Over more than six decades, the partnership between the United States and the Republic of Korea has been subject to many stresses and strains, from the Korean War to coping with the challenge of North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. More recently, the democratization of South Korea has opened the alliance to much greater public scrutiny and pressures from an active and mobilized Korean public. Managing this strategic alliance in an era of democracy has been a focus of the research work on Korea conducted by FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

With the election in December of Lee Myung-bak as South Korea’s president, ending two terms of progressive rule, Shorenstein APARC decided to launch a nonpartisan group of former senior U.S. government officials, scholars, and other American experts on Korea to explore how to revitalize the U.S. alliance with the Republic of Korea (ROK) after a decade of tensions. In partnership with the New York-based Korea Society, Shorenstein APARC assembled this policy study group at Stanford in early February for in-depth discussion of the challenges facing the alliance and then took the group to Korea for meetings with key figures, from President-elect Lee and his advisors to leaders of the opposition, Korean businessmen, and American diplomats and security officials.

Based on these intensive meetings, the members of this “New Beginnings” policy study group concluded that the United States now has a major opportunity to bolster and broaden its relationship with the ROK. Lee, Korea’s first businessman to be elected president and a self-proclaimed “pragmatist,” has stressed that he gives top priority to the United States in his foreign policy. His fixed five-year tenure will coincide with the entire first term of the next U.S. president, allowing the two new leaders an extended period of cooperation.

Immediately before Lee’s first visit to the United States as president in mid-April, New Beginnings members led by Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin, APARC Distinguished Fellow Michael H. Armacost, and Korea Society President Evans J.R. Revere visited Washington, D.C., and New York City to release their report, New Beginnings in the U.S.-ROK Alliance: Recommendations to U.S. Policymakers. They also addressed a forum in San Francisco co-hosted by the World Affairs Council and the Asia Society of Northern California on June 3 to discuss their recommendations and subsequent developments in U.S.-South Korean relations. The report received extensive coverage in the South Korean news media and was noted in American media as well.

Surrounded by a rising China, a more assertive Russia, a Japan seeking a greater international role, and a nuclear North Korea, the ROK can play a key role in working with the United States to maintain peace and stability in East Asia. No effort to address the nuclear and other challenges posed by North Korea is likely to succeed without the closest U.S.-South Korean cooperation. The ROK, as the world’s 13th-largest economy and one of Asia’s most democratic countries, is a model of the virtues of a market economy, of the values of freedom and human rights, and of alignment with the United States. The two countries are also bound by personal ties: 2 million people of Korean descent live in the United States, and 100,000 Koreans come to the United States each year for study and exchanges, more than from any other country.

President Lee’s election reflects four key changes in South Korea: (1) a shift from the political left back toward the center; (2) greater skepticism about North Korea; (3) increased wariness of China; and (4) enhanced support for the U.S.-ROK alliance. The protests against the United States seen in South Korea in 2002 were the result in part of transitory circumstances and no longer reflect the reality there.

President Lee seeks a global partnership with the United States while maintaining good relations with Korea’s neighbors, Japan, China, and Russia. He favors improved relations with North Korea and has stated his willingness to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il. In major departures from the earlier “sunshine” policy of the South Korean government toward North Korea, however, Lee will not provide large-scale economic assistance to the North until after it abandons its nuclear weapons program. In another major departure from the previous ROK policy, he has also criticized human rights abuses in North Korea. Lee supports continued food and other humanitarian aid to the people of North Korea.

New Beginnings group members believe that the United States cannot afford to lose the opportunity presented by President Lee to build a global partnership with one of the United States’ most important allies. The group identified a number of steps that the United States, in cooperation with the ROK, could take to move the alliance into a new era (see sidebar).

The New Beginnings group has announced that it plans to continue its efforts in support of strengthened U.S.-South Korean relations. Among other projects, the group intends to present recommendations early next year to the South Korean government on how to develop a close relationship and bolster the alliance with the incoming U.S. administration.

Recommendations to United States Policymakers

• Global Partnership — Building on the cooperation between Presidents Bush and Lee, the new U.S. president next year should issue a vision statement with Lee detailing their partnership and goals for the alliance. To advise them, the two new presidents should establish a bi-national panel of distinguished Koreans and Americans. The United States and the ROK should also give increased emphasis to the foreign ministerial strategic dialogue they initiated in 2006.
• Security Alliance — We support the ongoing realignment of U.S. forces in the ROK. Congress should increase its budget for the relatively small U.S. portion of the total cost of its implementation. The decision to transfer wartime operational control of Korean forces back to the ROK in 2012 was likewise correct, but the United States should respond positively to any South Korean proposal to discuss conditions related to the transfer. We welcome the Lee administration’s apparent desire to review the main North Korea war plan and to prepare jointly for other contingencies, including that of a North Korean collapse. The United States should conduct regular, joint consultations with South Korea and other allies in East Asia to determine whether security conditions warrant changes in our respective force levels and, if so, in what direction.
• North Korea — The ROK election has brought the United States and South Korea into essential agreement, for the first time in seven years, on how to deal with North Korea and its nuclear aspirations. To avoid the danger that their North Korea policies will again diverge, they must establish stronger consultative mechanisms, including with Japan.
• Economy and Trade — Congress should ratify the U.S.-ROK Free Trade Agreement now. U.S. failure to approve the FTA would not only represent foregone business opportunities; it would damage U.S.-ROK relations and be seen by the international community as a weakening of U.S. self-confidence and engagement, in East Asia and around the globe.
• People-to-People Ties — The U.S. government should set an early target date to include the ROK in the Visa Waiver Program and encourage the Korean government to support a major expansion of the Fulbright Program’s English Teaching Assistant Program. The United States should create a new program to allow U.S. federal employees to intern in Korean ministries and increase the budget for the State Department’s International Visitor Program for young South Korean leaders. U.S. military personnel stationed in Korea should be joined by their families. The United States should, at long last, construct a new U.S. embassy in Seoul.

CISAC science fellow Undraa Agvaanluvsan faces no small task this summer: She has returned to her native Mongolia to help draft first-time legal and security protocols to ensure that the country’s uranium-based nuclear industry develops safely while also attracting international investment. “Our government needs to be prepared to move ahead,” the nuclear physicist said. “Mining needs to be regulated, there need to be laws specific to uranium so that extraction won’t cause a risk to security.”

Mongolia boasts rich uranium reserves and the mining industry contributes to about 25 percent of the country’s economy. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian partners exported Mongolian uranium ore for military purposes to a well-guarded enrichment facility in nearby Angarsk, Siberia, Undraa said. (Mongolians use only one name — Agvaanluvsan is Undraa’s late father’s name.) After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, mining in Mongolia almost stopped. “Today the security concern is completely different,” Undraa said. “It is said that some people even dig uranium, among other minerals, out of the ground with no legal right to do so. They’re called ‘ninjas.’ It’s worrisome and it’s completely unregulated.”

According to Undraa, foreign investors want to develop Mongolia’s uranium mines quickly. “Mining companies may be supportive of nuclear nonproliferation but their main objective is their business bottom-line,” she said. “There is not enough concern for security. The area we’re concerned with — nonproliferation and national security — seems very far from them.”

Since November, Undraa has split her time between CISAC and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she has worked in the lab’s nuclear experimental group for three years. At CISAC, she has focused on the development of Mongolia’s civilian nuclear industry and how such changes are influencing the country’s fledgling democracy and market economy. Mongolia was a socialist state until a peaceful democratic revolution took place in 1990. The vast, landlocked country, squeezed between Russia and China with a population of 3 million, is now a multiparty capitalist democracy.

Undraa, 35, plans to return to Encina Hall this fall to continue this work with CISAC Co-Director Siegfried S. Hecker and consulting professor Chaim Braun. Under the auspices of the recently established Mongolian-American Scientific Research Center in Ulaanbaatar, the scientist is helping to organize two international conferences in the Mongolian capital this September on uranium mining and nuclear physics. Undraa hopes the conference findings will help her country, a non-nuclear weapons state, develop uranium mining profitably and responsibly.

“Mongolia plans to build a nuclear industry, starting from a zero baseline,” Undraa’s research plan states. “With a clean slate, how should Mongolia develop its uranium industry? What does Mongolia need to do to position itself as a trustworthy, global supplier of uranium?”

“With a clean slate, how should Mongolia develop its uranium industry? What does Mongolia need to do to position itself as a trustworthy, global supplier of uranium?”Undraa also wants to assess whether it makes economic sense for a developing Mongolia to turn to nuclear power or construct high-pressure coal-powered plants, which cost less and are faster to build and operate. She is acutely aware of the effects of climate change — in the late 1990s and early 2000s, millions of livestock across Mongolia’s steppes and deserts died due to harsh winters and summer droughts. “I have family members who lost their nomadic way of life — camels, sheep, goats, cattle died,” she said. “They had to move to the city because there was no point staying in the countryside.” As a result, the population of Ulaanbaatar has soared in recent years, with a parallel increase in pollution from coal fires burned by people living in traditional gers or yurts. “People say the pollution there is worse than Mexico City, worse than Beijing,” the scientist said.

Mining for Mongolia

On the uranium production front, Undraa wants to investigate whether her country should develop its own enrichment plant or collaborate with the Soviet-era facility in Angarsk. AREVA, the French multinational industrial nuclear power conglomerate, also is interested in building a power plant in Mongolia in exchange for raw uranium, she said.

An alterative proposal suggested by Sidney Drell, CISAC founding co-director, and Burton Richter, SLAC director emeritus, would establish a multinational uranium enrichment facility in Mongolia with possible collaboration from Japan, a country with a good track record for nuclear transparency. Such a facility could help meet the demands of growing energy markets in nearby China, India, and South Korea. Undraa said she supports exploring this option, which could bolster Mongolia’s position as a global producer of enriched uranium for nuclear power plants. “Mongolia is a democracy with friendly relations with Russia, China, the European Union, Japan, North and South Korea, as well as the United States,” she said during a May 7 presentation at CISAC. “This is a long shot,” Hecker said. “But perhaps an enriched uranium fuel guarantee from Mongolia instead of the United States may be more successful in keeping some countries from building their own enrichment facilities.”

Science as a tool to effect policy

Undraa hopes that her hands-on research at CISAC will help her homeland. “Being from Stanford has given me a platform to talk to the uranium mining people,” she said. “It gives me a right to talk to them as a scientist who is concerned with these global issues.”

The work brings Undraa full circle — as a teenager she wanted to become a diplomat but her father, a coal miner, was pro-western and pro-democratic during the socialist period and he knew that his daughter would face difficulties if she tried to enter the field. He instilled in Undraa what she calls “an American way” of thinking. “I was a very American girl in communist Mongolia in the 1980s,” she said smiling. “What he said was, ‘You’re entitled to have a view, so have a view. You’re entitled to ask questions, so ask questions.’” He also stressed the importance of pursuing education. Undraa took that lesson to heart, excelling in mathematics, then earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from the National University of Mongolia and a doctorate from North Carolina State University.

In addition to helping Mongolia develop protocols for uranium mining and enrichment, Undraa and her husband, Dugersuren Dashdorj, also a nuclear physicist, and like-minded colleagues such as the country’s foreign minister, Sanjaasuren Oyen — the first Mongolian to earn a doctorate from Cambridge — are considering plans to establish their nation’s first major interdisciplinary research English-language university. The project is representative of Undraa’s drive to make a difference in Mongolia. “We don’t have to be bound by how it has been done in the past,” she said. “We can do it differently. We realize this is not a one-to-two-year project — it will take decades to establish. But one has to start somewhere.”

While in London, Senior Research Scholar Rafiq Dossani spent time discussing the reasons behind India's continued rise and his recent book India Arriving: How This Economic Powerhouse is Redefining Global Business with CNBC's Europe Tonight host Guy Johnson. You can watch the interview here CNBC - Europe Tonight

Small scale power generation technologies (distributed generation) have the potential to significantly contribute to solving the rural electricity access problem in the developing world. This paper presents results from case studies in Brazil (part of a larger three country study) and shows that differences in business models and the influence of institutions are important factors for understanding success and failure in rural electrification and the contribution rural electrification can play in rural development. 

In their column on National Review on June 24, 2008 called “10 Concerns about Barack Obama,” William Bennett and Seth Leibsohn, begin their list of attacks on Senator Obama by writing that “Barack Obama’s foreign policy is dangerous, naïve, and betrays a profound misreading of history.” In arguing against any engagement with Iran, William Bennett and Seth Leibsohn point out that “Ronald Reagan met with no Soviet leader during the entirely of his first term in office.”

This statement is factually correct. And there was most certainly a big debate within Reagan Administration about whether to talk with the leaders of the Evil Empire. However, Bennett and Leibsohn imply in their piece that this debate was only resolved after the Soviet Union met some preconditions to talks and changed internally, that is after, as they write, that Reagan “was assured Gorbachev was a different kind of leader – after Perestroika, not before.”

In fact, the debate about engaging the evil empire was resolved three years before Reagan met with Gorbachev. The debate and the resolution in favor of talking to the leaders of the evil empires is meticulously chronicled in George’s Shultz’s memoir, Turmoil and Triumph: Diplomacy , Power, and the Victory of the American Ideal (1993). Just the title of Chapter 25, "Realistic Reengagement with the Soviets," underscores how misleading the Bennett and Leibsohn rendition of history is.

When they first came to Washington, many foreign policy advisors within Reagan administration advocated the Bennett and Leibsohn position and did not want to have any contact with the Soviets, even though every American president since the recognition to the USSR in 1933 had met with their Soviet counterparts. When George Shultz became Secretary of State in 1982, he began to challenge this policy of disengagement, arguing that the United States needed to engage both the Soviet leaders but also Soviet society. As he writes in his memoirs about the start of the New Year in 1983, “I wanted to develop a strategy for a new start with the Soviet Union. I felt we had to try to turn the relationship around: away from confrontation and towards real problem solving.” (p. 159) Shultz is writing about his thinking two years before Gorbachev comes to power.

Shultz’s idea for a turn towards engagement met resistance in the Reagan administration. Again, from his memoirs: “I knew the president’s White House staff would oppose such engagement. There was lots of powerful opposition around town to any efforts to bridge the chasm separating Moscow and Washington.” After listing the opponents to direct negotiations, which included Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and CIA head Bill Casey, Shultz affirmed that “I was determined not to hang back from engaging the Soviets because of fears that the ‘Soviet wins negotiations’.” (p. 159). Sound familiar? Instead the word, Iranians, for Soviets and you capture the essence of the debate today.

Shultz, as we all know, won this debate, convincing Reagan about the need to start talking directly to the Soviets (again well before Gorbachev came on to the scene). A subtitle of Chapter 12 of Shultz’s memoir is A President Ready to Engage. (p. 163). In early February 1983, Shultz even floats the idea of meeting directly with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin for a private chat, to which Reagan responds, “Great”, and then adds “I don’t intend to engage in a detailed exchange with Dobrynin , but I do tell him that if Andropov is wiling to do business, so am I” (p. 164). (Remember Andropov died in 1983 and his successor, Chernenko, also did not serve long as the Soviet leader before dying in 1985. from 1983-1985, there was a real crisis of leadership inside the Soviet Union, a factor that contributed to the lack of direct talks at the highest levels). Speed forwarding again to today’s Iran debate, which presidential candidate sounds more like Reagan?

Shultz’s approach toward engaging the Soviets offers another profound lesson for today’s Iran debate. Shultz never let the negotiations focus just on arms control. That played o the Soviet’s strengths. Rather, he insisted on an expanded agenda that always included human rights and democracy. Again, from his memoirs, "We were determined not to allow the Soviets to focus our negotiations simply on matters of arms control. So we continuously adhered to a broad agenda: human rights, regional issues, arms control, and bilateral issues." (p.267). This same approach is needed for dealing with the Iranian regime today.

Finally, Shultz never saw negotiations or expanding contacts with Soviets and Americans as a concession to Moscow or a signal of legitimacy for the communist dictatorship. In the debate about opening consulates in both countries – a move that some hardliners at the time saw as a sign of weakness – Shultz firmly supported the idea as a change in the American national interest. As he quotes from a memorandum that he wrote in 1982, "I believe the next step on our part should be to propose the negotiation of a new U.S.-Soviet cultural agreement and the opening of U.S. and Soviet consulates in Kiev and New York...Both of these proposals will sound good to the Soviets, but are unambiguously in our interest when examined from a hard headed American viewpoint."(p. 275). Exactly the same could be said about Iran today.

Historical analogies can only go far. Many dimensions of U.S.-Iranians relations differ radically from Cold War relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But when observers do roll them out, getting the facts right should be precondition to the substantive date about their relevance.

Much existing literature champions renewables implementation on India’s Sagar Island as an unqualified rural electrification success story.  Photovoltaic (PV) and wind systems put in place by the West Bengal Renewable Energy Development Agency (WBREDA) have clearly brought benefits to many of the island’s residents.

The highly-touted community management system governing the projects has been successful at instilling local pride and overcoming the traditionally thorny problem of tariff non-collection.  At the same time, an on-the-ground look at the Sagar Island experience identifies some deeper liabilities of the business model guiding the renewables projects.  Two of the ostensible strengths of the Sagar Island implementation – the harmonious tariff collection associated with community management and the resources, competence, and assertiveness of WBREDA itself – can at the same time be considered weaknesses limiting the scope, sustainability, and replicability of the projects. 

This working paper considers these questions through a case study of a typical Sagar Island facility, the Mritunjoynagar PV power plant.  It finds that Mritunjoynagar’s inability to recoup its full operating and maintenance costs by providing appropriate incentives for profit maximization limits the expansion of the project and threatens its long-term sustainability, or at least the relevance of its business model in the absence of a highly-visible champion like WBREDA to ensure continued support.  For WBREDA and other agencies to sustain and replicate similar projects—and their attendant benefits—throughout India, they must adjust their economic model, as WBREDA is beginning to implicitly acknowledge in exploring a franchise model for future efforts.

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

STANFORD SUMMER FELLOWS PROGRAM

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

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

DEMOCRACY, DEVELOPMENT, AND THE RULE OF LAW

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

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

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

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

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

Q. WERE YOU SURPRISED BY THE STUDENT RESPONSE?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s inauguration as the president of Liberia marks a watershed in the country’s tumultuous history.

Twenty-five years of misrule and civil war under Samuel Doe, Charles Taylor, and successive interim governments have left the country in ruins. Nearly 300,000 Liberians lost their lives, average income is one-eighth what it was in 1980, and large majorities of the population subsist in dire poverty.

Since United Nations and U.S. troops ousted Taylor in 2003, a fragile peace has taken hold, supported by 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers. With free and peaceful elections under their belts, Liberians are feeling new optimism and hope. Markets here are bustling, stores are freshly painted and open for business, and newspapers and radios feature lively debate.

The new government is a clear break from a past characterized by rule by force, extensive corruption, and a culture of impunity. Sirleaf, the first African woman elected head of state, has been an outspoken champion of accountability, transparency, and good governance for decades, a stance that landed her in jail twice and was a hallmark of her opposition to past governments and campaign for the presidency.

Already change is under way. She has instituted a code of conduct and full financial disclosure for senior officials, and endorsed a program that will install internationally recruited financial controllers in several state enterprises and create a strong anticorruption commission. Her government plans to publish financial accounts on the Web, make it easier for whistleblowers to report infractions, and rewrite Liberia’s outdated constitution to firmly establish participatory democracy, decentralize power, and install robust checks on the executive.

Recovery from deep conflict in Africa is not easy, but we know it is possible. Mozambique was destroyed by civil war in the 1980s, but its democratically elected government led the way to peace, stability, and a doubling of income in a dozen years. Sierra Leone suffered a blood bath in the 1990s, but the 1999 peace agreement and 2001 elections brought stability and economic growth of 7 percent a year. Rwanda’s genocide was followed by a recovery that few could have imagined.

But Sirleaf faces a daunting task. Liberia’s recovery will depend mainly on Liberians themselves, but it will require strong international support, just as in Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda.

West Africa’s civil wars have spawned widespread smuggling of diamonds, transshipment of drugs, and easy money laundering opportunities for global terrorist groups. Liberia’s historic moment provides the U.S. administration a chance to show it is serious about supporting nascent democracies, creating stability in a volatile region, and providing economic opportunities for Africa’s poorest countries.

First, the United States must continue its crucial role in the demobilization of combatants and commit to long-term rebuilding of Liberia’s police and army. The new government must be able to maintain and enhance security to begin to recover.

Second, the administration should support rapid and comprehensive forgiveness of Liberia’s debts, which were mainly undertaken and wasted by the rapacious Doe government. It makes no more sense to stick today’s Liberians with the bill, including 20 years of accumulated interest, than to force today’s Iraqis to pay Saddam Hussein’s bills.

Third, and perhaps most urgent, Congress should approve supplemental funding of $50 million to $100 million to support the new government. Unfortunately, Congress recently cut the administration’s initial request for Liberia, a short-sighted step that sent the wrong signal to a struggling democracy and old ally at a crucial turning point. These funds would build critical infrastructure, put kids back into schools, and continue vital training for security forces. It would give Liberians their best chance of securing peace and basic freedoms.

Four years after the ouster of the extremist Taliban government , Afghanistan is moving ahead but needs investment and expertise to recover from 30 years of war, the country’s ambassador to the United States said during a Nov. 14 luncheon at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

“Afghanistan has come a long way but the journey has just started,” said Said Tayeb Jawad, a former exile who returned to work for his homeland in 2002. The one-time San Francisco-based legal consultant was named Afghanistan’s ambassador to Washington two years ago by then-Interim President Hamid Karzai. “We would like to join the family of nations once again and stand on our own feet as soon as possible,” he said.

In an address to about 100 faculty, students, staff, and donors, Jawad spoke of his country’s strategic role in the war on terrorism. “Global security is one concept,” he said. “In order to fight terrorism effectively, better investment in Afghanistan is needed to stabilize the country and make [it] a safer place for Afghans and, therefore, global security.”

Afghanistan has established all the institutions needed for the emergence of a civil society, Jawad said. A new constitution was approved in January 2004, presidential elections took place in October of that year, and elections for a new parliament were held two months ago. “The constitution we have adopted is the most liberal in the region,” he said. Although problems abound—Afghanistan is the poorest country in Asia, only 6 percent of its residents have access to electricity and only 22 percent have clean water—the ambassador expressed hope for the future. About 3.6 million refugees have returned home, he said, and 86 percent of Afghans think they are better off today than four years ago, according to an Asia Foundation survey.

Émigrés are the leading investors in the country, Jawad said, noting that an Afghan American recently pumped $150 million into the country’s nascent cell phone system. Many others, including Jawad himself, have heeded President Karzai’s call for émigré professionals to aid their homeland. Other international expertise is also moving in: Eleven foreign banks have opened for business and 60,000 skilled workers from Pakistan and Iran have moved to Kabul. “We are trying to reconnect the country by building roads and the communication system,” Jawad said. “Reconnecting the country is important for national unity but also for the fight against terrorism and narcotics.”

Tackling the profitable opium trade is a top challenge facing the government and its greatest obstacle to national reconstruction, Jawad said. “Its proceeds feed into terrorism and lawlessness,” he said. In the past, horticulture comprised 70 percent of Afghanistan’s exports. But 30 years of war decimated a generation of farmers and destroyed traditional farming. “If you have a vineyard or orchard, you have to have a prospect of 10 years,” the ambassador said. “If you don’t have a sense of hope, you grow poppy seeds. It takes three months to harvest poppy. You can put it in a bag, take it with you and become a refugee again.”

While terrorists and the Taliban are defeated in Afghanistan, Jawad said, they are not eliminated and they continue to attack what he described as soft targets: schools and mosques and aid workers. But in the last two days, a U.S. soldier and NATO peacekeepers were killed in attacks, which police blame on al-Qaida. To help counter this, efforts are under way to build a trained national army and police force. More than 36,000 soldiers already have been trained. While the country is grateful for foreign military assistance, the ambassador said, “It’s our job to defend our country.”

The country’s leadership also allowed lower-ranking Taliban to join the government; three former officials have been elected to the new parliament. “This was a decision that was difficult to take,” Jawad said. “But we want to deny terrorists a recruiting ground. We are trying to pursue a policy of reconciliation. We cannot afford to have another circle of violence and another circle of revenge.”

At the end of the address, FSI Director Coit D. Blacker reiterated a formal statement initially made in August inviting President Karzai to visit Stanford.