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.

WASHINGTON, June 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Leading global development experts today called on Congress and the President to elevate development as a key component of the U.S. foreign assistance system to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The international and domestic challenges of the 21st century -- including transnational threats such as economic instability, terrorism, climate change, and disease -- cannot be met with a foreign assistance apparatus created to confront the challenges of the 20th century, said the experts in a report released today. The report, New Day, New Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century, contains various proposals of this coalition of experts, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN).

Foreign assistance and other investments in developing countries are vital tools for strengthening U.S. foreign policy, restoring American global leadership, and fighting global poverty, said MFAN co-chair Steve Radelet of the Center for Global Development. Foreign policy experts on both sides of the political aisle now recognize the importance of strong foreign assistance programs. But they also recognize that our foreign assistance programs are out of date and badly in need of modernization to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The report lays out the importance of foreign assistance as a foreign policy tool which includes defense, diplomacy, and development. It makes the case that it is in the countrys national interest to elevate development assistance and makes specific recommendations such as better accountability, a national strategy for the coordination of the entire U.S. foreign assistance system, and making development a sustainable piece of Americas long-term investments overseas.

"By giving development a seat at the foreign policy table we can narrow the gap between the world's haves and have nots, tackle the challenges posed by climate change, the global food crisis, and the world's weak and failing states and, most importantly, strengthen the moral foundation from which we lead, said MFAN co-chair Gayle Smith of the Center for American Progress.

The report was released today during the launch of MFAN in Congress. Speakers included Rep. Howard L. Berman, chair, House Foreign Affairs Committee; Rep. Nita Lowey, chair, State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee; and Sen. Chuck Hagel, member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Members of MFAN include: Steve Radelet (Center for Global Development), Gayle Smith (Center for American Progress), Brian Atwood (Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota), David Beckmann (Bread for the World), Lael Brainard (Brookings Institution), Larry Diamond (Hoover Institution, Stanford University), Sam Worthington (Interaction), Francis Fukuyama (The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University), Carol Lancaster (Mortara Center for International Studies, Georgetown University), George Ingram (Academy for Educational Development), Larry Nowels, Charles MacCormack (Save the Children), Michael A. McFaul (Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law, Stanford University), Ray Offenheiser (Oxfam America), Stewart Patrick (Council on Foreign Relations), and William Reese (International Youth Foundation).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The failure of Irish voters to ratify the Lisbon Treaty points to a problem for Europe that goes far beyond that specific referendum. The vote in Ireland, coupled with the rejection by voters in France and the Netherlands in 2005 of the now failed European Constitution, provides indisputable proof that many European citizens are strongly suspicious of the European Union and that European leaders must take strong action to remedy the misperceptions of those citizens. There are a variety of reasons why voters rejected the Constitution and now the Lisbon Treaty that have been commented on extensively. But as an outsider, I would submit that the most significant underlying reasons for rejection were a lack of understanding of the EU as an institution, the perception of its "unaccountability" and a resulting lack of loyalty to the EU as an entity. Speaking as a friend of Europe and as a strong proponent of transatlantic relations, I believe that these are the major issues that European leaders must address. The EU must have a "face" to which Europeans can relate. The chickens have finally come home to roost. If the EU is to move forward and deal with the challenges of the future, it can afford no longer to be viewed by much of the public, albeit unfairly, as a "mindless" bureaucracy running people's lives from Brussels.

European leaders must think about and be able to provide understandable answers to the most basic questions. What is the EU? How many Europeans can answer that question? Is the EU the equivalent of a nation-state with full sovereignty? Clearly not. Is it some kind of supra-national organisation where members have agreed to share sovereignty in agreed upon areas? That is a start but can it be articulated in a simple understandable way? Do Europeans have any idea as to how decisions are made within the EU? How many Europeans understand the "qualified majority" voting system? It would take a mathematics major to understand how votes are calculated, let alone the multiple layers of decision-making. Is there a simple way to explain how the EU is accountable to European citizenry? How does the EU serve the common good? If the EU remains a mystery to many Europeans, there should be little mystery as to why voters are uncomfortable expanding its powers. It is no wonder that when voters think that they are facing a choice between "national sovereignty" and surrendering sovereignty to a little-understood institution that may impinge on their perceived security, they will vote for "national sovereignty".

If the EU is so little understood in Europe, one can only imagine the lack of understanding among Americans. When I was nominated in 1999 by President Clinton to be the United States Ambassador to the European Union, the most common questions that were asked by my friends were: What is the EU? Isn't that the economic organisation in Europe? Or are you our first ambassador to the EU?

One can also understand why American policymakers, whichever party is in power, have often been reluctant to deal with the EU as an entity and retreat to working through member states. Over recent years US administrations have better recognised the need to work with the EU, and the US and EU have accomplished much working together. But still too often policymakers have become befuddled and frustrated in dealing with the EU. So, for example, even with the ups and downs of the US-French relationship, some US policymakers are more comfortable dealing with France than with the EU because there is a history to the relationship. We have been working with France for over 200 years. There is a texture to the relationship that does not exist with the EU. Until that texture begins to develop, policymakers will often tend to look first to the member states.

Ironically, the Lisbon Treaty would begin to put a face on the EU. The EU would have a president with a set term and a single person responsible for the implementation of EU foreign policy. The treaties upon which the EU is based would be incorporated into a single document. More efficient procedures to deal with an enlarged EU would be put in place. From an American standpoint the treaty should enhance US-European co-operation in areas of vital common interest.

But for the Lisbon Treaty to be ultimately ratified in Ireland and to be accepted by citizens in the other member states even though a referendum is not required in those states, Europe needs to get back to the basics and leaders must be able to explain what the EU is, how the EU is accountable to Europe's citizens and why the Treaty is in the interests of all Europeans.

Ambassador Richard L. Morningstar served as Ambassador to the European Union from 1999-2001. He is a Senior Director at Stonebridge International, a global strategy firm, a Lecturer at Stanford Law School, and an Adjunct Lecturer at the Kennedy School at Harvard University.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This past autumn, the Freeman Spogli Institute ( FSI ) in conjunction with the Woods Institute for the Environment launched a program on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) to address the deficit in academia and, on a larger scale, the global dialogue surrounding the critical issues of food security, poverty, and environmental degradation.

“Hunger is the silent killer and moral outrage of our time; however, there are few university programs in the United States designed to study and solve the problem of global food insecurity,” states program director Rosamond L. Naylor. “FSE’s dual affiliation with FSI and Stanford’s new Woods Institute for the Environment position it well to make significant steps in this area.”

Through a focused research portfolio and an interdisciplinary team of scholars led by Naylor and Center for Environmental Science and Policy (CESP) co-director Walter P. Falcon, FSE aims to design new approaches to solve these persistent problems, expand higher education on food security and the environment at Stanford, and provide direct policy outreach.

Productive food systems and their environmental consequences form the core of the program. Fundamentally, the FSE program seeks to understand the food security issues that are of paramount interest to poor countries, the food diversification challenges that are a focus of middle-income nations, and the food safety and subsidy concerns prominent in richer nations.

CHRONIC HUNGER IN A TIME OF PROSPERITY

Although the world’s supply of basic foods has doubled over the past century, roughly 850 million people (12 percent of the world’s population) suffer from chronic hunger. Food insecurity deaths during the past 20 years outnumber war deaths by a factor of at least 5 to 1. Food insecurity is particularly widespread in agricultural regions where resource scarcity and environmental degradation constrain productivity and income growth.

FSE is currently assessing the impacts of climate variability on food security in Asian rice economies. This ongoing project combines the expertise of atmospheric scientists, agricultural economists, and policy analysts to understand and mitigate the adverse effects of El Niño-related climate variability on rice production and food security. As a consequence of Falcon and Naylor’s long-standing roles as policy advisors in Indonesia, models developed through this project have already been embedded into analytical units within Indonesia’s Ministries of Agriculture, Planning, and Finance. “With such forecasts in hand, the relevant government agencies are much better equipped to mitigate the negative consequences of El Niño events on incomes and food security in the Indonesian countryside,” explain Falcon and Naylor.

FOOD DIVERSIFICATION AND INTENSIFICATION

With rapid income growth, urbanization, and population growth in developing economies, priorities shift from food security to the diversification of agricultural production and consumption. “Meat production is projected to double by 2020,” states Harold Mooney, CESP senior fellow and an author of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. As a result, land once used to provide grains for humans now provides feed for hogs and poultry.

These trends will have major consequences for the global environment—affecting the quality of the atmosphere, water, and soil due to nutrient overloads; impacting marine fisheries both locally and globally through fish meal use; and threatening human health, as, for example, through excessive use of antibiotics.

An FSE project is analyzing the impact of intensive livestock production and assessing the environmental effects to gain a better understanding of the true costs of this resource-intensive system. A product of this work recently appeared as a Policy Forum piece in the December 9, 2005, issue of Science titled "Losing the Links Between Livestock and Land."

Factors contributing to the global growth of livestock systems, lead author Naylor notes, are declining feed-grain prices, relatively inexpensive transportation costs, and trade liberalization. “But many of the true costs remain largely unaccounted for,” she says, including destruction of forests and grasslands to provide farmland for feed crops destined not for humans but for livestock; utilization of large quantities of freshwater; and nitrogen losses from croplands and animal manure.

Naylor and her research team are seeking better ways to track all costs of livestock production, especially hidden costs of ecosystem degradation and destruction. “What is needed is a re-coupling of crop and livestock systems,” Naylor says, “if not physically, then through pricing and other policy mechanisms that reflect social costs of resource use and ecological abuse.” Such policies “should not significantly compromise the improving diets of developing countries, nor should they prohibit trade,” Naylor adds. Instead, they should “focus on regulatory and incentive-based tools to encourage livestock and feed producers to internalize pollution costs, minimize nutrient run-off, and pay the true price of water.”

LOOKING AHEAD

The future of the program on Food Security and the Environment looks bright and expansive. Building on existing research at Stanford, researchers are identifying avenues in the world’s least developed countries to enhance orphan crop production— crops with little international trade and investment, but high local value for food and nutrition security. This work seeks to identify advanced genetic and genomic strategies, and natural resource management initiatives, to improve orphan crop yields, enhance crop diversity, and increase rural incomes through orphan crop production.

Another priority research area is development of biofuels. As countries seek energy self-reliance and look for alternatives to food and feed subsidies under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, the conversion of corn, sugar, and soybeans to ethanol and other energy sources becomes more attractive. New extraction methods are making the technology more efficient, and high crude oil prices are fundamentally changing the economics of biomass energy conversion. A large switch by key export food and feed suppliers, such as the United States and Brazil, to biofuels could fundamentally alter export prices, and hence the world food and feed situation. A team of FSE researchers will assess the true costs of these conversions.

The FSE program recently received a grant through the Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies to initiate new research activities. One project links ongoing research at Stanford on the environmental and resource costs of industrial livestock production and trade to assess the extent of Brazil’s rainforest destruction for soybean production. “Tens of millions of hectares of native grassland and rainforest are currently being cleared for soybean production to supply the global industrial livestock sector,” says Naylor. An interdisciplinary team will examine strategies to achieve an appropriate balance between agricultural commodity trade, production practices, and conservation in Brazil’s rainforest states.

“I’m extremely pleased to see the rapid growth of FSE and am encouraged by the recent support provided through the new Presidential Fund,” states Naylor. “It enables the program to engage faculty members from economics, political science, biology, civil and environmental engineering, earth sciences, and medicine—as well as graduate students throughout the university—in a set of collaborative research activities that could significantly improve human well-being and the quality of the environment.”