms-control agreements -- said the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty was not meant to forever discriminate between nuclear "haves" and "have-nots." Instead, it was designed so that those without nuclear weapons would benefit by receiving peaceful nuclear technology from weapons-producing nations, and guarantees that they would not be attacked. But when the United States shirks its nonproliferation obligations -- as it has done by rejecting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and taking steps to develop new nuclear weapons -- the entire regime is threatened, Graham said. He cited Pakistan and North Korea as the biggest nuclear threats, and said the United States must engage in direct negotiations with the latter.

The next presentation, by Daryl Kimball -- executive director of the Arms Control Association -- addressed prospects for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Though the treaty has been signed by 171 nations including the United States, it has been ratified by only 113 of those nations -- not including the United States -- and must be ratified by 12 more of the 44 designated "nuclear-capable" nations before the treaty can take effect. Kimball discussed the Bush administration's opposition to the treaty, noting that Bush has sought to remove it from the Senate's agenda. Still, Kimball said he's optimistic that the treaty will ultimately be ratified by the United States and will take effect. He cited increasing international pressure on CTBT "holdout states," and a recent U.S. poll showing that public support for the treaty is at its highest level ever, 87 percent.

John Rhinelander, an attorney who helped negotiate the ABM Treaty and SALT I agreements, discussed the prospects for nuclear weapons in space. The weaponization of space is supported by the Bush administration, he noted, and is a real possibility if the United States follows through on its missile defense program. He predicted that President Bush, if re-elected, would continue to pursue weapons development in space, but said Kerry seemed unlikely to do so if elected.

During a question-and-answer session following the presentations, the panelists offered perspectives on why it is so difficult to get the public's and lawmakers' attention on nuclear non-proliferation issues. The panelists agreed that since the breakup of the Soviet Union, most Americans -- including lawmakers -- no longer perceive nuclear weapons as a serious threat, and they have little knowledge about the existing quantity of nuclear weapons. Matthew Bunn said the problem is, "there is no one whose reelection depends on reducing or securing nuclear weapons." He said nuclear non-proliferation could best be promoted by tying it to the issues of terrorism and homeland security. Rhinelander and Grahm advocated holding Congressional hearings on the issue for the first time in 20 years.

Regarding Israel, India and Pakistan, Graham said those nations -- which produce nuclear weapons but have refused to join the NPT regime -- cannot continue to remain outside the regime. He proposed that the three nations be allowed to join in limited form, in exchange for accepting basic limitations such as no first use and no nuclear testing.

Throughout the event, Bunn was praised by the panelists and moderator; Chyba described him as "the personification of the best that CISAC strives to be." Bunn was the first general counsel for the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, helped negotiate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and later served as U.S. ambassador to the Geneva Disarmament Conference.

Although keeping score is difficult, the State Department's annual report on international terrorism, released last month, provides the best government data to answer this question. The short answer is "No," but that's not the spin the administration is putting on it.

"You will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight," said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. As evidence, the "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report says that worldwide terrorism dropped by 45 percent between 2001 and 2003. The report even boasts that the number of terrorist acts committed last year "represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969."

Yet, a careful review of the report and underlying data supports the opposite conclusion: The number of significant terrorist acts increased from 124 in 2001 to 169 in 2003 -- 36 percent -- even using the State Department's official standards. The data that the report highlights are ill-defined and subject to manipulation -- and give disproportionate weight to the least important terrorist acts. The only verifiable information in the annual reports indicates that the number of terrorist events has risen each year since 2001, and in 2003 reached its highest level in more than 20 years.

To be sure, counting terrorist acts is not as straightforward as counting the number of SARS victims. Specialists have not agreed to any test that would unambiguously qualify an act as one of international terrorism. But in the words of the Congressional Research Service, the State Department's annual report is "the most authoritative unclassified U.S. government document that assesses terrorist attacks."

So how did the report conclude that international terrorism is declining?

It accomplishes this sleight of hand by combining significant and nonsignificant acts of terrorism. Significant acts are clearly defined and each event is listed in an appendix, so readers can verify the data. By contrast, no explanation is given for how nonsignificant acts are identified or whether a consistent process is used over time -- and no list is provided describing each event. The data cannot be verified.

International terrorism is defined in the report as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets" involving citizens or property from multiple countries, "usually intended to influence an audience." An event "is judged significant if it results in loss of life or serious injury to persons" or "major property damage."

A panel determines whether an event meets this definition, but the State Department refused to tell us the members of the panel or the practices used to count nonsignificant terrorist acts.

We do know that the definition leaves much room for discretion. Because "significant events" include such things as destroying an ATM in Greece or throwing a molotov cocktail at a McDonald's in Norway without causing much damage, it is easy to imagine that nonsignificant events are counted with a squishy definition that can be manipulated to alter the trend.

The alleged decline in terrorism in 2003 was entirely a result of a decline in nonsignificant events.

Another curious feature of the latest report is that its catalogue of events does not list a single significant terrorist act occurring after Nov. 11, 2003, despite averaging 16 such acts a month in the rest of the year.

The representation that no terrorist events occurred after Nov. 11 is patently false. The bombings of the HSBC Bank, British Consulate, and Beth Israel and Neve Shalom synagogues in Istanbul by individuals associated with al Qaeda occurred on Nov. 20 and Nov. 15, respectively. Additionally, the report mentions the bombing of the Catholic Relief Services in Nasiriyah, Iraq, on Nov. 12 but somehow omits it from the official list of significant events.

So the record number of 169 significant international terrorist events for 2003 is undoubtedly an understatement. It is impossible to know if these and other terrorist events were left out of the State Department's total of events.

Despite the lack of transparency and the rose-colored graphs, the department's data reveal that administration policies in the past year have not turned the terrorist tide. Of course, it is impossible to know how many terrorist acts would have occurred absent the war on terrorism, but it is unambiguous that the number of significant international terrorist acts is on the rise.

The fact that the number of nonsignificant terrorist acts has headed down -- even if true -- is, well, nonsignificant. What matters for security is the number of significant acts. It is regrettable that one casualty in the war against terrorism has been the accurate reporting of statistics. This seems to be another fight we are losing.