Today's paper (April 18) has a valuable Op-Ed making the argument that the United States should cease its opposition to a gas pipeline that is being worked out by Iran, Pakistan, and India. The argument is made on several levels. First, America needs the cooperation of India and Pakistan, and it needs for these countries to develop and preserve good relations with one another. Second, India, and to a lesser extent, Pakistan need more energy sources and Iran is the most easily available and affordable source. The three countries are working out the agreement and the financing — they do not need us. Finally, natural gas is the most easily available energy source for India from the viewpoint of global pollution.

Instead of welcoming this initiative, however, the United States is opposing it in an automatic, unthinking attempt to oppose whatever Iran does. At the same time as we are blocking them in this regard we are also requiring the Iranians to give up part of their efforts in the nuclear area — and this is at the same time as we are proposing to help the Indians develop their nuclear power capabilities. If we carry through on the latter, we will infuriate all our traditional allies, all of whom we have tried to block from efforts to support (and profit from) nuclear power in the developing world.

The authors advise the U.S. government to change its stance in regard to this issue as others as well. Their suggestion is supported by an unrelated report of the IISS (in their "Strategic Comments" series, 11,2). They report that in recent years Iran has pulled back from its support of terror, particularly outside the Middle East. Iran has been reluctant to take an active role in Iraq and is likely to remain reluctant. The IISS paper argues that Iran is offering the United States an opportunity to improve relations. If we really want to keep Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons, this is an opportunity we should take advantage of.

A recent posting gave an incorrect picture of the insurgency situation. Although many more civilians and Iraqi security personnel are being killed than members of the Coalition forces, according to the latest American figures it is still true that the majority of attacks are directed against Coalition forces. Nevertheless, it is also true, as that posting stated, that the number of attacks has been declining since the elections.

This brings us back to the question of where the insurgency is going. A few days ago, Muqtada al-Sadr took his people into the streets again after a long rest, denouncing Americans and demanding that they pull out. The event was in Baghdad. The numbers were impressive, but not as great as the organizers had hoped. Its organizers managed to keep their people nonviolent. It was probably just an attempt to show that the Mahdi Army was still a group that had to be reckoned with, and not really a turn toward supporting the insurgency.

Meanwhile, with fits and starts the politicians seem to be getting their act together. A major Sunni Arab leader went to see the Ayatollah Sistani to thank him for his attempts to avoid Shi'a attacks against Sunnis. This leader was not part of the die-hard Sunni Arab faction, but still a good step. The Iraqi security forces seem to be steadily becoming more and more active and effective. Talk of immediate American withdrawal has generally quietened

All of which leads to the question of how the insurgency will be able to preserve itself. It is still remarkably effective. But for how long? The fanatic Muslim side of the effort continues to get reenforcements from outside the country. But the old Baathist officers who have had most of the money and probably been the most effective militarily must be thinning out through killing and capture. Their sources of funds in Syria are sure to dry up eventually.

To be sustainable at a high level, insurgencies generally need outside support, or at least a fairly open highway for support to flow in. In spite of some accusations, the only side that has been shown to provide regular access is the Syrian. One doubts if it is in the long-range interest of Syria to allow this to continue at the level it has in the past. Syria's leaders belong to a relatively secular Allawi sect of Shiism, one with little love for the Ithna 'Ashariya Iraqi type. Only a general dislike of "the foreigner" motivates them to go along with the insurgency traffic. One can only assume that sooner or later other considerations are likely to change the balance against continuing support for the insurgency.

Which brings us back to the young men willing to risk their lives continuing the fight. Do they still have a theory of victory? It is hard to imagine. About the only fairly coherent one I can think of would be based on the hope that the three major ethnic groups will break apart over the writing of the constitution and the insurgency with its forces already in the field will be able to pick up the pieces. First, one can assume the Americans, disappointed with this result and unwilling to fight the ethnic groups to hold together a disintegrating Iraq, will decide to leave. Then, the insurgency will again establish its supremacy over the Sunni Arab community. Then it will go on to subdue the Shi'a in Baghdad and the south. Finally it will be the turn of the Kurds in the north.

The Muslims extremists associated with Zarqawi have a more diffuse goal. They just want to kill the "enemies of Islam", whether they be Americans or Iraqis. Iraq seems to be as good a place to do this as anywhere. They may have hoped to inflict a major defeat on the American devils in Iraq. As this hope fails to be realized, they can be sustained by the more general faith in their righteousness. But if their secular allies desert them and the Iraqi community becomes more hostile to their presence, their effectiveness and long-term viability as a movement in Iraq will diminish.

One can only hope that the Americans and the new system of government in Iraq can understand the hopes and fears and strategies of the insurgency in such a way as to hasten its withering into insignificance.

Kristof is once again beating his fists against the indifference of the outside world to the crimes against humanity in the Darfur region of Sudan. Thousands of natives are killed and mutilated and starved to death while the world reactions hardly go beyond mincing steps that do little to change the situation. He is incensed in his latest column particularly by the rape of women and girls, rape that not only persists with little legal challenge but also destroys the girls involved socially and legally in ways not imagined in the West. The latest news is that the victims of rape in Darfur are being imprisoned for having illicit relations outside marriage. Before their arrests, they were already thrown out by their families and divorced by their husbands.

Kristof's solution is for the United States to put more pressure on its allies and the United Nations, to increase the size of intervention forces. He seems to forget the numerically worse horrors that have been going on in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo now for some years. Unlike Darfur, the United Nations has had an army there for several years and has granted it a much more active mandate than the African Union force in Darfur. Yet those on the ground, such as representatives of Doctors without Borders people, report that violence remains the main danger for the people, that the effectiveness of the UN forces seldom extends beyond the major towns.

Instead of continuing to apply Band-Aid, the world needs to hold a major conference on Africa. Such a conference would not duplicate the Berlin Conference of the 19th century but it should be as far reaching. The conference should go beyond discussing modes of intervention. It should create the means and the will to occupy and administer those parts of Africa that are likely to remain festering sores indefinitely. There needs to be a form of recolonization, which was, in effect, what the UN Trusteeship system that dated back to the League of Nations was all about. In much of Africa, the colonial blueprint of the nineteenth century needs to be torn up, to be replaced by a new blueprint more in congruence with the divisions among African peoples. These new divisions must be wards of the international community, much in the way that Bosnia remains today.

The more generalized and longer term problem that Kristof addresses in his discussion of rape is the inhumanity of so many peoples, particular Muslims, in their treatment of their women. The formerly Muslim woman in the Netherlands who has recently stood up to her tradition, rejected it, and now wants the Western world to join her has made the point heroically and forcibly. She risks death for the cause of Muslim women and we should applaud and support her cause. Political correctness and multiculturalism should not cause anyone, liberal or not, to accept as unchangeable and worthy of respect customs and attitudes that are seriously demeaning to a segment of the population, whether this be an ethnic minority or women. We must be prepared, as the Turkish generals that transformed Turkey were prepared to do in the 1920s, to delegitimize such customs. Western campaigns against female circumcision seem to be having an effect, partially because this practice is not in the Quran or the most accepted hadith literature. Success against many of the other attitudes and practices demeaning women in Islam may also be successfully campaigned against for the same reason. Perhaps the "honor killings" of wives, daughters, or sisters may be delegitimized for without touching the most essential traditions. Unfortunately, some anti-feminine strictures, such as the idea that it takes the word of two women before a court to equal that of a man, exist in the general body of Muslim law. Any international campaign to right such wrongs must begin with the easier and move to the more difficult, but the world should develop a willingness to educate and retrain people away from moral underdevelopment as much as from material underdevelopment. This development strategy should also be introduced in the trusteeship period as described above. Such a use of "colonialism" was often practiced by the British, most famously by their prohibition of the Hindu suttee in India.

After a several days gap in postings, we should revisit the situation in Iraq. There has been a series of encouraging news items. The violence appears to be down. Coalition casualties are less than they were, although still substantial. The decline in coalition casualties also means a decline in Iraqi civilian casualties, although those caused by the insurgency remain at a high level. Another way of judging is by the number of incidents reported daily or weekly. These too seem to be down, although the military is worried by the size of some recent attacks, such as that on Abu Ghraib.

One of the most hopeful signs was a sermon by a leading Sunni opponent of the war telling young Sunni Arabs that they should join the new security services so that the community would not have to face so many evil people (read Kurds or Shi'a) in the new army and police forces. One could read this as no more than a plea for more insurgents to infiltrate these services, but no one seemed to read it that way.

On the political front, the parties seem to have finally gotten together so that the political process can move forward. They have selected a Sunni Arab speaker of the national assembly. They have selected a leader of the Kurdistan Alliance to be President, and a Sunni Arab (already in the interim government) and a Shi'a leader to be vice presidents. It is presumed that they will select al-Jaafari, a somewhat conservative Shi'a party leader, as the new Prime Minister.

These results have not gone over well with everyone. In spite of their lack of voting and consequent small representation in the Assembly, the Sunni Arabs seem to have gotten their share so far. The Kurds appear very happy, while others find this disturbing. They see the Kurds getting too much, which apparently means that they have gained some still not revealed assurances about the incorporation of the Kirkuk area and its oil into the Kurdish realm.

The greatest dissatisfaction is being expressed by those Shi'a and Kurds who demand that the interim government be replaced immediately by a government appointed by the new leadership. The reason is simmering hatred of the Allawi regime because it has allowed some of the old Baath members back into government positions. Their demands seem precipitous, coming before a new cabinet is established. More than that they reflect an unwillingness to accommodate the old ruling strata of the country, one of the primary groups behind the insurgency. For all its faults, the Allawi regime did hold out an olive branch to the Sunni Arabs, something these dissenters would evidently lop off.

Iraq is not in the clear yet, but it is getting there. The problems for the next few months are (1) resisting overly ambitious calls for American withdrawal, (2) writing a constitution giving the Kurds rights that they and the rest can live with, (3) finding an acceptable balance of secular/religious interests in the constitution, (4) reducing violence enough for the country's infrastructure to really make a recovery, and (5) holding a referendum on the new constitution (set for October, but it may be delayed), and then (6) electing a new assembly under the new constitution. The world wishes them well.

The latest of a series of reports, the "Silberman-Robb" report makes a scathing indictment of the intelligence system both before and after 9/11, before and after the attack on Iraq. Like previous reports, it makes many suggestions for improving the performance of system or systems, many based on failures to adopt or implement successfully previous recommendations.

It is hard to know what to add to all the commentary that has poured forth on the unclassified portions of the report. (One of the problems is right here: so much is classified that judging what is really being said becomes unduly difficult.) But what strikes an outside observer most forcefully is the simple fact that too much advice is flowing forth. How can organizations that have just been restructured several times since 9/11 (several changes within each organization plus new CIA direction plus incorporation of much of the effort into Homeland Security plus the setting up of an intelligence czar over the whole intelligence community) incorporate this advice effectively?

Given this caveat, many of the suggestions seem useful in themselves. The major thrust is integration, "Let's get the different parts of the structure talking with one another." One small part of the problem in this area is illustrated by a report of a continuing feud between a new center for terrorism threat analysis and the CIA's counterterrorism unit. The government had proposed a National Counterterrorism Center. But the units that were meant to contribute to this failed to do so effectively. Its head finally reported that lack of cooperation made it unable to fulfill its mission. It is perhaps not helpful that the new Commission report proposes several more such integrative agencies or units. One gets the feeling that the problem is simply unmanageable and may only get worse. (The intelligence muddle is just one example of how hard it is for a President to actually run the country however well meaning or even however intelligent he might be.)

Before leaving the issue, let me mention a couple of recommendations that might do some good because they seem to lie outside already established turfs. One is to set up within the Director of National Intelligence's Office (DNI, remember the acronym, you'll be hearing it a lot) a long-range research and analysis group that would look into general issues more deeply than is generally the case. Second, the Silberman-Robb report recommends setting up an independent, nongovernmental think tank to play the devil's advocate, to challenge the intelligence agency's views. This seems a great idea, although how the clearances required to know what the intelligence community is reporting to the President and other top officials would be handled would be a serious problem. Ultimately, the problems of the intelligence community are several — bureaucratic intransigence, overlapping jurisdictions, inadequate humint, and relatively low general intelligence and education. The think tank might help to at least ameliorate the latter.

The Chinese government has launched an initiative campaign within China intended to prevent Japan from becoming a permanent member of the Security Council (along with Germany in the one current proposal). They hope to have enough signatures that the government can say that it simply cannot agree to making Japan a permanent member. China is apparently upset by recent Japanese support for an American position on Taiwan, as well as what goes into Japanese textbooks about World War II. (I would hate to know what goes into Chinese textbooks).

Whatever the sins of the Japanese, Japan is still the second largest economy in the world. It has made a major contribution to many international programs in the last few years, including both those promoted separately by the United Nations and by the United States.

As I pointed out before, the United States needs to set about developing an effective, long-term method of controlling the growth of Chinese power in the world. Taking a firm position on this issue in support of a permanent seat for Japan would make a good start. It should be made clear to other candidates such as Germany, India, and Brazil that China is standing in the way of the expansion of the permanent membership. We might also start talking about alternative ways of establishing world order and marshalling world opinion on critical issues in ways that by-pass the Security Council if it is not to be expanded. Plans for expanding the functions of the OECD (previous post) is one approach. New modalities for regulating international trade that would decrease the advantages China seems to have is another. Whatever we do, we should act in such a way that China becomes isolated on this issue and is forced to pay a diplomatic price.

The world is suffering from the continuing pressure of the dead weight of the past. Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Hindus are entranced by texts written long ago, in contexts very different from the modern world, by people who could not have any understanding of the ways of thinking that educated people everywhere now take for granted. We must clearly affirm that neither the Torah nor the Christian Bible nor the Quran are the word of God. Pick up any one of these texts and read for a while. Even those who believe that God exists in some form cannot believe that God would have sent down messages meant for all time that were so clearly related to the time and place of their recording or transcription.

People have always been killed and tortured in the name of religion. But that this should continue, that it should threaten the very existence of American democracy based on the separation of powers should cause everyone to pause for a minute. In a desire to embed multiculturalism in our society and institutions, many liberals concluded years ago that questions of belief should not be raised in polite society. "Everyone has their own book, and they have a right to follow what it says." But we can accept this no longer. When the book of the Jews is read to grant them all of Palestine while the book of the Muslims leads them to understand that they have a god-given right to the same territory, we outsiders, the interpreters of our day, must come clean. We must clearly declare that no religious book has the authority to guide anyone today.

In the United States, fundamentalists — Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, and Jewish — insist that the findings of verified science in field after field must be dismissed because they are not found in their holy books. The result is that millions of "schooled" Americans reach maturity deeply confused about the meaning of the modern world and how to react to it. Many Christians have been taught to believe in a violent second coming, a belief so strongly advocated by some that they would be glad to see an all-out war of Jews and Muslims in Palestine — it would herald the glorious end of time. Some Christians have even seen nuclear war in this light, believing that it is actually what the Book of Revelations leads up to. Elite American policy makers cannot blithely carry the country forward and maintain the peace as long as these dead weights continue to pull us down.

In the Middle East, fundamentalist Islam continues to teach that women are inferior, that they were put on the earth to serve men and bear children. As the history of Pakistan has demonstrated, no matter how many liberals rise up to leadership positions in Muslim societies, there is always the danger that a politico-religious group will be able to undermine the progress toward equality that fitfully occurs. "Real democracy", in the sense of free and fair elections, may carry such societies back to the Middle Ages. I have always felt that the Draconian measures of the Turkish army to keep religion out of politics (Islam cannot be mentioned in a political context) cast doubt on the sincerity of the commitment of the Turkish elite to democracy. Now, however, I wonder if such Draconian means are not essential in the Islamic context for the world to grow up.

All peoples must eventually mature into educated modern peoples free of the burdens of the past. If they do not, their leaders will not be able to work out a means to face the escalating difficulties of a world whose relentless material expansion threatens us all.

The Republican attempt to intervene with due process in order to save the life of an unfortunate but essentially unsalvageable woman in Florida might suggest an unwillingness to take the kind of difficult and tough decisions that doctors so often feel called upon to make. However, in the military-terrorism-foreign affairs-treatment of prisoners realm, the Administration is laying the groundwork for even tougher actions. First, they appointed Ambassador Bolton as American Ambassador to the United Nations. This is in spite of his well-known record of disparaging the usefulness of the organization and his stated position that we should only support the United nations when it supports our interests. This record is so egregious that a number of high-placed persons who have served in the foreign service and in policy positions in previous administrations have written a letter to Senator Lugar opposing his nomination. Second, President Bush has appointed Ambassador Negroponte to be director of directors for America's intelligence agencies. Negroponte has two sides. On the one hand, he loyally carries out whatever policy those above him wish him to. (He might or might not have told Bush the truth about Iraq: he finds out what is expected and then does it.) On the other hand, he has been the coldest of cold warriors. He resigned from a Vietnam policy position in the 1970s because he felt Kissinger had sold out the South Vietnamese (he did, but the importance with which he took this does show a rather unusual stance). As Ambassador in Honduras, he was according to those who worked with him at the time, notably unconcerned with the actions of the groups associated with the United States in the anti-communist struggle. The ambassador that preceded him in Honduras has accused him of discouraging reporting to Washington of torture, abductions or killings by the units he was supporting. Although an ambassador, he seemed actually to be part of the CIA in this position. As another acquaintance has said, Negroponte thought that to defeat the Russians in the Cold War anything was permissible. There is a fear that in the present fearful climate of the so-called "war on terror", he will evince the same kind of attitude.

China has recently come out with a human rights report on the United States. It is available in English here. China intends this to be counter-propaganda against the State Department's annual human rights report that always has many negative things to say about China. (Even though their report is ostensibly developed as propaganda against the American Human Rights report, I doubt if average Chinese have access to the American original.)

However, it is useful for Americans, and indeed all peoples, to examine and think about the ways in which the United States can be said to fail to live up to the high human rights standards that we expect the rest of the world to attain. It is significant that the primary sources for the Chinese report are reports on leading American newspapers. Their treatment is often unbalanced, but it is generally based on relatively noncontroversial data.

The Chinese report emphasizes problems in personal security in America, pointing out the high level of violent crime and the large number of people in American jails. There is also a good deal on how inmates are treated. They point out the high levels of poverty and joblessness. They point to the difference in the ways in which different races live in the United States, pointing out how the inferred racial discrimination is against the very words of the Declaration of Independence. They point to high rates of rape, emphasizing particularly sexual crimes against children. (As is often the case with these discussions, there is no reference to things being better in China or elsewhere — lack of useful statistics is probably one reason.) The Chinese report particular faults the United States for its treatment of foreign nationals, beginning with the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The interested reader should go the full document referenced above. One cannot agree with the Chinese advice that given these shortfalls in our behavior we should give up our report, but one can agree that "the United States should reflect on its erroneous behavior on human rights and take its own human rights problems seriously". Would that there could be a cross-cutting world of such reports. There could not be a better kind of competition.

In last night's Lehrer show three experts agreed that the security situation in Iraq was steadily improving. Violence was down, while what remained was directed primarily at Iraqis, especially those in the security forces or wishing to be in them. The Iraqi security forces, for their part, were slowly but steadily becoming more capable, and thus more able to take over from the Americans. But the discussants also agreed that it would be a long time before the Americans could leave. There was still too much violence for the new state to survive.

Meanwhile, the election produced a balance of forces that has led to an alarming failure of the America-sponsored political process to move forward. The Kurds and the Shi'as cannot agree on critical issues, such as the status of Kirkuk, the Kurd's percentage of oil income, and the secular/religious balance. Complicating the picture are the Sunni Arab leaders who now say they must have at least one vice-president and receive as many critical cabinet posts in any new government as the Kurds (in spite of having elected very few members of parliament because most Sunni Arabs abstained). Given this impasse, the holdover government is apparently barely functioning, and the confidence of the people declines with every passing day. Some of the Shi'a parliamentarians are beginning to have second thoughts against backing the relatively conservative Ibrahim Jafari to be the new Prime Minister. Chalabi may be at work here: Muqtada al-Sadr is said to be one of the doubters (if we believe that these two have continued their strange relationship).

At the same time, Sheikh Harith al-Dari, perhaps the most influential leader of the Sunni Arab community insists that he will continue to support the insurgency until the Americans announce a date by which they will be gone from the country. Setting such a date is something the Shiites (other than al-Sadr) have not pressed for because they do not want to fight a war with the Sunni Arab community. They also do they want the Kurds to separate themselves entirely from the state, an event that could also spark another internal war. Many Americans, including myself, have thought a definite date for departure would be helpful. It might take the wind out of the insurgency. But one cannot be sure; certainly no one in our government talks that way.

Today's paper has an Op-Ed on strengthening NAFTA as a counterweight to China. It does not seem to make much sense for two reasons. First, the economies and capabilities of the United States, Mexico, and Canada are simply too different. In particular, we cannot afford to make the Mexican border into an irrelevancy in the near future. The suggestion that this is the kind of international reorganization we should favor rests on an outmoded territorial idea of the basis of international organization. The states that are closest to one another today are not those that are geographically closest, but rather those that are politically, morally, and economically closest.

A similar geographical concept is behind the thought that NATO be expanded in its membership and functions. Both suggestions have in common the idea that the United States faces long-term international problems that can only be handled by more intensive international cooperation outside the United Nations. The United Nations is an important organization, one that will always be needed because of its universality. However, the membership of the United Nations is so disparate that the issues on which effective action can be taken through the United Nations are limited. When it comes to foreign aid, it is difficult to effectively coordinate and develop policy when the poorest of the poor are part of the decision making process. When it comes to massive human rights violations, such as those in Sudan, the problem has often been that the perpetrators are actually members of the UN commissions that are supposed to suppress the violations.

My friend Jim Huntley has written extensively on developing a democracy-centered international organization built along the lines of NATO but having a global reach that would include Japan. However, there has been resistance to this idea in many quarters, partly because it appears to be another American attempt at hegemony, something that led the French to partially withdraw from NATO years ago.

The OECD, on the other hand, has its headquarters in Paris and has never been considered to be under the thumb of the United States. Its thirty members include all of the new European community, Japan and South Korea, as well as NAFTA. The purposes of the OECD (an organization set originally to help administer Marshall Plan assistance0 are to coordinate economic policy, particularly as it relates to development assistance to the less developed countries. Its relatively wealthy members work to improve economic and social conditions within it membership and throughout the world. It struggles against bribery and responsible government everywhere and regularly puts out reports of the social conditions, environmental policies, and educational standards in member states.

The OECD would seem to me to be the best available base from which to build a more effective parallel organization. Its strong statistical branch should help the United States maintain the standards of the rest of the developed world, while we can gradually help member states develop more coherent and congruent positions on the international issues that interest us. A expanded OECD could form a kind of caucus within the United Nations, with the end result either pressing the UN for more effective action or organizing more effective action on its own — if necessary military action to solve international problems. If we nurtured and respected its membership, this could become the group of states that could give the United States the muscle and moral strength that it will need to stand up to an emerging China down the road.

The news has been full of the Kyrgyzstan chapter in a developing democratic wave. A few years ago the country and its ruler were considered the most democratic in Central Asia. But after familial and other corruption and a questionable parliamentary election, the situation unraveled. A popular movement began in the south, the poorer and more religious area. It spread rapidly to Bishkek, the capital. Soon, the police abandoned their posts and the President fled the country with this family. The newly elected parliament (the one the protesters rejected) and the old parliament (elected at a more promising time) have begun meeting on separate floors in the parliament building (confusing since some people are in both old and new parliaments). But the popular coup has stalled for now. The Supreme Court has not registered the new parliament and the new interim PM elected by the old parliament is not sure he has the right to rule. Demonstrations for the President have occurred. Stay tuned.

Whatever happens, the movement to reject the announced election result was inspired in part by events recently in the Ukraine and before that in Georgia, where the outcomes were rejected and the rejections legitimated by new elections. A legitimating second election did not happen in the Philippines in the 1980s when Marcos was thrown out after an election that the opposition claimed was rigged. (As one of the observers of that election I do not know that it actually was. Where I was Marcos clearly won on the basis of ballots counted — but how free the average voter felt he was in making his choice is another question.) Many of these movements look back to the popular movement that finally got rid of Milosevic in Serbia in 2000. Today, we have examples of popular movements in Lebanon and Zimbabwe, and may see one in Egypt.

This democratic fervor and ferment is generally to be applauded. However, we must remember that mob democracy is not the same as constitutional democracy. The revolutionary birth of a nation such as occurred in the French Revolution is not something we would want to see repeated. It is important to not be too quick to endorse such movements, taking sides only when there is a high probability that the result will be a stable, responsible government.

The United States has decided to more directly interfere militarily with the growing, refining, and shipment of opium in Afghanistan. Before now, American forces were supposed to only interfere when they came across drugs in the course of other work. Now they will specifically target the problem. The current consensus is that 85% of the world's opium now originates in the country (seems doubtful, but the figure is repeated often). The U. S. government feels that its intervention will be judged a failure if it ultimately leaves with the country effectively in the hands of narcotics lords.

The problem is that we have tried this approach before against the growers and distributors of opium and its derivatives (such as heroin), as well as other drugs such as cocaine. Success has been difficult in every case. But to the extent that we have succeeded, the growing, refining, and distribution of the drug simply shifts to new countries and new routes. As long as we do not make a significant dent in the market in the developed world, prices will stay high, and some people, somewhere, will supply the needs.

Meanwhile, what is happening in the country? The poorest countries turn to opium or other drugs because they are so much more profitable than alternatives. As long as such countries were really composed of autochthonous villages that produced the food and clothes they consumed, there was no market and drug income was unnecessary. If the crops failed, the people starved. But today everyone is a consumer, even the peasant in a distant Afghan valley. The people feel they need some income both to cover the shortfall in local production of foodstuffs and to buy the "necessities" of the outside world, whether these be new medicines or Nikes. Once they enter this world, they find that they can both assure their food supply and obtain more goods from the outside world if they drop their subsistence crops and take up a cash crop. In Afghanistan, this has led to a very large percent of the people changing from the culture of wheat to that of opium.

The only ways the government and the United States know to change the equation are to kill the opium crops, punish people for growing opium, and arrest opium dealers and refineries, thereby reducing the chance for farmers to gain from their illicit crops. Whether in Colombia, Peru, or Bolivia, the end result is that large parts of the rural population become estranged from the government, seeing it as the enemy. When the United States takes a more direct part, then the United States becomes the enemy, with the local government being seen as the tool of the United States. This problem is exacerbated when the inevitable happens: people are killed in the course of anti-drug missions in the country, and people claim (sometimes with justification) that the destruction of crops has poisoned their fields, sickened their animals, contaminated their foodstuffs, and even killed their children.

It is true that we do not wish to leave behind another Colombia. But it is also true that we do not want to undermine democracy in Afghanistan by making it seem that the supporters of democracy (local and foreign) are the enemies of the people. Nor do we want to simply drive the drug problem elsewhere in the developing world.

The solution, as many have said, lies in giving the people viable alternatives to growing opium. But except on a very small scale, these viable alternatives have not really worked out. It seems to me that before we start to tighten the screws militarily on the production of opium in Afghanistan, we should do more than we have to develop these alternatives, whether they be new crops (and ways to market them) or new ways to make a living, such as expanding light industry. I realize that this is all easier said than done. But the emphasis of the antidrug effort simply must be changed.

Kofi Annan has publicized the results of a report he commissioned on reforming the United Nations. Three issues are especially important in my view. The first is the definition of terrorism. Annan wants a definition that defines all attacks on civilians as terrorism. The problem with this is that it still does not deal with the idea of state terrorism and/ or terrorism in wartime. I do not see important progress being made on this. The second is the proposal to replace the present UN Commission on Human Rights with a smaller Human Rights Council that is elected by the General Assembly by a two-thirds vote. This would replace the current system in which member states are selected on a regional basis, with the unfortunate result that some notable human rights violators, such as Sudan, have ended up on the Commission. This would be an important change if doable. (His proposal to change dramatically the amount of money the wealthy countries devote to development and other third world problems is unlikely to fly, although on the margins he might be able to make a difference.)

Annan's most important proposal is for change in the makeup of the Security Council. This is important because of the international importance of the Security Council and because this is the proposal that seems to have the most general backing among major states. He wishes to either change the number of permanent members or establish a semi-permanent member category that would allow a greater range of countries to expand their role on the Council. Greatest interest is in the first alternative. Here the proposal seems to be that there should be six new permanent members. Most agree that four of these should be Germany, Japan, Brazil, and India. These four are now actively lobbying for this change (they have been pushing something similar for a long time). Then there is the thought that two African states should be added. Possible choices would be South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria. (Kenya appears to also want to throw its hat in this ring.)

There are several problems with this approach. The first is there seems to be little discussion of taking away the veto from the permanent members. Therefore, increasing the number of permanent members would add to opportunities for blocking UN action in crises, because blocking typically occurs when the interests of permanent members are directly or at least politically involved. The organization's paralysis would not be cured by such a change. There is the problem that no African candidate is stable or developed enough to play its part beyond a regional role (South Africa has about half the GDP of Switzerland, Egypt considerably less than that, Nigeria a third of Egypt's.)Given recent history, none of them are likely to be able to perform at a high level in regard to human rights. The same can be said of China, but this choice for a permanent member is one the UN is saddled with. It is already the case that at least two African states are represented in the Security Council at all times (on a revolving basis, with two year terms). Perhaps the need to improve representation for Africa could be addressed at least temporarily by making the OAU a permanent member.

One way to reduce these and other difficulties would be to revise the charter so that the veto powers of permanent members were reduced, with the reductions greater for the new members than the old. For example, before India can made a permanent member, Pakistan will have to be mollified. This might be accomplished if the veto power of India were lessened. India could be granted the veto except where its interests and those of its neighbors were directly involved (for example in regard to Kashmir). Without these and many other compromises, I do not see the suggested reformations going very far.

Sunday's Times magazine carries an extensive discussion of the case of a former member of the PKK, Ibrahim Parlak. He had settled in Michigan, had a dearly loved daughter of seven, opened a restaurant and become a well liked member of the community. Suddenly he was picked up, declared to be a terrorist, and now faces deportation for his "crimes". There is no doubt that as a young man in Turkey's Kurdistan, he joined the resistance movement, then know as the PKK. He worked for them in Germany and then tried to reenter Turkey to assist them on the ground. Captured after six months, he was tortured for weeks. He finally caved in, leading the Turkish authorities to a store of weapons. After serving his sentence, he escaped the country, believing that both the Turkish authorities would continue to mistrust him while the PKK would treat him severely if they caught him. He sought and received asylum in this country on this basis. One reason for our reopening of his case is that in the interim the PKK was put on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

The PKK is a tough, guerilla movement that has campaigned for many years for Kurdish rights. It was impossible in the near past and is still difficult for Turkish Kurds to legally and nonviolently struggle for their rights. This means that Kurds, like many separatists before them (Minutemen?), have taken up arms against the government, fighting in endless skirmishes with casualties on both sides. Terrorist actions have characterized many such movements throughout history. According to the State Department's current standards, the Stern Gang and the Irgun that fought for Israel's independence in the 1940s would have been put on today's list of terrorist organizations.

If we look at how and why the State Department puts groups on its list, we will find that the ostensible standards are quite unobjectionable if unrealistic. But what is most critical here is the third criterion for inclusion on the list. This reads: "The organization’s terrorist activity or terrorism must threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security (national defense, foreign relations, or the economic interests) of the United States." Not too bad if observed in a commonsense manner. However, in many cases actions against individuals are based on a warped reading of this criterion. The PKK has never had any interest in attacking the interests of the United States, unless we define the interests of the Turkish government as necessarily also the interests of our own. We are not only partial to Turkey. In 2002, the ETIM, a Uighur resistance movement in China was added to the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. (It was already on the UN's terrorist organization list; the UN simply adds any group that a UN member state submits to it.) Again, the Uighurs have no legitimate means of actually improving their status in northwest China. The fact is that the interest of the United States in better relations with China and Turkey is decisive in these designations, not whether the group is actually working against our interests.

The prosecutor Parlak's hearing declared, "He's not a freedom fighter. He's a terrorist. Parlak is not a freedom fighter. He's a terrorist." This repetition seemed to satisfy the judge. She declared his stay at an end (now on appeal — Turkey will not take him). The ignorance Americans involved in the INS, Homeland Security, and the FBI (the bureaucracies involved in this case) of the struggles for independence of peoples everywhere is astounding. From a more reasonable perspective, they would understand Parlak's story to be as follows: "He took up arms against the Turkish government because as a Kurd that was the only way to struggle for the rights of his people. He carried arms at times, engaged in fire fights, was captured, tortured, served his time and was released. He and his family decided he better get out. He did. He made a new life in the United States." We have now destroyed his life and the faith of an entire community (largely American by the way; he avoided Kurds) that because of an inability to understand that the whole world is not like Peoria. As the defense attorneys said, soon we will be jailing those who fought the apartheid government in South Africa. (Actually we won't: they are generally not Muslims, and the American government is friendly with the winners in that struggle.)

Sometimes we tire of definitions. But this time it is important. We must know what a terrorist is, and why he or she is a terrorist. We must know what an enemy of the United States is, and know the difference between being an enemy and being a terrorist. We must know what a struggle for independence is, and know when other than violent means are closed to a people it will turn to violence, however unfortunate that may seem. We must know how to distinguish between pasts that make a person's existence among us dangerous and pasts that can be counterbalanced by changes in behavior and situation. Parlak and many others picked up in the post 9/11 hysteria were making a contribution to their communities. Some were not, some were spreading hate or at least too open to messages of hate. These should be separated from the community or carefully monitored. But we are a long way from being able to make these distinctions. Until we seriously make this effort, we may lose as much from our officious diligence as we gain.

As I have argued recently in these postings, the strength and health of the United States has an important influence on the near-term health of the world. This brings us to today's column by Kristof on what he calls the "Captains of Piracy". The compensation of top executives in American firms is now out of hand. If this pattern continues, the competitive position of the United States, and ultimately its economy, will be down the tubes. Kristof reports that the bonuses for CEOs rose last year by 46%, often irrespective of the performance of their institutions. Since 1993, the average pay of CEOs for the top 500 companies in Standard and Poors tripled to $10 million (many other countries, including Japan, Great Britain and Germany continue to pay much less). Paying such compensation is not a trivial expense, even for large companies. A recent Harvard study found that public companies today devote about 10% of their profits to compensating their top five executives, up from 6% in the mid 1990s. If we look at long term trends in the relation of ordinary worker pay to that of top executives we will find that in 1980 it was 42/1, in 1990 85/1, while today it stands at 301/1. These comparisons suggest that the United States is no longer either socially or economically competitive with the rest of the world. The insistence of the current Administration that even in the face of these great disparities, the country should reduce the tax burden on the richest of the rich is mind boggling.

It has been argued that the greatest strength of America is its "soft power", a term that some in the Administration pretend not to understand. Soft power is the power of example, the power that comes from being the society that the rest of the world wants to imitate. Anything that lessens the attractiveness of American society in the eyes of the world reduces the country's soft power. Ultimately this means that America will no longer be the country that everyone wants to move to, or at least be educated in. Our "superpower" status will be stripped of everything aside from the sheer military power that we can put into the field. As the economy sours as debt overcomes it and the dollar weakens, the forces we can field will no longer be so exceptional: we will no longer be able to play our role. And with no country in a position to replace us, the world will relapse into a melange of warring states, each trying to become "Number One".

The new Homelands Security Department under Michael Chertoff seems to be making a good start. The Department has come up with a reasonable list of the most likely terrorist and natural disasters that the country will have to face. Natural disasters are included in the list because they will have to be responded to in ways analogous to responses to terrorist attacks. Fifteen representative "nightmares" are defined, the casualties estimated, and the economic impact predicted. Some nightmares produce only fatalities and wounded, others have primarily, or in one case only, economic impact. The nightmares are: the detonation of a nuclear device in a large city; aerosolized anthrax released in several cities simultaneously; a flu pandemic spreading from China (not terrorist); pneumonic plague released in city facilities; chemical blister agent sprayed over a football stadium during a game; attack on oil refineries releasing massive amounts of toxic gas; release of sarin gas into the ventilation system of a large city; infiltration of an industrial storage facility leading to the blowing up of tank containing chlorine gas (17,500 dead); 7.2 magnitude earthquake on a fault running through a major city; category 5 hurricane hits major city; bombs set off with radioactive caesium at several points in a city; handmade bombs and suicide vehicles are used to attack a sports stadium and emergency room; liquid anthrax is used to contaminate ground beef; terrorists infect farm animals with foot and mouth disease at several locations (huge loss of livestock); cyber attacks on financial institutions over several weeks. One could argue with the list. But at least it is an attempt to consider a variety of dangers and then presumably game the responses of the many local and federal agencies that would be involved. One hopes that as far as the human-caused events are concerned the lists will help with developing counter strategies and tactics. One can only hope that such lists do not put ideas in the heads of potential terrorists whose response might be "Why didn't we think of that?" This is a danger that must be weighed, and we can only hope it was.

This list brings to mind the fact that we have not had a major attack in the country since 9/11. It is a very frightening list, for it would appear that many of the possible terrorist acts, and many others they bring to mind, would just not be that hard to organize and finance. Why, given the size of the Muslim community in this country (Arabs and otherwise), has not al-Qaida been able to recruit in this country the extremely small numbers necessary for terrorism or slip them through our still quite open borders? (This is not a statement that any significant part of the Arab or Muslim community should be thought to be potential traitors. If there are one and a half million Arabs in the country, I assume that not more than one percent, 15,000, would be open to radical Jihadist arguments, with one hundredth of one percent, or 150 persons, actually recruitable.) Yet as far as the pubic knows plans for such attacks in the United States have seldom if ever been discovered since 9/11. On the other hand, many such plots have been discovered in Spain recently, and some in France and elsewhere in Europe (although often these are more targeted, traditional terrorist attacks rather than ones meant to simply cause fatalities and destruction). This suggests that terrorist plots along some of these lines might have been discovered in this country since 9/11 without being publicized. Perhaps Spain is simply more up front about the achievements of their security forces.

Another possibility is that Bin Ladin, in spite of the fearlessness of his rhetoric, is actually not pushing too hard for another spectacular in this country. It may be that our efforts in Afghanistan to catch or kill him are at an "acceptable level" right now. He can live with them in some security. But he knows that after another spectacular we would come after him with little regard for the niceties of respecting borders or avoiding casualties in tribal areas. So, ironically, we might just have an unspoken agreement with al-Qaida that protects both our homeland and theirs. This would be a form of bargaining with terrorists that I had not considered.

In today's Times, Thomas Friedman points to the many fallacies in the way in which the present Administration interacts with China. He sees the most pressing problem to be the financial insolvency that we have been led into. For short-term political gain, the American government has allowed our deficit to balloon. In this crisis China, has become the second largest holder of American debt and its share its likely to rise. If it called in the "bill" during a Taiwan or other confrontation, the U.S. government would be hard pressed to do anything other than default. He also points out that China's growing thirst for oil is what drives plans for more Alaskan oil. His sources suggest that eventually China and India will drive prices above 100$ a barrel, putting more and more money into the hands of "some of the world's worst governments". Meanwhile the Administration is cutting the budget of the National Science Foundation, thereby making America less competitive in another dimension. Friedman does not even get into a discussion of the destruction of American manufacturing through the much too generous free trade policy, that hears no evil and sees no evil when it comes to China's wage, benefit, and environmental policies, or China's unwillingness to control the stealing of intellectual property by its citizens.

Clearly, Friedman believes that we must put our house in order and regain scientific leadership. he suggests, among other things, that we place a $1 a gallon tax on gasoline to help close our budget gap and reduce dependence on the oil producing countries.

I would add another thought. We need to improve the balance in the world before our necessarily brief stint at the helm of affairs passes away. Here's one way. The United States has been improving its relations with India, offering, for example, help with a nuclear plant to improve its energy situation. At the same time, India is improving its relations with Iran and Pakistan. This latter has reached the point where there is an active plan to develop a gas pipeline across Pakistan, for the benefit of Iran, Pakistan and India. The United States opposes this out of its general hatred of Iran and its fear of its nuclear program (analogous to the programs that we have effectively now approved for Pakistan and India). The suggestion is that the United States make a conscious decision to strengthen South Asia as a counterweight to China. Pakistan and India are now in a friendly "cricket" phase. Both are deemphasizing their religious differences. We should make every effort to support this process, not heavy handedly, but quietly by our actions. This would be a major way to help support the development in a large part of the world while lessening the danger that China poses to all its neighbors, as well as the United States, in the long run.

A knowledgeable commentator on North Korea points out that none of its neighbors are pushing for change in its execrable political system any time soon. The reasons are many. First, there is no evidence that there are any individuals or institutions that would be able to take over if the current regime fell. There is practically no independent business class. The army is the favored institution, but its leaders have shown no managerial or creative capability. Everyone is so used to simply doing and saying what the government demands that it is doubtful that there could be any short-term adjustment. The most likely immediate result of a government collapse would be a worsening of the availability of food, medicines and other supplies, with no one equipped to receive or distribute what aid came in. For these reasons, and because of the past behavior of the North Koreans, South Korea and China, and to a lesser extent even Japan, can expect millions of destitute North Koreans to flood across the country's borders after a breakdown of the Kim family regime.

Meanwhile, there is some evidence that the North Koreans are at last beginning to get at least a little information on what is happening in the outside world. Yesterday's paper reports that cell phones are being used along the Chinese border by many people. (They bury them in their gardens when not in use to avoid police sweeps.) Chinese merchants smuggled thousands of used video recorders across the northern border after DVDs replaced them in Manchuria. Somehow tapes of South Korean movies and music have come in along with the video players. They have become so popular that Pyongyang has launched propaganda campaigns inveighing against the foreign styles in clothing, language, and other customs that people pick up from the tape recorders. This is, of course, all illegal. A favorite tactic of the police is to surround an area, cut off the electricity, and then move in. As a result they are able to arrest many whose video player stopped in the middle and they were unable to get the banned tapes out of them. The main effect that the tapes have, however, is not the transmission of styles but rather the transmission of backgrounds that show a society in the south that is infinitely better off than that in the north. The claim that North Korea has created a "worker's paradise" rings increasingly hollow.

It would seem to me that the Kim family regime cannot long remain in its present form. The next generation is coming on, and the "Dear Leader"'s three sons are said to be contesting the succession. Perhaps this is the opening for change. Military commanders, no matter how servile, have in other situations grabbed power in crises. This might also happen. A popular movement might suddenly arise around some incident leading quickly to uncontrollable crowds in the streets. This seems highly unlikely to experts, but it is still a possible route. History suggests that all it takes is for a repressive regime to lose its confidence in such a crisis, to hesitate. There is probably such a wealth of suppressed hatred among the North Korean people that any opening, any softening, ironically any showing of respect for human rights, could lead to an explosion. In any event, the United States should be engaged in urgent negotiations with all of North Korea's neighbors on the definition of possible transition scenarios and the ways in which the United States and neighboring states could most effectively respond during and after a transition crisis. It would be a sad commentary on the world if the streets of Pyongyang were one day running in blood while the rest of the world stood by timidly watching until the last resister was hunted down.

In the latest edition of IISS's "Strategic Comments" series, a summary is offered of the state of the Iraqi insurgency as well as thoughts on how well we are doing. Let me paraphrase, and comment on, what it has to say.

First, the insurgency is continuing at a vicious rate. (The viciousness is particularly serious for the Iraqis. To put our 1500 military deaths in perspective, I note that today's paper reminds us that in 35 days, 6800 marines were killed on Iwo Jima toward the end of World War II.) Deaths of Iraqis are a much more serious problem. Leaving aside those killed in the initial invasion, the figure is probably well above 25,000. Over 3000 Iraqi security personnel have been killed since last June. Other civilian casualties continue at a high rate, with attacks increasingly targeting the Shi'a. Infrastructure attacks have also been increasing recently. The summary also points out Iraq's extraordinary murder rate (killings not directly connected to the insurgency: 90 per 100,000 — the next highest rate in the region is Jordan's 7 per 100,000). One of the reasons the Iraqis have been so against us in many areas has been the rise in ordinary crime of all kinds.

Intelligence on the size and nature of insurgent forces remains very poor. The balance between the Islamists and the Baath is unclear, as is the difference this actually makes. Many participants are simply criminals doing it for the money (and pay per incident has been greatly inflated recently). But many are also suicide bombers, and these are presumably not doing it for the money.

Clearly, the United States has decided to shift the bulk of the fighting to the Iraqis, but it has not been very successful in doing this. They still have few effective units aside for the Kurdish Peshmerga. We would also like to "fight" the war politically. American commanders are apparently trying to negotiate in secret with the Baathists, but with what results we do not know. They apparently had more success with al-Sadr. Most commentators believe that we clearly need more troops. But in view of other commitments, we do not have excess forces to send to Iraq and this situation is not about to change.

We are now in a box that is hard to get out of. Soon we are likely to be asked to come home, both by the Iraqis and by American Congressmen. Yet we have a long way to go before the violence is sufficiently under control to turn it over to the Iraqis. A consoling thought is that the problems may be as severe on the other side. According to today's Times, the "al-Qaida in Iraq" (Zarqawi) organization on its web site shows increasing concern that the Iraqis are no longer understanding their mission. They repeatedly try to explain why they are still killing. Recent arrests of Baath leaders in Syria and the possible change in Syrian willingness to cooperate also offers a glimmer of hope.

At a conference on terrorism just concluding in Spain, Kofi Annan outlined in a few words a comprehensive strategy for fighting terrorism. In its simplicity, directness and balance his talk might be a useful starting point for all governments concerned with terrorism. The full text may be found here.

The Secretary-General organizes his talk around five D's: dissuading groups from choosing terrorism as a tactic; denying terrorists the means to carry out their attacks; deterring states from supporting terrorists; developing state capacities to deal with terrorism; and upholding human rights during the struggle against terrorism.

Dissuasion involves attempts to show any group that has taken up or is thinking of taking up terrorism that it is wrong under any circumstances. Deliberately killing civilians cannot be justified in any way, even as a defense against so-called "state terrorism". Civilian and religious leaders must clearly denounce terrorism.

Denying terrorists the means includes measures against money laundering and denying access to nuclear materials and other WMDs. States can be deterred by maintaining a firm line against all states that harbor or support terrorists. State capacity to counter terrorism, especially in poor states, must be strengthened with international assistance. Among the capacities for effective governance that Annan especially emphasizes is strengthening public health capacities everywhere, which he regards is the first line of defense against the possibilities of biological terrorism.

Finally, the Secretary General emphasizes the importance of upholding the principles of human rights during the war against terrorism. He strongly supports a recent proposal to create a special rapporteur to report to the human rights commission on the "compatibility of counter-terrorism measures with international human rights laws".

We should note that the approach is notably hard-headed. He does not begin, as too many analysts have, with proposing to treat the so-called "causes of terrorism". Although well aware of the crying needs of Africans and others, he does not consider "want" or "state terrorism" as a justification for terrorism. His argument is that we have to be clear. No group is justified in attacking civilians to advance its cause.

Today's paper reports that in the first month after the end of quotas on apparel and textiles (January), China managed to flood the world market in an alarming manner. Imports of these items nearly doubled compared with the previous January. Meanwhile 12,000 jobs were lost in the American textile industry in January. Last year, America's trade deficit with China was $162 billion, the largest deficit ever run by the United States with any one country. (The European Union countries was affected similarly with the end of quotas, showing an increase of 46% in imports in this area in January.) Even before this latest information, the flood of inexpensive goods into the United States, both legitimate and fraudulent, has been remarkable. The trend has been hastened by the decision of big marketers such as Wal-Mart to make China their major source of goods. For many kinds of goods, the American consumer has often found that he is either unable to buy what he is looking for that is not "made in China" or that he must pay a prohibitively higher price for the non-Chinese goods. Some discussion of these issues is available here.

The American government has done little to stem this trend. It has talked to China about revaluing its money to increase the relative cost of its products to importers. But China has made little response to this and other suggestions. It is well known that working conditions in China are very poor, wages are very low, environmental considerations are routinely ignored, and the government subsidizes many industries to get ever larger shares of the market.

It is past time the wealthier countries realized that the dream of a world unencumbered with trade barriers of any kind is not a world that they can live with if they are to maintain the standards they have managed to attain over the last half century.

Referring back to another recent posting, unless the economy and financial strength of America and its allies are maintained, the country will neither be able to afford to defend its interests nor undertake efforts to right the wrongs of the world, expand the boundaries of liberty, and improve the health and well being of the poorest sections of the globe. These latter may be responsibilities eventually accepted by China as it climbs to the top of the pyramid of economic and later military power. But recent experience suggests that taking on such responsibilities is unlikely to be high on the Chinese agenda for some time. Meanwhile, it is up to us.

The sad story in Monday's paper of the inability of the Pentagon's procurement system to provide adequate body armor to the soldiers in Iraq and the equally sorry performances in the provision of armored humvees or even in the retrofitting with armor of humvees and other vehicles, or in the provision of already tested devices to make it the electronics in roadside bombs inoperable is complemented in recent media by the story of the enhanced use of torture by the CIA and the Pentagon after 9/11. In this latest chapter, the torture has been an integral part of a policy called "rendition", that is the sending of suspects, often not charged with anything, to foreign countries where they will be made to talk. The countries chosen for such visits may not even be allies (for example, Syria), but they have the distinction of being known for the use of methods of torture that American officials feel they should avoid themselves because of American law and international commitments. Then there is today's article in the Times about the inability of the government to stop the sale of guns, including high-powered automatic guns, to known or suspected terrorists in the United States. Most of the people who applied for such guns lately were cleared for purchase. My friends also tell me of a recent talk they heard on the Plum Island center for the study of exotic viruses and bacteria. The speaker detailed many ways in which Plum Island, a small government owned island laboratory that harbors such friends as the Ebola, is actually less secure today that it was years ago. Extremely hazardous materials are regularly brought in an out by truck, with little securing along the way, and there is little protection on the island against a raid by terrorists.

These sad stories tell us many things about our government. When combined with the inability of the government to rationally address the deficit while insisting on cutting taxes while ignoring a decline in the dollar, this suggests that our political leaders and perhaps even our political system are not up to the challenge of leading the world while protecting the country against the inevitable blowback from our foreign adventures. Yes, as the only superpower we do have responsibilities. But in the long run we can only fulfill these responsibilities if our leaders are willing to tell the American people, and especially the wealthier taxpayers among them, that playing our role in the world requires sacrifices by all Americans. To be sustained, military and police actions require a strong economy to back them up. Handling the inevitable load of prisoners produced by our actions and by the terrorists, domestic and foreign, requires procedures and arrangements that can be sustained in terms of the body of national and international law on which our leadership depends. Fighting effectively in difficult environments requires the streamlining of procurement procedures that go beyond the "business as usual" approach that the Pentagon too often accepts. Controlling terrorists in the United States requires a new understanding of the requirements of security at sensitive facilities; it requires setting aside support for NRA positions long enough to enforce new controls on the availability of arms to suspected terrorists.

For some years now the world has been moving toward more widely practiced freedoms. There has been and always will be some backsliding among those countries that achieve for a time a high "freedom rating". Right now we are interested most directly in what is happening and has happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The critical problem for Afghanistan is the increasing dependence of the economy on the growing, processing, and overseas distribution of opium. Opium is now over fifty percent of the economy and represents nearly all of the nation's exports. This dependence of the farmers is reflected in a growing ability of the warlords to maintain their armies and control in much of the country. There is no easy way out of the box in which the country finds itself. I suppose the country could have a fully functioning democratic narcostate, but experience in Colombia and elsewhere casts doubt on this outcome. The end result may be a state pressured by the United States to act forcibly against opium in ways that neither the people nor the warlords will accept. This would seem to give an opening for a Taliban comeback.

The critical problem in Iraq is that of often hostile communities that are likely to find it even more difficult to live together under democracy than they were under authoritarian rule. The country could either split up or relapse into a prolonged state of violence between ins and outs, Sunni Arab and Shi'a, Kurds and the rest, Fundamentalists and secularists — and within each of these groups many subgroups struggling for a place in the sun.

The more general problem with democratic transition, and one reason why we now notice some "backsliders" is that the measures of freedom or democracy are faulty. (Freedom and democracy are not the same thing, but this is a difficult discussion that I do not want to enter into here.) One free and fair election accompanied by several independent newspapers are sometimes enough to get a rating of "free". But the real test of democracy is bound to come later. Remember that nearly every former colony in the post-colonial world came to independence after a free and fair election. The first post-colonial government was, then, "democratic". But too often there was either a coup or political and social conditions that did not allow for the first generation of leaders to be displaced through democratic processes, and sometimes both. The most recent example may be what happened in Zimbabwe after it finally became free of British control, direct and later indirect, and Mugabe was elected. Democracy has been on a downhill trajectory in the country ever since. The test of democracy must, then, be at least a minimal degree of democratic continuity. A country should not really be considered a democracy until there is an election (and accompanying campaigning, free media etc.) that allows for a change in leadership to a new party, or to something approximating a new party.

These comments suggest that the road to democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, or elsewhere in the Middle East, may run into boulders that we have not yet noticed. We should be looking out for them as we press forward. But this does not mean that real possibilities are not opening up, that there may, in fact, be a democracy coming back to Lebanon and developing in Palestine. We should also not undervalue the "partly free" or controlled democracies that may come first. These can represent real progress for the people concerned, just as we have seen in Malaysia and Singapore. For the near future, such democracy may be an attainable and desirable way station on the road to freedom for many peoples.

A recent 60 Minutes on Sistani led me to look him up on the internet where he has a web site in several languages (www.sistani.org). Although originally from an Iranian family with a long history of religious study, Sistani has spent most of his life in Najaf. There he studied, rose through the ranks, became an assistant of the leading Ayatollah of the day (al Khoei). On his death, Sistani took his place in Najaf. In 1994, Saddam forbid him to continue his activity in this role. The result was he diversified, beginning to support through his foundation many scholarships in Qom, Iran. These have been continued after he resumed his activities in Najaf. In addition to the support of many students in Iraq and Iran, his foundation also does charitable work (for example, in support of destitute Afghans in Iran). He and al-Khoei have been identified with a quietist approach to Iran, and thus always looked askance at the activist approach associated with Khomeni and now adopted by the Iranian theocracy. This does not mean that Sistani does not think Islam should play a critical role in the life of an Islamic people, it merely means that religious leaders should not have direct political roles in society. It also does not mean this is a particularly "enlightened" Islam. If the reader goes to the Sistani web site, he will see that the thousands of people who are said to visit it daily are looking for practical advice on the minutiae of living as a Shiite Muslim. For example, the exact ways in which one should ritually bathe in different situations are described. He does seem, however, to be relatively easy-going on the question of shaking hands with non-Muslims, something the strict are always doubtful apart because of the impurities of non-Muslims.

Many feel that Sistani is seen as a threat by the present Iranian regime. He has more widely accepted credentials than any of the leading clerics in Tehran. From the above discussion it would appear that he is pushing his cause in Iran, hoping perhaps to solidify his position as the spiritual leader of all Ithna Ashariya Shiites. What this means politically we do not know. We also do not know what he sees as his actual political role in Iraq. He plays a quietist role, but how quiet in future political life in Iraq, and even Iran, we do not know.

The continued presence of nuclear weapons and the ever-present threat that they will spread to other states, and even to terrorist groups, presents a clear, long-term danger to all peoples. It is true that more traditional, conventional weapons, as well as biological and chemical weapons, can be extremely destructive. But the potential destructiveness of nuclear weapons is of quite a different magnitude than conventional weapons. The use of one small nuclear weapon might have relatively little impact. Yet it would break the convention against using these weapons in war that has held since 1945. And a single use would open up possibilities of escalating use and counter use that might easily lead to a world that few of us would want our children to live in.

There are two primary reasons that a nation uses to justify the maintenance or acquisition of nuclear weapons. The first is to deter the use of nuclear weapons against the nation or one of its allies. The second is to deter any attack by a stronger state. In the hands of advocates of nuclear weapons, this argument was extended by an earlier generation to argue that nuclear weapons were the key to universal peace. However, the amount of war and destruction that has nevertheless occurred under this "nuclear umbrella" in the last fifty years has weakened the case for "peace through the bomb". A third, generally unspoken, reason for acquiring or maintaining nuclears is to enhance or preserve a nation's prestige and "weight" in the world. This is certainly a major reason that France developed its forces. After the demise of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a much weakened Russia, Russia's maintenance of a substantial nuclear force has stood out as one of the few ways in which it can still see itself as a major power in the world. When Iran considers developing nuclear weapons, we should remember that the present regime, just as the shah's regime that preceded it, has long searched for a way to emerge as the key regional power in southwest Asia. When it sees India and Pakistan to the east developing nuclear weapons and notes the presence of nuclear weapons in Russia to the north and Israel to the west, Iranian leaders might well feel that without nuclear weapons Iran cannot attain its goal of being taken seriously as a regional power.

The case for the possession of nuclear weapons as a means of preventing an otherwise stronger state from attacking, with or without the use of nuclear weapons, is weak when the attacking state also has nuclear weapons. If nuclear use by the attacker is deterred, all are in luck. If it is not, then the defender has to decide quickly whether or not to carry out its explicit or implicit threat to respond with a nuclear counterattack. While there are many clever scenarios that show how a defender might use nuclear weapons in a "tit-for-tat" manner that would not lead to mutual suicide for the warring states, the danger that such an exchange would get out of hand would be likely to tie the hands of the defending state, even if it were losing on the battlefield.

A deep contradiction exists between the reliance of the United States on a massive nuclear force as a means to deter nuclear (or major WMD) attacks on the United States and its allies, and the commitment of the United States to stopping growth in the number of states with usable nuclear weapons. For we are telling states without nuclear weapons that they are not to be allowed to have them because their possession would be dangerous while we are allowed to have nuclear weapons because in our hands they are not dangerous. We are also saying that these aspiring states will not be allowed the weapons even though this means that they must remain "second class" states for the foreseeable future. The argument that nuclear weapons are not dangerous in the hands of the present nuclear powers is particularly weak if we consider the problems Russia has had in maintaining and securing its weapons, and the certitude that as long as we maintain our nuclear forces, Russia will continue to maintain theirs.

The only long-run means for the world to find its way through the maze of nuclear weapon possession and hope for possession is for the leading nuclear power, the United States, to work effectively toward the goal of a nuclear-weapon free world. It should do this in two steps. First, it must reopen the argument that another use of a nuclear weapon in wartime would be a crime against humanity. Secondly, it must work with the other nuclear powers and quasi-powers to reduce over a period of years the number of nuclear weapons in their inventories to zero. Only when this process is undertaken and is sufficiently advanced that it becomes believable to all will we attain the high ground from which we can effectively tell other states that they are not to be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

The initial problem with this approach is that the major nuclear powers have taught themselves over the last fifty years that they need nuclear weapons to deter possible nuclear use or threat of use by possible enemies. The question then becomes how these powers, and particularly the United States, can unlearn this teaching. Progress in the United States will not be made by preaching to our leaders that deterrence is unnecessary. It will only be made when they begin to have confidence that we can produce and maintain highly trained and effective conventional forces that can achieve, and appear before the fact as though they can achieve, our deterrence objectives. We have developed a wide array of strategic and tactical systems for the gathering and real-time dissemination of battlefield intelligence. We have developed a catalog full of small units that can be inserted and resupplied behind enemy lines. We have shown in our last few battlefields that we can achieve remarkable results through the air with ever more accurately targeted and more effectively constructed conventional weaponry. If we were to harden this capability and increase the number and effectiveness of this weaponry, then we could hope to respond, and appear as though we could respond, to the use of nuclear weapons against us with massive but relatively surgical attacks that would not on our side break nuclear conventions.

We have a long way to go to before we can build an adequate basis for a switch to nonnuclear deterrence. Along the way, and in combination with phased nuclear weapon reductions that involve all powers, we should reach out to allies and even potential enemies with offers of assistance in the transition to reliance on nonnuclear deterrence forces. What is proposed here will be a hard sell both at home and abroad. But as the only "superpower" in the world, it is incumbent upon us to lead the world down this road.

Pollock's account of the repeated problems in the tortuous relations of the United States and Iran is softened somewhat by reference to the cooperation of Iran with the United States during its recent Middle Eastern adventures. Tehran both hated and feared the Taliban and were glad to see it brought down. They hated with an even greater intensity Saddam Hussein for the disastrous war he had waged against them. Even before our attack in Afghanistan, Iran had urged more help for the Northern Alliance, a group of warlords that they themselves helped considerably before and during the conflict. They provided logistical support for our efforts, even basing for our planes early on. In Iraq they have made a major effort to control their friends in Iraq to prevent their fighting the Americans. What they apparently want in Iraq is a state free of Hussein and under Shi'ah control. They do not expect a theocracy such as they have, but do expect a much more friendly and less threatening state, a state that will once again allow the easy movement of Shi'a in and out of the country.

Given this general picture, Pollock also points to some problems. The main problem stems from the fact that Iran evidently has a large and effective clandestine service operating in both countries. During the Afghan campaign, their units began to take an active role in many parts of the country. The United States had to sit down with the Iranians and make an agreement that they would stay in their own sphere of interest in the western part of Afghanistan. They then pretty much lived up to that. This service has also been very active in Iraq. Their activity has been mostly one of organization rather than direct action. One exception was an attack on an Iraqi police unit in Falluja that had captured some of their agents. The Iranians attacked from four sides with fifty men, making a diversionary attack at the same time. American officers were astounded, rating this the best organized attack they had witnessed. Pollock uses this as an example of what the Iranian could be doing in the country but have opted not to. (Makes one think.) Pollock also recounts the history of Iran and al-Qaida and Afghanistan. First they intercepted and imprisoned several al-Qaida escaping across the border. (They hate al-Qaida as much as we do, but for their anti-Shiism.) Later, however, they allowed some al-Qaida to remain in the country and even to mount actions in Saudi Arabia. The game being played here is unclear to Pollock.

In "the Persian Puzzle", mentioned here before, Pollock concludes that the most serious crisis facing the United States in its Iran Policy is the danger that Iran will become a nuclear power soon unless we act expeditiously. He rates the likelihood of the Iranians becoming a nuclear power in the near future very high. After going over the history of efforts to control the Iranian program, and outside efforts of influence the political process in Iran for this and other reasons, Pollock comes to several conclusions. First, the Europeans and the rest of the world are unlikely to step up to the plate with effective action through the IAEA, Security Council etc. They have shown by past behavior that they are more interested in trade than anything else. Second, the only really good way to end the standoff would be for a new government to come to power in Tehran. But as a policy solution this has two subproblems. First, we do not know how we could effectively cause governmental change. The Persians have such a pervasive suspicion of the United States that anything we might try would be likely to have more negative than positive consequences. Any attempt to support antigovernment or "liberal" forces in Iran would undermine their position, tarnishing their reputation, and perhaps causing their execution. The second subproblem, related to this one, is that a new, non-theocratic Iran might be as interested in nuclear weapons as the theocratic — as the example of the shah suggests. Third, invasion would be too dangerous, and we lack the capability to undertake such an effort in the near future. Attacks directly on the nuclear facilities, either by the United States or Israel, would be more feasible. But we would find ourselves quite alone, we would make the enmity of the Iranians even greater than it is now, we would cause the Iranians to enter into a no holds barred terror campaign against us, and we might fail to destroy enough of their program to accomplish our objectives. These considerations lead him to suggest a complex policy containing both carrots and sticks, attempts to change of regime without direct intervention, and so on. He does not have much faith in this complex policy, one essentially woven from the pieces of the other alternatives.

After this rather dark discussion, Pollock concludes with a discussion of how we might live with a nuclear Iran. He points out that we have learned to live with the other nuclear states. Iran claims that it wants the bomb for deterrence, primarily deterrence of the United States, and there is little reason to doubt this at this point. Once they had the weapon there objectives could change, but his judgment is that for the foreseeable future we would be able to deter any Iranian ambitions to aggressively use their deterrent. I find this cold comfort, particularly since proliferation is unlikely to stop with Iran.

To my thinking the best way to stop Iran would be to stop North Korea. States can give up nuclear programs, even weapons. We have seen this for South Africa, Libya, and several of the former republics of the Soviet Union. If we forcibly brought North Korea's program to an end, Iran might well see that it was in its interest to follow the same path. As Pollock suggests, while the world would condemn an invasion, or preemptive strike, on Iran, it would be much more willing to accept such actions against North Korea, just as it went along with our destruction of the Taliban. North Korea has a truly terrible regime that has been responsible for the death, torture, and starvation of hundreds of thousands of its own people. Its leaders are unpredictable and dangerous. To consider such action we must unfortunately wait until things have settled down in the Middle East, thus freeing up our military resources. We must also gain the confidence and cooperation of South Korea, a country whose people have a strange love-hate relationship with the north. Their opposition is also based on the fact that Seoul and a large percentage of South Korea's population is within range of North Korean guns, even without nuclear weapons. Before any attack, we might need to evacuate a large area of the South. Yet if we are serious about stopping proliferation, and this is the greatest short-term danger the world faces, we need to take effective action somewhere, preferable against a state that for other reasons should be brought down.

We have tried diplomacy with North Korea with even less success than Iran. But instead of a massive attack against North Korea's forces or nuclear facilities, we might combine threats with a campaign of subversion, an approach that Pollock rightly thinks would be counterproductive for Iran. Subversion would not be counterproductive against the DPRK because there is no reason to think that we would be weakening antigovernment elements in the regime or society. As far as the outside world knows, there are no groups allowed to exist in the North that are in any way antigovernment. We would have little to lose if a policy of regime change failed. Many North Koreans seem to know in spite of the news blackout that their government is unusually repressive. The number of people willing to take the risks associated with escape to China across the river remains high no matter how ferociously the government tries to block their escape. Last April's train explosion near the Chinese border was probably a serious attempt to kill the Kim Jong-il. This suggests that a campaign of this sort could just start something that we could fan into a change of regime that would obviate the need for a major attack.

As readers of this blog know, I have often pointed to the reality and even desirability of a Kurdish state emerging from today's Iraq. There are many problems with this scenario, including the opposition of the United States, the opposition of neighboring states, and the likelihood that a Kurdish attempt to create a new state might plunge Iraq into a possibly interminable war.

Now along comes James Glanz of the New York Times with a long piece on Basra and the new south in the "News in Review" section of this Sunday's edition. One does not know whether to take Glanz seriously or not. It is worrisome that the New Yorker piece mentioned in the last posting on the situation in Basra has almost no overlap with the Glanz discussion. Let's remember this, but leave it for now.

Glanz paints a picture of a newly emerging sense of community consciousness in Basra, and beyond that of the south. Many of the people here, he writes, want to have their own place in the world and forget Baghdad. He says that the new southerners imagine three different versions of a separate south. The first, the one most appealing to the powers that be in Basra (or what he sees as the powers that be, largely rich merchants I believe), is essentially a city state based on Basra and its surroundings. Their model would be Singapore with a little bit of Las Vegas thrown in (apparently some years back Basra was the casino playground for the rich of the Gulf). The largest southern state that he maps out would include Karbala and Najaf, essentially all the overwhelmingly Shi'a parts of Iraq. Another version would be a compromise between these two.

The economic base for such a new configuration appears promising. Some of the larger international companies, such as Kellogg, Brown, and Root are moving their operations to Basra. They find the atmosphere more accommodating, and appreciate the less anti-foreign and more open attitude. Basra also sees itself as a part of the Gulf. One interesting aspect is that the head of the Shaykhi Shiites is resident in Basra, making another tie with the Gulf countries that also have many Shaykhi communities.

(It should be noted that the Shaykhis are another interesting component of the patchwork that is Iraq. Like most Iraqi and Iranian Shiites, they are ithna ashariya or twelvers, but unlike the others they believe in attaining spiritual knowledge through intuition rather than rationalization from texts. It was the Shaykhis that laid the groundwork for the emergence of the Bab in the nineteenth century, and the Bab was the forerunner of Bahaiullah, the founder of Bahaism that has its world headquarters in Israel. For most Muslims, Bahais are heretics and persecuted as such. Turning to another aspect of the patchwork, the tribes of Iraq overlap everything else. They are composed of sections with different religious allegiances, and even overlap with the Kurds. Tribal leaders are the ones who can guarantee your personal safety if you are in trouble, not the religious leaders. I have also seen little discussion of the Yezidis in the news. Their religious beliefs have Islamic, Zoroastrian, and pagan aspects. Several thousand Kurds are Yezidis. Apparently some modern secular Kurdish leaders looking for another basis for differentiation see Yezidiism as the true Kurdish religion. We could go on and on. There are many different Christian groups, an array of Sufi orders within the Muslim community etc.)

What is exciting to me about the idea of a Shiite state in the south is that this would take the pressure off the Kurds. It would mean that a peaceful reformation of the country might be possible with a Sunni-Shi'a, largely secular state centered on Baghdad, a secular Kurdish state in the north, and a Shi'a, but not necessarily theocratic, state in the South. All would get what they really want, and no major group would feel it was being unfairly dominated by another. The biggest sticking point might be the division of the oil resources, for these are not uniformly distributed. If the Kurds do get the Kirkuk area in the end, then I believe the new Iraq centered on Baghdad would be the state with the least oil.

All this offers a new vision. Whether there is any reality in it remains to be seen.

Reading in Kenneth Pollock's excellent account of Iranian-American relations, The Persian Puzzle, and considering the account of the situation in Basra in a recent piece by George Packer in the The New Yorker I have come to realize there is another picture of American-Iranian relations than that I have expressed previously here. This one is painted in much darker colors, and has as its ground the fact that even Iran under the Pahlevis imagined itself to be a temporarily poor state that deserved to be a great power.

Long before al-Qaida declared war on America, identifying it as the enemy of Islam, Tehran had declared its own war against us. Their thinking derived from many sources, including a common Iranian misapprehension of America's attempts to influence events in Iran after World War II, an Iranian sense of thwarted greatness, and a bitter Islamic hatred of everything non-Islamic. This stance was perpetuated after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, the person who had most deeply held these views and who had used these views as a key basis for his own power. In the jihadist mythology, America and Israel were identified, and both were labeled crusaders much as Bin Ladin was to do later. They saw America as attempting with the help of Israel to conquer all the Middle East; they saw Iran as the only country that could stand in their way. This line was perpetuated by people around Khomenei, the religious successor to Khomeini as the great leader or Faqih. Only by hewing carefully to the popular "Imam's line" could they establish their credentials to rule, because they did not have adequate religious credentials on their own.

Conceiving themselves to be in a state of war since the hostage crisis in Tehran, Iran has made a persistent effort to export its revolution throughout the area. It supported terrorism in Lebanon and Israel, and across the world even in Buenos Aires where Iranian agents made two major attacks on the Jewish community. Tehran has been the major supporter of the Hizbollah based in Lebanon, as well as a major supporter of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It was evidently behind the killing of Israeli leaders that scuttled the peace process in the 1990s, because Iran saw the peace process as aggression against Islam. In some aspects of this effort Iran and Syria have been allies, in other aspects, not. Tehran had a hand in the attacks on Marines in Lebanon that led us to remove our forces in the 1980s, and was responsible for the explosion at the Khobar barracks in Saudi Arabia that killed many Americans.

Iran understood the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s to be engineered by the United States with the hope of crushing the Islamic Revolution in Iran. They believed that America's accidental shooting down of a civilian airliner in the Gulf toward the end of that war (during a brief period when Tehran was throwing away its navy in a hopeless attempt to drive us from the Gulf) as a deliberate act. They saw America's abandonment of the Shiites at the end of the Gulf War as another attempt to deny Shi'as the chance to extend their revolution to Iraq. Recent Iranian actions in Iraq have not seemed particularly aggressive. However, it must be remembered that the Iranians have believed since the hostage crisis that the United States was looking for any excuse it might find to invade and punish Iran. Realizing the disparity in military force, it has talked tough when it felt it could, but calmed down when military forces seemed to be getting too close. As long as we are in Iraq, it is likely to adopt a moderate stance to the political process there. But this could change if the opportunity presents itself. It is reasonable to understand their efforts in Iraq as another chapter in what they view as their long-term struggle against the United States.

Packer's piece in the New Yorker, combined with other accounts. suggests that Iran's hands-off policy may change at any time. According to Packer, the British have allowed the Iranians and their money to flow freely across the border, setting up political and quasi-military units throughout the area. They have begun to enforce more stringent social behavior on the civilian population in the manner of the Taliban (although with much less stringent rules). Many of these Iranian efforts have not been well received by the locals. But yet the Shiite combined ticket won overwhelmingly in Basra. Even though it was put together by the quietist Sistani (originally from Iran himself), the leaders of the two major parties and even their armed militias spent the last years of the Saddam regime in Iran. Muqtada's Mahdi Army may or may not be pro-Iranian, but we know that another element on this combined ticket was put together by Chalabi, the one-time American favorite who was later accused by the Americans of passing information to the Iranians. He recently bought a house outside Tehran.

Iranians and the current Shi'a leaders of Iran have a deep sense of history. What is now Iraq was a central part of the Iranian Sassanian dynasty. The Shi'as are a "new" part of Iranian history. They forcibly converted Iran in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Gradually, with Iranian help, the Shi'a increased in Iraq until by the time it came under the British control, they formed a majority. The centers of Shi'ism are in Iraq, but the heart of Shi'ism is in Iran. The Iranians may well feel they are entitled to play a major, if not an occupying role in the country, and the Sunni Arabs may be the only ones who can stop them. Stay tuned.

Almost inadvertently Bush has become the "democracy president", or perhaps better "the world campaign for democracy president". He has done more to harm than help the fundamental concepts and assumptions of democracy in this country. Yet he strides the international stage as the great hero of democratization. It is an inadvertent role because without 9/11 the small group of neocons in the White House that loom so large today would not have played a major role in his administration, except perhaps for a part in strengthening the pro-Israeli inclinations of the government.

After 9/11, Bush managed with the help of local warlords to drive the Taliban into a minor role in Afghanistan. The new government in Kabul is not firmly in power, but it has done well in the circumstances and Karzai has been legitimately elected President. In Iraq, at great cost to all concerned Bush has managed to bring the country out from under the control of a monstrous dictatorship, hold elections, and proceed on a road toward democracy. There may be many ruts still to navigate in this road. But so far we and the great majority of the Iraqi people are moving forward.

He has used this motion, and the reverberations of his own simplistic rhetoric, to expand his goals to the democratization of the Middle East, and beyond that to the democratization of the world. He goes, for example, to Europe to mend fences with his insulted and recalcitrant allies and the even more difficult Russians. He succeeds in some measure. But beyond this he makes the theme of his trip support for democratization, with an appeal to the Europeans to join with him. He then lectures Putin on the ways in which he has not lived up to the democratic ideals that he expects to characterize European states. He ties this discussion together in a way that suggests that Putin and Russia should be accepted as full-fledged participants in Europe if they do live up to these ideals. He has developed an approach to foreign aid to the underdeveloped world that is meant to reward countries that control corruption and move in a democratic direction. (Of course, he includes in his definition of democracy a "free market" and other shibboleths of his ideology.)

In the Middle East, reports from many countries indicate that the hatred engendered by the attack on Iraq has been partly replaced by growing interest in democratic reforms in many countries. Saudi Arabia has held local elections, a small step but an important one for them. The Palestinians have held the most democratic election in their history. And relations between Palestine and Israel are again on an upswing. In Lebanon, the assassination of a leader has led to a massive movement bent on restoring democracy to the country. This morning we read that Rice has refused to attend a planned meeting in Egypt because of the recent jailing of an Egyptian opposition leader. Gestures such as this will play well in much of the region, inspiring hope that American rhetoric is more than simply propaganda.

The emerging reality is that President Bush could go down in history as the American who democratized the world. If so, his performance will echo that of Reagan, for like Reagan he has been disparaged by the knowledgeable for his foolishness and his ideological blinders. With all these failings, and perhaps partly because of them, he accomplished great things on the world stage (taking the principal steps that led to the dissolution of the USSR). If we do begin a sustainable movement toward universal democracy under Bush, it will confuse and infuriate many Democrats, including myself. How can the actions of such a simpleton, such a liar, a person who misled the American people and tried to mislead the world end up benefiting humankind? Perhaps we better let the future sort this out.

A major reason for Bush's success is the fact that we are more than most Americans realize actually the only superpower, the only state that the rest of the world needs to take seriously. The leading states of the past seem pretty feckless today. On the shore of the Atlantic, some of