FOREIGN

AFFAIRS

MAY/JUNE 2003
VOLUME 82, NUMBER 3

Comments
The Rise of Ethics in Foreign Policy
Leslie H. Gelb andJustineA.Rosenthal 2
Once marginal, morality has now become a major force in foreign policy. For all the
problems this development raises, the United States and the world are better off.

America Slams the Door (On Its Foot)

John N. Paden andPeter W Singer 8
Harsh new restrictions on Muslim visitors have told potential friends that the United
States no longer wants them. Goodwill is being squandered; Americans will pay.

Essays
Why the Security Council Failed Michaelj.Glennon 16
One thing the current Iraq crisis has made clear is that a grand experiment of the
twentieth century-the attempt to impose binding international law on the use of
force-has failed. As Washington showed, nations need consider not whether armed
intervention abroad is legal, merely whether it is preferable to the alternatives. The
structure and rules of the UN Security Council really reflected the hopes of its
founders rather than the realities of the way states work. And these hopes were no
match for American hyperpower.
 Contents

How to Build a Democratic Iraq

AdeedDawisha andKaren Dawisha 36
What follows the war in Iraq will be at least as important as the war itself. Nurturing
democracy there after Saddam won't be easy. But it may not be impossible either.
Iraq has several assets going for it, including an educated middle class and a history
of political pluralism under an earlier monarchy.

A Trusteeship for Palestine? Martin Indyk 51

The Bush administration's plan for Middle East peace is a road map to nowhere.
A more ambitious approach will be necessary to parlay the bounce from a successfiil
Iraq war into serious Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The time has come
to consider the notion of a trusteeship for Palestine.

The Forgotten Relationship Jorge G. Castafeda 67

The September u attacks led the United States to replace its previous engaged and
enlightened approach to Latin American relations with a total focus on security
matters. This pullback has undermined recent regional progress on economic
reform and democratization. To meet the pressing challenges ahead, Latin America
needs the United States to be a committed partner.

Milosevic in The Hague GaryJ Bass 82

Yugoslavia's former tyrant now sits in the dock facing charges of genocide and
crimes against humanity. Serving as his own counsel, Slobodan Milosevic rages
against NATO conspiracies and victor's justice. But these courtroom antics cannot
detract from the trial's great achievements: revealing the truth about Milosevic's
role in the Balkan wars and removing him from Serbian politics once and for all.

Is Turkey Ready for Europe?

Michael S. Teitelbaum and PhilipL. Martin 97
Brussels has delayed a decision on whether to admit Turkey to the EU. This caution
is wise: it may aggravate the Turks, but no one really knows what consequences
accession would bring, and Turkey has yet to achieve Europe's economic standards.
History suggests that open borders would bring a flood of Turks northward looking
for better jobs-a negative development for all the countries involved.

Untangling India and Pakistan K ShankarBajpai 112

India and Pakistan remain caught in a dangerous deadlock over Kashmir. Pakistan-
backed terrorists continue daily provocations against India, and an increasingly
frustrated Indian government feels that it has little recourse short of war.
The only way out is for both sides to accept that their current strategies are not
working and to start talking. And only the United States can help them do that.

III] FOREIGN AFFAIRS- Volume82No. 3

 Contents

Reviews & Responses

Putting Liberty First John B. Judis 128
In his provocative new book, Fareed Zakaria argues that without liberty, democracy
can lead to trouble---both abroad and at home.

Free Trade Optimism DaniRodrik 135

A new memoir from Mike Moore, the former director-general of the World Trade
Organization, sheds light on the institution and ponders globalization's challenges.

Democracy Promotion
PaulajDobrianskyand Thomas Carothers r4a
The undersecretary of state for global affairs defends the administration's pro-
democracy policies; Thomas Carothers responds.

Recent Books on International Relations 146

Including G. John Ikenberry on Unilateralismand US. Foreign Policy; Lawrence
D. Freedman on FixingIntelligence, and Lucian W. Pye on Korean Endgame.

Letters to the Editor 168

Paul Kellogg on the French phenomenon; Matthew Evangelista's riposte; Allen
McDuffee, Adam M. Smith, and others.

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 Comments

Morality, values, ethics, and universal

principles have taken root in the hearts of
the U.S. foreign policy community.
The Rise of Ethics in Foreign Policy Leslie H. Gelb andJustineA.Rosenthal 2

America Slams the Door (On Its Foot) John N. Paden and Peter W Singer 8
 The Rise of Ethics in Foreign Policy
Reaching a Values Consensus

Leslie H. Gelb and Yustine A. Rosenthal

In the space of a few weeks recently, here's
what happened on the international
morality and values front: Madeleine
Albright testified at a Bosnian war crimes
tribunal, the State Department's chief
policy planner argued that promoting
democracy was one of the most important
reasons to go to war with Iraq, and a top
Bush administration diplomat traveled
to Xinjiang to examine China's treatment
of its Muslim citizens. The news stories
were routine and unremarkable-which
is what was remarkable. A former secretary
of state at a war crimes trial. Democracy
for Iraq. Beijing allowing a U.S. human
rights official to check out its domestic
policies. Such events occur regularly now
with little comment, no snickering from
"realists," indeed with little disagreement.
Something quite important has hap-
pened in American foreign policymaking
with little notice or digestion of its mean-
ing. Morality, values, ethics, universal
principles-the whole panoply of ideals
in international affairs that were once
almost the exclusive domain of preachers
and scholars--have taken root in the hearts,
or at least the minds, of the American
foreign policy community. A new vocab-
ulary has emerged in the rhetoric of senior
government officials, Republicans and
Democrats alike. It is laced with concepts
dismissed for almost ioo years as "Wilson-
ian." The rhetoric comes in many forms,
used to advocate regime change or human-
itarian intervention or promote democracy
and human rights, but almost always
the ethical agenda has at its core the
rights of the individual.
This development of morality cannot
be seen simply as a postmodern version
of the "white man's burden," although it
has that tenor in some hands. These values
are now widely shared around the world
by different religions and cultures. Move-
ments for democracy or justice for war
crimes are no longer merely American
or Western idiosyncrasies. And although
some in America's foreign-policy com-
munity may still be using moral language
to cloak a traditional national security
agenda, one gets the sense that the trend

LESLIE H. GELB is President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

JUSTINE A. RoS ENTHAL is Director of the Executive Office at the Council on
Foreign Relations and a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Columbia University.

[2]
 The Rise ofEthics in Foreign Policy
is more than that. In the past, tyrants
supported by Washington did not have
to worry a lot about interference in their
domestic affairs. Now, even if Washington
needs their help, some price has to be
exacted, if only sharp public criticism.
Moral matters are now part of American
politics and the politics of many other
nations. They are rarely, even in this new
age, the driving forces behind foreign
policy, but they are now a constant force
that cannot be overlooked when it comes
to policy effectiveness abroad or political
support at home.
THE EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA
The moral phenomenon we are now
witnessing did not materialize out of whole
cloth. It evolved over time, in fits and
starts, solidifying only in the last 30 years.
From the dawn of human history, there
have been laws about the initiation and
conduct of war. The ancient Egyptians
and the fourth century BC Chinese military
strategist Sun Tzu set out rules on how and
why to begin wars and how those wars
should be fought. Saint Augustine argued
that an act of war needs a just cause, and
Saint Thomas Aquinas believed that battle
requires the authority of a sovereign power
and should be acted out with good inten-
tion. The sixteenth-century French jurist
Jean Bodin held that war was a necessary
evil and largely the domain of the sover-
eign. And the seventeenth-century legalist
Hugo Grotius, after witnessing the
atrocities of the Thirty Years' War, wrote
on the protection of noncombatants and
methods to promote and ensure peace.
These and many other figures played a
role in creating the system of international
law and a related kind of international
morality that we witness today. But the
FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June 2o3
debates often occurred on the periphery of
international practice and related more to
the rights of the aristocracy and the sover-
eign state than to a universal set of values.
The Hague Conventions of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
the precursors of the Geneva Conventions,
set out "laws of war" with the aim of
protecting combatants and noncombatants
alike and outlining rules for the treatment
of prisoners and the wounded. These
guidelines helped make war somewhat
more humane but did not address the
ethics of larger foreign policy questions.
And some of these issues were taken up
on a targeted basis by transnational organ-
izations in the nineteenth century. Thus
Quakers in the United Kingdom and
the United States joined hands in an
antislavery movement, and women from
around the world united to champion
women's suffrage. But not until Woodrow
Wilson did a modern world leader step
forward to put ethics and universal values
at the heart of a nation's foreign policy.
Wilson called for making matters
such as national self-determination and
democracy equal to the rights of man.
Yet the perceived failure of his efforts
made his successors less bold. Franklin
Roosevelt's Four Freedoms speech and
his subsequent stewardship of the creation
of the United Nations fell short of Wilson's
lofty ideals. The UN at its core was based
far more on great-power politics than on
universal principles.
Perhaps the boldest single effort to
enshrine human rights as a universal value
came with the Nuremberg trials, which
charged Nazi rulers and followers alike
with war crimes and "crimes against
humanity." But although the tribunals
astonished, the precedents they set were
soon put aside, viewed more as victor's
justice than as a universal and shared
symbol of morality.
The Cold War did not get high marks
for morality either. It pitted an evil system
against a far better one, but on both sides
the moral gloves came off when it came
time to fight. The left in the United States
challenged what it saw as U.S. moral mis-
deeds: supporting dictators and the like.
But none of these challenges struck home
and prevailed in American politics until
the presidencies of Richard Nixon and
Jimmy Carter.
The realpolitik policies of Nixon and
Henry Kissinger generated a backlash
among both Republicans and Demo-
crats on grounds of immorality. The
Republican right attacked detente as
acceptance of the evil Soviet empire.
The Democrats, and soon their presi-
dential standard-bearer Jimmy Carter,
attacked Kissinger's approach as contrary
to "American values." And Carter made
morality in U.S. foreign policy a core
issue in his presidential campaign.
Although as president Carter did alter
policies toward numerous dictatorships-
such as those of Argentina, Uruguay, and
Ethiopia-he also hedged his moral bets
in places such as the Philippines, Iran,
and Saudi Arabia. These contradictions
served as examples of the almost inevitable
policy inconsistencies that result when
leaders try to balance security priorities
with an ethical agenda.
His successor, Ronald Reagan, main-
tained Carter's ethical rhetoric but changed
the focus to address communist dictator-
ships. He aided indigenous foes of the
Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Angola,
Cambodia, and Nicaragua. Again, how-
ever, the impossibility of consistently
 The Rise ofEthics in ForeignPolicy
applying morality became clear. Even as
Reagan made moves to defeat commu-
nism, he was criticized for supporting
right-wing death squads in El Salvador,
mining the harbors of the "democrati-
cally" elected government in Nicaragua,
and trading arms and Bibles for hostages
with Iranian zealots.
Carter used ethical rhetoric to pummel
dictatorships on the right, whereas Reagan
pummeled those on the left. But both
made agile use of ethics and values in their
foreign policies.
They left behind something approach-
ing a consensus among Democrats and
Republicans that morality and values
should play a bigger role in U.S. actions
abroad. With the passing of the Cold
War and America's emergence as the
sole superpower, moreover, the tradeoffs
between security and ethics became less
stark, and a moral foreign policy seemed
more affordable.
WHAT NOW?
Debates over right and wrong are now
embedded both in the international arena
and in domestic deliberations. Protecting
individual rights, advancing the rule of
law, preventing genocide, and the like have
become an inescapable part of arguments
over policy. This is so not only in the
public circus, where what is said rightly
sparks a modicum of cynicism, but in
private counsels in and out of government,
where such arguments used to be dismissed
as "unrealistic" or simply ignored.
Just how much ethical rhetoric has
permeated policymaking is almost nowhere
more clearly evident than in the lead up
to war with Iraq. The debate about
whether and why to go to war has featured
a value-laden rhetoric: freedom for the
FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June2003
Iraqi people, democracy for Iraq if not
for the whole region, and the use of the
United Nations (even if grudgingly) to
help justify invasion. And this language is
often proffered even more by the tradi-
tional realists than by the traditional
liberals. Even if, in the end, a U.S.-led
war effort serves to strengthen American
power in the region more than anything
else, the use of ethical rhetoric will have
been a necessary ingredient in furthering
that national security agenda.
Values now count in virtually every
foreign policy discussion, at times for
good, at times for ill, and always as a
complicating factor. The cases where
ethics must be factored in these days are
startling in number and complexity.
For the longest time, Americans
engaged in a sterile debate over human
rights. It was a debate between those
who believed the United States had to
fight the bad guys no matter what the
security tradeoffs, and those who believed
the United States had no business inter-
fering with the internal affairs of other
states. Dictators used this split to neutral-
ize U.S. pressure. Now that left and
right have largely joined forces on the
issue, however, dictators have to bend
their precious local values and pay more
heed to American entreaties-all the
more so when those entreaties are inex-
tricably bound to military and financial
inducements. Human rights probably
never will be effective as a public battering
ram. Countries are complicated beasts
most resistant when directly challenged.
But leaders around the world understand
today that they cannot take American
money, beg American protection, and
consistently escape the acknowledgment
of American values.
 Leslie H. Gelb andJustineA.Rosentbal
Humanitarian intervention, meanwhile,
is perhaps the most dramatic example
of the new power of morality in interna-
tional affairs. The notion that states
could invade the sovereign territory of
other states to stop massive bloodshed
(call it genocide or ethnic cleansing or
whatever) was inconceivable until the
199os. The right of states or groups
within states to mutilate and kill fellow
citizens on a mass scale seemed to have
assumed God-given proportions. But in
the space of a few years, this pillar of
international politics was badly shaken.
The UN approved interventions in Bosnia
and Somalia. NATO took military action
in Kosovo. And the Organization of
American States blessed the U.S.-led
intervention in Haiti. What is more, the
international community was quite pre-
pared to intervene militarily in Rwanda had
the Clinton administration not prevented
it. Just think of it: states endorsing the
principle that morality trumps sovereignty.
Even the historic triumph of this
trumping, however, does not eliminate
the moral problems raised by doing good
through humanitarian intervention. Who
is to be saved? The ethics of choice here
remain cloudy indeed. Not everyone
will be saved, particularly not minorities
within major powers. And who is to as-
sume the burdens of repairing and better-
ing societies that intervention pulverizes?
The costs are staggering and the list of
funders is wanting.
Other checks on crimes against
humanity exist now as well. The UN has
established war crimes tribunals to prose-
cute those who committed atrocities in
Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and British
authorities arrested former Chilean
dictator Augusto Pinochet on charges of
[6] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82 No. 3
mass executions, torture, and other crimes
against humanity. Even though these
prosecutions may not deter all would-be
killers, some justice is better than no
justice at all.
As for the promotion of democracy,
who could imagine how far America's
commitment to it would go after Wilson's
flop on the international and domestic
stages? Just look at the odd soulmates
who have found common ground on this
issue in recent years: Morton Halperin
and Paul Wolfowitz, George Soros and
George W. Bush, even "realists" such as
Richard Haass.
To be sure, some who ridiculed Presi-
dents Clinton and Carter and their clans
for advocating democracy now adopt this
ideal whole, without so much as a blush,
and perhaps may revert to their original
positions under international duress.
Whether or not they do so, the realists'
warnings about democracy as a double-
edged sword are worth remembering.
It can be used to justify actions that
otherwise would require better explana-
tions; in this way democracy protects
weak arguments. And its advocacy could
compel excesses, such as rushing to elec-
tions before the development of a liberal
society to underpin those elections.
We may be better off now that so many
leaders, good ones and bad ones, feel they
must protest their yearning for democracy.
These protestations might actually entrap
them, forcing them to do more good
than they had ever considered desirable
for their own ends. Still, this democratic
ideal contains so much power that some
prudence about rushing its implementa-
tion seems wise. Even if done cautiously,
however, implementing democratic ideals
carries its own contradictions. The Clinton
 The Rise ofEthics in ForeignPolicy
and Bush administrations have promoted as universal values become more a part
democracy around the world yet said little of the foreign policies of nations, those
or nothing about the need for it in places policies will still be ridden with contra-
such as China, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. dictions and hypocrisies. And yes, the
The counterterrorism agenda only morality of the strong will generally
heightens these inconsistencies. It further still prevail over that of the weak, and
divides Americans and Muslims around considerations of value almost inevitably
the world, many of whom see terrorists will have to take second place. But they
as freedom fighters. And many now in used to have no place. Second place means
the Bush administration condemned that leaders now have to be mindful of
President Clinton's decision not to make ignoring or abusing what are increasingly
major issues of Russia's treatment of the seen as universal values.
Chechens or China's treatment of Muslim We have passed from an era in which
Uighurs, but have more or less abandoned ideals were always flatly opposed to self-
that brief in the name of a common front interests into an era in which tension
against al Qaeda and like organizations. remains between the two, but the stark
Then there is the fact that the United juxtaposition of the past has largely
States is often on a different ethical and subsided. Now, ideals and self-interests
moral track from others. Most nations are both generally considered necessary
have approved of the genocide convention, ingredients of the national interest. For
the International Criminal Court, the all the old and new policy problems
treaty banning land mines, and the Kyoto this entails, Americans and most of the
Protocol on climate change, all of which world are better off.0
they consider part of their moral stance.
But the United States rejects these and
other such agreements on grounds that it
suffers disproportionately under their
terms. Such conflicts between the ethical
and the practical will not be sorted out
easily and so will remain a source often-
sion. But it is better to dispute matters such
as land mines and global warming than to
go to war over traditional power issues.
Yes, it will remain very rare for ethical
and moral concerns to dominate foreign
policy, particularly when it comes to
national security issues. Yes, nations will
continue to dispute the merits of their
respective ethical and moral systems.
Yes, within nations, there will be battles
over whether moral or practical concerns
should come first and over which moral
concerns should take precedence. Even

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2o3

 America Slams the Door
(On Its Foot)
Washington's Destructive New Visa Policies

7ohn N. Paden and Peter TV Singer

On January 28, Ejaz Haider--the editor government, had already registered on

of one of Pakistan's most influential
newspapers and a guest scholar at the
Brookings Institution-was stopped
outside the Washington think tank by
two armed, plainclothes officers from
the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS). Haider had originally been
invited to the United States by the State
Department for a conference on U.S.-
Pakistan relations. Nonetheless, he was
arrested, hustled into a car, driven to a
detention center, and interrogated for
hours. The charge: he had allegedly failed
to properly register his presence in the
country-something now required of
visitors from many Muslim countries to
the United States as part of a stringent
set of immigration restrictions that have
been imposed since the September i,
2OO1, attacks.
Haider's arrest occurred despite the
fact that he had been invited by the U.S.
his arrival, and indeed had been extensively
interrogated when he first entered the
country, some three months earlier. He
had since done exactly as he was instructed
by the INS' own telephone help line.
High-ranking officials at the State
Department quickly intervened, raising
sharp protests with their colleagues at the
INS, and Haider was released that night,
dumped in suburban Washington, D.C.,
with little but a subway card in his pocket.
Furious, the Pakistani journalist, who had
been to the United States six times before,
resolved that he would not return as long
as such policies continue. "This is not the
United States I used to come to," he told
The Washington Post.
In a sense, he was right. Whereas
Haider's plight received a high level of
attention due to his stature, his treatment
was hardly unique. On the contrary, it
revealed a disturbing pattern that has

JOHN N. PADEN is Clarence Robinson Professor of International Studies at

George Mason University. P. W. SINGER is Olin Fellow in Foreign Policy
Studies at the Brookings Institution and Coordinator of the Brookings Pro-
ject on U.S. Policy Toward the Islamic World.

[8]
 America Slams the Door (On Its Foot)
emerged in the year and a half since Amer-
ica was first attacked by terrorists: the U.S.
government has begun to impose highly
restrictive regulations on visitors from
Muslim lands, restrictions that have had
the primary effect of telling men like Ejaz
Haider-potential friends and supporters
of the United States-that they are no
longer wanted in the country. A huge
source of goodwill is thus being squan-
dered, at precisely the time when the
United States needs it most.
The most painful irony of this new
policy is that the United States' openness
to outsiders has long been the underpin-
ning of the country's economic and social
fabric. Just as many U.S. corporations have
gone global in recent years to great success,
so too have American universities, draw-
ing on the talents of the best and brightest
from around the world. Roughly half of
the students now receiving Ph.D.'s in the
sciences at U.S. schools are foreigners.
That may not last for long, however.
What Washington seems not to rec-
ognize is that these guests are important
not just for the nearly $12 billion they
pump into the U.S. economy each year.
They also provide bridges of knowledge
and understanding that greatly improve
the strategic position of the United States
in the world. Consider this: Kofi Annan,
the UN'S secretary-general; Prince Saud
Faisal, Saudi Arabia's minister of foreign
affairs; Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, presi-
dent of the Philippines; and Vicente Fox,
president of Mexico, are just a few of the
many current foreign leaders who studied
at U.S. universities. As students at
American schools, they developed strong
ties to the country, laying the foundation
for the productive relationships they have
relied on later in their careers. American
FOREIGN AFFAIRS .May/June2003
security has greatly profited as a result.
And nowhere are such ties more important
than with the more than 50 predominantly
Muslim countries that now form the
frontline in the war on terrorism.
Unfortunately, Washington's present
homeland security policy, shaped by panic-
driven regulations and unfunded or ill-
crafted mandates, is undermining this
openness and harming America's broader
foreign policy. Rather than combating the
growing radicalism and anti-Americanism
of many Muslim youths around the
world, the stringent new visa policies are
only feeding such resentment. At a time
when the United States needs pro-
American ambassadors more than ever,
its government seems bent on turning
away the next generation of them.
AN UNAMERICAN ACT
Most of the current controversy stems
from one legislative source: the USA
PATRIOT Act of 2ool ("Uniting And
Strengthening America by Providing
Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept
and Obstruct Terrorism"). The PATRIOT
Act was a response to the trauma of the
September u attacks and to the fact that
some of the hijackers had entered the
country on student visas to attend U.S.
ffight schools. The new legislation was
part of an effort to start better vetting and
monitoring of foreign visitors, including
students and scholars attending American
schools. The restrictions imposed, how-
ever, were extreme, exceeding in scope
those in any other Western democracy.
Among other things, the PATRIOT Act
has been interpreted as requiring that
the State Department be provided with
electronic evidence by academic institutions
of all background data on applicants before
[9]
 John N. Paden and Peter W Singer
issuing student and scholar visas. Other
nonimmigrant visa applicants are now sub-
jected to additional clearance procedures,
including having their names checked
against law enforcement and security
agency databases. A Web-based tracking
and reporting system (known as the
"Student and Exchange Visitor Informa-
tion System," or SEVIS) is being established
to allow the INS to monitor the status of
all foreign students. All nonimmigrant
visitors and green-card holders must
now report changes of address to the INS.
Finally, and most controversially, all non-
immigrant male visitors between the ages
of 16 and 45 from certain (mostly Muslim)
countries have been required to register with
INS offices-in some cases, even if they
registered when first entering the country.
Each of these requirements has proved
contentious, not to mention bureaucrati-
cally arduous to implement. As a result,
implementation has already bogged down.
The various agencies responsible for
executing the program still lack the fund-
ing to fully enforce its measures. And the
turmoil has only been heightened by
the reorganization of many of these
agencies into the new Department of
Homeland Security.
Meanwhile, most U.S. universities,
schools, and national associations have
encountered similar bureaucratic and
logistical problems and have been unable
to computerize their databases within the
mandated time period. Entering records
into SEVIS has also created snags. Many
of the required technical and logistical
elements, including the underlying data-
bases, simply do not exist. To make matters
worse, INS officials are required to physi-
cally visit and recertify every one of the
thousands of American schools accept-
ing foreign students, at a time when the
agency is already stretched thin.
Also worrisome has been the marked
tendency of government bureaucrats to
stonewall when dealing with many foreign
(particularly Muslim) visitors. Officials
have failed to act in a timely manner on
visa matters and gratuitously resorted to
law enforcement techniques such as
fingerprinting and background checks.
Yet such tactics have met with little
protest; in the best of times, visa holders
have no natural constituency to stand
up for them. The post-September ii
environment has made such advocates
even harder to find.
DENIALS, DELAYS, AND DISTRESS
The damaging effects of the new system
have already begun to be felt across the
U.S. educational system and beyond.
According to the Association of American
Universities, the unintended consequences
of the new visa screening requirements have
included a massive decrease in the number
of foreign students from Muslim states,
scores of foreign faculty being unavailable
to teach courses, scientific research projects
becoming delayed or derailed, and busi-
nesses moving trade elsewhere. Meanwhile,
the selective registration program for
Muslim males inside the United States
has had little success in finding actual
terrorists, even while causing great dis-
tress and offense to Muslim visitors.

1 The countries on the list are Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea,
Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

[1o] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3

 America Slams the Door (On Its Foot)
In terms of the numbers of foreigners The effects of these new cumbersome
refused admission, hard data on the impact policies, moreover, are being felt by all
of the new restrictions is not yet available, foreign visitors-not just by students, and
and will likely never be issued-at least not just by those from Muslim states. U.S.
not in the form of local breakdowns of immigration lawyers report that visitors
the numbers (to prevent applicants from from places as far afield as Russia and
knowing whether some ports of entry are China are experiencing problems. Even
more forgiving). There is, however, exten- more disturbing, perhaps, is the fact that
sive anecdotal evidence that the numbers the new policies are also harming refugees
have dropped. Surveys of college adminis- and asylum seekers. Last year, the INS
trators support the widespread belief that admitted only 27,300 refugees to U.S.
the number of students being denied per- soil, despite the fact that a full 70,000
mission to enter the country has radically had been authorized by the government
increased over the last two years. to come. This was the lowest number of
The problem is not just pure denials, refugees allowed into the country in a
however, but also the increase in delays given year in the last quarter-century
in the process-which can have the same and represented just 40 percent of the
effect as outright rejection. Even for those 2001 total (68,426). The situation has
who successfully obtain visas, what used grown so severe, in fact, that the UN now
to take a few weeks can now take from refers urgent refugee-status seekers away
six months to a year. For students, this can from U.S. shores and toward Canada
mean interrupting their studies or missing and the Scandinavian nations instead.
registration dates. As The Chronicle of All this despite the fact that not one ter-
HigherEducation noted in November 2002, rorist has ever been found among the
for many foreign students trying to reach refugees screened.
the United States, the past few months Finally, at a time when U.S. policy-
have amounted to endless waiting in a makers are lamenting the global spread of
stalled security line. Students seeking anti-Americanism and pushing for better
visas are reporting not only delay after delay, public diplomacy, U.S. visa restrictions are
but also a lack of information about what beginning to harm cross-cultural outreach
is causing the delays. as well. For example, in October 2002, the
Together, the denials, delays, increasing Brookings Institution sponsored a con-
costs, and the perception of xenophobia ference in Doha, Qatar, on "U.S. Relations
are driving thousands of foreign students to with the Islamic World." The conference
study in other countries. Universities in the attracted more than 70 senior leaders and
Middle East, as well as in other Western scholars from 25 different Muslim countries
states such as Canada or the United King- to discuss how the United States could
dom, have seen a large increase in the num- better engage with Islamic states and
bers of applicants--in some cases as much communities. Ironically, such a conference,
as a fivefold increase from pre-2001 levels. designed to support Muslim reform
Australian universities have even begun movements, probably could not have been
explicitly marketing themselves as an alter- held in the United States itself because of
native to arduous U.S. visa procedures. the new difficulty in getting visas.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June2oo3 Ili]

 John N. Paden andPeter W Singer
an identity search in some cultures. Even
BUT IS IT WORKING? birth dates are often not reliable, thanks
To be fair, it should be remembered that to poor local record-keeping and confusion
the new restrictions had a legitimate between Muslim lunar and Western solar
motivation: to improve homeland security. calendars. Other identity indicators, such
Sadly, they have accomplished little on as ID numbers, are therefore necessary.
that front; if anything, they seem to be But these measures only increase the
backfiring, and actually hampering the possibilities for fraud and deception.
long-term war on terrorism. Complicating matters still further,
Part of the problem is that many tech- al Qaeda has shown itself to be adept at
nical and cultural questions that underlie adapting to new security schemes. The
the new policies have simply not yet been organization has already begun recruiting
sorted out. For example, the new restric- non-Arab Muslims in order to avoid
tions were imposed before the large-scale, detection. Terrorists of the future are
complex database programs had been equally likely to be Western, including men
established or funded. Moreover, even if such as Jos6 Padilla (the would-be "dirty"
the technology were available to link bomber from Chicago) and Richard Reid
various agencies of federal, state, and (the attempted shoe bomber from Birming-
local governments, the colossal scale of ham, England). Terrorists could also be
such links (leaving aside the privacy 46 years old or older (as are both Osama
complications) would still entail problems bin Ladin and his top deputy, Ayman al
with false and mistaken identities. Zawahiri), which would place them outside
After all, terrorists who try to get visas the INS' scrutiny.
to enter the United States will now almost What the drafters of the new visa
certainly take the trouble of falsifying restrictions seem not to have recognized
their application forms in ways that will is that the real risk to the United States is
be difficult to trace. Moreover, differences now posed by terrorists who enter through
between Western and non-Western naming illegal, not legal, means. This group can
conventions undermine the utility of com- include those who cross the loosely guarded
puterized identity searches. Within the Canadian border. Harassing the thousands
Muslim world alone, there exist a variety of law-abiding Muslims who follow all of
of naming principles: in some cases, mem- Washington's rules and laws will do
bers of each generation take the personal nothing to address this problem. Instead,
name of the father as their last name and by straining relations with the Muslim
hence names change with each generation; community and making people fearful of
in other areas, people use their place of U.S. law enforcement agencies, the new
origin as a last name. Also popular are varia- measures may actually make it more difficult
tions on Islamic names such as Muhammad to gather intelligence about those actually
or the "99 names of God," which provide seeking to do harm.
abundant opportunities for combinations
with "Abdul," or "the servant of." MAKING ENEMIES ABROAD
As these examples suggest, names As the above problems suggest, the
alone are not very helpful when conducting new visa restrictions cannot simply be

[12] FOREIGN AFFAIRS- Volume82No. 3

 America Slams the Door (On Its Foot)
considered a question of homeland security.
The new measures have had such damaging
implications for the conduct of foreign
affairs that they should no longer be
viewed in isolation.
Already, the new programs are provok-
ing widespread protests and indignation
abroad. Nearly every Muslim ambassador
to the United States has raised the matter
with the State Department. The foreign
ministers of Bangladesh, Indonesia, and
Pakistan have all traveled to Washington
to personally protest the measures, which
they saw as an affront. More widely, the
new requirements have become major
political issues within the Islamic world,
helping stoke the belief that the United
States is hostile to Muslims in general.
What the drafters of the new immi-
gration policies seem to have ignored is
the fact that the overwhelming majority
of Muslim countries are not supporters of
terrorism; indeed, many have worked
closely with Washington on counter-
terrorism. Given such cooperation, the
United States' one-size-fits-all approach
to visa questions has been particularly
galling. Qatar, for example, has come
under great criticism in the Arab world
for letting the U.S. military use its terri-
tory as a base for the coming war with
Iraq. Yet Qatar has been rewarded for its
risk-taking by having its citizens included
by the INS in the same category as Iraqis.
The unintended consequences of such
a ham-fisted approach will have long-term
effects as well. By reducing the number
of foreign students and scholars and im-
posing extensive and expensive reporting
requirements, these measures will weaken
the U.S. university system and economy
directly. Indirectly, they will undermine
the perception that American universities,
FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June2003
the U.S. economy, and American society
at large welcome international visitors.
Yet if the United States hopes to remain
a world leader, it cannot act like an
isolationist power.
The new visa measures will also, over
the long term, damage support for
American ideals in the Islamic world and
beyond. By burning America's bridges
with the next generation of business and
political leaders, Washington will under-
cut its ability to encourage progress
abroad. Nor will a slick public-diplomacy
campaign do much to improve matters.
The humiliating sting of being forced to
stand in line for days only to be rejected
for a visa will be not be salved by a glossy
brochure or a radio program extolling
Muslim life in America.
SEEING CLEARLY
Slamming the brakes on all visa applica-
tions and putting all Muslim males on
watch lists is clearly not the way to protect
the United States. Yes, a young Muslim
man may represent a greater threat of being
an al Qaeda terrorist than an elderly Dan-
ish woman. But even sound policies can
have unintended costs and consequences,
and these also must be considered.
To improve its approach, the U.S.
government must focus its efforts on
trying to weed out terrorists at its borders.
Better controls are needed over weak zones
of entry. Relatively unguarded harbors
(through which terrorist weapons of mass
destruction would more likely enter) merit
the same attention as airports. Rather than
treating all Muslim male visitors the same,
the INS should identify smaller subsets
of visa applicants and holders that require
special screening. It should also focus on
processing nonproblem applications far
1131
 America Slams the Door (On Its Foot)
more quickly, in order to ease the burdens
both on the system and on applicants.
A structure should be put in place to
rapidly admit visitors who have already
been vetted, such as students and scholars
who are returning from short trips out-
side the country. Re-entry documents
should be provided prior to their leaving
the United States.
The U.S. government must also try
to link its public diplomacy with its visa
processes. Rather than discouraging all
Muslims from coming to the United
States, Washington should welcome
well-intentioned Muslim students,
clerics, writers, and other distinguished
visitors. Special programs should be put
in place at the embassy level to ensure a
smooth application process for foreign
opinion leaders.
Within U.S. borders, the treatment
of foreigners should also be improved. This
means rethinking the INS registration pro-
gram, which has degenerated into a system
of harassment. The Haider case must
never be repeated. To ensure that, Wash-
ington must put an end to in-depth and
insulting interrogations at the border
and within the country, where the policy
has been to treat all Muslim visitors like
criminals, not guests. INS workers should
also receive better cultural sensitivity train-
ing, and the present "cattle-line" processing
at airports should be amended.
Reform will require the joint participa-
tion of both the executive and legislative
branches of the U.S. government. Most
of the blame for the current situation
may lie with the Justice Department for
its hysteria and the White House for its
disengagement. But Congress also shares
responsibility. It was Congress, after all,
that enacted such broad legislation. And it
[14] FOREIGN AFFAIRS
was Congress that failed to provide federal
agencies with the resources adequate to
enforce it. Therefore Congress, as well
as the executive, must work together to
address and improve the current problems.
As a unit, the U.S. government must
recognize that true homeland security
requires long-term vision. The damaging
effects of the present exclusionary policies
will be felt for generations. Current visa
and registration policies only antagonize,
with no great gain in safety. They must
be rationalized and reformed in a way that
seeks to better protect America and further
U.S. outreach, particularly toward Muslim
communities that are all-important in
the war on terrorism.
No other nation has a history of being
as welcoming to outsiders as the United
States. This trait has been a source of
America's greatness and of much of the
foreign goodwill toward the United States.
Erecting walls to keep out people of the
Muslim faith will obscure that vision of
America as a shining beacon on a hill.
And that is something neither the United
States nor the world at large can afford.0
Volume82No. 3
 Essays

06d-mn

With the dramatic ruptureof the

Security Council, it became clear that
the grand attempt to subject the use of
force to the rule of law had failed.
Why the Security Council Failed MichaelJ Glennon 16

How to Build a Democratic Iraq AdeedDawisha and Karen Dawisha 36

A Trusteeship for Palestine? MartinIndyk 51
The Forgotten Relationship Jorge G. Castafeda 67
Milosevic in The Hague Garyj Bass 82
Is Turkey Ready for Europe? MichaelS. Teitelbaum and PhilipL. Martin 97
Untangling India and Pakistan K ShankarBajPai 112
 Why the Security
Council Failed
Michael . Glennon

SHOWDOWN AT TURTLE BAY

"THE TENTS have been struck," declared South Africa's prime minis-
ter, Jan Christian Smuts, about the League of Nations' founding. "The
great caravan of humanity is again on the march." A generation later,
this mass movement toward the international rule of law still seemed
very much in progress. In 1945, the League was replaced with a more
robust United Nations, and no less a personage than U.S. Secretary of
State Cordell Hull hailed it as the key to "the fulfillment of humanity's
highest aspirations." The world was once more on the move.
Earlier this year, however, the caravan finally ground to a halt.
With the dramatic rupture of the UN Security Council, it became
clear that the grand attempt to subject the use of force to the rule of
law had failed.
In truth, there had been no progress for years. The UN's rules govern-
ing the use of force, laid out in the charter and managed by the Security
Council, had fallen victim to geopolitical forces too strong for a legalist
institution to withstand. By 2003, the main question facing countries
considering whether to use force was not whether it was lawful. Instead,
as in the nineteenth century, they simply questioned whether it was wise.
The beginning of the end of the international security system had
actually come slightly earlier, on September 12, 2002, when President

MICHAEL J. GLENNON is Professor of International Law at the

Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the au-
thor, most recently, of Limits ofLaw, Prerogativesof Power."Intervention-
ism After Kosovo.

[16]
 Why the Security CouncilFailed
George W. Bush, to the surprise of many, brought his case against
Iraq to the General Assembly and challenged the UN to take action
against Baghdad for failing to disarm. "We will work with the UN
Security Council for the necessary resolutions," Bush said. But he
warned that he would act alone if the UN failed to cooperate.
Washington's threat was reaffirmed a month later by Congress,
when it gave Bush the authority to use force against Iraq without
getting approval from the UN first. The American message seemed
clear: as a senior administration official put it at the time, "we don't
need the Security Council."
Two weeks later, on October 25, the United States formally proposed
a resolution that would have implicitly authorized war against Iraq.
But Bush again warned that he would not be deterred if the Security
Council rejected the measure. "Ifthe United Nations doesn't have the will
or the courage to disarm Saddam Hussein and if Saddam Hussein
will not disarm," he said, "the United States will lead a coalition to dis-
arm [him]." After intensive, behind-the-scenes haggling, the council
responded to Bush's challenge on November 7 by unanimously adopt-
ing Resolution 1441, which found Iraq in "material breach" of prior
resolutions, set up a new inspections regime, and warned once again
of "serious consequences" if Iraq again failed to disarm. The resolution
did not explicitly authorize force, however, and Washington pledged
to return to the council for another discussion before resorting to arms.
The vote for Resolution 1441 was a huge personal victory for
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had spent much political capital
urging his government to go the UN route in the first place and had
fought hard diplomatically to win international backing. Nonetheless,
doubts soon emerged concerning the effectiveness of the new inspec-
tions regime and the extent of Iraq's cooperation. On January 21,
2003, Powell himself declared that the "inspections will not work."
He returned to the UN on February 5and made the case that Iraq was still
hiding its weapons of mass destruction (WMD). France and Germany
responded by pressing for more time. Tensions between the allies, already
high, began to mount and divisions deepened still frither when i8 Euro-
pean countries signed letters in support of the American position.
On February 14, the inspectors returned to the Security Council
to report that, after u weeks of investigation in Iraq, they had discovered

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June2oo3 [17]

 Michael/. Glennon
no evidence of WMD (although many items remained unaccounted
for). Ten days later, on February 24, the United States, the United King-
dom, and Spain introduced a resolution that would have had the council
simply declare, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (the section
dealing with threats to the peace), that "Iraq has failed to take the final
opportunity afforded to it in Resolution 1.441." France, Germany, and
Russia once more proposed giving Iraq still more time. On February 28,
the White House, increasingly frustrated, upped the ante: Press
Secretary Ari Fleischer announced that the American goal was no
longer simply Iraq's disarmament but now included "regime change."
A period of intense lobbying followed. Then, on March 5, France
and Russia announced they would block any subsequent resolution
authorizing the use of force against Saddam. The next day, China
declared that it was taking the same position. The United Kingdom
floated a compromise proposal, but the council's five permanent
members could not agree. In the face of a serious threat to interna-
tional peace and stability, the Security Council fatally deadlocked.

POWER POLITICS

AT THIS POINT it was easy to conclude, as did President Bush, that

the UN'S failure to confront Iraq would cause the world body to "fade
into history as an ineffective, irrelevant debating society." In reality,
however, the council's fate had long since been sealed. The problem
was not the second Persian Gulf War, but rather an earlier shift in
world power toward a configuration that was simply incompatible
with the way the UN was meant to function. It was the rise in Ameri-
can unipolarity--not the Iraq crisis-that, along with cultural clashes
and different attitudes toward the use of force, gradually eroded the
council's credibility. Although the body had managed to limp along
and function adequately in more tranquil times, it proved incapable of
performing under periods of great stress. The fault for this failure
did not lie with any one country; rather, it was the largely inexorable
upshot of the development and evolution of the international system.
Consider first the changes in power politics. Reactions to the United
States' gradual ascent to towering preeminence have been predictable:
coalitions of competitors have emerged. Since the end of the Cold

[1.81 FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volumeg2No. 3

 CORBIS

Goingdown: Secretary ofState ColinPowellwith Russian ForeignMinister

IgorIvanov at the Security Council,January20,2003

War, the French, the Chinese, and the Russians have sought to re-
turn the world to a more balanced system. France's former foreign
minister Hubert Wdrine openly confessed this goal in 1998: "We
cannot accept ... a politically unipolar world," he said, and "that is
why we are fighting for a multipolar" one. French President Jacques
Chirac has battled tirelessly to achieve this end. According to Pierre
Lellouche, who was Chirac's foreign policy adviser in the early 199os,
his boss wants "a multipolar world in which Europe is the counter-
weight to American political and military power." Explained Chirac
himself, "any community with only one dominant power is always a
dangerous one and provokes reactions."
In recent years, Russia and China have displayed a similar pre-
occupation; indeed, this objective was formalized in a treaty the two
countries signed in July 20oo, explicitly confirming their commitment
to "a multipolar world." President Vladimir Putin has declared that
Russia will not tolerate a unipolar system, and China's former president

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June2003 [19]

 Michaelj.Glennon
Jiang Zemin has said the same. Germany, although itjoined the cause
late, has recently become a highly visible partner in the effort to confront
American hegemony. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said in 2000
that the "core concept of Europe after 1945 was and still is a rejection
of ... the hegemonic ambitions of individual states." Even Germany's
former chancellor Helmut Schmidt recently weighed in, opining that
Germany and France "share a common interest in not delivering our-
selves into the hegemony of our mighty ally, the United States."
In the face of such opposition, Washington has made it clear
that it intends to do all it can to maintain its preeminence. The Bush
administration released a paper detailing its national security strategy
in September 2002 that left no doubt about its plans to ensure that
no other nation could rival its military
Since the end of the strength. More controversially, the now infa-
mous document also proclaimed a doctrine
Cold War, the French, of preemption-one that, incidentally, flatly
the Russians, and the contradicts the precepts of the UN Charter.
Chinese have worked Article 51 of the charter permits the use of
force only in self-defense, and only "if an
tirelessly to balance armed attack occurs against a Member of the
American power. United Nations." The American policy, on
the other hand, proceeds from the premise
that Americans "cannot let our enemies
strike first." Therefore, "to forestall or prevent ... hostile acts by our
adversaries," the statement announced, "the United States will, if
necessary, act preemptively"-that is, strike first.
Apart from the power divide, a second fault line, one deeper and
longer, has also separated the United States from other countries at
the UN. This split is cultural. It divides nations of the North and West
from those of the South and East on the most fundamental of issues:
namely, when armed intervention is appropriate. On September 20,
1999, Secretary-General Kofi Annan spoke in historic terms about
the need to "forge unity behind the principle that massive and systematic
violations of human rights-wherever they take place-should never
be allowed to stand." This speech led to weeks of debate among UN
members. Of the nations that spoke out in public, roughly a third
appeared to favor humanitarian intervention under some circumstances.

1201 FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3

 Why the Security CouncilFailed
Another third opposed it across the board, and the remaining third
were equivocal or noncommittal. The proponents, it is important to
note, were primarily Western democracies. The opponents, meanwhile,
were mostly Latin American, African, and Arab states.
The disagreement was not, it soon became clear, confined merely
to humanitarian intervention. On February 22 of this year, foreign
ministers from the Nonaligned Movement, meeting in Kuala
Lumpur, signed a declaration opposing the use of force against Iraq.
This faction, composed of n4 states (primarily from the developing
world), represents 55 percent of the planet's population and nearly
two-thirds of the UN's membership.
As all of this suggests, although the UN's rules purport to represent a
single global view-indeed, universal law-on when and whether force
can be justified, the UN's members (not to mention their populations)
are clearly not in agreement.
Moreover, cultural divisions concerning the use of force do not
merely separate the West from the rest. Increasingly, they also
separate the United States from the rest of the West. On one key
subject in particular, European and American attitudes diverge and
are moving further apart by the day. That subject is the role of law in
international relations. There are two sources for this disagreement.
The first concerns who should make the rules: namely, should it be
the states themselves, or supranational institutions?
Americans largely reject supranationalism. It is hard to imagine
any circumstance in which Washington would permit an interna-
tional regime to limit the size of the U.S. budget deficit, control its
currency and coinage, or settle the issue of gays in the military. Yet
these and a host of other similar questions are now regularly decided
for European states by the supranational institutions (such as the
European Union and the European Court of Human Rights) of
which they are members. "Americans," Francis Fukuyama has written,
"tend not to see any source of democratic legitimacy higher than the
nation-state." But Europeans see democratic legitimacy as flowing
from the will of the international community. Thus they comfortably
submit to impingements on their sovereignty that Americans would
find anathema. Security Council decisions limiting the use of force
are but one example.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2003 121]

 Micbaelj.Glennon

DEATH OF A LAW

ANOTHER general source of disagreement that has undermined the

UN concerns when international rules should be made. Americans
prefer after-the-fact, corrective laws. They tend to favor leaving the
field open to competition as long as possible and view regulations
as a last resort, to be employed only after free markets have failed.
Europeans, in contrast, prefer preventive rules aimed at averting
crises and market failures before they take place. Europeans tend to
identify ultimate goals, try to anticipate future difficulties, and then
strive to regulate in advance, before problems develop. This approach
suggests a preference for stability and predictability; Americans, on
the other hand, seem more comfortable with innovation and occa-
sional chaos. Contrasting responses across the Atlantic to emerging
high-technology and telecommunications industries are a prime
example of these differences in spirit. So are divergent transatlantic
reactions to the use of force.
More than anything else, however, it has been still another under-
lying difference in attitude-over the need to comply with the UN'S
rules on the use of force-that has proved most disabling to the UN
system. Since 1945, so many states have used armed force on so many
occasions, in flagrant violation of the charter, that the regime can only
be said to have collapsed. In framing the charter, the international
community failed to anticipate accurately when force would be
deemed unacceptable. Nor did it apply sufficient disincentives to
instances when it would be so deemed. Given that the UN'S is a
voluntary system that depends for compliance on state consent, this
short-sightedness proved fatal.
This conclusion can be expressed a number of different ways under
traditional international legal doctrine. Massive violation of a treaty
by numerous states over a prolonged period can be seen as casting that
treaty into desuetude-that is, reducing it to a paper rule that is no
longer binding. The violations can also be regarded as subsequent
custom that creates new law, supplanting old treaty norms and
permitting conduct that was once a violation. Finally, contrary state
practice can also be considered to have created a non liquet, to have
thrown the law into a state of confusion such that legal rules are no

[22] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume82No. 3

 Why the Security CouncilFailed
longer clear and no authoritative answer is possible. In effect,
however, it makes no practical difference which analytic framework
is applied. The default position of international law has long been
that when no restriction can be authoritatively established, a country
is considered free to act. Whatever doctrinal formula is chosen to
describe the current crisis, therefore, the conclusion is the same. "If
you want to know whether a man is religious," Wittgenstein said,
"don't ask him, observe him." And so it is if you want to know what
law a state accepts. If countries had ever truly intended to make the
UN'S use-of-force rules binding, they would have made the costs of
violation greater than the costs of compliance.
But they did not. Anyone who doubts this observation might
consider precisely why North Korea now so insistently seeks a non-
aggression pact with the United States. Such a provision, after all, is
supposedly the centerpiece of the UN Charter. But no one could seriously
expect that assurance to comfort Pyongyang. The charter has gone
the way of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the 1928 treaty by which every
major country that would go on to fight in World War II solemnly
committed itself not to resort to war as an instrument of national policy.
The pact, as the diplomatic historian Thomas Bailey has written,
"proved a monument to illusion. It was not only delusive but dangerous,
for it ... lulled the public ... into a false sense of security." These days,
on the other hand, no rational state will be deluded into believing that
the UN Charter protects its security.
Surprisingly, despite the manifest warning signs, some interna-
tional lawyers have insisted in the face of the Iraq crisis that there
is no reason for alarm about the state of the UN. On March 2, just days
before France, Russia, and China declared their intention to cast a
veto that the United States had announced it would ignore, Anne-
Marie Slaughter (president of the American Society of International
Law and dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School) wrote,
"What is happening today is exactly what the UN founders envisaged."
Other experts contend that, because countries have not openly declared
that the charter's use-of-force rules are no longer binding, those rules
must still be regarded as obligatory. But state practice itself often
provides the best evidence of what states regard as binding. The truth
is that no state-surely not the United States-has ever accepted a

FOREIGN AFFAIRS-May/June2003 [ 231

 Michaelj. Glennon
rule saying, in effect, that rules can be changed only by openly declaring
the old rules to be dead. States simply do not behave that way. They
avoid needless confrontation. After all, states have not openly declared
that the Kellogg-Briand Pact is no longer good law, but few would
seriously contend that it is.
Still other analysts worry that admitting to the death of the UN's
rules on the use of force would be tantamount to giving up completely
on the international rule of law. The fact that public opinion forced
President Bush to go to Congress and the UN, such experts further
argue, shows that international law still shapes power politics. But
distinguishing working rules from paper rules is not the same as
giving up on the rule of law. Although the effort to subject the use of
force to the rule of law was the monumental internationalist experi-
ment of the twentieth century, the fact is that that experiment has
failed. Refusing to recognize that failure will not enhance prospects
for another such experiment in the future.
Indeed, it should have come as no surprise that, in September
2002, the United States felt free to announce in its national security
document that it would no longer be bound by the charter's rules
governing the use of force. Those rules have collapsed. "Lawful" and
"unlawful" have ceased to be meaningful terms as applied to the use
of force. As Powell said on October 20, "the president believes he now
has the authority [to intervene in Iraq] ... just as we did in Kosovo."
There was, of course, no Security Council authorization for the use
of force by NATO against Yugoslavia. That action blatantly violated
the UN Charter, which does not permit humanitarian intervention
any more than it does preventive war. But Powell was nonetheless
right: the United States did indeed have all the authority it needed
to attack Iraq-not because the Security Council authorized it, but
because there was no international law forbidding it. It was therefore
impossible to act unlawfully.

HOT AIR

THESE, THEN, were the principal forces that dismasted the Security
Council. Other international institutions also snapped in the gale,
including NATO-when France, Germany, and Belgium tried to block

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 Why the Security CouncilFailed
it from helping to defend Turkey's borders in the event of a war in
Iraq. ("Welcome to the end of the Atlantic alliance," said Frangois
Heisbourg, an adviser to the French foreign ministry).
Why did the winds of power, culture, and security overturn the
legalist bulwarks that had been designed to weather the fiercest
geopolitical gusts? To help answer this question, consider the follow-
ing sentence: "We have to keep defending our vital interests just as
before; we can say no, alone, to anything that may be unacceptable."
It may come as a surprise that those were
not the words of administration hawks such The French goal was
as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, or
John Bolton. In fact, they were written in never to disarm Iraq;
20ol by Vdrine, then France's foreign it was to strenghten
minister. Similarly, critics of American France.
"hyperpower" might guess that the state-
ment, "I do not feel obliged to other gov-
ernments," must surely have been uttered by an American. It was in
fact made by German Chancellor Gerhard Schr6der on February io,
2003. The first and last geopolitical truth is that states pursue security
by pursuing power. Legalist institutions that manage that pursuit
maladroitly are ultimately swept away.
A corollary of this principle is that, in pursuing power, states use
those institutional tools that are available to them. For France, Russia,
and China, one of those tools is the Security Council and the veto
that the charter affords them. It was therefore entirely predictable that
these three countries would wield their veto to snub the United States
and advance the project that they had undertaken: to return the world
to a multipolar system. During the Security Council debate on Iraq,
the French were candid about their objective. The goal was never to
disarm Iraq. Instead, "the main and constant objective for France
throughout the negotiations," according to its UN ambassador, was to
"strengthen the role and authority of the Security Council" (and, he
might have added, of France). France's interest lay in forcing the
United States to back down, thus appearing to capitulate in the face
of French diplomacy. The United States, similarly, could reasonably
have been expected to use the council-or to ignore it-to advance
Washington's own project: the maintenance of a unipolar system.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June2oo3 [251

 Michaelj Glennon
"The course of this nation," President Bush said in his 2003 State of
the Union speech, "does not depend on the decisions of others."
The likelihood is that had France, Russia, or China found itself in
the position of the United States during the Iraq crisis, each of these
countries would have used the council-or threatened to ignore it-
just as the United States did. Similarly, had Washington found itself
in the position of Paris, Moscow, or Beijing, it would likely have used
its veto in the same way they did. States act to enhance their own
power-not that of potential competitors. That is no novel insight;
it traces at least to Thucydides, who had his Athenian generals tell
the hapless Melians, "You and everybody else, having the same power
as we have, would do the same as we do." This insight involves no
normative judgment; it simply describes how nations behave.
The truth, therefore, is that the Security Council's fate never
turned on what it did or did not do on Iraq. American unipolarity had
already debilitated the council, just as bipolarity paralyzed it during
the Cold War. The old power structure gave the Soviet Union an
incentive to deadlock the council; the current power structure encour-
ages the United States to bypass it. Meanwhile, the council itself had
no good option. Approve an American attack, and it would have
seemed to rubber-stamp what it could not stop. Express disapproval of
a war, and the United States would have vetoed the attempt. Decline
to take any action, and the council would again have been ignored.
Disagreement over Iraq did not doom the council; geopolitical reality
did. That was the message of Powell's extraordinary, seemingly
contradictory declaration on November io, 20o2, that the United
States would not consider itself bound by the council's decision-
even though it expected Iraq to be declared in "material breach."
It has been argued that Resolution 1441 and its acceptance by Iraq
somehow represented a victory for the UN and a triumph of the rule
of law. But it did not. Had the United States not threatened Iraq with
the use of force, the Iraqis almost surely would have rejected the new
inspections regime. Yet such threats of force violate the charter. The
Security Council never authorized the United States to announce a
policy of regime change in Iraq or to take military steps in that direction.
Thus the council's "victory," such as it was, was a victory of diplomacy
backed by force-or more accurately, of diplomacy backed by the threat

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 Why the Security CouncilFailed
of unilateral force in violation of the charter. The unlawful threat of
unilateralism enabled the "legitimate" exercise of multilateralism.
The Security Council reaped the benefit of the charter's violation.
As surely as Resolution 1441 represented a triumph of American
diplomacy, it represented a defeat for the international rule oflaw. Once
the measure was passed after eight weeks of debate, the French, Chinese,
and Russian diplomats left the council chamber claiming that they had
not authorized the United States to strike Iraq-that 1W41 contained no
element of"automaticity." American diplomats, meanwhile, claimed
that the council had done precisely that. As for the language of the
resolution itself, it can accurately be said to lend support to both claims.
This is not the hallmark of great legislation. The first task of any
lawgiver is to speak intelligibly, to lay down clear rules in words that all
can understand and that have the same meaning for everyone. The UN'S
members have an obligation under the charter to comply with Security
Council decisions. They therefore have a right to expect the council to
render its decisions clearly. Shrinking from that task in the face of
threats undermines the rule of law.
The second, February 24 resolution, whatever its diplomatic utility,
confirmed this marginalization of the security council. Its vague terms
were directed at attracting maximal support but at the price ofjuridical
vapidity. The resolution's broad wording lent itself, as intended, to any
possible interpretation. A legal instrument that means everything,
however, also means nothing. In its death throes, it had become
more important that the council say something than that it say some-
thing important. The proposed compromise would have allowed states
to claim, once again, that private, collateral understandings gave mean-
ing to the council's empty words, as they had when Resolution 144t was
adopted. Eighty-five years after Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points,
international law's most solemn obligations had come to be memorial-
ized in winks and nods, in secret covenants, secretly arrived at.

APOLOGIES FOR IMPOTENCE

STATES AND COMMENTATORS, intent on returning the world to a

multipolar structure, have devised various strategies for responding to
the council's decline. Some European countries, such as France, believed

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June 2003 [27]

 Michaelj Glennon
that the council could overcome power imbalances and disparities of
culture and security by acting as a supranational check on American
action. To be more precise, the French hoped to use the battering ram
of the Security Council to check American power. Had it worked,
this strategy would have returned the world to multipolarity through
supranationalism. But this approach involved an inescapable dilemma:
what would have constituted success for the European supranationalists?
The French could, of course, have vetoed America's Iraq project.
But to succeed in this way would be to fail, because the declared
American intent was to proceed anyway-and in the process break
the only institutional chain with which France could hold the United
States back. Their inability to resolve this dilemma reduced the
French to diplomatic ankle-biting. France's foreign minister could
wave his finger in the face of the American secretary of state as the cam-
eras rolled, or ambush him by raising the subject of Iraq at a meeting
called on another subject. But the inability of the Security Council to
actually stop a war that France had clamorously opposed underscored
French weakness as much as it did the impotence of the council.
Commentators, meanwhile, developed verbal strategies to forestall
perceived American threats to the rule of law. Some argued in a com-
munitarian spirit that countries should act in the common interest,
rather than, in the words of Wdrine, "making decisions under [their]
own interpretations and for [their] own interests." The United States
should remain engaged in the United Nations, argued Slaughter, because
other nations "need a forum ... in which to ... restrain the United
States." "Whatever became, asked The New Yorker's Hendrik
Hertzberg, "ofthe conservative suspicion of untrammeled power... ?
Where is the conservative belief in limited government, in checks and
balances? Burke spins in his grave. Madison and Hamilton torque it
up, too." Washington, Hertzberg argued, should voluntarily relinquish
its power and forgo hegemony in favor of a multipolar world in which
the United States would be equal with and balanced by other powers.
No one can doubt the utility of checks and balances, deployed
domestically, to curb the exercise of arbitrary power. Setting ambition
against ambition was the framers' formula for preserving liberty. The
problem with applying this approach in the international arena, however,
is that it would require the United States to act against its own interests,

[ 28] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3

 Why the Security Council Failed
to advance the cause of its power competitors-and, indeed, of power
competitors whose values are very different from its own. Hertzberg
and others seem not to recognize that it simply is not realistic to expect
the United States to permit itself to be checked by China or Russia.
After all, would China, France, or Russia-or any other country-
voluntarily abandon preeminent power if it found itself in the position
of the United States? Remember too that France now aims to narrow
the disparity between itself and the United States-but not the im-
balance between itself and lesser powers (some of which Chirac has
chided for acting as though "not well brought-up") that might check
France's own strength.
There is, moreover, little reason to believe that some new and
untried locus of power, possibly under the influence of states with a
long history of repression, would be more trustworthy than would the
exercise of hegemonic power by the United States. Those who would
entrust the planet's destiny to some nebulous guardian of global
pluralism seem strangely oblivious of the age-old question: Who
guards that guardian? And how will that guardian preserve interna-
tional peace-by asking dictators to legislate prohibitions against
weapons of mass destruction (as the French did with Saddam)?
In one respect James Madison is on point, although the commu-
nitarians have failed to note it. In drafting the U.S. Constitution,
Madison and the other founders confronted very much the same
dilemma that the world community confronts today in dealing with
American hegemony. The question, as the framers posed it, was why
the powerful should have any incentive to obey the law. Madison's
answer, in the Federalist Papers, was that the incentive lies in an
assessment of future circumstances-in the unnerving possibility that
the strong may one day become weak and then need the protection
of the law. It is the "uncertainty of their condition," Madison wrote,
that prompts the strong to play by the rules today. But if the future were
certain, or if the strong believed it to be certain, and if that future
forecast a continued reign of power, then the incentive on the power-
ful to obey the law would fall away. Hegemony thus sits in tension
with the principle of equality. Hegemons have ever resisted subjecting
their power to legal constraint. When Britannia ruled the waves,
Whitehall opposed limits on the use of force to execute its naval

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2o3 [29]

 MichaeJ.Glennon
blockades-limits that were vigorously supported by the new United
States and other weaker states. Any system dominated by a "hyperpower"
will have great difficulty maintaining or establishing an authentic rule
of law. That is the great Madisonian dilemma confronted by the in-
ternational community today. And that is the dilemma that played out
so dramatically at the Security Council in the fateful clash this winter.

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

THE HIGH DUTY ofthe Security Council, assigned it by the charter, was
the maintenance of international peace and security. The charter laid
out a blueprint for managing this task under the council's auspices.
The UN's founders constructed a Gothic edifice of multiple levels,
with grand porticos, ponderous buttresses, and lofty spires-and with
convincing faqades and scary gargoyles to keep away evil spirits.
In the winter of 2003, that entire edifice came crashing down. It is
tempting, in searching for reasons, to return to the blueprints and
blame the architects. The fact is, however, that the fault for the council's
collapse lies elsewhere: in the shifting ground beneath the construct.
As became painfully clear this year, the terrain on which the UN's temple
rested was shot through with fissures. The ground was unable to support
humanity's lofty legalist shrine. Power disparities, cultural disparities,
and differing views on the use of force toppled the temple.
Law normally influences conduct; that is, of course, its purpose.
At their best, however, international legalist institutions, regimes, and
rules relating to international security are largely epiphenomenal-
that is, reflections of underlying causes. They are not autonomous,
independent determinants of state behavior but are the effects of
larger forces that shape that behavior. As the deeper currents shift and
as new realities and new relations (new "phenomena") emerge, states
reposition themselves to take advantage of new opportunities for en-
hancing their power. Violations of security rules occur when that
repositioning leaves states out of sync with fixed institutions that can-
not adapt. What were once working rules become paper rules.
This process occurs even with the best-drafted rules to maintain
international security, those that once reflected underlying geopolitical
dynamics. As for the worst rules-those drafted without regard to the

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 Why the Security Council Failed
dynamics-they last even less time and often are discarded as soon as
compliance is required. In either case, validity ultimately proves
ephemeral, as the UN'S decline has illustrated. Its Military Staff Com-
mittee died almost immediately. The charter's use-of-force regime, on
the other hand, petered out over a period of years. The Security Council
itself hobbled along during the Cold War, underwent a brief resurgence
in the 199os, and then flamed out with Kosovo and Iraq.
Some day policymakers will return to the drawing board. When
they do, the first lesson of the Security Council's breakdown should
become the first principle of institutional engineering: what the design
should look like must be a function of what it can look like. A new in-
ternational legal order, if it is to function effectively, must reflect the
underlying dynamics of power, culture, and security. If it does not-
if its norms are again unrealistic and do not reflect the way states
actually behave and the real forces to which they respond-the com-
munity of nations will again end up with mere paper rules. The UN
system's dysfunctionality was not, at bottom, a legal problem. It was
a geopolitical one. The juridical distortions that proved debilitating
were effects, not causes. "The UN was founded on the premise,"
Slaughter has observed in its defense, "that some truths transcend
politics." Precisely-and therein lay the problem. If they are to comprise
working rules rather than paper ones, legalist institutions-and the
"truths" on which they act-must flow from political commitments,
not vice versa.
A second, related lesson from the UN's failure is thus that rules must
flow from the way states actually behave, not how they ought to behave.
"The first requirement of a sound body of law," wrote Oliver Wendell
Holmes, "is that it should correspond with the actual feelings and
demands of the community, whether right or wrong." This insight will
be anathema to continuing believers in natural law, the armchair
philosophers who "know" what principles must control states, whether
states accept those principles or not. But these idealists might remind
themselves that the international legal system is, again, voluntarist. For
better or worse, its rules are based on state consent. States are not bound
by rules to which they do not agree. Like it or not, that is the Westphalian
system, and it is still very much with us. Pretending that the system can
be based on idealists' own subjective notions of morality won't make it so.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June2003 1311

 Michaelj Glennon
Architects of an authentic new world order must therefore move
beyond castles in the air--beyond imaginary truths that transcend
politics-such as, for example, just war theory and the notion of the
sovereign equality of states. These and other stale dogmas rest on archaic
notions of universal truth, justice, and morality. The planet today is
fractured as seldom before by competing ideas of transcendent truth,
by true believers on all continents who think, with Shaw's Caesar,
"that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature." Medieval
ideas about natural law and natural rights ("nonsense on stilts," Bentham
called them) do little more than provide convenient labels for encultur-
ated preferences-yet serve as rallying cries for belligerents everywhere.
As the world moves into a new, transitional era, the old moralist
vocabulary should be cleared away so that decision-makers can focus
pragmatically on what is really at stake. The real questions for achieving
international peace and security are clear-cut: What are our objectives?
What means have we chosen to meet those objectives? Are those
means working? If not, why not? Are better alternatives available? If
so, what tradeoffs are required? Are we willing to make those
tradeoffs? What are the costs and benefits of competing alternatives?
What support would they command?
Answering those questions does not require an overarching legalist
metaphysic. There is no need for grand theory and no place for
self-righteousness. The life of the law, Holmes said, is not logic but
experience. Humanity need not achieve an ultimate consensus on
good and evil. The task before it is empirical, not theoretical. Getting
to a consensus will be accelerated by dropping abstractions, moving
beyond the polemical rhetoric of "right" and "wrong," and focusing
pragmatically on the concrete needs and preferences of real people who
endure suffering that may be unnecessary. Policymakers may not yet
be able to answer these questions. The forces that brought down the
Security Council-the "deeper sources of international instability," in
George Kennan's words-will not go away. But at least policymakers
can get the questions right.
One particularly pernicious outgrowth of natural law is the idea
that states are sovereign equals. As Kennan pointed out, the notion of
sovereign equality is a myth; disparities among states "make a mockery"
of the concept. Applied to states, the proposition that all are equal is

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 Why the Security CouncilFailed
belied by evidence everywhere that they are not-neither in their
power, nor in their wealth, nor in their respect for international order
or for human rights. Yet the principle of sovereign equality animates
the entire structure of the United Nations-and disables it from
effectively addressing emerging crises, such as access to WMD, that
derive precisely from the presupposition of sovereign equality. Treating
states as equals prevents treating individuals as equals: if Yugoslavia
truly enjoyed a right to nonintervention equal to that of every other
state, its citizens would have been denied human rights equal to those
of individuals in other states, because their human rights could be
vindicated only by intervention. This year, the irrationality of treating
states as equals was brought home as never before when it emerged
that the will of the Security Council could be determined by Angola,
Guinea, or Cameroon-nations whose representatives sat side by
side and exercised an equal voice and vote with those of Spain, Pakistan,
and Germany. The equality principle permitted any rotating council
member to cast a de facto veto (by denying a majority the critical
ninth vote necessary for potential victory). Granting a de jure veto to
the permanent five was, of course, the charter's intended antidote
to unbridled egalitarianism. But it didn't work: the de jure veto
simultaneously undercorrected and overcorrected for the problem,
lowering the United States to the level of France and raising France
above India, which did not even hold a rotating seat on the council
during the Iraq debate. Yet the de jure veto did nothing to dilute the
rotating members' de facto veto. The upshot was a Security Council that
reflected the real world's power structure with the accuracy of a
fun-house mirror-and performed accordingly. Hence the third
great lesson of last winter: institutions cannot be expected to correct
distortions that are embedded in their own structures.

STAYING ALIVE?

THERE IS LITTLE REASON to believe, then, that the Security Council

will soon be resuscitated to tackle nerve-center security issues, however
the war against Iraq turns out. If the war is swift and successful, if the
United States uncovers Iraqi WMD that supposedly did not exist, and
if nation-building in Iraq goes well, there likely will be little impulse

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June2003 [33]

 MichaelJ Glennon
to revive the council. In that event, the council will have gone the way
of the League of Nations. American decision-makers will thereafter
react to the council much as they did to NATO following Kosovo: Never
again. Ad hoc coalitions of the willing will effectively succeed it.
If, on the other hand, the war is long and bloody, if the United
States does not uncover Iraqi WMD, and if nation-building in Iraq
falters, the war's opponents will benefit, claiming that the United
States would not have run aground if only it had abided by the charter.
But the Security Council will not profit from America's ill fortune.
Coalitions of adversaries will emerge and harden, lying in wait in
the council and making it, paradoxically, all the more difficult for the
United States to participate dutifully in a forum in which an increasingly
ready veto awaits it.
The Security Council will still on occasion prove useful for dealing
with matters that do not bear directly on the upper hierarchy of world
power. Every major country faces imminent danger from terrorism,
for example, and from the new surge in WMD proliferation. None will
gain by permitting these threats to reach fruition. Yet even when
the required remedy is nonmilitary, enduring suspicions among the
council's permanent members and the body's loss of credibility will
impair its effectiveness in dealing with these issues.
However the war turns out, the United States will likely confront
pressures to curb its use of force. These it must resist. Chirac's
admonitions notwithstanding, war is not "always, always, the worst
solution." The use of force was a better option than diplomacy in
dealing with numerous tyrants, from Milosevic to Hitler. It may,
regrettably, sometimes emerge as the only and therefore the best way
to deal with WMD proliferation. If judged by the suffering of non-
combatants, the use of force can often be more humane than eco-
nomic sanctions, which starve more children than soldiers (as their
application to Iraq demonstrated). The greater danger after the sec-
ond Persian Gulf War is not that the United States will use force
when it should not, but that, chastened by the war's horror, the pub-
lic's opposition, and the economy's gyrations, it will not use force
when it should. That the world is at risk of cascading disorder places
a greater rather than a lesser responsibility on the United States to use
its power assertively to halt or slow the pace of disintegration.

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 Why the Security CouncilFailed
All who believe in the rule of law are eager to see the great caravan
of humanity resume its march. In moving against the centers of disorder,
the United States could profit from a beneficent sharing of its power
to construct new international mechanisms directed at maintaining
global peace and security. American hegemony will not last forever.
Prudence therefore counsels creating realistically structured institu-
tions capable of protecting or advancing U.S. national interests even
when military power is unavailable or unsuitable. Such institutions
could enhance American preeminence, potentially prolonging the
period of unipolarity.
Yet legalists must be hard-headed about the possibility of devising
a new institutional framework anytime soon to replace the battered
structure of the Security Council. The forces that led to the council's
undoing will not disappear. Neither a triumphant nor a chastened United
States will have sufficient incentive to resubmit to old constraints in
new contexts. Neither vindicated nor humbled competitors will have
sufficient disincentives to forgo efforts to impose those constraints.
Nations will continue to seek greater power and security at the expense
of others. Nations will continue to disagree on when force should
be used. Like it or not, that is the way of the world. In resuming
humanity's march toward the rule of law, recognizing that reality
will be the first step.0

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2003 [35]

 How to Build
a Democratic Iraq
Adeed Damisha and Karen Dawisha

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

THUS FAR, most of the endless talk about the war in Iraq has focused on
several issues: the scale of the operation, Washington's motivation, and
the rift in the Atlantic alliance. It is now safe to assume, however, that if
and when war comes (as of this writing, the battle had yet to begin), the
United States and its allies will win, Saddam Hussein and his cronies will
be toppled, and some sort of massive military occupation will follow.
In the aftermath of the war, the occupiers will focus on immediate
tasks, such as ensuring order, providing relief to the long-suffering Iraqi
people, and asserting control over the country. Very quickly, however-
even before they have met these goals-the victorious powers will have
to answer another pressing question: How, exactly, should they go
about rebuilding the country? Saying simply that postwar Iraq should
be democratic will be the easy part. Just about everyone agrees on that,
and indeed, for many this end will justify the entire operation. The
more difficult question will be how to make it happen.
Fortunately, the job of building democracy in Iraq, although
difficult, may not be quite as hard as many critics of the war have
warned. Iraq today possesses several features that will facilitate the
reconstruction effort. Despite Saddam's long repression, democratic

ADEED DAWI SHA is Professor of Political Science at Miami University,

Ohio. His latest book is Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From
Triumph to Despair. KAREN DAWI SHA is Walter E. Havighurst Professor
of Russian Studies at Miami University, Ohio. Her books include the four-
volume DemocratizationandAuthoritarianismin Post-CommunistSocieties.

[36]
 How to Build a DemocraticIraq
institutions are not entirely alien to the country. Under the Hashemite
monarchy, which ruled from 1921 until 1958, Iraq adopted a parlia-
mentary system modeled on that of its colonial master, the United
Kingdom. Political parties existed, even in the opposition, and dissent
and disagreement were generally tolerated. Debates in parliament
were often vigorous, and legislators were usually allowed to argue and
vote against the government without fear of retribution. Although
the palace and the cabinet set the agenda, parliament often managed to
influence policy. And this pluralism extended to Iraq's press: prior
to the 1958 revolution that toppled the monarchy, 23 independent
newspapers were published in Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra alone.
Not that the Iraqi kingdom always refrained from electoral fraud,
harassment of opponents, or abuse of emergency powers. The govern-
ment also occasionally banned newspapers that dared to indulge in
particularly virulent criticism ofthe regime (although the bans typically
lasted for only short periods). To be sure, Iraq's history-both under
the monarchy and especially after the 1958 coup-has been filled with
plenty of authoritarianism, tribalism, and ethnic and sectarian violence.
The postwar reconstruction of Germany and Japan, however, not to
mention the more recent transitions from communism in eastern
and central Europe, all testify to the way in which democratic political
institutions can change such attitudes in a country-often quite
quickly. Having said that, the success or failure of democracy in Iraq
will depend on whether the country's new political institutions take into
consideration its unique social and communal makeup. It is therefore
important to start talking about specifics. What should the blueprint
for a future democratic Iraq look like?

LET'S GET FEDERAL

IRAQ'S ETHNIC and sectarian diversity-the splits between Kurds,

Arabs, and Turkmen, and between Shi'ites and Sunnis-is usually
seen as an impediment to building a stable democracy there. The fact
is, however, that all this antagonism could serve a constructive purpose:
having factions zealously check each others' power could actually
promote democracy at the expense of rigid communal particularism.
The trick is to work out a constitutional arrangement that makes

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May /June 2003 [37]

 Adeed DawishaandKaren Dawisha
sense of Iraq's social and cultural mosaic, transforming diversity into
an agent for positive change.
For that reason, democratic Iraq must have a federal system of
government. Already, the Kurds-who have enjoyed freedom from
Baghdad's control since the establishment of the northern no-fly
zone-have been adamant in demanding such a system. But all Iraqis
would benefit from federalism, as the example of other current federal
states-the United States, Germany, Russia, and now the United
Kingdom-suggests.
In a federal Iraq, both Baghdad and the regions should be equal
guardians of the constitution. Monitoring the rights and arbitrating
disputes between these power bases should be the responsibility of a
strong federal judiciary. As other federal states have shown, constitutional
amendments to change this arrangement should be allowed only with
the concurrence of both houses of the legislature, the head of state,
and all federal units. Allowing the center to bypass the regions in
amending the constitution quickly dilutes local rights and increases
regional antipathy to central control-as occurred in Russia before
the December 1993 referendum imposed a new federal constitution.
Successful federal systems also divide power to raise and distribute
revenues between the capital and the periphery. Central revenues can
be used to redistribute resources from rich to poor regions, whereas
local revenues support local economic and cultural initiatives. Such
revenue-sharing arrangements are critical because power follows
resources; when the central government denies regions the right to
raise and spend money, it is tantamount to denying them authority.
Revenue-sharing, on the other hand, can also decrease the temptation
for one ethnic group to either capture the state or seek separation.
That said, as in other federal states, certain strategic assets such as
Iraq's petroleum must remain in the hands of the central government.
Local governments should in general have widespread control over
their territories. This includes responsibility for all citizens in a given
region, not just those of a given ethnicity. The now-collapsed Israeli
efforts to give the Palestinian Authority control over some Arab activity
in the West Bank and Gaza, while Jerusalem retained sovereignty
over Jews in the territories, was a doomed formula: modern states,
with their massive infrastructures, must be organized territorially and

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 How to Build a DemocraticIraq
can function only in that manner. Limiting authorities to caring for
their own kind only reinforces tribal, ethnic, and religious divisions,
which can undermine democracy. For these reasons, any attempts on
the part ofIraq's Arab elites to once again grant the Kurds autonomy-
without also giving them substantial control over their territory as a
unit in the federal structure-will likewise be doomed to fail.
Admittedly, federalism does not always satisfy the aspirations of
groups bent on independence, as demonstrated by the conflicts in
Northern Ireland, Kosovo, and Chechnya. At the same time, devolution
of power has succeeded in stemming the rise of separatism in the other
ethnic republics of Russia, in Scotland, and in Montenegro-and
could do the same for Iraq, if properly handled.
The question therefore becomes how to increase the chances that
federalism will work in Iraq. To begin with, it would be a mistake to
create only three ethnically or religiously based federal units: a Kurdish
north, a Shi'ite south, and a Sunni center. Such a structure would
only entrench current divisions and might even lead to ethnic cleansing.
A far better idea would be to maintain Iraq's present administrative
structure, under which the country is divided into 18 units. Keeping
these provincial boundaries would serve the interests of Iraq's vari-
ous communities, while avoiding inordinate emphasis on ethnic and
sectarian concerns and increasing healthy political competition for
resources-even within various ethnic or religious communities.
Each of the 18 units should be allowed to elect a local government
and send representatives to the upper chamber of a new parliament.
Creating an upper house in parliament that-like the German upper
house or both houses of the U.S. Congress-is based on regional
representation would give regions a voice at the center, check the
centralization of power, and, by providing a second set of local elites,
minimize regional corruption. Such a system would be far better for
Iraq than a centralized one, along the lines of France's old prefect
system or that newly adopted by Russia, which lets Moscow appoint
the governors of the seven new super-regions. Such centralized systems
allow for enormous abuse, especially if the executive branch is not
particularly devoted to the rule of law. The postwar occupiers of Iraq
should therefore avoid even temporarily appointing Iraqi governors,
since it may prove difficult to displace them once the occupation ends.

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 Adeed Dawishaand Karen Dawisha

WHO'S IN CHARGE

EXECUTIVE BRANCHES of government are usually structured in one

of two ways: unified in a single, strong presidency combining the
powers of the head of state and the head of government, or divided
between a head of state (a president or monarch) and a head of gov-
ernment (a prime minister). What would be the advantages and
disadvantages of each for Iraq?
In strong unitary systems, presidents are normally directly elected,
enjoy wide latitude in ruling by executive order, can call referendums
to override legislation, may unilaterally declare states of emergency
under conditions prescribed by the constitution, and usually have
broad powers ofpolitical, administrative, and even judicial appointment.
Such presidents are the primi inter pares of the branches of govern-
ment and, depending on their performance and perceived legitimacy,
can be extremely popular-as, for example, was Charles de Gaulle in
the first years of the Fifth Republic or Boris Yeltsin until 1993.
Too much, however, depends on the character of the individual
president, and thus the disadvantages of such a system outweigh
its benefits. In all but the strongest democracies, such systems are
vulnerable to abuse, to coups d'6tat by opposition forces, or to self-
overthrow by sitting presidents who refuse to leave office once their
terms are up. Indeed, one need only glance at the unitary presidencies
of the Middle East and Central Asia to be reminded how prone they
are to corruption, repression, and self-aggrandizement. Getting strong
presidents to leave office is particularly difficult and, outside the West,
rarely happens without the help of a coup, assassination, or natural
death. In sum, then, strong presidencies can be judged less a mainstay
of democracy than a blunt instrument for its demise.
One alternative system that might be proposed for Iraq, especially
given its divisions between Arabs and Kurds and Shi' ites and Sunnis,
is the Bosnian model: a shared presidency, in which each ethnic com-
munity receives a seat on a presidential triumvirate. Agreed to as part
of the U.S.-brokered Dayton accord, this unwieldy arrangement was
the price that had to be paid for an end to the fighting. It has, however,
been beset by untold problems and has resulted in almost no state
building. Each of Bosnia's three presidents is elected by, and therefore

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 GETTY

The once andfuture kingdom ? Iraq'sFaisalII, 1956

responsible only to, the electorate of one of the three ethnic commu-
nities. Unfortunately, this has reinforced the tendency of Bosnia's
rival substate authorities to maintain the fiefdoms they built during
the war, leaving leaders no incentive to cooperate. Bosnia's Serbian
ministate in particular has remained entrenched and continues to act
as a vassal ofultranationalists in Belgrade. Iraq's Shi' ites might likewise
be tempted to form similar bonds with Iran, and Iraqi Kurds could
look to their brethren in Turkey, Iran, and Syria-rendering a Dayton-
style shared presidency particularly dangerous for the country.
A weak but unified presidency, on the other hand, would avoid
both the Bosnia scenario and the problem of creeping authoritarianism.
In weak presidential systems, such as in the Czech Republic, Germany,
Hungary, Israel, and Italy, the president is typically chosen by parliament

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 Adeed DawishaandKaren Dawisha
and has limited, largely symbolic powers, such as recommending judges,
approving constitutional amendments, and signing laws and treaties.
In such systems, presidents typically cannot initiate constitutional
changes, unilaterally call referendums, or prorogue parliament. The
prime minister or chancellor, not the president, is the one who heads
the government and does most of the work of a chief executive.
Splitting the executive between a weak president and a prime minis-
ter has a better chance of sustaining democracy in Iraq. This division
would allow political dueling to take place within the democratic
tent, and not in the Iraqi street. A prime minister chosen by, and
dependent on maintaining, a majority in the lower house of a bicameral
parliament would serve as an institutional buttress against presidential
abuse and would keep the affairs of the state running. Meanwhile,
a charismatic president, chosen by the upper house (itself composed of
the elected representatives of the 18 federal
A constitutional units, as well as notables and professionals)
would function as the symbolic figurehead
monarchy in Iraq could of the Iraqi nation.
become a symbol Another option that might work well for
of the country's unity Iraq is restoring the Hashemite monarchy
under strict constitutional limits. Because
and civility, the Hashemites share the faith of Iraq's elite
Sunni minority, restoration would reassure
the Sunnis that the inevitable change in the balance of power will not
lead to their marginalization. The monarchy also has the advantage of
being well connected with tradition, which would make it a stabilizing
force during a time of uncertainty and a barrier against extremism. A
constitutional monarchy could become the symbol of Iraq's unity and
civility and act as the custodian of its positive traditional values. A
monarchy would also help reassure Saudi Arabia and the other Persian
Gulf states that they would no longer face the kind of threat Republican
Iraq has long posed.
Two obvious candidates for the throne would be SherifAli bin al-
Hussein of Iraq or Prince Hassan bin Talal ofJordan. Both are cousins
of Iraq's last king, Faisal II. Sherif Ali, a British-trained economist,
is the current head of the Constitutional Monarchy Movement, an
Iraqi opposition group. Prince Hassan, a graduate of Oxford University

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 How to Build a DemocraticIraq
and the younger brother of Jordan's late King Hussein, has been a
long-time proponent of greater democracy in the Arab world.
Of course, some Iraqis and outsiders will oppose a restoration of
the kingdom on the grounds that monarchies are a thing of the past-
regressive and outdated. It is important to remember, however, that
monarchies can actually help safeguard democracy. After all, when
Spain restored its monarchy in 1975 after 40 years of Francisco
Franco's rigid authoritarianism, the king served as a powerful guarantor
of stability and progress. Moreover, in the Arab world today it is not
the presidential systems but the monarchies-Bahrain, Jordan,
Kuwait, Morocco, and Qatar-that are leading the way in democratic
reform. Whatever the theoretical benefits of reinstating a limited
constitutional monarchy in Iraq, however, it should be done only with
popular support, as demonstrated through a referendum.

GETTING READY TO CHOOSE

TALK OF REFERENDUMS leads naturally to the next question about

postwar Iraq: If the country opts for a weak presidential system with
a split executive, how should the president be chosen? By direct or
indirect elections?
There would be advantages to both. Direct elections, in which the
entire population votes for president, theoretically encourage rival
candidates to position themselves at the center of the political debate,
in order to maximize their chances of winning as much support as
possible. At the same time, however, democratic theorists from the
ancient Greeks through de Tocqueville have observed that direct
elections favor populist and antidemocratic candidates. It is because
of this fear that presidents in several new central European democracies
are chosen by parliament.
In Iraq, where some 6o percent of the population is Shi'ite, direct
elections could be expected to shift the political balance away from
the minority (but traditionally dominant) Sunnis. Although such an
outcome should not in and of itself be thwarted, direct elections
should be avoided lest they allow the election of a Shi'ite president
who unfairly favors the south or promotes an increased role for religion
in state affairs. Selecting the president through indirect elections-

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 Adeed Dawishaand KarenDawisha
for example, making it a choice of the upper house of parliament,
perhaps by a super-majority-would, on the other hand, make the
president beholden to, and dependent on, the success of another
democratically chosen and regionally diverse body.
Prime ministers generally are leaders of the parliamentary majority
in the lower house. The president and prime minister thus have
different power bases and may come from different parties. During
periods of so-called cohabitation, gridlock might increase, but so
would the need for consensus politics. In countries where dire economic
conditions demand strong and swift government, such a system can
seem less than ideal. But democratic Iraq's major problem will not be
economic hardship; the real threat will come from the concentration
of great wealth in one industry (oil production) that is located primarily
in the Shi'ite south. Getting all Iraqis to share this resource for the
common good will be difficult, but institutions that diffuse power will
have the best chance of success.
Turning to parliamentary elections, Iraq will face two key issues:
how to draw the boundaries of its electoral districts, and how many
members should be elected from each. During the monarchical period,
Iraq was divided into 14 provinces, each of which was subdivided into
electoral districts of 20,ooo voters. These districts each elected a single
member, and the complaint was often voiced that tribal leaders pre-
dominated at the expense of urban populations. Iraq is vastly more
urbanized today, however. Thus it seems best to draw electoral
boundaries in a way that will give greater influence to city dwellers.
Doing so will also serve to strengthen secularist tendencies and decrease
the possibility of rural and tribal domination of the lower house.
As for the second question, in Iraq's case there would be several
advantages to having multimember districts (MMDS). For one thing,
MMDS allow a district's diversity to be more clearly mirrored in par-
liament. In Iraq, MMDS could thus increase the representation of the
professional middle class, as well as local minorities, including Sunnis
in Basra, Christians in Baghdad, Turkmen in Kirkuk, Arabs in Kurdish
areas, and Kurds in Arab regions. In addition, MMOS elsewhere have
been shown to boost the representation of women in parliaments.
Given that Iraqi women already boast high levels of education and
professional attainment, increasing their input in government would

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 How to Build a DemocraticIraq
contribute considerably to democratic stability. MMDS would also
allow for tribal representation without allowing it to dominate.
Another way to ensure representation of women and minorities
in Iraq would be to set aside guaranteed seats in parliament. For example,
Iraq's pre-1958 monarchical constitution reserved a certain number of
seats for Christians and Jews. More recent examples of set-aside
seats, however, show that they cement rather than eradicate ethnic
divisions. For example, the guarantee of representation to diaspora
Croats in Franjo Tudjman's Croatia was enacted to ensure that other
minorities would not outvote Croats. But the provision gave the foreign
Croats rights without any responsibilities, reinforced ultranationalism
within the ruling party, and limited the development ofinterethnic trust.
Similarly, the collapse of the Good Friday power-sharing agreement
in Northern Ireland, which included set-aside seats for Catholics and
Protestants, has further underlined the need to avoid any quota system.
The next question is whether Iraq should enact a mixed system
of voting, in which half the seats in parliament would be chosen by
elections in MMDS as described above, and half would be chosen by party
list. Under such a system, voters would get two ballots at each
election, one for district representatives, and another for nationwide
parties. Countries that currently feature mixed systems include
Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, and Venezuela. The
advantage of such an approach for Iraq is that it would allow voters
to have direct and personal contact with their local representatives
while also encouraging the development of nationwide parties with na-
tional, rather than regional or sectarian, agendas. Usually, in order to
run candidates in the party-list section of the election, parties need to
have offices and a large number of registered members in most elec-
toral districts. Using such standards would ensure that purely regional
parties (which may be ethnic and sectarian) could still win individual
seats in the lower house through MMD elections. But if they lacked
offices and a nationwide membership, they would be ineligible to run in
the party-list part of the campaign. Therefore, in Iraq, for example, Kur-
dish representation in parliament would be limited to seats won in MMDS
unless the Kurds joined with others to form a truly nationwide party.
As for the upper house, following the example of Germany's
Bundesrat, each of Iraq's 18 federal units would constitute one MMD,

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 Adeed DawishaandKaren Dawisha
with the number of representatives per district determined by that
district's population size. Legislators elected this way would constitute
half of the upper body. The remaining half could be filled by elected
representatives of a broad cross-section of society, such as tribal and
regional notables and key representatives of professional associations
(university deans and presidents, lawyers, the heads of women's asso-
ciations, journalists, doctors, teachers, engineers, industrialists, and
merchants). Allowing parliamentary representation by professional
associations would stimulate and support the re-emergence of civil
society so vital for democracy, while allowing
Should the military, the tribal representation would reflect Iraq's
history and traditions.
clergy, and the Baath In accordance with typical parliamentary
Party be banned from procedure in other countries, the upper
I i house would not have the power to initiate
Iraqi politics? legislation, but would be able to review and
send back legislation deemed incompatible with the constitution
and the federal system. The upper house could also be given a role in
approving judicial appointments and amendments to the constitution.
Providing federal units and organized interests a seat at the democratic
table, even if it is in the chamber with lesser powers for everyday rule,
would enhance constitutional continuity and deliberation.
In discussing electoral and party systems for Iraq, the question
arises whether certain groups that have undermined democracy in the
region-specifically, the clergy, the military, and the Baath Party-
should be banned from politics altogether. As for the clerics, they
could be allowed to enter the upper house as representatives of their
communities (Muslim and Christian) provided they accepted the
secular character of the constitution. After all, complete exclusion of
the clergy has usually had disastrous consequences in the Middle
East, whereas the United Kingdom, where bishops serve in the
House of Lords, has shown that religious representatives can exercise
a benign influence. As for Iraqi military officers, those not barred
from office for complicity in the crimes of the past should be allowed
to stand for election-if, that is, they are retired from active service.
The Baath Party, however, should be banned altogether in order to
stigmatize it for its responsibility for the institutionalization of

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 How to Build a DemocraticIraq
tyranny under Saddam Hussein. Officials who participated in torture
and other human rights violations should be prosecuted and
blocked from future participation in public life. And the thousands
of midlevel Baath Party careerists should be allowed to return to
political life only if they join new parties. Banning the party would
also avoid the mistake made in some post-Soviet states, where reformed
communist parties were allowed to keep their existing assets,
thereby upsetting the level playing field necessary for the emergence
of a competitive party system.

DEMOCRATIZING THE MIDDLE CLASS

As ALMOST ALL political theorists agree, a fully developed middle

class is essential to an effective and sustainable democracy. Fortunately,
even after 12 years of debilitating sanctions, a substantial and highly
educated middle class has persisted in Iraq. Thus far, however, this
group has not pushed for democratization or reform. This is partly
because Iraq's middle class, like other sectors of the country's society,
has been terrorized by Saddam's regime into submission and inaction.
But there are other reasons.
Democratic theory holds that independent and self-sustaining
middle classes create the basis for democratic civil life. This notion is
highlighted when one glances back at the second half of the nine-
teenth century and contrasts the experiences of the United Kingdom
and Germany. During this period, democracy was rapidly incorporated
into the British body politic through a series of parliamentary acts
that not only expanded the electorate, but also placed ever increasing
limitations on the power of the monarchy and the aristocracy. In
Germany's Second Reich, by contrast, political elites dominated by
the nobility ruled through a strong authoritarian system, and chancellors
and their cabinets were not answerable to the Reichstag. Britain's
progress toward democracy was spurred by an entrepreneurial middle
class largely independent of the state. In Germany, the economy
was much more closely connected to the government, and the indus-
trialization of the country occurred as a result of the alliance between
the state and the traditional elites. There was no robust middle class
to agitate for greater freedoms and representation.

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 Adeed Dawisha andKaren Dawisha
Iraq's middle class today is more like nineteenth-century Germany's
than the United Kingdom's. As in many other Arab countries, much
of Iraq's middle class remains directly dependent on the state, pri-
marily through employment in the vast bureaucracy, in state-owned
industries, in military and security agencies, and in Baathist political
bureaus. Moreover, thanks to Iraq's immense oil wealth, government
revenues come mainly from oil sales and not taxation, which further
adds to middle-class docility.
In order to stimulate entrepreneurship and strengthen the free
market, postwar Iraq must begin the process of transferring resources
from the public to the private sector. This shift should have an
enormous political payoff: the development of a self-sustaining
middle class that will become more proactive in promoting democ-
ratic institutions. A proper taxation system should also gradually be
introduced; only then will the middle class demand accountability
from the government.
Helping orient the middle class toward democracy is also im-
portant because it is the middle class that fills the ranks of any
bureaucracy. Bureaucracies, known for their rigid adherence to
legal rules and to hierarchies, are often not ideal agents for foster-
ing democratic values. These impediments substantially increase,
however, when bureaucracies are oversized and corrupt, as is Iraq's.
It is therefore imperative to improve the country's civil servants, so
they will not impede democratic growth.
Not unlike the rest of the Arab world, Iraq's bureaucracy today is
simply a vehicle for ensuring full employment. This has resulted in
allying ever larger segments of the middle class with the government,
creating an abiding sense of dependence on, and acquiescence to, the
state and its institutions. In order to lessen this dependency and
improve efficiency, the current size of the bureaucracy needs to be
reduced considerably.
Inefficiency and corruption would also diminish if entry into
the civil service were based on merit alone; without regard for
sect, ethnicity, or political affiliation. Making such a change
would not be impossible, or even very difficult. True, in Saddam's
political regime, unqualified but loyal employees were given posts
of high responsibility. But the culture of merit is in fact embedded

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 How to Build a DemocraticIraq
in the Iraqi consciousness. The most visible example of this is the
national baccalaureate exam, which for decades has been taken at
the end of high school. This exam has, in many ways, acted as a
great equalizer; children of humble origins and resources who
achieve high scores get a free education in the country's most
prestigious colleges or are sent on scholarships abroad. Despite
complaints of nepotism and influence peddling, the baccalaureate
has also functioned as the main determinant of one's future career,
and the great anxiety it engenders among all Iraqi high schoolers
and their parents, rich and poor, testifies to its neutrality. To build
on this foundation, a civil service college, modeled on the French
Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), could be established not
only to teach administrative sciences but also to train future civil
servants in democratic values and practices. In order to make the
bureaucracy smaller and more selective, civil servants should also
be paid more. Unlike in Afghanistan, however, this will not be
beyond the means of Iraq, a country with the second largest oil
reserves in the world.

SETTING THE STANDARD

Fo R THE SAKE of all parties involved, the American endeavor in Iraq

must not end in a more agreeable dictatorship or a successor regime
that promises nothing beyond greater cooperation with Washington.
The United States' standing in the world rests not only on its might,
but also on the democratic values that it espouses and propagates.
The country and its allies therefore cannot shrink from setting Iraq
on a democratic path. Not only will Arab and international opposition
to regime change be assuaged if a democracy results; building
democracy in Baghdad is also the best way to eliminate the threat of
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Restructuring Iraq's political system will be laden with difficulties,
but it will certainly be feasible. At the same time, the blueprint for
Iraq's democracy must reflect the unique features of Iraqi society.
Once the system is in place, its benefits will quickly become evident
to Iraq's various communities; if it brings economic prosperity
(hardly unlikely given the country's wealth), the postwar structure

FOREIGN AFFAIRS. May/June2003 [49]

 Adeed Dawisbaand Karen Dawisha
will gradually, yet surely, acquire legitimacy. As is shown by the
eastern European example, where ex-communist dictatorships have
now lined up to join NATO and the European Union, putting in
place democratic political institutions that function properly, meet
the particular needs of a given society, and deliver the goods can
rather quickly produce "habituation"-that is, inculcate democratic
habits in the population that become well entrenched and resilient.
A democratic federal system would turn Iraq into the standard
against which other Arab governments are judged, and make the
country a natural ally of the West. Such an outcome would benefit
everyone-but especially the people of Iraq, who, after suffering for
so long, deserve no less.0

[50] FOREIGN AFFAIRS* Volume82No. 3

 A Trusteeship for Palestine?
Martin Indyk

ROAD MAP TO NOWHERE

THE SECOND Palestinian intifada will soon enter its fourth year.
Both Israelis and Palestinians have become exhausted by the worst
violence in the history of their bloody conflict, and yet it continues.
Palestinian terror attacks and Israeli military responses are dragging
both communities deeper and deeper into the abyss.
Still, as President George W. Bush has averred, the removal of
Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq would create an opportunity for
broader Middle East peacemaking. Iran and Syria, fearing that they
might be the next targets, would feel pressure to reduce their support
for Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad (Pij), and Hezbolah-the terrorist
organizations that have done so much to fuel the current conflict.
With a new regime in Iraq emerging under American tutelage, the
balance of power in the Arab world might shift decisively in favor of
the more moderate states of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, which
are committed to Arab-Israeli peace. The elimination of one of the
terrorists' patrons and the lowered profile of others might further
lessen the appeal of terror for a Palestinian community already
coming to the realization that violence has been nothing short of
disastrous for its cause and circumstances. And Israelis suffering from

MARTIN INDYK is Director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy
at the Brookings Institution. He served as U.S. Assistant Secretary
of State for Near East Affairs from 1997 to 2000, and as Ambassador to
Israel in 1995-1997 and 2000-20ol. The ideas presented here were devel-
oped in the Saban Center's Israeli-Palestinian Workshop with input from
the Israeli, Palestinian, and American members of the workshop's Design
Group in International Intervention.

[51]
 MartinIndyk
an unprecedented number of civilian casualties, a worsening economic
crisis, and a war-weary reserve army would welcome some deus ex
machina from the war in Iraq to get their country out of its current rut.
Should President Bush decide to seize such a moment of diplomatic
ripening and try his hand at Arab-Israeli peacemaking, he would find
that a remarkable consensus has formed around his own vision of a
two-state solution to the conflict. The president first articulated this
vision in November 2ool, when he called for the establishment of an
independent Palestinian state living in peace beside a secure Israel,
and he elaborated on the idea in June 2oo2, when he added that such
a state had to be democratic. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has
endorsed this vision, as have majorities of the Israeli and Palestinian
publics, and the international community believes in it.
What Bush would also find, however, is that he lacks an effective
mechanism for translating his vision into reality. Bush has announced
his personal commitment to working on the implementation of a
"road map" of reciprocal Palestinian and Israeli steps toward peace-
beginning with Palestinian reform, an end to violence, and Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) withdrawals, moving on to a freeze of settlement
activity, and proceeding eventually to negotiations on an interim
arrangement that would create a Palestinian state with provisional
borders. The problem with this approach is that it is likely to meet
the same fate as all previous failed attempts to get Israelis and
Palestinians to take reciprocal steps, most notably the Tenet cease-fire
plan and the Mitchell recommendations.
On the Palestinian side there is simply no credible institution
capable of constraining the terrorist organizations and armed
militias responsible for the violence-and without such an insti-
tution the IDF will not be willing to withdraw from and stay out
of the Palestinian cities and towns they have reoccupied to try to
stop the terrorists. Nor is there a credible Palestinian partner for
any political initiative such as the one the road map envisages.
Although the appointment of Mahmoud Abbas (known as Abu
Mazen) as prime minister is a positive development, Arafat will
do everything he can to undermine him in order to retain power.
And with a new center-right government constraining Prime
Minister Sharon's every move forward on the political front, the

15 2 ] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3

 A Trusteeshipfor Palestine?
Israeli leader will likely prefer a drawn-out negotiation over the
road map's details to proceeding with its implementation.
Absent a credible Palestinian security apparatus willing and able
to crack down on terrorism, a plausible Palestinian political partner to
make a deal with Israel, and a flexible government in Israel willing
to do its part, the road map's chances of success are slim. If it is tried
and goes nowhere, the Bush administration's likely response will be
to leave the parties to battle it out on their own once again. With
American elections on the horizon, a domestic economy needing
tending, and an already overcrowded diplomatic agenda, it would
be easy for the administration to return to its default position of
disengagement. But it would also be a mistake. The contrast between
the administration's willingness to invest a huge effort in changing the
regime in Iraq and its scant efforts to end the violence in the Israeli-
Palestinian arena would fuel antagonism toward the United States
throughout the Muslim world. Israel's economic recovery would be
forestalled. The human carnage would continue to bind the lives of
Israelis and Palestinians "in shadows and in miseries." And a fleeting
opportunity for the United States to wield its regional influence on
behalf of peace would have been lost.
There is another and possibly more promising way to parlay the
bounce from a successful Iraq war into an effective effort to forge an
Israeli-Palestinian peace, but the United States would have to use a
different map and take a steeper but more direct road. The approach
would have to be much more ambitious than the one President Bush
seems to have in mind, more akin to the major effort his father
undertook to create an effective machinery for Arab-Israeli peace
negotiations after the last Persian Gulf War. The equivalent effort in
today's circumstances would require the United States to lead an in-
ternational push to create a trusteeship for Palestine. This would be
a major undertaking, but unlike the road map process, it could actu-
ally lead to the creation of a responsible and accountable Palestinian
political partner and an effective Palestinian security capability,
thereby triggering the appropriate Israeli response.
For decades the United States has rightly preferred that the onus
for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain on the parties
themselves. The appropriate role of the United States and other

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 MartinIndyk
external parties, officials believed, was to facilitate agreements arrived
at through direct negotiations. But now things have changed. The
Oslo accords, which were produced by direct negotiations, have
collapsed and have been replaced by a violent interaction that the two
sides cannot end by themselves. Without some form of effective
international intervention, Israelis and Palestinians will continue to
die and their circumstances will continue to deteriorate, fueling vast
discontent and anger at the United States in the Muslim world and
placing Israel's future well-being in jeopardy.
The concept of trusteeship has been used to good effect in other
places-such as East Timor and Kosovo-where the collapse of
order and the descent into chaos have necessitated outside action.
The Bush administration is prepared to promote such a concept in
Iraq, to ensure that the removal of Saddam Hussein is followed by a
political and security framework that will enable the Iraqi people to
establish new, more representative institutions of governance. If there
were sufficient political will in the United States, it could be adapted
effectively to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well.

DESIGN FOR LIVING

A W E LL - D E S IG N E D trusteeship for Palestine would have an explicit

mandate to build an independent, democratic Palestinian state. It would
take formal control of Palestinian territories from Yasser Arafat and the
Palestinian Authority and hold them in trust for the Palestinian people.
The trustees would then oversee the establishment by Palestinians of
democratic political institutions, including the drafting of a new consti-
tution, the creation of an independent judiciary, and the holding of
free elections. At the same time, the trustees, with the assistance of the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, would supervise
the establishment of transparent and accountable economic institutions.
This process would be accompanied by international funding for an
effort akin to the Marshall Plan to rebuild the Palestinian economy.
Initially, the territories held in trust would include the parts of the
West Bank and Gaza already ceded by Israel to the Palestinians (the 'A
and B areas" of the Oslo accords), with some additional land from the
"C areas" that have remained under Israeli control included to provide

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 A Trusteeshipfor Palestine?
territorial contiguity. The IDF would withdraw from these territories
and the Israeli government would commit not to return as long as the
trusteeship was fufilling its mandate.
To enable the IDF to do this, U.S.-commanded special forces units
and other troops would be put at the disposal of the U.S.-led trusteeship.
These would not be peacekeepers or monitors; rather, they would be
tasked with maintaining order, suppressing terrorism, and restructuring
and retraining the Palestinian security services-roles similar to those
currently being played by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Parallel to the establishment of the trusteeship, final-status
negotiations would be launched between Israeli and Palestinian
delegations to resolve, among other issues, the final borders of the
Palestinian state. These negotiations would give Palestinians confidence
that the trusteeship would not be a permanent outcome in itself, but
a way station on the road to true independence and sovereignty. The
gradual success of the trustees in building responsible and accountable
Palestinian institutions, meanwhile, could give the Israelis enough
confidence in their new Palestinian partners to enable them to make
the painful concessions and take the calculated risks needed to
reach a final agreement.
As the process of democratic nation-building progressed, the
trustees would gradually devolve authority to the Palestinian institutions
they had helped to create. In this way, a Palestinian government could
emerge with which Israel could confidently negotiate, one in control
of security services that would be able and willing to prevent terrorism
and violence. To be minimally acceptable to both sides, however, all
this would have to be packaged to accommodate the Israeli require-
ments of security and rigorous testing of Palestinian intentions and
would have to meet the Palestinian requirement of a clear pathway
and time line for achieving a viable, independent state. The mech-
anism for establishing the trusteeship would thus have to include
the following elements.

A UNresolution.To be acceptable to Israel, the trusteeship would need

to be a U.S. construct. From a legal standpoint, however, it would be
preferable for the trusteeship to be legitimized by a uN Security
Council resolution, which would vest it with authority to act as well

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June2003 [55]

 Martin Indyk
as sovereignty over the territory under its control.' Such international
legitimacy would provide Palestinians with the cover needed to co-
operate with the trusteeship. However, the Security Council would
not have an ongoing role in supervising it. Instead, the UN resolution
would vest the powers to run the trusteeship in a U.S.-led steering
committee of participating states.

A time linefor statehood.To give the Palestinians confidence that their

independence would not be long delayed, the trusteeship should
establish a three-year time line for carrying out the final-status ne-
gotiations and establishing a Palestinian state much like the time line
President Bush has established for the road map. This must not
become a deadline for the expiry of the trustees' mandate, however,
since that would remove the incentive for Palestinians to carry out
their part of the bargain. Instead, the trusteeship would have to
be authorized to remain in force until it became possible to hand
over complete authority and sovereignty to a democratically elected,
accountable, and transparent Palestinian government with a proven
ability to live up to its commitments, prevent attacks on Israelis, and
promote the welfare of the Palestinian people. In other words, the
Palestinians would be assured that if they fulfilled their commitments
they would get their state in three years, but Israelis would be assured
that if the Palestinians did not live up to their commitments the
trusteeship would continue until they did. These guarantees would be
made explicit both in the language of the UN resolution and, if necessary,
in side letters provided by the United States.

ProceduresforjudgingPalestinianperformance.The trustees would be

responsible for judging Palestinian fulfillment of their commitments.
The Palestinians would much prefer this to having Israel judge them.
However, Israelis would be wary of any indication that the trustees

1 Legally, sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza remains in the hands of the
United Nations, which inherited it from the United Kingdom, which inherited it from
the League of Nations, which took it from the Ottoman Empire at the end of World
War I. Jordan's claim to sovereignty over the West Bank after 1948 was never recognized,
and although Israel administered the territories after the 1967 Six-Day War, it has never
claimed sovereignty over them.

[56] FOREIGN AFFAIRS- Volume82No. 3

 A Trusteeshipfor Palestine?

were either biased in favor of the Palestinians or being hoodwinked by

them. To deal with Israeli concerns, the trustees would need to establish
a consultative mechanism that would enable Israel to offer its input.
One of the central purposes of the trusteeship would be to overcome
the deep suspicion that now pervades Israeli-Palestinian relations by
providing a third-party mechanism that both sides could trust. As a
final safeguard, Israel would still be in a position to hold back on with-
drawal from additional territory if it were dissatisfied with Palestinian
performance. But it would not be allowed to do this arbitrarily.

MaintenanceofPalestinianself-government. Although a principal purpose

of the trusteeship would be to rebuild Palestinian institutions along
democratic lines, this would not require the abolition of all existing
institutions of Palestinian governance. Some, such as the current nine
separate Palestinian security services, would indeed need to be eliminated,
but others could be reformed and restructured. The Palestinian Finance
Ministry, for example, has already undertaken serious reform measures,
starting a process that simply needs to be supported and facilitated. And
at the local and municipal level and in the health and welfare sectors,
many existing Palestinian institutions could continue to function.

A Palestinianconsultative body. Since the trusteeship would replace the

Palestinian Authority, a consultative body would need to be established
to represent the Palestinian people to the trusteeship in the transitional
period before a constitution is finalized and elections are held. The Pales-
tinian Legislative Council could serve this purpose, or the trusteeship
could oversee the creation of a Palestinian Transitional Council, per-
haps elected by mayors of the towns and villages and other Palestinian
representatives. The prime minister could head this consultative body.

SECURING THE REALM

AMONG THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS of the trusteeship

would be the size, composition, and effectiveness of its security force.
To be accepted by both sides, this force would need to be under U.S.
command. Israel would not trust any other outside party with such a
sensitive role, and the Palestinians would prefer U.S. leadership too

FOREIGN AFFAIRS-May/June2003 [57]

 Martin Indyk
because they have come to appreciate the part the United States can
play in influencing Israel and promoting their interests. It would make
sense for the core of the force to be drawn from the United Kingdom,
Australia, and Canada and to be composed of small, experienced units
capable of the kinds of operations that Israeli Special Forces now carry
out in the Palestinian territories. The British Special Forces have a good
deal of experience combating the Irish Republican Army in Northern
Ireland; the Australians ran a successful multinational force in East
Timor, where they were effective in confronting Indonesian-backed
militias; and the Canadians have decades of experience in peacekeep-
ing operations. Important actors within these governments are already
beginning to look at the idea of committing troops to such a mission.
The operations of the trusteeship force could actually be more effec-
tive than current Israeli counterterrorism operations in Palestinian towns
and refugee camps to the extent that they could rely on a reconstituted
Palestinian security service that would have a greater ability to penetrate
terrorist organizations than Israel does. The force would need to be large
enough to impress Palestinians and Israelis with its seriousness, but
given the small size of the West Bank and Gaza and the desirability of
keeping the military footprint within reasonable bounds, it should be
possible to keep the total number of troops involved under io,ooo. If
necessary, these could be backed up by additional "over the horizon"
international forces stationed nearby in Jordan, Egypt, and Israel.
To provide reassurance to Israel that the job is being done effectively,
the trustees would need to establish a trilateral consultative security
mechanism to ensure a fill and timely exchange of information between
the international force and the Israeli and Palestinian security services.
This mechanism would also serve to rebuild relations between the
Israeli and Palestinian security services, a step vital to the ongoing
battle against terror that will outlast the trusteeship.
It would be inadvisable to include troops from Arab countries in
the international force since they would find it inherently difficult
to deal sternly with Palestinian militants. Nevertheless, Egypt and
Jordan should be encouraged to play an active role in training the
restructured Palestinian security services. Egyptian and Jordanian
officers could also serve as liaisons, bringing to bear their knowledge
of the strengths and weaknesses of existing Palestinian services.

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 A Trusteeshipfor Palestine?
The notion that a U.S.-led fighting force would take responsibility
for combating Palestinian terrorism and rebuilding Palestinian security
capabilities is perhaps the most controversial element in the trustee-
ship proposal. The Palestinian terrorist organizations would fully
understand the danger this force posed to them and would try to portray
it as part of a Western, imperialist occupation. Before long they might
even launch a terror campaign to drive out the infidels-all in the
name of "liberating Palestine." Some other Palestinians might be glad
to avoid the responsibility of confronting the renegades in their ranks
and would view the force as the "international protection" from
the Israelis that they have long sought, rather than as a means of
assisting their own fight against terror.
Given the perceived zero-sum nature of the conflict, meanwhile,
Israelis would tend to regard what is pleasing to the Palestinians as
disagreeable to them. Israelis would be concerned that the inter-
national force would not have the IDF'S mo-
tivation to confront the terrorists, and would Americans have
be deeply frustrated when the IDF were not
permitted to engage in hot pursuit of ter- traditionally shied away
rorists on trusteeship territory. If the IDF from the idea of inserting
went ahead anyway-after another suicide
bombing, for example-this might well
precipitate a crisis in U.S.-Israel relations. Israelis and Arabs.
Israelis would also be concerned that if U.S.
soldiers were killed in operations designed
to protect Israelis, the American people would blame Israel. And
acceptance of such a force would breach a fundamental tenet of
Israel's national security doctrine that requires Israel to defend its
own citizens by itself.
Americans too have traditionally shied away from the idea of
inserting American troops between warring Israelis and Arabs. They
have bad memories of the 241 marines blown up in their barracks by
a Hezbollah suicide bomber in Beirut in October 1983 and would be
reluctant to expose their forces to the same danger again. Members
of the American Jewish community would be particularly concerned
about the potential domestic political fallout from American soldiers'
risking their lives in the defense of Israelis.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.May/June2o3 [59]

 MartinIndyk
All of these are legitimate concerns, but all can be addressed. On
the Palestinian side, it would certainly be essential to the trusteeship's
success that Palestinians saw the U.S.-led forces as liberators rather
than occupiers. This perception, however, would be fostered from the
outset of the trusteeship, with the withdrawal of the IDF from many areas
they currently occupy and the disappearance of the hated IDF checkpoints
and curfews. The trustees would benefit from being seen as having got-
ten the Israeli army out of the Palestinians' daily lives. Moreover, because
the trusteeship would bear the stamp of international legitimacy and
carry with it a (conditional) guarantee of Palestinian independence,
it should be possible to maintain this image over time, especially as it
became clear that the trustees were overseeing the establishment of
the institutions of Palestinian statehood.
Confronting terrorists would need to be a joint operation between
the international force and the reconstituted Palestinian security
services, with the latter always taking the lead. This would make it
clear that the primary responsibility for fighting terrorism remained
on the shoulders of the Palestinians themselves. Given the structure
of the trusteeship, Palestinian leaders would be able to make clear to
their people that continued support for terrorist activity would only
harm their chances for statehood, prolong the trusteeship, and, if
it ultimately failed, bring the Israeli army back into occupation.
This linkage is key: to gain the support of the Palestinian populace,
the U.S.-led force would have to be presented as defenders of the
Palestinian state aborning rather than as defenders of Israelis per se.
Assuaging Israeli concerns would be less easy. If the international
force could demonstrate its effectiveness, the Israelis might find its
presence preferable to the corrosive impact of keeping an overstretched
regular and reserve army in indefinite occupation of the main Palestinian
cities and towns. However, by putting its army back in control in the
West Bank and Gaza, Israel has for the time being reduced terrorist in-
cidents to a sustainable level, and may prefer the costs of staying there
to the risks of withdrawing in favor of an international force. Yet the
IDF'S presence cannot succeed in thwarting every terror attack, and
it does not want to rule over Palestinians forever. This is why it con-
tinuously seeks ways to get the Palestinians to assume greater security
responsibilities so that the IDF can withdraw. On their own, the Israelis

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 A Trusteeshipfor Palestine
have not been able to make this happen and thus might be amenable
to the trusteeship idea if they believed it could deliver on the promise
of creating a Palestinian capacity and will to fight terror.
What if the international force failed to stop terrorism and Israelis
were killed as a result? This would be the principal question the
Israeli government would want answered. The answer would require
a detailed understanding between the United States and Israel-with
the first element being an Israeli willingness to give the trusteeship
force an opportunity to deal with the source
of any new attack. Such agreement is not as Confronting terrorists
unlikely as it might seem. Israel repeatedly
gave Arafat the opportunity to act against would need to be ajoint
terrorists during the first i8 months of the operation.
current intifada, often exercising extraordinary
restraint in order to test his will to confront
them. 2 Israel also depends on Jordan to prevent terrorist infiltration
across its borders. And in the case of a U.S.-led force, Israel could be
far more confident that there would be a loo percent effort, even if at
first it did not produce loo percent results.
The notion that Israel cannot accept foreign forces defending its
citizens is belied by the fact that in 1991 and again in 2003 Israel wel-
comed American Patriot antimissile teams to help defend it from an Iraqi
attack. It is precisely because Israelis trust the United States and
the United States alone to look out for their security interests that the
international force and the trusteeship itself would have to be U.S.-led.
Would the United States, finally, be prepared to absorb casualties
in such a confrontation and stay the course? It should be emphasized
that even though an American would have to command the opera-
tion for it to be acceptable to Israel, the main work on the ground
would be done by troops from countries such as the United Kingdom,
Australia, and Canada. And after costly experiences in Beirut and
Saudi Arabia, force protection has become a much higher priority for

2 The most notable example of this was in June 2oo, after a ij suicide bombing out-
side the Dolphinarium Discotheque in Tel Aviv killed 21 Israeli teenagers and wounded
120 others. Prime Minister Sharon decided against any form of retaliation, hoping that
Arafat would instead act against the terrorists. Sharon argued at the time that there was
"wisdom in restraint."

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June2oo3 [61]

 MartinIndyk
the United States, making its units less vulnerable than before. Nev-
ertheless, some terrorist attacks might succeed, and some Americans
might die. But this concern has not deterred the United States from
fighting Islamic militants in some 50 countries across the globe, and
today the American people are clearly prepared to pay a higher price
than before because they now see a direct connection between threats
to their own security and terrorist activities far afield.
President Bush in particular has singled out the organizations in-
volved in the Palestinian intifada as terrorist enemies of the United
States, and the Islamic militants themselves are busy blurring the
boundaries between al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Put simply,
the psychological and political context for committing American
troops has changed dramatically. Whereas before September n1, 2001, it
was unimaginable that American troops would be fighting Palestinian
terrorists, it now seems quite thinkable. And, in the case of a trustee-
ship, U.S. forces would not only be helping to defend Israelis, they
would also be working to build an independent Palestinian state free
of the scourge of terrorism. The United States would thus benefit by
playing a crucial role in helping to resolve the conflict that is at the
heart of Muslim anti-Americanism.

LAND AND PEACE

To START, the trusteeship would be established in some 50 to 6o per-

cent of West Bank territory and most of Gaza, with the details to
be worked out by the United States in consultation with the local
parties. While the trusteeship was fulfilling its mandate, Israeli and
Palestinian delegations would have to negotiate the final borders of
the Palestinian state, completing the talks by the end of the third year.
Implementation of those borders would be dependent on the com-
pletion of the trusteeship's other tasks, but along the way, as the Pales-
tinians were seen to be assuming their responsibilities and aspects of
the final territorial settlement came into view, further IDF redeploy-
ments from "C areas" could take place and the territorial ambit of the
trusteeship could then be expanded.
Of course, Palestinians would fear that if they agreed to a trusteeship
initially limited in size, it would never grow because Israel would not

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 A Trusteeshipfor Palestine?
continue its withdrawal from the remaining parts of the West Bank
and Gaza. Some of them would therefore insist that the trusteeship
be established from the beginning in all of the pre-1967 territories, or
accept the concept only if it were accompanied by an Israeli commitment
to withdraw eventually to the June 4,1967, lines.
Israelis, on the other hand, would consider a prior commitment to
fill withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza to be an unacceptable
reward for the launching of the second intifada. And some of them
would reject out of hand the idea of an eventual "fill withdrawal," since
they view the borders of pre-1967 Israel as militarily indefensible. After
more than two years of violence and terrorism, the gap between Pales-
tinian expectations and Israeli flexibility is understandably wide.
One way to reconcile these competing concerns is for the United
States to declare parameters for the final-status negotiations that would
accompany the trusteeship. The parameters would make clear that
the ultimate settlement would involve the end of the occupation (as
President Bush has already declared), and would therefore require Israeli
withdrawal from most of the West Bank and all of Gaza plus territorial
swaps compensating the Palestinians for all the land Israel might be
allowed to keep in consolidated settlement blocks. This would establish
the principle of full Israeli withdrawal but avoid specifying the pre-1967
lines, leaving the parties to finalize the actual borders.
As for the settlements themselves, the trusteeship would have to have
contiguous borders to maximize the ability of Palestinians to move freely
within the territories under its control and to minimize points of friction
with the Israeli army. As a consequence, some settlements-such as
Netzarim and Kfar Drom in Gaza, and Ganim, Kadim, Sanur, and Beit
Hagai in the West Bank-would have to be evacuated as the trusteeship
was being established (otherwise the IDF would have to remain and
protect them, creating new sources of friction for the trustees).
In addition, the Israeli government would have to agree to freeze
all settlement activity in the large number of settlements in the "C
areas" remaining under Israeli control in the interim period, in order
to reassure Palestinians that the trusteeship was not just a way to
facilitate Israel's hold there. Such a freeze would be consistent with
the position Bush articulated in February, when he noted that "as
progress is made toward peace, settlement activity in the occupied

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June2003 [63]

 Martin Indyk
territories must end." Ending settlement activity would make it easier
for the Palestinians to accept a vague formulation for the territory that
would eventually come under their jurisdiction. Indeed, evacuation
of some settlements and freezing the expansion of others would
be understood by both sides as setting precedents for the ultimate
territorial solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Although the number ofIsraeli settlers that would have to move their
families in the first phase would be relatively small (some 5,000 people
compared to a total settler population of some 220,000), evacuating even
one settlement would be politically costly for the Israeli government and
would represent a traumatic setback for the settler movement. Never-
theless, Israeli public-opinion polls consistently show strong majorities in
favor of a fuU settlement freeze and of evacuation of outlying settlements
as part of a peace process that provides Israel with security. And Sharon
has indicated privately that he would be prepared to evacuate some
outlying settlements in the context of a peace process based on the prior
cessation of Palestinian violence. In the context of a serious effort to stop
terrorism, evacuation should not be an insurmountable obstacle. The
evacuated settlers would, of course, have to be appropriately compensated
and could be offered the option ofrelocating to other settlements in areas
likely to be annexed to Israel once final boundaries had been determined.
Once the final-status negotiators achieved agreement on the
Palestinian refugee issue, meanwhile, the trusteeship could begin
the process of absorbing those refugees who chose to be resettled
there, even before the emergence of a fully independent Palestinian
state. As long as the negotiators had found a way to resolve the issue
of "right of return," such a resettlement could serve as a confidence-
building measure for both sides. Resettlement would start relieving the
plight of refugees even before the final-status agreement is imple-
mented, signaling that their concerns would no longer be shelved,
and it would mitigate the concerns of Israelis by showing them that
those refugees were resettling in the emerging Palestinian state rather
than waiting to return to areas inside Israel's pre-1967 borders.
The trusteeship would have responsibility for supervising the elim-
ination of incitement from the Palestinian media and the restructuring
of the Palestinian school curriculum to promote coexistence. Israel
would need to take reciprocal steps to deal with any incitement in its

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 A Trusteeshipfor Palestine?
media. Depoliticizing this process through the trusteeship should work
much better than previous efforts to deal with the incitement issue
bilaterally, which quickly deteriorated into mutual recrimination.
And as for the surrounding Arab countries, Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
and Jordan would have an important role to play at every step of the
trusteeship process. Their clear, consistent, and public support for it
would do much to legitimize it in Arab eyes, and they could be
brought into a U.S.-led steering committee to oversee the final-status
negotiations. Their training of the Palestinian security services would
ensure that Western methods were effectively adapted to Arab culture.
And Egypt and Saudi Arabia would also need to influence the calcu-
lations of the terrorist organizations by cutting off their funding and
pressuring their external leaderships to change course. As Israel with-
drew from trusteeship territory and evacuated settlements there, Arab
states would also need to initiate steps to normalize relations with Israel,
beginning with those that did so during the Oslo years but that have
pulled back more recently.

MORE FOR MORE

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER, sooner or later, the current Israeli-Palestinian

stalemate will be broken. When it is, some form of international
intervention in the conflict might well become inevitable, because
left to their own devices the parties have shown themselves incapable
of helping each other climb out of the morass. An international role
is a feature even of President Bush's proposed road map for peace,
which provides for international monitors, multilateral donor and
reform committees, and a supervisory role for the "quartet" (the United
States, Russia, the European Union, and the UN).
The trusteeship notion is based on the logic that a more radical
outside intervention is required in order to make serious progress
more likely. Used to good effect in East Timor and Kosovo in the face
of humanitarian disasters and a total breakdown of order, trusteeship
could be critically important in the event of a cataclysmic collapse in
the West Bank and Gaza. But the concept is also flexible and adapt-
able to less drastic circumstances. If the Israelis do build a separation
fence and undertake a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank, for

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.May/June2oo3 [65]

 Martin Indyk
example, a trusteeship designed to stave off disaster on the Palestinian
side of the fence could serve the interests of all. Alternatively, if Abu
Mazen, in his newly appointed role as Palestinian prime minister, is
unable to put an end to the terrorism and violence (as is likely), a
trusteeship could take power away from the Palestinian Authority
and devolve certain functions to him while temporarily taking over
responsibility for security and other critical tasks.
Trusteeship is by no means an ideal, or even an attractive, proposition.
Neither Palestinians nor Israelis would be able to digest it easily; Amer-
icans would grumble about the burdens involved; implementation
would be difficult; and numerous spoilers on both sides would lie in
wait for opportunities to disrupt its efforts. But given the increasingly
debilitating situation on the ground and the manifest inadequacy of
reciprocal processes (such as the road map) for improving matters, some
form of trusteeship might well be the least bad alternative available. No
other mechanism seems capable of generating a responsible Palestinian
negotiating partner, an effective Palestinian security apparatus, and
credible Israeli responses-all of which are indispensable requirements
for a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Only the United States can credibly sponsor such an initiative, because
only it enjoys the essential trust of both parties, the necessary influence
with each of them, and the ability to muster the requisite international
support. Yet given the Bush administration's reluctance to become
engaged in a sustained effort to put Israelis and Palestinians back on
the path to a negotiated solution, it is hard to imagine that it would
look kindly on this even more ambitious undertaking.
Still, these are days of awesome and unprecedented U.S. inter-
vention in the Middle East. The administration has begun an enterprise
in Iraq, for example, that could cost more than $ioo billion and re-
sult in more than ioo,ooo American troops staying there for years. Is
it so inconceivable that the United States would be prepared, for a
small fraction of that cost, to help resolve a festering problem that
fuels Muslim anti-Americanism, generates terrorism, jeopardizes the
future of Israel, and inflicts terrible hardship on Palestinians and
Israelis alike? As the president himself noted recently, "the security
of our nation and the hopes of millions depend on us, and Americans
do not turn away from duties because they are hard."O

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 The Forgotten
Relationship
Jorge G. Castanieda

RETHINKING U.S.-LATIN AMERICAN TIES

FREE FROM the strategic and ideological rigidities of the Cold War,
Latin America in the mid-199os looked forward to a more realistic
and constructive relationship with the United States. The first Summit
of the Americas in 1994, which launched negotiations on the Free
Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), symbolized the renewal of good-
will and cooperation in the region. The summit led to a series of
hemisphere-wide meetings at various levels throughout the 199os
that offered a new model for political relations between the United
States and Latin America (most notably the Williamsburg and Bariloche
defense ministerial meetings). This new diplomacy for the first time
presumed to treat all the region's nations (with the exception of Cuba)
as equals. The summitry also sent a powerful message throughout the
hemisphere by implicitly stating that the success of the entire endeavor
depended on the coordinated progress of all nations in the Americas.
A sign of the times was the lessened rhetorical confrontation between
most Latin American nations and their powerful northern neighbor.
Some unilateral U.S. policies-such as the process of "certifying"
countries' cooperation with the U.S. drug war or the Helms-Burton
legislation, which placed sanctions on any country that traded with
Cuba-faced firm regional opposition. But Latin American countries
felt increasingly more at ease when discussing certain issues with
Washington that in the past had been highly controversial, such as

JORGE G. CASTA&JEDA served as Mexico's Minister for Foreign Affairs

from 2000 to 2003.

[67]
 Jorge G. Castahieda
democracy and human rights promotion or combating corruption. A
consensus developed, stronger than at any time in the past half-century,
on what constituted a common agenda for hemispheric relations and
how to address it.
By the end of the last decade, however, the progress seemed to
wind down. And the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington
sounded the death knell of what could have become the new Bush
administration's more forward-looking, engaged, and enlightened policy
toward the rest of the hemisphere. The resulting post-September 11
picture is not pretty from a Latin American point of view, although
there is certainly no lack of understanding or even support through-
out the Americas for the U.S. fight against terrorism. But the United
States has replaced its previous, more visionary approach to relations
in the western hemisphere with a total focus on security matters. This
disengagement is dangerous because it undermines the progress
made in recent years on economic reform and democratization.
Rarely in the history of U.S.-Latin American relations have both the
challenges and the opportunities for the United States been so great.
It is certainly not a time for indifference.

ROLLBACK

THE EVENTS of September ii preempted the Bush administration's

initial plans to employ a more open approach within the western
hemisphere. Indeed, security and counterterrorism concerns quickly,
and perhaps understandably at first, overshadowed any other issue.
For example, one immediate casualty of the emphasis on homeland
security was the initiative to create a comprehensive and long-term
solution to the problem of migration flows from Mexico to the United
States. Other setbacks swiftly followed. By early 2002, the Bush
administration had broadened the Plan Colombia antidrug initiative
to include direct anti-insurgency efforts. This decision was motivated
both by a sense that any area plagued by armed instability was a
potential host for terrorism and by the collapse of the Colombian
peace process. The international antiterrorist campaign further led to
a disengagement from the economic troubles brewing in Argentina,
Uruguay, and Brazil. In particular, the U.S. Treasury Department's

[6 8] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume82No. 3

 The ForgottenRelationship
inaction turned the tragedy of Argentina's financial collapse into a
painful lesson in international laissez-faire. In Venezuela, moreover,
social polarization, political instability, and growing anti-American
sentiment were largely ignored at the policymaking level, even if
intellectual concern in Washington among officials and think tanks
was acute and increasing.
But perhaps more than these country-specific crises, the main
reason to worry about the redirection of U.S. attention lay in the
broader patterns emerging in Latin America. First and foremost was
the lack of tangible results from years of economic reform. By the turn
of the new century, it had become quite clear that the structural
changes implemented in virtually every Latin American economy
over the past two decades had not brought about the desired results.
Growth rates remained far below expectations or even previous
achievements. Even Chile, for many years the only showcase of
successful economic reform, had run out of steam, averaging barely
three percent growth between 1999 and 2002. This situation not only
discredited the reforms themselves but invited the advent of alterna-
tives, some of which inevitably are "anti-neoliberal."
The disappointing results, moreover, brought into question the
other great regional achievement of recent times: the broad and deep
consolidation of democratic rule throughout the hemisphere. Those
who became familiar at the same time with open economies and open
societies channeled, perhaps unavoidably, their frustrations about
weak economic performance into anger at the political process. People
increasingly blamed democracy for economic stagnation, or at least
for failing to deliver economic growth. Consequently, governance began
to falter: democratic regimes with nothing to show for their efforts
found themselves increasingly impotent and isolated, blamed for
everything from the impact of unpredictable weather to international
economic trends to crime and corruption. The dwindling enthusiasm
for economic reform and representative democracy was revealed in
poll after poll and in one election after another. And, as a result, the
region today faces an increasingly unpredictable future.
U.S.-Latin American relations are also mired in uncertainty. In
the post-September ii world, Latin America finds itself consigned
to the periphery: it is not a global power center, but nor are its difficulties

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.May/June2003 [69]

 Jorge G. Castaheda
so immense as to warrant immediate U.S. concern. In many ways, the
region, at least in terms of U.S. attention, has become once again an
Atlantis, a lost continent. Perplexing bureaucratic conundrums-for
instance, the lengthy absence of a permanent U.S. assistant secretary
of state for western hemisphere affairs-and new agency priorities
have left many Latin American capitals in a diplomatic vacuum. This
situation has developed despite Secretary of State Colin Powell's and
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's excellent and perhaps
unprecedented personal relationships with many of their colleagues in
the region. On top of it all, Latin American leaders and diplomats have
a nagging feeling that whenever they point out the obvious lack of U.S.
attention to regional problems or bilateral
Latin America, at least agendas, their views are received in Washing-
ton with impatience and even irritation.
in terms of U.S. Indeed, as the post-September ii world
attention, has become grows increasingly complex, the western
lost hemisphere still reveals a relatively simple
once again a lpattern: the reassertion of U.S. hegemony.
continent. The central question thus becomes whether
the United States is willing to work with
Latin America to achieve a durable framework for regional relations
and how it would accomplish this. The United States can be a positive
influence in the hemisphere and it can, more than ever, contribute to
the successful resolution of the region's challenges.

UNQUIET QUARTET

To BETTER understand the challenges-and the opportunities-of

Latin America today, one ought to focus on four countries: Mexico,
Colombia, Argentina, and Venezuela. Their problems have diverse
sources but all would benefit from vigorous U.S. engagement.
Dealing with Mexico is in many ways the most important regional
task facing the Bush administration. The matter can be summed up
simply: President Vicente Fox's consolidation of Mexico's first
democratic transfer of power must be-and be seen to be-a success.
There is nothing more important to the United States than a stable
Mexico, and today a stable Mexico means a democratic one. And the

[70] FOREIGN AFFAIRS* Volume82No. 3

 The ForgottenRelationship
United States has a huge role in making Mexico's transition to
democracy a success, or in contributing to its failure. The success or
failure of this experiment will be judged in Mexico ultimately in the
light of the country's economic performance-which has not been
impressive these past two years. But Mexicans will also judge the state
of their country's relations with the United States. They will look to
see whether Presidents Fox and Bush deliver on the ambitious bilateral
agenda they sketched out at their historic February 2oo meeting at Fox's
ranch in Guanajuato, Mexico. On issues of trade, drug enforcement,
the border, building a North American Economic Community, energy,
and, most significant, immigration, the two countries set out a bold
series of goals to meet by the end of Bush's first term, if not sooner.
Indeed, in the first eight months of their respective presidencies, Bush
and Fox achieved a fundamental breakthrough on immigration. By
the time of the Guanajuato meeting, both sides had identified the
core policies needed to tackle undocumented migration flows from
Mexico to the United States: an expanded temporary-worker program;
increased transition of undocumented Mexicans already in the
United States to legal status; a higher U.S. visa quota for Mexicans;
enhanced border security and stronger action against migrant traffickers;
and more investment in those regions of Mexico that supplied the
most migrants. The speed with which both governments carried out
these negotiations certainly captured the political imagination of
both societies. Fox's resounding state visit to Washington on the eve
of the September ii terrorist attacks further lifted the new initiatives
and underscored both leaders' commitment to them.
But the symmetry ends there: Fox staked much more on this part-
nership than Bush did. And since the Mexican president has little to
show for his gamble, he has paid a high domestic political price for
his willingness to bring about a sea change in Mexico's relations
with the United States and the rest of the world. Indeed, this
change has been on the order of what President Carlos Salinas did
with Mexico's economy or what President Ernesto Zedillo did with
the nation's political system. Hence the centrality of immigration
in the bilateral relationship today: both Bush and Fox stated dra-
matic goals and raised expectations enormously. The United States
understandably was forced to put the issue on hold for a time. But

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2003 [71]

 what was initially portrayed as a brief inter-
lude will now probably stretch through
Bush's entire first term.
It will be almost impossible to point
to success in the bilateral relationship
without a deal on immigration. And unless
there is such a breakthrough, Fox's six-year
term in office, nearly half over, may well be
seen in Mexico as an exercise in high expec-
HUGO CHAVEZ tations but disappointing results. To avoid a
breakdown in relations, Bush must make a state
visit to Mexico City this year. He should take with him sufficient
progress on key issues-immigration; trade concerns relating to sugar,
tuna, trucking, and the North American Free Trade Agreement's
agricultural chapter; and funding for heightened security and the
expedited passage of people and cargo at the border-to show that
Mexico remains a top priority for his administration. Bush must
also show that he is willing to spend political capital to ensure the
success of Fox's push for true Mexican democracy. Washington
may have so far missed an opportunity to present its relationship
with Mexico City as a model for the rest of the hemisphere and,
indeed, for the rest of the developing world-an example of how a
rich and powerful neighbor and a still relatively poor and weak one
can get along and contribute to each other's success. But the window
of opportunity has not been shut. In the aftermath of the current
conflict with Iraq, the United States would benefit hugely by
demonstrating that it can construct alliances beyond
its traditional circle of friends.
Colombia is almost as important as Mexico to
the United States because of the U.S. stake in that
country's fight against drug traffickers and
-insurgents. The problems inherent in such
a conflict are manifest. The downing of a U.S.-
manned intelligence flight in mid-February
close to territory controlled by the Revolu-
tionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known
LUIS IO L DA SILVAby its Spanish acronym, FARC) was a tragedy

172 ] FOREIGN AFFAIRS- Volume82No. 3

waiting to happen. Indeed, rather than being
an isolated event, it seems to be a deliberate
escalation of FARC's war against the administra-
tion of President Alvaro Uribe and the United
States. The apparent kidnapping of three U.S.
intelligence officials, in the context of deadly
bombings in several Colombian cities, under-
scores the nature of the U.S. and Colombian
dilemma. On the one hand, the peace process and the oRBE
ALVARO

"all-talk, no-fight" policy pursued by former President Andres Pastrana

ended in utter failure because of the guerrillas' total unwillingness to
negotiate. But the "all-fight, no-talk" strategy employed by Uribe has
led to a predictable outcome: the FARc has unleashed a wave of terror
and violence, identical to those loosed previously by the insurgents and
the drug traffickers. The country, moreover, seems hardly willing to
pay the price required for a military victory over the guerrillas or even
for an offensive long and intense enough to force them to negotiate
in good faith. Uribe's choice is as illusory and one-sided as Pastrana's,
and U.S. support for it is equally misplaced.
Is there a solution? Perhaps, but it is not cheap, complete, or quick.
The broad outline of a long-haul strategy should be built around
three components. First, Uribe should fight and talk simultaneously,
as guerrillas themselves have always done. He should up the ante
militarily and continue to receive U.S. support in that effort, but he
should also restart negotiations with the FARC and again move
forward in talks with the rival National Liberation Army (ELN).
Uribe should be able to count on firm and vocal
backing from the Bush administration on that
score as well. This cooperation should include, if
necessary, direct talks between the United States
and the FARC and also the ELN-something that
Washington has been unwilling to do since three
American anthropologists were murdered four
years ago near the Darien Gap. Second, the United
States should at all costs avoid direct involvement
on the ground, regardless of legalistic distinctions
between contractual and official personnel, or between
VICENTE FOX

FOREIGN AFFAIRS • May/June 2003 [73]

 Jorge G. Castaieda
trainers, advisers, and combatants, be they overt or covert. Doing
otherwise, no matter how great the temptation, will only mire the
United States in this conflict.
Finally, Washington and Bogotd should involve the rest of the hemi-
sphere, especially Brazil and Mexico, in the Colombian peace process.
These countries should act mainly, but perhaps not only, as mediators.
Brazil has proved notably reluctant to participate in the Colombian
crisis other than by tightening controls on its border. Brazil's new
president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, however, may be more forth-
coming than former president Fernando Cardoso, especially if cajoled
by Mexico in that direction. Other countries, not just in the region
but also in Europe, could also help Colombia by isolating the FARC
internationally, as Mexico did by closing down the FARC'S office in
Mexico City. Governments should also investigate potential ties between
the FARC and other regional players, such as Cuba. Not only would such
outside involvement improve the prospects
Argentina's economic for negotiating success, but it would also pro-
vide political cover for Uribe in what can
crisis, although only be a bitter and bloody struggle.
contained, is certainly The third trouble spot is Argentina. Its
economic crisis, although contained, is cer-
not over. tainly not over. And the longer-lasting con-
sequences of the collapse of the Southern Cone economy are as yet
unclear, both for Argentina and for the rest of South America. Partly for
reasons of timing (when the crisis exploded the Bush administration still
thought it could easily break with the precedents set by previous bailouts
from the International Monetary Fund) and partly for circumstantial
reasons (Republican dislike for the IMF and former treasury secretary
Paul O'Neill's perceived dislike for Argentina), Washington seemed
willing to let Argentina "sink until it hit bottom," as one Western leader
put it. But neither has it sunk completely nor recovered filly from the
collapse of its currency and the deep depression of its economy. As a
result, U.S. support for an agreement with the IMF had to be channeled
through the government of President Eduardo Duhalde. This approach
ultimately translated into backing for a deal that possesses serious flaws
and may not even be implemented filly by the next Argentine president,
who is to be elected in late May or early June.

[74] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3

 The ForgottenRelationship
Thus it would seem to make more sense for the United States
to fully engage Argentina and provide solid support for the new
government. At the same time, Washington should urge Buenos Aires
to carry out the political and institutional reforms that that nation (and
for that matter, all of Latin America) desperately needs. The new pres-
ident, whatever his or her political persuasion, will require a lot of help,
primarily in the form of economic assistance, and the United States
should make that assistance available. This support would not be a case
of throwing good money after bad. Intervention costs less earlier than
later, and benign neglect is not an option, as the economic spillover
from Argentina to Uruguay and Paraguay and the political shock waves
hitting Brazil and Bolivia have already shown.
Finally, there is Venezuela. After excessive irritation with Presi-
dent Hugo Chdvez during the first year of the Bush administration,
Washington's attitudes toward the Venezuelan regime had shifted
rather remarkably by the time of the attempted coup in April 2002.
The unlikely, worst-case explanation of what happened is that the
U.S. government bestowed a smile and a wink on the bungling
conspirators during the crisis leading up to the coup attempt; the best
and most likely rendition is that Washington displayed an almost
unheard-of degree of indifference toward those events. Concern did
set in after the coup started, but it was once again overtaken by dis-
tance and by growing concern with other issues (increasingly, Iraq).
Only as 2002 ended did Washington concentrate again on Venezuela,
as the oil workers' strike and Chdvez's decision to hold onto power at
all costs plunged the country into chaos. Secretary Powell then began
to consider diplomatic options to work with the Organization of
American States and its secretary-general, C~sar Gaviria, as well as
with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. The United States agreed
to join the "Group of Friends" of Venezuela created in January, which
also included Mexico, Brazil, and Chile, as well as, perplexingly,
Spain and Portugal. But that diplomatic effort never got off the
ground, Ch~ivez eventually broke the oil strike, and the opposition,
the United States, and the rest of Latin America ended up right back
where they started more than a year ago.
On the one hand, Venezuela has a democratically elected president.
He may have polarized public opinion and driven the country into

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2oo3 [75]

 Jorge G. Castafieda
the ground in response to an irresponsible opposition, but he can
hardly be characterized as a communist or a traditional Latin American
dictator. On the other hand, the level of animosity in Venezuelan
society and the magnitude of the economic collapse guarantee that
the crisis will continue. Ch~ivez will retaliate against his opponents,
they will continue to plot and demonstrate against the government,
and all of this will put the country's fragile institutions to a terrible
test and frighten its neighbors and friends who know that such situations
never end well.
Which is perhaps why, now that tensions have slightly receded, it
might be time for Washington to participate in a less formal, more
realistic initiative together with Chile, Brazil, and Mexico. Such an
effort should seek to place a series of compromise proposals on the
table, and then use different methods to transform them into offers
that neither party could refuse. The United States can, as it did in
the Central American peace talks nearly 15 years ago, deliver the
opposition. And the major Latin American countries might be able
to convince Chdivez that it is in his interest to cut a deal that is less
than perfect, but that will allow him either to depart in a dignified
manner or to continue to govern in a reasonably effective way. Just
as some insisted that no Group of Friends would be viable without
the United States, there is no way out of the Venezuelan imbroglio
without American engagement. The cost of letting these wounds
fester is steep: for the Venezuelan people; for neighboring countries
such as Brazil and Colombia; for Mexico, now one of the largest
investors in Venezuela; and for the United States, which still relies
on the country for more than 15 percent of its crude oil imports.

LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE

IF THE PRECEDING CASES resemble a long list of brewing regional

troubles, there are also a couple of bright spots in the region, where
the United States has proceeded judiciously and can continue to do
so with ease. Moreover, Washington with a few relatively simple steps
can do much to bridge the gap with the rest of the region.
The Bush administration, and its insightful and skillful trade ne-
gotiator, Robert Zoellick, concluded a sophisticated free trade agreement

[7 6 ] FOREIGN AFFAIRS* Volume82No. 3

 The ForgottenRelationship
with Chile in December 2002. Chile's economic and social situation,
although lacking the spectacular results of the period from 1985 to
1999, is also solid and secure. Thus, just staying the course with
Santiago would be fine policy for Washington. In addition, Chile
has adroitly managed its relations with the United States, engaging
intelligently and effectively with it both at the UN Human Rights
Commission and at the Security Council. President Ricardo Lagos
is rightly considered Latin America's elder statesman today; when
he speaks on international matters, everyone in the region listens.
Brazil is the region's other bright spot, perhaps of greater import
because, in the end, size does matter. Washington dismissed ideo-
logical prejudices and played its cards right during the presidential
campaign that took Lula (as the new Brazilian president is universally
known) to power. The Bush administration has refrained from es-
tranging the new government and has constructively engaged Lula's
team on a potentially divisive issue, the involvement of the Group
of Friends in Venezuela. Brazil's new leader, for his part, has cho-
sen a wise course of avoiding confrontation with the United States
and pursuing domestic policies that are acceptable to the markets and
would not ultimately scare the Bush administration into being
more assertive. Yet Lula has not betrayed his platform or his fol-
lowers. He is implementing many of his campaign promises, his
social programs are ambitious yet feasible, his team is diverse and
representative, and he could well be the harbinger of the great trans-
formation, or aggiornamento,of the Latin American left that has been
so long in coming.
Washington should do everything it can to help Lula succeed. It
can go beyond benevolent neutrality to actively endorsing his
regime with the markets, the IMF, and the World Bank; the United
States can become a cheerleader for Lula, obviously not on ideo-
logical grounds, but because he is a democratically elected leader
with sound social and economic policies. The value of such an effort
is the same as it would be in Mexico: contributing to a Lula success
story would generate enormous benefits for Washington. The reward
would be not only the stability of Brazil, something of paramount
value to the region and the United States. Most important, such a
policy would show that the Bush administration can work constructively

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2o3 [77]

 Jorge G. Castafieda
with regimes that are not its ideological soul mates, but that are
nonetheless willing to reach out to the United States and find com-
mon ground. Again, as in relations with Mexico, this is no small
matter in the aftermath of conflict with Iraq and U.S. estrangement
from the rest of the world.
That common ground is not as difficult to reach as some may
think, particularly when looking at the broad problems that Latin
America faces and how the United States can address them. Economic
stagnation is of course the most salient one, as well as the single issue
felt most directly by the region's inhabitants. The core concern here
is restarting economic expansion, at a time when regional growth
rates have once again dropped to very low levels. In addition to the
debacles in Argentina and Venezuela last
A firm commitment to year, Mexico and Brazil both suffered prac-
tically flat economic performances in 2002,
democracy is essential and the prospects for 2003 are dropping
to U.S. credibility in the daily. The United States can play a role here,
both through its own economic recovery and
region, by pushing for a more open trade agenda
in the new World Trade Organization talks
leading up to the ministerial meeting in Canctin, Mexico, next
September. The U.S. stance in the WTO's "Development Round" has
in fact been more constructive than the European Union's. But other
U.S. steps-such as implementing huge agricultural subsidies and
steel import tariffs-have deeply disturbed many in Latin America,
particularly those in countries such as Argentina and Brazil, for whom
agricultural or steel exports are crucial. The United States can do
much more to open up its markets in these areas.
Washington can also add a new dimension to the FTAA agenda,
which is partly dormant as a result of Argentine, Brazilian, and
Mexican wariness. Since the third Summit of the Americas in 2001,
many countries have pointed out that free trade on its own will not
easily nor automatically pull up the least developed countries in the
region. Accordingly, they have called for the inclusion of some
type of resource-transfer mechanism for the poorest parts of the
hemisphere. Again, such a step may not be ideologically palatable to
the Bush administration, but it would be in the U.S. national interest.

[78] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume82No. 3

 The ForgottenRelationship
Like the equally counterintuitive announcement of gradual increases
in the U.S. foreign aid budget at the Monterrey development summit in
March 2002, a resource-transfer proposal would be extremely well
received in Latin America and would provide a stimulus to the falter-
ing free trade negotiations.
With respect to issues of good governance, the United States can
also help solve some of Latin America's most intractable problems.
Many in the region today believe that the main obstacles to growth
are neither the weakness of economic reforms (essentially the con-
servative view) nor the nature of the reforms themselves (the left's
perspective) but rather the poor quality of governmental institutions
and corporate practices. Reforming both is perhaps the region's greatest
challenge-and last opportunity-to return to growth. These reforms
require political will, resources, and a friendly international environ-
ment. They could include jettisoning Latin America's two-centuries-
old system of presidential regimes, which have never worked under
truly democratic rule nor with open societies. And they could also
foster a crusade to establish the rule of law throughout the region. In
too many nations, human rights, property rights, due process, an
efficient and accessible judicial system, and brief, nonprogrammatic
constitutions are either insufficiently represented or inadequately
respected. Through the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International
Development, bilateral agreements, and other regional mechanisms,
Washington could contribute actively to the modernization of Latin
American institutions and thus help remove the remaining obstacles
to renewed economic expansion.
By doing so, the United States would also send a strong signal that
it is committed to democracy in Latin America. The U.S. response
to the recent Venezuelan coup attempt was not a shining moment
in this regard. The potential lack of compliance with human rights
considerations in current and future anti-insurgency campaigns in
Colombia could be another setback. Thus the Bush administration
must emphasize that its support for democracy and human rights in
Latin America holds regardless of the specific regimes this policy
may help or the specific obstacles this may generate with respect to
other goals. This commitment is essential to U.S. credibility in the
region. Moreover, the United States would firmly establish itself as

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June2o3 [79]

 Jorge G. Castaheda
an ally in building democracy, rather than a hindrance or a fickle
companion that engages or disengages depending on its interests.
A final area in which the United States and Latin America could
cooperate fruitfully is in the conduct of international diplomacy. For
instance, Chile's and Mexico's role on the UN Security Council can
have an important effect on U.S.-Latin American relations. Al-
though neither voted against the United States, they clearly felt
reluctant to go along with the use-of-force resolution sponsored by
the American, British, and Spanish delegations. This may have gen-
erated some irritation in Washington, but the Bush administration
should use this opportunity to show that friendly relations do not
require unconditional support and that there are no hard feelings.
Nevertheless, both Santiago and Mexico City remain committed
to working with Washington to provide diplomatic leadership
on important regional issues such as the Special Conference
on Hemispheric Security, which will take place in Mexico City
during the summer.

BRAVE NEW CONTINENT

THE CHALLENGES that Latin America faces today, even for a part
of the world accustomed to adversity, are awesome. If those challenges
are compounded by the lack of a bold, ambitious, and enlightened
U.S. approach to the region, then undoubtedly they will be still more
daunting. And yet the opportunities are also greater today than ever
before. The Cold War is long gone. Democracy has taken hold nearly
everywhere in the region, as has at least the principle of respect for
human rights. Many Latin American governments, perhaps starting
with Mexico, are accepting that there is no better ally for domestic
change than scrutiny, commitment, and support from abroad-
preferably multilateral in nature, although bilateral ties can certainly
play a part.
Across the region, people now realize that market economies of
one sort or another-not necessarily the "one-size-fits-all" model
purveyed by the Washington Consensus-are here to stay, and that
their advent is not such a bad thing. And increasingly broader
swaths of Latin American societies now accept that globalization

18o] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume82No. 3

 The ForgottenRelationship
and closer ties with the United States are facts of life, and not nec-
essarily undesirable ones. The United States, despite its sporadic
bouts of parochialism and unilateralism, and its reduced attention
span, has shown open-mindedness in recent times. For instance,
the early Bush administration, the AFL-CIO, and Federal Reserve
Board Chair Alan Greenspan all accepted in principle a new pro-
migration stance toward the region. The U.S. Congress has also
virtually suspended the much-loathed counterdrug certification
process. So there is progress to cheer about, but clearly much more
to hope for. To turn hope into reality, the entire region needs lead-
ership, vision, and the will to achieve. Both Latin America and the
United States have ample reserves of all three.0

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.May/June2oo3 [81]

 Milosevic
in The Hague
Gary f. Bass

JUSTICE AS A POLICY

OCTOBER 30, 2002, is just another day in the trial of Slobodan

Milosevic. A stocky former Serb intelligence agent, Slobodan Lazarevic,
is testifying against his erstwhile boss and former political idol.
Lazarevic had planned to testify in secret, as witness c-ool. (He is so
smooth on the stand that the Serbian press corps dubs him "Agent
oo, License to Kill.") Milosevic, serving as his own counsel, asks,
"Based on my information ..., your wife's name is [deleted]?" As the
prosecution objects furiously, pointing out that Lazarevic is in a witness
relocation program and demanding that his wife's name be stricken
from the record, Milosevic adds, "His wife worked as a [deleted]." It
is a blatant attempt at intimidation: you mess with me, I mess with
your family. Even behind bulletproof glass, the former strongman
still aims to be dangerous.
The world has looked away just as the Milosevic trial has gotten
really interesting. In February 2002, raging against NATO conspiracies
and victor's justice, the ousted Yugoslav leader was hauled into court
in The Hague. This was an amazing triumph for the human rights
movement, but at the same time the realization of a nightmare that
had haunted the Allied officials who planned the Nuremberg tribunals
nearly 6o years ago. They had worried that Nazi leaders would be able
to use those trials as a forum to justify their actions and present

GARY J. BASS is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs

at Princeton University and the author of Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The
Politicsof War Crimes Tribunals.

[8 2]
 LU RBIJS

Defiantin the dock. Slobodan Milosevic

on the second day ofhis trialin The Hague,February13,2002

themselves as martyrs to subsequent generations. Milosevic has tried

to do the same and, slowed by his antics, the trial has now entered its
second year with the prosecution still only partway through its case.
As the most important moment for international justice since the
trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, Milosevic's trial is a possible watershed.
Charged with committing genocide and crimes against humanity in
Bosnia and crimes against humanity in Kosovo and Croatia, he is the
first former head of state to land in the dock of an international war
crimes tribunal. The trial's success or failure will therefore shape
all future efforts at punishing the world's bloodiest war criminals-
including those at the International Criminal Court (icc) that started
up in March, and any postwar tribunals in Iraq. International justice
must not only be done, but also be made to look useful and appealing
so that future politicians will decide, in the phrase of the late political
theorist Judith Shklar, to choose "justice, as a policy."
The Bush administration, desperate to avoid giving encouragement
to the ice, has essentially ignored the trial rather than seize the oppor-
tunity it affords to remind Muslims worldwide of how U.S. power was
used, albeit belatedly, to save Muslim lives in the former Yugoslavia.
But those who see the Milosevic case primarily in terms of its role in the

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 GaryJ Bass
progressive evolution of an international legal order-whether support-
ive human rights lawyers or nervous sovereignty-minded American
officials-are missing the point.
The tribunal's most important impact will be not in the legal sphere
but in the political one. Success will be measured by how much the
enterprise helps sideline dangerous leaders, shame perpetrators and
bystanders, and soothe victims. The ultimate objective--which is still in
doubt-is less to create some dazzling supranational legal precedent than
to demonstrate that administering justice can contribute to reconciliation
and moderation, in the Balkans and, by extension, elsewhere as well.

DELAYED BUT NOT DENIED

WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS often do not work. Despite the shining

example of Nuremberg, the history of international justice is full
of failure. Allied efforts to prosecute German and Ottoman war
criminals after World War I resulted only in failed trials and nation-
alist backlash. The UN'S tribunal for Rwanda is regularly criticized as
ineffectual by the Rwandan government. Without the kind of total
victory achieved by the Allies in World War II, imposing justice after
a war is always difficult.
That is why the tribunal in The Hague dealing with the former
Yugoslavia had such a rocky start. The ad hoc court was created by a
UN Security Council resolution in 1993, as Serb nationalists besieged
Bosnia's non-Serb civilians. It seemed a token gesture: the world
would not stop war crimes while they were actually happening, but
it would prosecute them afterward. And even that commitment was
halfhearted, since the tribunal started off without adequate funding,
robust political support, or major suspects in custody. It could do
little to make the war in Bosnia less brutal. The tribunal reached its
nadir in July 1995, when Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladic
slaughtered some 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the UN
"safe area" of Srebrenica. Mladic and his political chief, Bosnian Serb
leader Radovan Karadzic, have been indicted for genocide and crimes
against humanity, but remain at large.
When NATO finally struck against the Bosnian Serb army and
oversaw the Dayton accord that ended the war, the tribunal still had

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 Milosevic in The Hague
to wait almost two years, until July 1997, for NATO troops to begin
arresting war crimes suspects in Bosnia. Even then, the nationalist
regime in Croatia and Milosevic's regime in Serbia excoriated its
efforts and frequently refused to cooperate. It was only in 1999, during
NATO'S second Balkan campaign, over Kosovo, that Milosevic himself-
the prime mover in the wars of Yugoslavia's disintegration-was
finally indicted. And it was not until after the 20oo democratic
revolution in Serbia that he was shipped off to The Hague.
In terms of big-name suspects brought to court, the tribunal has
made huge strides over time. Its first trial, which opened in May 1996,
was of a mere pawn, a concentration camp sadist. Since then it has
snared vastly bigger fish, including a Bosnian
Serb general who helped organize the The trial's most basic
Srebrenica massacre, leading Serb and Croat
nationalists who were involved in the slaugh- SUCCess has been
ter of Muslims, and senior Milosevic aides getting Milosevic out of
such as the chief of staff of the Yugoslav army. Balkan politics once
In one of the biggest victories to date, Biljana
Plavsic---a wartime Bosnian Serb leader so and for all.
delusionally nationalist that she once told a
senior UN official that Serb babies were being fed alive to the animals
in the Sarajevo zoo-expressed remorse and pleaded guilty to one
count of crimes against humanity.
The prosecutions themselves constitute the most basic success of
the tribunal, even though Karadzic and Mladic-the most important
war criminals in Bosnia-have so far escaped its clutches. To put it
simply, rather than whipping up more nationalism back in the region,
several major malefactors in the Balkan wars are now behind bars.
(Several others, meanwhile, have died-including Croatia's wartime
president, Franjo Tudj man, from cancer; the Serb paramilitary leader
known as Arkan, from assassination; and former Serbian interior
minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, from suicide.) The Milosevic case is a
perfect example of how useful the tribunal can be. "The process itself
is a success," says Mary Robinson, the former UN high commissioner
for human rights. "He is no longer a respected figure in Serbia." Even
if his trial turns out to be a minor train wreck, the prosecution has
managed to get him out of Balkan politics once and for all.

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 GaryJ Bass
After Milosevic fell from power, the real question was not whether
he would be held to account for his crimes, but which court would try
him. The Hague was and is clearly the best choice. In a perfect world,
it would have been better to put Milosevic on trial in a Serbian court
in Belgrade, just as it would have been better to put the top Nazis on
trial before a German court in Berlin. This point is clear even to many
officials at the tribunal. "It's a message that can only be put across in
Serbian," says Jean-Jacques Joris, the diplomatic adviser to Carla Del
Ponte, the tribunal's Swiss chief prosecutor. But a Belgrade trial
would have helped matters only if it were a real war crimes trial-one
that produced the kinds of revelations about Bosnia and the self-styled
Krajina Serb republic that are emerging now in The Hague. But Vojislav
Kostunica, Yugoslavia's president after Milosevic and a committed
Serb nationalist, has a fierce contempt for the tribunal, and thus at first
said that he would haul Milosevic up merely on charges of corruption
and electoral fraud. Even if war crimes had gradually made their way
onto Kostunica's agenda for a Milosevic trial, such an effort would
never have been accepted in Bosnia and Kosovo. It might have wound
up like the 1921 trials at Leipzig-a hopelessly botched effort after
World War I, in which a German high court either acquitted or
glancingly punished German soldiers, to French and Belgian fury. As
it was, putting Serb nationalists in charge of Milosevic's trial would
have risked disaster.

THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY

THAT THE INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL is the least bad option

available for dealing with problematic figures such as Milosevic would
be enough to justify its existence. But the current trial is increasingly
offering more. After an inauspicious start with the Kosovo charges, as
the prosecutions case moves to Croatia and Bosnia, it has begun to
offer an unparalleled window into how one of the most murderous
regimes on the planet really worked.
Watching the proceedings, Milosevic sits with his familiar white
hair swept back, and on good days (when not complaining of heart
trouble), he has color in his thick cheeks. He seems alert and quizzical,
and rarely blinks. He has a way of wearing his Balkan politician's

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 Milosevic in The Hague
clothes-dark suit, blue shirt, red-and-blue rep tie-that makes them
look sloppy, with the tie wrinkling up at his gut as he sits, the suit
jacket bunched up as he flings his plump left arm around the back of
his baby-blue UN chair. He knits his eyebrows toward each other and
wrinkles his brow, or pulls back the corners of his mouth. He shows
no particular curiosity when a new witness appears.
Since Milosevic is not accused of hands-on homicide and cannot
be put away simply for espousing unusually loathsome politics, any
conviction will have to rest on demonstrating his command respon-
sibility. The prosecutors must prove that he ordered killings, or that he
knew about slaughter and chose not to stop it. But the prosecution
wants more than that. For a real success, the court must convict Milo-
sevic of being not merely the end of the Serb military chain of
command, but actively in charge.
For that outcome, the best witnesses are former Serb officials. Because
many Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia feel betrayed by Milosevic thanks
to actions he took during in the mid-1 9 9os, the prosecutors have
managed to assemble a formidable lineup of insiders willing to testify
against him. Lazarevic, the former intelligence agent, was among
the first of these, and he painted a damning picture of the densely
interlocking links among the various Serb nationalist forces in the
former Yugoslavia and the government in Belgrade. Another insider
identified the voices on a Bosnian intelligence intercept as Milosevic
talking to Karadzic. The courtroom listened in as the two discussed
uniting the Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia, and Milosevic told Karadzic
to get weapons from a Yugoslav National Army (JNA) garrison inside
Bosnia. On the intercept, the judges heard Milosevic telling Karadzic
in July 1991, as Tito's Yugoslavia crumbled, "Take radical steps and
speed things up, and we shall see if the European Community is
going to fulfill their guarantees, if they are going to stop that violence."
A JNA general in charge of military counterintelligence, Aleksandar
Vasiljevic, has testified about Milosevic's responsibility for the war in
Croatia. During Vasiljevic's testimony, the prosecution introduced a
smoking-gun letter from June 1993, in which a leader of the Krajina
Serbs asked Milosevic to "put pressure" on the JNA to help him in his
fight against the Croatian government-the kind of letter one sends
only to the man in charge.

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 GaryJ Bass
The result is a grand history lesson, meant to change minds. Bogdan
Ivanisevic, a Human Rights Watch researcher in Belgrade, says,

The insider witnesses usually include a narrative about Milosevic

betraying the Serbs. ... What insiders say is not just that the JNA and [the
Krajina Serb army] and [the Bosnian Serb army] were one army, but that
in 1995 [when the Croatian army reconquered the Krajina, sending some
ioo,ooo Serb refugees fleeing,] the army didn't even try to protect Serbs,
that Milosevic had some deal with Tudjman that let the Serbs become
refugees, that the government did not welcome them. This is very credible.
This segment of testimony turns many Serbs against Milosevic and makes
them more willing to accept the testimony about crimes against non-Serbs.

"It's the revenge of the Krajina Serbs," says one tribunal official of this
phase of the trial.

THE KILLING FIELDS

To UNDERMINE Milosevic's claims of powerlessness, the prosecutors

have to show exactly how his regime in Belgrade controlled the
entire Serb apparatus of ethnic murder and expulsion. This means
looking at the inside details of whose palms were greased, where the
killers came from, how the different Serb nationalist units outside
Serbia's borders coordinated their attacks, how they negotiated in
bad faith, how they gulled the UN and the world, how deniability was
supposed to be preserved, what lies were fed to whom-and how it
was all done on orders from the top.
The operational details of Serbian expansion, as they spill out
day after day, are lessons in applied thuggery. According to Lazarevic,
who was assigned to the Krajina in 1992, the Serb army there had a
special "antiterrorist unit" attached to each of its corps, made up of
"40 to 45 young men generally with extensive criminal records,"
in
charge of harassing or killing civilians and other "dirty jobs" that regular
JNA officers might refuse. The Krajina Serbs also supplied hundreds
of muscular enforcers to handle anti-Milosevic demonstrators back
in Belgrade: "They were selecting really huge blokes, anything over
six-two, to assign them to Belgrade and deal with the demonstrators,
and most of them actually were joking, like, they're going to go over

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 Milosevic in The Hague
there and beat the living"-Lazarevic paused for a beat, remembering
he was in court-"daylights out of the anticommunist demonstrators."
At one point Lazarevic told of organizing a one-for-one exchange of
loo dead with the Bosnian army. Since the Serbs had only 90 Bosnian
corpses ready at hand, he went to the secret police "because there
[were] some dead bodies kind of buried around." Two Croat prisoners
were forced to start digging, but ran into difficulties:

They did dig out four bodies. The problem that I had with them, first
theywere in a high state of decomposition, so it was not something that
happened recently in a combat situation. Obviously they were there for
a considerable number of months. And the second even more worrying
thing was that all four bodies had their hands tied with wire up front,
which would suggest they were executed, that they did not actually die
in a combat situation. But being pressed for the bodies, nevertheless I
took those four, removed the wire, and put them in the body bags.

To fill out his quota, Lazarevic was directed to an officer of Arkan's

Tigers, the bloodstained Serb paramilitary group: "[He] calmly said
he doesn't have any dead bodies, however he does have six live ones
and I can have them if I need them badly
enough." The next morning, "there were six "There were six
dead bodies lined up which appeared to be
very freshly killed." bodies lined up
From the proceedings, the contempt that which appeared to be
Serb nationalists had for the West becomes
clear. Serb convoys would declare them- very freshly killed:
selves humanitarian while actually carrying
automatic weapons. When the UN-sponsored Vance Plan required
the demobilization of the Krajina Serb army, Lazarevic testified,
"What we did, we changed the uniform overnight from military
olive-green into the police blue and within a very short period of
time, I'd say within ten hours, we have repainted all the military
vehicles." At four international peace conferences, the Krajina Serb
delegation got its instructions from Serbian officials in Belgrade, up
to the rank of Milosevic's cabinet: "The idea was not to agree on
anything. That was very simple to follow." "Slobo" or "the boss" is
described as wanting peace talks to fail.

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 GaryJ Bass
Chilling as all of these details are, what is most important is the
testimony about the chain of command. At the trial, Milosevic is cling-
ing to the claim that the JNA, for which he was officially responsible, was
barely involved with the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. But Lazarevic,
speaking about the JNA and its Krajina Serb and Bosnian Serb counter-
parts, testified, "We are not talking about three different armies. We are
talking about one and only one army. ... [A]ll the supplies and the
finances would come from Yugoslavia, Serbia." For important military
matters, the Krajina Serb military reported to JNA chief of staff Momcilo
Perisic in Belgrade. JNA officers would commonly serve a six-month
stint with the Krajina Serb forces. The corridor connecting Belgrade
and the Krajina Serbs was called the "jugular vein"-"if you cut that one
off, the life is gone." And beyond military matters, Lazarevic's testimony
was just as damning on Belgrade's control of Serb secret police forces.

METHOD AND MADNESS

IT IS TOO MUCH to say that Milosevic is defending himself The

judges regularly have to remind him to stick to the case ("Avoid
narratives and concentrate on asking short questions," says one), with
presiding judge Richard May of the United Kingdom maintaining
steely politeness in the face of harangues and tangents. The prosecution
lawyers are obviously unafraid of Milosevic's legal skills. But Milosevic
is anything but stupid, and he must understand the trap that Del Ponte's
office is laying for him. So he tries to undermine the insider testimony
about the chain of command.
Milosevic swings back and forth between two modes: thundering
defiance, like Hermann G6ring in Nuremberg, and evasion of re-
sponsibility, like Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. In his defiant mode,
Milosevic's preferred theme is the enduring infamy of the familiar villains
of his former state-controlled media: "the revamped Ustasha movement"
among Croats, foreign mujahideen abetting "Islamic fundamental-
ism" among Bosnia's Muslims, and NATO imperialists. The war's
atrocities, Milosevic repeatedly insists, were faked. The Srebrenica
massacre, he says, was the work of French intelligence. Commenting
on the 1991 massacre of 200 Croats in a Vukovar hospital, for which The
Hague has indicted three senior JNA officers, Milosevic said, "Ustashas ...

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 Milosevic in The Hague
withdrew after the surrender of Vukovar and dressed into medical staff
clothing in order to portray themselves as the medical staff and the
wounded." He explained that "this practice of killing their own peo-
ple ...was typical for the Muslim side during the war in Bosnia and
Herzegovina." For Milosevic, international condemnation of atrocities
is just an anti-Serb plot: "Whatever the Serbs do, they commit a crime."
His chances of acquittal, however, lie not in defiance but in his
Eichmann-style claims that he was just a normal civil servant who dis-
played no particular initiative. At these times Milosevic casts himself as
a cross between Eichmann and Serbia's answer to the queen of England.
He was, in this view, almost a nominal figurehead during the wars, a pres-
ident who somehow seems to have been out of the loop on every major
decision taken throughout the slaughters that raged from 1991 to 1999.
But the self-important strongman in Milosevic's psyche finds it
hard to hold the cringing Eichmann pose for long. Thus he clamors
for his old Scotch-drinking buddy Richard Holbrooke, the former
U.S. assistant secretary of state, to come to The Hague and testify
that it was Milosevic who reined in the Bosnian Serbs in 1995, paving
the way for the Dayton accord. This is true-U.S. diplomats secretly
called it "the Milosevic strategy"-but it is also counterproductive
vanity. Milosevic is inviting Holbrooke to testify that the Serbian
leader could turn off the bloodbath when he wanted to, proving that
he was in control and therefore guilty as charged.
Similarly, Milosevic conducts much of his defense using information
fed to him by Serbian security services that still cling to him. And he
cannot resist producing letters from loyal supporters in the region
that nastily accuse the witness of the day of a wide range of treasons.
Yet this implicitly strengthens the prosecution's case, since the more
Milosevic can produce secret files or obviously stage-managed letters
from toadies swearing they never took orders from Belgrade, the
more obvious it is that he was and is their boss.
During his cross-examination of Lazarevic, Milosevic's most basic
trick was to just call the witness a British spy or a liar, which he did
repeatedly and with gusto. (Although there were some inconsistencies
in Lazarevic's testimony, Milosevic never managed to catch the former
spy in a major falsehood.) When this tack seemed not to be working,
he attacked the accusations of command responsibility. For example,

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 GaryJ Bass
after Lazarevic testified that the Krajina Serb army was supplied and
funded by Serbia, Milosevic tried to wave that away, appealing to the
long-suffering Judge May: "Economic aid has nothing to do with
commanding, Mr. May, and you should know this."
With the vanity of a former head of state, Milosevic could not hide
his contempt for a low-level spy such as Lazarevic. He rudely told him
that the tribunal's interpreters speak much better English than Lazare-
vic does. And he boasted that "Several other million Serbs ... call me
Slobo ... which I hope you know." "Well," Lazarevic zinged back, "usu-
ally it was in a very negative context when they called you Slobo. ... I'm
surprised that you brought that up"-a reference to the revolutionary
slogan of 2ooo, "Slobo, Slobo, save Serbia and kill yourself."
When Lazarevic said, "Mr. Milosevic, you were at the head of the
army at that time [in the 199os] and you know that full well," Milosevic,
demonstrating that he understands the legal stakes perfectly, replied,
"That's what you claim, and you're claiming that in order to, how
shall I put it, support this false indictment." Milosevic asked, "You
mean that Belgrade wishe[d] to expel the Croats from their
homes?" "'Belgrade' was synonymous with you, Mr. Milosevic,"
said Lazarevic. "'Belgrade' meant you." "Oh, I see," Milosevic replied
sarcastically. "That's rather a large synonym."

THE SOUL OF SERBIA?

MILOSEVIC'S ULTIMATE AUDIENCE is not the judges (who have

clearly had a bellyful of his poor courtroom etiquette), but the Serbs.
Since he denies that the "false tribunal" has any legitimacy, to him the
trial is just a colossal paid advertisement for his fiery brand of Serb
nationalism. In his rants against the non-Serbs, NATO, and the tribunal
at The Hague, Milosevic is still trying to stir up trouble. A lot of
people, he says, see Yugoslav affairs his way, and "when I say a lot
of people, I mean millions."
This is nonsense. Despite his courtroom theatrics, Milosevic
remains consistently and intensely unpopular at home. A November
2002 survey by the International Republican Institute found that Serbian
views of Milosevic were essentially unchanged since May 2001 (when
the tracking poll started, with Milosevic in a Belgrade cell waiting to

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 Milosevic in The Hague
be shipped to The Hague): 66 percent unfavorable to only 17 percent
favorable. These are the figures not of a hero, but of a man who lost
an election, tried to rig the results, was overthrown in a popular
revolution, and finally was arrested and deported by his successors.
Despite occasional press reports about Milosevic's gala perform-
ance in the dock, the opening of his trial in February 2002 gave his
popularity only a small and temporary boost, from 16 percent favorable
in January to 21 percent in March, falling back to 17 percent by June.
"His conspiracy theories still resonate pretty well here," says Ivanisevic
of Human Rights Watch. "When he is unfriendly to Kosovar witnesses,
they [Serb nationalists] may relate to this, because of the strong anti-
Albanian sentiment that existed here. On the other hand, objectively
speaking, he did destroy their lives."
To be sure, many Serbians despise both the defendant and the tribunal.
"There was a near consensus of indifference to crimes against non-Serbs"
throughout the 199os, says Ivanisevic. A May 2002 poll by the National
Democratic Institute (NDI) found that 30 percent of Serbians thought the
tribunal was conducting a fair trial but 57 percent thought it was unfair.
In another poll, only 32 percent of Serbians supported cooperating with
the tribunal in The Hague, while 47 percent said they would prefer to
address war crimes only in Yugoslavia's own
courts and 13 percent said they would suspend Milosevic's most basic
war crimes investigations altogether.
In a bizarre irony, Milosevic's most power- courtroom trick is to
ful implicit defender is Kostunica, the man call his accusers liars.
who overthrew him. In October 2000, during
his first state television interview after the
revolution, Kostunica denounced the tribunal in terms not much
different from those Milosevic himself now uses: "The Hague court is
not an international court, it is an American court and it is absolutely
controlled by the American government. It is a means of pressure
that the American government uses for realizing its influence here."
According to Joris (Del Ponte's diplomatic adviser), Kostunica's "posi-
tion is a matter of conviction: this place [the court] is evil. He's always
been a nationalist. He was a vocal advocate of Greater Serbia, but not of
rape and 'ethnic cleansing.' But he never wanted to see the consequences
of that policy. To him, Bosnia was a civil war, with deaths on all sides."

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 Garyj Bass
Kostunica's government accordingly resisted cooperation with The
Hague. Prosecutors complained that over half of their requests for
documents went unanswered. Two JNA officers, indicted for the 1991
Vukovar massacre that Milosevic denies ever happened, are still on the
loose. Prosecutors are particularly frustrated that Ratko Mladic-twice
indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity, the second time for
personally overseeing the Srebrenica massacre--is still at large, despite
the pleas of Del Ponte and even UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Mladic, arguably the most hated man in Bosnia, is seen as a war hero
by many in Serbia. Until March 2002, Joris
Now that Milosevic is says, he "was staying in military facilities.
Top members of the Yugoslav armed forces
out of Serbian politics, are organizing Mladic's protection."
his people are no longer Kostunica's actions have solidified preexist-
interested in him. ing Serbian resentment of the tribunal at The
Hague. Even Zoran Djindjic, the recently as-
sassinated reformist and pro-Western Serbian
prime minister who sent Milosevic to trial, argued for cooperation with
the tribunal primarily as a way to get Western economic aid. Only
Goran Svilanovic, the human rights activist turned Yugoslav foreign
minister, makes a case for extraditing war criminals on principle.
As the Milosevic trial has turned to insider testimony dealing with
Croatia and Bosnia, many tribunal officials are worried that their
message is not yet getting through. The tribunal's press office complains
that some Serbian media outlets-even the relatively liberal ones-cover
the trial too narrowly, framing the story in terms of Milosevic's day-to-
day courtroom performance rather than the broader pattern of atrocities
in the former Yugoslavia. Prosecutors complain that even after Plavsic
contritely pled guilty to crimes against humanity in October 2002, there
was little soul-searching among Serb nationalists. "Most Serbs have a po-
sition," says Liam McDowall, the chief of the tribunal's regional outreach
program. "It's preconceived ideas. And then people cheer or pooh-pooh."
Other tribunal-watchers see more progress, however slow. Human
Rights Watch's Ivanisevic argues,
Even though they have resistance to hearing non-Serb witnesses, people
do take into consideration what they hear. The trial has caused reduced

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 Milosevic in The Hague

myth-making in Serbia. You don't hear, as you did prior to the trial, ...
that Srebrenica didn't happen or that the Muslims killed themselves.
I wouldn't minimize this reduced space for rewriting history. As for
acknowledgment of our side's crimes, it's a psychological barrier too
difficult [to cross-admitting] that the policywe supported was criminal.
It will take time. It may take a new generation that was not implicated.

Indeed, even Nuremberg's success (at least within Germany) was

largely a matter of time and generational change. The trial opened
many minds, but some unrepentant Nazis would never accept the
court-even though they might be cowed into keeping their mouths
shut in public. But their children took Nuremberg to heart. The new,
post-Nazi generation held war crimes trials of their own: in 1963-65,
the Frankfurt trials for the men who ran Auschwitz, and in 1975-81, the
Duisseldorf trials for those who ran Majdanek.
One can see the possible stirrings of a similar process in Serbia
today. The young there are noticeably more reformist than their elders
(although there are plenty ofyoung nationalists too). Among Serbians
aged 18 to 30, 40 percent support full cooperation with The Hague;
for those 30 to 44, the figure falls to 38 percent; for those from 45 to
59, it drops to 28 percent; and for those over 6o, to 24 percent. The
NDI poll found that Milosevic's biggest fans remain what it called
the "angry old"-Serbians who long for the past. More reform-
minded Serbians, especially what the NDI calls "new Serbia"-youthful
and Western-oriented voters-have nothing but contempt for him.
Education and gender play roles too; university-educated women are
probably the least nationalist people in Serbia. There are competing vi-
sions of what Serbia could become, not just Kostunica's nationalist view.

YESTERDAY'S MAN

IF THE SERBS constitute a prime audience for the Milosevic trial,

they are not the only one. The tribunal was meant to nurture not only
repentance among perpetrators, but also forgiveness, or at least some
measure of solace, among victims. It is too early to see whether this
will work for the people of Bosnia and Croatia, whose sufferings the
court is just beginning to review. But surely it will give them some

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 Garyj Bass
satisfaction. And it should have a broader significance as well, showing
that there can indeed be a middle path for post-atrocity societies some-
where between lasting communal blood feuds and shameful silence.
For all the tribunal's frustrations, there was and is no real alterna-
tive. Its mission is profoundly important and could not have been
accomplished better in some other way. Now that Milosevic is out of
Serbian politics, he is on his way to becoming a nobody; his people
are no longer interested in him. Only 16 percent of Serbians say
they are following the trial "very closely," with an additional 35 per-
cent saying they are following it "somewhat closely." These people
may watch with resentment, or with opening minds, but few really
care. The Serbian public is vastly more concerned with the country's
decrepit economy, crime, and corruption than with Milosevic's fate.
The tyrant has become irrelevant.
For the first time since becoming president of Serbia in 1989,
Milosevic is being treated as yesterday's man. He suffers a host of
courtroom humiliations. When Stjepan Mesic, the reformist president
of Croatia, testified against him in October 2oo2, the current head of
state needled his deposed counterpart, addressing him as "Mr. Accused."
Paddy Ashdown, a former leader of the United Kingdom's Liberal
Democrats, reminded Milosevic that he had been put on notice back
in 1998, as Serb forces ratcheted up their repression in Kosovo: "I
warned you that if you took those steps and went on doing this you
would end up in this court. And here you are." Even worse, by his
lights, Milosevic is stuck confronting people and accusations that he
clearly thinks beneath him. But unable to draw on the full apparatus
of state power, he often takes a drubbing.
After Lazarevic's testimony, the former tyrant stayed in his cell for
a week, complaining of exhaustion. Cross-examining his accuser, he
had said, "So this is another untruth, Mr. Lazarevic, spread out by
you. Is that right or not?" Lazarevic snapped back, "Mr. Milosevic, you
are starting from an unbelievable position, which is that the whole
world is lying and that you are the only one telling the truth."C

[9 6 ] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume82No. 3

 Is Turkey Ready for Europe?
Michael S. Teitelbaum and Philip L. Martin

TUSSLES IN BRUSSELS

LAST DECEMBER, the leaders formally agreed to expand their

EU'S
union in 2004 from 15 to 25 members-a historic broadening of one
of the world's most exclusive clubs. Europe's politicians also set a
schedule under which two more countries, Bulgaria and Romania,
would be brought into the fold three years later.
During the months leading up to the December decision, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan-leader of Turkey's Justice and Development Party,
which won control ofTurkey's parliament in November--energetically
toured Europe's capitals, urging EU leaders to include his nation in their
expansion plans and to set a definite date to begin accession talks.
Ankara's lobbying got strong backing from Washington: President
George W. Bush even made a personal telephone call to the EU'S then
president, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to make
the case. After much debate, however, when the Eu announced its
decision at a summit in Copenhagen in December, Turkey was turned
down. Instead of offering a concrete date, the EU'S leaders, in somewhat
Delphic language, merely promised that ifTurkey fulfilled the so-called
Copenhagen criteria on human rights and democracy by December
2004, accession talks could then begin "without further delay."
By waffling, Brussels in effect managed to push down the road what
has become a fundamental debate on the continent: should Turkey

MICHAEL S. TEITELBAUM is Program Director at the Alfred P Sloan

Foundation. PHILIP L. MARTIN is Professor in the Department of
Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California,
Davis, and the author of The UnfinishedStory: Turkish LahorMigration to
Western Europe.

[971
 Michael S. Teitelbaum and PhilipL. Martin
ever be admitted to the EU? Brussels' ambivalence reflected what has
become the position of many of Europe's individual leaders-an at-
titude that can best be described as "yes-but." Many of Europe's
politicians now seem willing to recognize Turkey as an official candi-
date-but only once it becomes more like them. This means greater
respect for human rights and a reduced role in government affairs for
Turkey's military. And it also means that Ankara must demonstrate
sustained economic growth, enough to minimize the flood of Turkish
emigration that many fear will result from its admission to the EU.
Some European leaders have also expressed darker concerns about
Turkey. Most declarative, perhaps, have been the views of France's
former president, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the man now in charge
of overseeing the drafting of a "constitution for a United Europe." On
November 8, speaking to an interviewer from Le Monde, Giscard
d'Estaing flatly asserted that Turkey simply is not a European country.
"[Turkey's] capital is not in Europe," he declared, "and 95 percent of
its population is outside Europe. [It has] a different culture, a different
approach, and a different way of life. It is not a European country."
Eu membership for Turkey, he further declared, would mean "the
end of Europe."
Giscard d'Estaing is not alone in such sentiments. His comments
have been echoed by West Germany's former chancellor, Helmut
Schmidt, who publicly voiced fears that the admission of Turkey
"would open the door for similarly plausible full membership of other
Muslim nations in Africa and in the Middle East. That could result,"
he argued, "in the political union degenerating into nothing more
than a free trade community."
As such comments suggest, the debate over Turkey's admission to
the EU has come to involve far more than simple economics, and this
complexity makes Brussels' current ambivalence more understandable.
As historians are quick to point out, European perspectives on
Turkey have been colored by centuries of often troubled relations and
by venerable, sometimes contradictory images of "the Turk." European
elites long defined themselves in contrast to what they saw as the
decadent, effete, depraved, and weak societies of "the East," dominated
by the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, "the Turk" was also often
portrayed as a powerful Mediterranean seafarer or a Barbary pirate:

[9 8] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3

 GILLES PERESS/ MAGNUM PHOTOS

Havepermit,willtravel Turkish guest workers, Munich, 1973

a shrewd and cruel warrior and a potent enemy to be feared and respected.
Both images, although forged in the eighteenth century, have persisted
into the current one, and for many they continue to define Turkey as
outside the scope of European culture.
And yet there are also now strong arguments in favor of admitting
Turkey to the EU. Turkey has a long record as a loyal NATO ally in a
violent and dangerous part of the world. Turkey's admission would
also allow the EU to send an important signal to the world: that it is
open to Muslim as well as Christian societies. And in practical terms,
advocates insist that Turkey's admission might not pose serious
difficulties; they point to the EU's past success in integrating poorer
countries such as Greece, Portugal, and Spain as proof that admission,
accompanied by economic assistance, can set in motion virtuous cycles
that speed up economic growth and constrain migration.
Would Turkey's admission, then, truly represent the "end of Europe,"
as Giscard d'Estaing has warned? Or would it offer a much-needed
embrace to the Islamic world? With credible arguments on both
sides, the answer probably lies somewhere in between. Turkey has
much to offer the EU, and vice versa. In fact, Turkey's admission is

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June2003 [99]

 MichaelS. Teitelbaum andPhilipL. Martin
probably only a matter of time. Having said that, rushing the process
before Turkey is ready will benefit no one, and the best approach
would be a measured and precautionary one. Before forcing the
question, Turkey should improve conditions at home, making itself a
"European" country in spirit and form. Undertaking such reforms
will not be easy. But it is possible, especially if Turkey and the EU work
together to make it happen.

VIVE LA DIFFERENCE?

PERHAPS the one thing that both supporters and opponents of

Turkey's admission can agree on is the unique geographic and histor-
ical position the country occupies. Although part of its largest city
does sit in Europe, nearly all of the modern Turkish Republic's landmass
is in Asia, and throughout history, Turkey has served as both a barrier
and a bridge to Europe. Whatever happens with Turkey's EU candidacy,
the country is likely remain distinctive, even unique, for some time.
Already large by the standards of the EU's 15 (soon to be 25) members,
Turkey's population is growing rapidly. At present there are about
67 million Turks; of these, 3.5 million live abroad, two-thirds of them
in Germany. Germany, by contrast, is currently the largest EU state with
about 83 million residents, but it is shrinking by about 82,ooo a year.
Under the EU's founding Treaty of Rome, citizens of member
states are guaranteed the right to move freely to any other EU state
and to seek jobs there on an equal basis with the locals. Indeed, the
freedoms of movement and employment are among the cornerstones
of the union's constitutional principles. When the EU has expanded
in the past, however, freedom of movement for new members has
often been delayed for a period of seven years in order to prevent mass
emigration. Hence, if Turkey were to be admitted along with Bulgaria
and Romania in 2007, its citizens could similarly be denied the right
to freely emigrate for seven years-until 2014, which, coincidentally,
is about the same year Turkey is projected to become more populous
than any EU member state.
Turkey is not remarkable just for its size; its history is similarly
unique. The region was already of vital importance when Emperor
Constantine established Constantinople in AD 330, and for the next

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 Is Turkey Readyfor Europe?
millennium the city remained the capital of the Eastern Roman
(Byzantine) Empire. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks captured Constan-
tinople and renamed it Istanbul, and for the 450 years that followed,
the cosmopolitan city presided over the Ottoman Empire as it expanded
its control into the Mediterranean and central Europe.
The empire collapsed after World War I, however, and the modern
secular state of Turkey emerged from its ruins-founded in 1923 by a
hero of that war, General Mustafa Kemal. Known as Atatirk,
Turkey's patriarch was deeply suspicious of Europe's postwar attempts
to dismember his country, and for most of the next 40 years, Turkey
and Europe remained wary of and ambivalent toward one another.
Despite his suspicions, Atatdrk was a relentless modernizer, and
his top-down transformations of Turkey
often involved the adoption of European There are now signs
norms-as, for example, when he outlawed
the fez and the veil or changed Turkey's that Turkey's fiercely
alphabet from Arabic to Latin. secular military is
Ataturk died in 1938, and in 1945 his reducing its influence
successor allowed other political parties to
compete for power. In modern Turkey's first over politics.
free election in 1950, the Democratic Party
led by Adnan Menderes came to power. This election, unhappily, also
inaugurated an era of political instability, and the country has suffered
four coups d'6tat in the ensuing half-century. First Menderes was
overthrown by the military and executed in 196o; then, although
civilian rule had been quickly restored, his successor, Sileyman
Demirel, was similarly deposed in 1971. Civilians once again returned
to power three years later, but the coalition governments that followed
proved unstable, and a third coup ensued in 198o. Turgut Ozal gov-
erned as civilian prime minister from 1983 until his death in 1993. But
not long after the Islamist Welfare Party came to power in 1996, it
was forced out by the military (in a bloodless putsch that has come to
be known as Turkey's "soft" coup of 1997).
There are now signs, fortunately, that Turkey's nationalistic and
fiercely secular military is reducing its influence over politics. In last
November's national elections, Erdogan's Justice and Development
Party (known as the AKP in Turkish)-formed from previously banned

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2oo3 1101]

 Michael S. Teitelbaum andPhilip L. Martin
Islamic parties-won 34 percent of the popular vote with promises to
end corruption and revive the stagnating economy. Under Turkey's
electoral system, this plurality translated into a clear majority of 363
(64 percent) of the seats in Turkey's 55o-seat parliament. This huge
share has allowed the AKP to form Turkey's first single-party government
since 1987, and thus far, the military has shown no signs of meddling.
For example, although Erdogan, the AKP'S leader and a former mayor
of Istanbul, was initially banned from formal office because of a 1999
conviction for "inciting religious hatred" (the result of having read at
a political rally a poem declaring, "The mosques are our bayonets, the
domes our helmets and the believers our soldiers"), when his party
changed the constitution to allow him to run for parliament in a
March 2003 by-election, the generals did not openly object. As this
article went to press, Erdogan had just won the by-election and looked
likely to become prime minister.
Despite fears that the AKP would Islamicize Turkey, since taking
power its top priority has been to win EU membership, and the new
government has taken immediate steps to make the necessary changes.
In November, for example, Turkey's state broadcasting authority
responded to EU concerns about the treatment of Turkish Kurds by
announcing that it would for the first time start allowing limited
broadcasts in Kurdish.

THE GUESTS WHO CAME TO STAY

POLITICs ASIDE, perhaps the major obstacle to Turkey's EU entry

today is the country's unproductive and unstable economy, and the
related threat that with accession to the EU, millions of Turks in search
ofjobs and higher wages would emigrate to Germany and elsewhere in
Europe. In order to determine whether such fears are merited, it helps
to review Europe's experience with the last great influx of Turkish
workers: namely, under the "guest worker" programs, which often led
to unexpected results for the countries involved.
In 196o, Turkey adopted a new constitution that, for the first time,
guaranteed citizens the right to a passport and to travel abroad. The
timing was auspicious; Turks gained this freedom just when European,
especially German, employers, were rapidly expanding under Europe's

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 Is Turkey Readyfor Europe?
"economic miracle" and were starting to look abroad to recruit foreign
guest workers (Gastarbeiter)to staff their assembly lines. The supply
of East German migrants had been curtailed by the building of the
Berlin Wall, and thus in October 1961, Turkey and Germany signed a
bilateral labor recruitment agreement that allowed German employers
to hire Turks under temporary (one-year) work permits. If em-
ployers certified that they still needed their Turkish workers after the
one-year period expired, the work permits could be renewed for up to two
further years, and the workers' families were allowed to join them in Ger-
many. After five years in Germany, guest workers became entitled to
change employers and to remain in the country even ifthey lost their jobs.
The program proved very popular in Turkey, and the number of
Turkish guest workers recruited by Germany rose sharply: from 9,0o0 in
1961 to 66,ooo in 1964, and then to 13o,ooo in 1970. The flow peaked
in 1973 at 136,ooo, the same year the German government decided
to stop recruiting abroad. By then, however, some 805,ooo Turks had
already officially moved to Europe under the Turkish Employment
Service, and 500,ooo-7oo,ooo more had gone abroad without work
permits (most European countries had not yet required Turks to
obtain tourist visas), and then found jobs that allowed them to stay.
In the beginning, at least, both Europeans and Turks described
the guest-worker programs as a win-win policy. The system, they
argued, allowed northern and western Europe to achieve sustained
noninflationary economic growth by importing un- and under-
employed workers from southern Europe. Meanwhile, southern
Europe benefited by reducing its persistent under- and unemployment
while profiting from the hard currency sent home by workers
abroad as well as from the return of former peasants who had become
experienced factory laborers.
The deal, however, depended on the assumption that the migra-
tion would be temporary. Guest workers were expected to rotate in
and out ofjobs on assembly lines, construction sites, or mines. When
the economic boom finally waned and unemployment rose, guest
workers who lost their jobs were expected to act as shock absorbers
for European labor markets by naturally choosing to return home to
take advantage of lower living costs, thereby keeping unemployment
rates in northern Europe low.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.May/June2003 [103]

 Michael S. Teitelbaum and PhilipL. Martin
This "worker rotation" principle was first tested in Germany
during the recession of 1966-67, and at first it seemed to work: the
number of foreigners employed in Germany did decline, the Ger-
man unemployment rate stayed under two percent, and economic
growth and guest worker recruitment resumed in the late 196os.
Soon, however, the skeptics who argued that worker rotation
would not work over the long term turned out to have been right
after all. Neither guest workers nor their employers desired strict
enforcement of the rotation policy. The workers became accus-
tomed to wages that were eight to ten times higher than those at
home. Employers, for their part, had little incentive to send
trained workers home and then pay to recruit and train replace-
ments. Guest workers who stayed often reunified their families in
Europe, and thus the number of nonworking dependents climbed
steadily. As a result, whereas in the early 1970s two-thirds of for-
eigners in Germany were employed, 20 years later the figure had
sunk to one-third.
Today, 30 years after the formal guest worker programs ended,
some 50,000 to 8o,ooo Turks continue to migrate to Germany
each year. Most come today under family unification programs,
when Turks in Germany choose to import their spouses from
home. A second way in is through political asylum; during the
199os, an average of 25,ooo Turks a year, especially Kurds, applied
for the protection of asylum status in Germany. (Only a minority
of such claims were approved, but many whose claims were rejected
stayed on anyway.) Finally, there is a large level of illegal Turkish
immigration adding to the influx.

AT HOME ABROAD?

IN THEIR 40 YEARSin Europe, Turkish guest workers and their

families have had considerable difficulty integrating successfully into
European societies. These problems have been widely recognized
across Europe's political spectrum and are cause for further concern
about Turkey's admission to the EU, as many European societies fear
that additional Turkish migration will produce hard-to-integrate
minorities that will threaten social peace and stability.

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 Is Turkey Readyfor Europe?
Numerically, Turks have never represented more than a third of all
the foreigners in Germany, but in many respects they have been the
most visible and least integrated. Turks were the last guest workers to
arrive in large numbers, the poorest, the least educated, and the most
different in cultural and historical terms. Their large numbers and
low levels of income and education meant that Turkish migrants were
more likely to reside in enclaves beset by high rates of poverty and
joblessness. Their integration was also impeded by sharp differences
between Turkish and European cultural views on the roles of men and
women, by the deep significance of Islam in the daily lives of many
Turks, and by the persistent and sometimes violent political divisions
within Turkish society (for example, those between Kurdish and
other Turks). The failure of assimilation was also compounded by the
policies of both governments: Bonn made naturalization extremely
difficult and stressed Turkish-language education even for German-
born Turks, while Ankara encouraged foreign-born Turks to think
and act as Turkish citizens.
Both countries, moreover, had unrealistic expectations about
the benefits of guest worker migration. The Germans overlooked
the social costs of the program, and Turkey overestimated the positive
impact it would have on its own development. Ankara expected
that migration's three Rs-recruitment, remittances, and returns-
would catapult Turkey into the ranks of industrial countries. That
leap never materialized, however, and given how high the expec-
tations were, disappointment was all but inevitable. European
employers naturally wanted to recruit only the best and brightest
workers. The Turkish government tried to counter this trend with
various schemes designed to promote candidates from its poorer
regions in the eastern part of the country, and fostered the creation of
Turkish Workers Companies (Twcs) designed to pool hard-currency
remittances to establish factories and other operations in the mi-
grants' area of origin. Most such plans, however, failed to achieve
their development objectives. Rather than work in a factory for far
lower wages than they had received abroad, most returning migrants
preferred to open a small store or operate a truck or taxi. Hence
their return never enhanced the productivity of local industry, as
had been hoped.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2o3 [105]

 MichaelS. Teitelbaum andPhilip L. Martin

DOING THE MATH

WHAT DO such experiences augur for the future, if Turkey is admit-

ted to the EU? Turkey's own demographics also bear on this question.
During the 1950s, the population of Turkey grew at the exceptionally
high rate of nearly three percent a year, as death rates declined and
fertility stayed high. Fertility rates eventually declined to moderate
levels, yet between 195o and 199o, the country's population almost
tripled, from 21 to 56 million, and it continues to increase by about
8oo,ooo a year today. As mentioned above, this growth means that
by 2014, if it is admitted, Turkey would become the most populous
country in the EU.
The country's work force, meanwhile, remains heavily agricul-
tural: of the 20 million employed Turks, 35 percent work in agriculture,
compared to 25 percent in industry and 40 percent in services. Within
the EU, by contrast, only 4 percent of the population works in agri-
culture; even in Poland, the most agricultural of the EU'S lo new
members, the figure is only 19 percent.
Past experience with EU entry indicates that admission would
accelerate labor displacement from agriculture in Turkey. Ankara
provides a higher level of economic aid to its agriculture sector than
does any EU country: Turkey's agricultural support programs, in fact,
account for 4.3 percent of GDP, versus 1.7 percent in the EU. Nonethe-
less, incomes in Turkish agriculture remain low, and Turkish entry
into the EU would therefore likely provoke large-scale movement off
farms. It remains uncertain whether those leaving agriculture, which
is concentrated in the east and southeast of Turkey, would move only
to Istanbul-or all the way to Germany.
Further raising the likelihood of migration, not to mention eco-
nomic chaos in general, is the fact that, if admitted, Turkey would be
the poorest EU state by far. The Organization for Economic Coopera-
tion and Development reports that Turkish per capita GDP was only
$2,100 in 2ol-a tenth of the $21,ooo average in the EU. Turkey's
economy has also proved alarmingly unstable in the last decade. It con-
tracted by six percent in 1994, expanded by six to seven percent a year
between 1995 and 1997, and then shrank again in 1999-2000. In 2001,
Turkey suffered its worst postwar economic crisis, as the economy

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 Is Turkey Readyfor Europe?
contracted ten percent and the official unemployment rate exceeded
ten percent; the economy was eventually stabilized in 2002 only thanks
to a $i6 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

THE ITALIAN JOB

PARALLELS are frequently drawn between the relationship of Turkey

and the EU to that between Mexico and the United States. And
indeed, there are some important similarities. Turkey and Mexico
both are developing countries with substantial populations: nearly
67 million in Turkey and loo million in Mexico. Both countries have
experienced large emigrations of their people toward richer countries
to the north. In both cases, these migrations preceded economic
integration with their northern neighbors, and one argument for
closer economic integration (via the North American Free Trade
Agreement or EU membership) has been to reduce migration pressure.
The Mexico-U.S. case, however-not to mention other similar
scenarios-makes it overwhelmingly clear that the economic inte-
gration of lower-income countries with richer partners requires
painful restructuring in the lower-income country. One typical result
is that large numbers of workers are displaced from agriculture and
from protected industries, leading to increased pressures favoring
emigration over the short term. This so-called migration hump can
easily last a decade or more.
Still, there are signs for hope. When Italy, for example, restructured
itself and integrated with northern Europe in the early 196os, at first
large numbers of Italians left for France, Germany, and Switzerland.
The surge of Italian migration was short-lived, however, because Italy
managed to create newjobs for ex-farmers in the north and to launch
major development projects in the south.
Could Turkey manage a similar feat, creating jobs for its own
ex-farmers and internal migrants following EU integration? Unhappily,
Turkey's recent track record on job creation has been poor. Over the
last decade, as the working-age population has increased by a million a
year, total employment has remained stagnant at 20 million-21 million.
Only half of these jobs were in the formal sector, moreover, and many
of these were in overstaffed and loss-producing State Economic

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2003 [107]

 Michael S. Teitelbaum and PhilipL. Martin
Enterprises (SEE)-public-sector companies involved with telecom-
munications, energy, iron and steel production, and transportation.
In fact, it was Turkey's failure to privatize or restructure the SEES that
contributed to its deep financial crisis in 2ooL and 2002.
Not only has Turkey's domestic record been poor; it also has a
history of failing to live up to commitments it has made to Europe in
the past. Turkish and European diplomats have been anticipating
Turkey's EU entry since the 196os and negotiating agreements on that
basis, trying to facilitate free movement for Turks in Europe. In 1963,
before the social costs of Turkish integration had become clear, the
then European Community signed an association agreement with
Turkey that envisioned the mutual lowering
No one knows whether of trade and migration barriers. In 1973, an
additional protocol to the association agree-
admitting Turkey to ment established a joint commission charged
the EU would reduce with removing migration barriers between
migration. the Ec and Turkey by 1986.
The barriers were never removed, how-
ever. Turkey balked at lowering its trade
barriers as required, and in 1982 the EC suspended relations with
Turkey in the aftermath of the 198o military coup. Nonetheless, on April
14, 1987, against the advice of Germany and other EC countries, Turkey
formally applied for membership. This application was rebuffed on
December 18, 1989, on grounds that Turkey had not fulfilled basic
human rights criteria and because it was feared that Turkey's low
wages and underemployment could lead to mass migration.
Today, Turkish leaders, like their EU counterparts, are actually
divided about accession. Those in favor argue that the EU should accept
Turkey for three reasons: to bolster those Turks who want to create a
prosperous and secular state, to send a signal that other Islamic states
could eventually join the EU, and to strengthen Turkey's economy and
thus reduce unwanted emigration. Yet many Turkish leaders are less
enthusiastic and emphasize that EU entry is desirable only if the EU
understands Turkey's need to take a firm hand with its Kurdish
minority and does not press too hard on Cyprus. Turks also worry
about becoming the poorest member of Europe, when they could
focus on leading the Islamic world instead.

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 Is Turkey Readyfor Europe?
Some Turkish leaders also resent what they perceive as Europe's
condescending attitudes and complain that Islam is the reason why
the EU is reluctant to admit them. Erdogan, for example, recently
lamented that "Turkey has been waiting at the gates of the EU for
40 years, but countries that applied only lo years ago are almost be-
coming members. We think we have to go beyond that and not look
at the EU as a Christian club."
Erdogan does have a point. Although often avoided in public
discussions of Turkey's admission, the place of Islam in Europe has
become a highly sensitive subject. There are already ii million to
12 million Muslims in Europe, including 5 million in France, 3 million
in Germany, 2 million in the United Kingdom, and 1 million in Italy.
The numbers, combined with problems surrounding integration of
Islamic residents in some countries, the rise of Islamist militancy in
Europe and elsewhere, and the uncovering of organized Islamist
terror cells throughout the continent, have rendered the subject
even more fraught.
Although proponents claim otherwise, in fact no one has any
way of knowing whether admitting Turkey to the EU would reduce
migration, as promised, or stimulate it. What we do know, however,
is that the last time they had the chance, between 1961 and 1973,
some 1.5 million Turks went abroad for employment. That figure
was equivalent to lo percent of Turkey's 1970 work force and 40 per-
cent of its male workers aged 20-39. We also know that interviews
with workers in the late 198os, when Turkey first applied for EU
entry, revealed that at least 20 percent of young men were interested
in overseas jobs and that many young women would have liked to
join them abroad.
Again, even within Turkey there is little agreement on the impact
that EU admission would have on migration. Some Turkish experts
anticipate it would lead to an emigration boom; these pundits note
that there is already significant rural-to-urban and east-west migra-
tion within Turkey that could easily become international migration.
Moreover, migrants who have settled abroad are seen in Turkey as
economic successes. Finally, there is little prospect that enough
formal-sector jobs will be created anytime soon for new entrants
to the labor force-especially for young women in urban areas.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June2003 [log9]

 Michael S. Teitelbaum and PhilipL. Martin
Other Turks, however, deny these claims. They argue instead that
Turkey would replicate the experiences of other, earlier, relatively poor
Eu entrants such as Italy, Greece, Portugal, and Spain. In those historic
cases, the foreign investment and aid that accompanied admission
created enough jobs to prevent large-scale migration. Similarly, most
analysts predict the ten states joining the EU in 2004 to produce only
335,000 migrants-despite the fact that these countries have a combined
population of 67 million.1
The truth is that no one can offer credible predictions in the case
of Turkey. Turkey's population in 2004 will exceed the combined
populations of all ten of these new EU member states. Most analysts
guess that if Turkey entered the EU, a large initial wave of Turks-
20 to 30 percent of the country's young men and women-would
travel abroad to test the EU'S labor markets as soon as they were allowed
to do so. After this initial wave, however, migration would likely
depend on the evolution of labor markets in Turkey and other EU
nations. If Turkey managed to quickly create jobs and raise wages,
departures would shrink, just as would be the case if EU labor markets
offered few jobs for workers with limited skills and little education.

BETTING ON THE FUTURE

TURKEY HAS a long history of struggle between modernizers and

traditionalists in its government. The former now argue that the
latter will become stronger and more assertive if the EU rejects or
delays Turkey's admission. Although such arguments have a certain
logic, however, the overriding fact is that no one knows what the conse-
quences of rapid admission would be. Given such crucial uncertainty,
prudence and good sense support a more cautious process. Certainly,
Turkey has changed dramatically over the past 8o years, successfully
transforming itself from an autocratic and decaying empire to a
modernizing (ifunstable) democracy. If these changes can be sustained,
Turkey will gradually establish itself as ready for full EU membership.

' Even this low level of expected migration prompted Austria and Germany to insist
that the EU prevent citizens of new eastern European members from migrating for at
least two years. After this two-year wait, old EU members will still be allowed to indi-
vidually prevent freedom of movement for up to another five years.

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 Is Turkey Readyfor Europe?
Hasty Eu admission, on the other hand, would be a gamble, one
that could go badly wrong-especially since reversal would not be an
option. Particularly worrisome is the possibility that Turkey's military
might once again take power, especially if it feels the country is
threatened by resurgent Islamists. Should an Islamist takeover and
coup (either "hard" or "soft") occur, EU leaders would find themselves
facing an impossible choice: between endorsing a military takeover or
accepting an Islamist regime in their largest member state.
Nonetheless, Turkey's admission to the Eu remains an attractive
idea in the long term. Those in Turkey and elsewhere who urge a
rapid pace should not be disheartened when their friends tell them
that Turkey must first undertake a process of adjustment-economic,
political, educational, and cultural. What Turkey really needs is more
honesty about the need for such adjustments and about the consider-
able time they are likely to require. Such frankness, unpalatable
though it may sound, would be far more helpful than pressure for a
rapid timetable that will likely fail. Such a failure could do great damage
both to Turkey and to the EU-far more than would a more cautious,
if less dramatic, process.0

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June2003 [111]

 Untangling
India and Pakistan
K. Sbankar Bajpai

EVER ON THE BRINK

As ONE of the world's longest-suffering victims of terrorism, India

had high hopes for the U.S.-led campaign against global terrorists
that emerged in the wake of the September u attacks. But well into
the second year of this "war," and despite full support for U.S. actions,
India finds itself harder put to counter the violence inflicted on it. At
the same time, the source of that violence, Pakistan, seems better
placed to get away with it.
This bizarre situation arises from the importance of Pakistan
to the ongoing effort to secure Afghanistan. Pakistan joined the
campaign against the Taliban, its erstwhile client, in part due to
international pressure but also in part because Afghan extremists
were swiftly becoming a threat to Pakistan's own security. It is of
course an old Wild West custom for the sheriff to co-opt the gunslinger
in hunting bigger outlaws-and the Afghan campaign resembles
nothing so much as a Wild West manhunt writ large. But problems
arise when he who helps the good guys also keeps his ties with the
bad ones. The military government of General Pervez Musharraf
doubtless confronts severe obstacles in any effort to root out Islamic
extremism on its own soil. Islamists carry weight in the country
and are said to be beyond government control. In addition, the army

K. SHANKAR BAJPAI served as India's Ambassador to Pakistan, China,

and the United States, and as Secretary of the Ministry of External
Affairs. He was a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Center for
International Security and Cooperation in 2002.

[112]
 UntanglingIndia andPakistan
feels an irresistible temptation to use terrorists in its campaign
against India in the state ofJammu and Kashmir (referred to here-
after as Kashmir). As a result, Pakistan has sought to let what India
calls cross-border terrorism in Kashmir continue, as though exempt
from the international war against terror.
Whether with Islamabad's connivance or tacit approval or despite
its genuine willingness to stop them, groups directly linked to Pakistan-
based extremists have perpetrated ever more intolerable attacks
against India, resulting in the crisis that almost led to war last year.
The first outrage followed so hard on the heels of the attacks in the
United States that it seemed almost a show of defiance against the new
international coalition. On October 1, 2001, groups trained and
financed by Pakistan, Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed
(which were soon designated as terrorist organizations by the United
States), organized a brazen assault on the Kashmir state legislature.
Then, on December 13, came an even bolder attack on the Indian
Parliament, which triggered the deployment of Indian forces to the
border with Pakistan. After intense pressure from Washington,
Musharraf delivered his now famous January 12 speech asserting the
cessation of all further terrorist activity from Pakistani territory.
Although all attacks were formally disowned by Islamabad, non-
Kashmiri militants based in and backed by Pakistan continued their
lesser daily mischief and in May 2002 organized another audacious
assault on families at the Kaluchak army base in Kashmir. Again
officially denied, this outrage led to India's outright threat of war.
The crisis was defused only by a flurry of U.S. diplomatic activity.
And despite Pakistan's assurances of a crackdown, terrorist incidents
continue, including the recent massacre of 24 Kashmiri Hindus by
militants disguised as Indian soldiers.
Although war was avoided last year, public pronouncements
from both sides about the conflict are not encouraging. They con-
sist largely of each side's claims that it got the better of the other
because it possessed the nuclear deterrent. Was India bluffing, and
did Pakistan get off the hook by making empty promises? Or was
India ready to face nuclear damage, and did it extract promises that,
even if Pakistan now denies them, were firm commitments made to
and confirmed by the United States? No one can be sure which view

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June2o3 1113 1

 K Shankar Bajpai
is true, but misplaced confidence on both sides continues to make
the conflict extremely volatile.'
The two sides' brinkmanship has also led to two profoundly alarming
developments: the United States has made it clear that it cannot exercise
any greater pressure on Pakistan to give up cross-border terrorism, and
Pakistan has persuaded itself that India can go no further militarily.
Both factors encourage militancy against India. Worse still for India,
international attention is shifting from pressing Islamabad to crack down
harder on terror to urging New Delhi to "do something" to make it worth
Pakistan's while to end terrorism. Before any such trends complicate a
dangerous situation further, it is necessary to look again at the real nature
of the issues involved and the realistic possibilities for resolving them.
Since the confrontation between India and Pakistan is widely seen
as arising from their differences over Kashmir, international attention
has focused on coming up with some agreement on the state's status.
This approach misses the basic fact that there can be no such solution
to the Kashmir issue, and no improvement in Indo-Pakistani relations,
under existing circumstances. The sooner all concerned-India,
Pakistan, and potential outside players (especially the United States)-
accept this fact, the better the chances for easing tensions and working
out an acceptable solution.

VICTIMS OF CIRCUMSTANCE

CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES are unpromising, even alarming, in

several important ways. First, there are no positive pressures what-
soever in Indo-Pakistani relations, no effective sense of common
benefits from cooperation, no mutual trust, and, of course, no dialogue.

1 The nuclear issue of course needs fuller attention. But despite its enormous
importance, to deal with it here would double the length of this essay. Let us merely
note that India has always accepted Pakistan's right to develop its own nuclear capabilities.
In fact, to the extent that tensions in the subcontinent are linked to Pakistan's genuine
(as opposed to propagandist) fears of India, anything that gives it greater confidence
for its security should act as a stabilizing factor. Unfortunately, recent tensions have
cast severe doubts about such a view. The two sides should therefore begin serious
discussions on basic confidence-building and nuclear transparency to avoid catastrophic
accidents, mistakes, or miscalculations. Here, too, the United States could be a most
effective catalyst.

[114] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume82No. 3

 UntanglingIndiaandPakistan
Perhaps the only thing that kept the two from going to war in their
recent standoff was the apprehension that much harm might be done
without much advantage being gained.
Even this source of restraint may dry up because both sides believe
that they can sooner or later achieve their goals by persisting in their
present approaches. India hopes to contain and ultimately defeat
outside militancy by using its superior military might-so far without
crossing into Pakistan. Pakistan for its part feels it can force India
into negotiations aimed at giving up Kashmir
by persisting in its low-cost instigation of An increasingly
violence. Since neither side has been able to
achieve its objective for nearly two decades, frustrated India feels
it would be logical to rethink the basic ap- that it has few options
proaches. Instead, Pakistan behaves as though
India will have no option but to cave in if short of full-scale war.
kept on the run long enough. An increasingly
frustrated India, unable to develop any graduated responses to Pakistan's
challenges, feels driven to apply the ultimate sanction of fill-scale war.
The extent to which unrest in Kashmir is rooted in Pakistan's
actions or indigenous Kashmiri resentments is endlessly argued, but
two facts are indisputable: Pakistan could not have sustained the
current level of violence in Kashmir if there were not substantial local
resentment to exploit. India, however, could at least contain, and
most probably overcome, challenges within Kashmir if there were no
Pakistani support for the militancy. Both facts encourage Pakistan to
carry on provoking trouble in Kashmir. Although indigenous oppo-
sition to India within the state has been almost wholly overtaken
by outsiders, Pakistan continues to exploit enough residual dissatis-
faction to keep the levels of violence up-again leaving India with
no response short of threatening war.
For India's containment approach to succeed, there must be a
new arrangement between New Delhi and the Kashmiri people
that would address the dissatisfactions that facilitated the growth
of militancy. Last year's elections in Kashmir have undoubtedly
produced a great opportunity for progress, but for that very reason
Pakistan will renew its efforts to undermine any settlement and
prolong instability.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS .May/June2o3 [115]

 K ShankarBajpai
In sum, the dangers of another slide to the brink remain alarmingly
higher than either the slim and hardly reassuring possibility that the
conflict will just continue to simmer or any hope that it will ease up.
The only new factor that could make a difference is the United States'
improved relationship with both countries. But if Washington is
to be a force for the better, its policies must take into account the
full nature of the conflict. The absence of dialogue is hardly the only
obstacle. Such a limited focus ignores the compelling lesson of history:
when circumstances do not permit of a solution, do not try to find
one-try instead to change the circumstances.

FORGET KASHMIR, FOR NOW

How CAN India and Pakistan change the circumstances between

them? They must start by breaking the chicken-and-egg cycle that
prevents even a starting point for discussions. Pakistan says, "Settle
Kashmir and normal cooperative relations will follow"; sometimes
this position is softened to, "Start settling Kashmir and we can
start toward normalization." India responds, "Start normalizing
relations, and options regarding Kashmir, unthinkable today, can
become feasible."
Here India's experience with China is instructive. For decades
after the 1962 Sino-Indian war, New Delhi refused to consider
normalizing relations unless Beijing withdrew from the territories
it had occupied. The Chinese said any boundary settlement would
obviously take time, and that meanwhile India should also be
ready to improve relations in other fields. It was when India accepted
the inevitability of this approach that the present Sino-Indian d6-
tente became possible. Of course, the example is not brightly
promising: relations have had several setbacks and still have a long
way to go. Nevertheless, the basic approach has been beneficial to
both sides.
Pakistanis retort that the Sino-Indian dispute did not involve a
restive population, like the Kashmiri people, and, moreover, that
it cannot compare to the Kashmir conflict in the public emotion it
arouses. No Pakistani leader could be seen as yielding even an iota on
Kashmir without courting domestic political disaster. That public

[116] FOREIGN AFFAIRS- Volume82No. 3

 "i e
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emotions have been deliberately
kept at fever pitch does not help - --

matters-nor does pointing it out.

Some Pakistani public opinion polls
have recently suggested that only a
very small percentage of Pakistanis consider Kashmir to be the
country's number one problem; the overwhelming majority place
it way below a whole host of bread-and-butter issues. Similar polls
would be similarly misleading about India. Such readings of pub-
lic opinion do not allow for the fact that political forces can rapidly
inflame public opinion. Even those who may not care much today
would be screaming blue murder if they were told that their lead-
ers were "selling out"-or if they thought something drastically
wrong was happening on the ground (as has indeed been the case
in India after all these years of terror). But this is surely a matter of

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.May/June2003 [117]

 K ShankarBajai
leadership. Leaders can neither ignore public opinion nor be led by
it-they have to try and change it.
But if it is domestically difficult for a Pakistani leader to be seen as
slackening in the struggle for Kashmir, it is no less difficult for an
Indian leader to be seen as slackening in the struggle against terrorism.
This serious challenge has undermined the very idea of starting talks.
Nobody can doubt that the two sides must ultimately start negotiating,
but India has solid reasons for being cautious. Pakistan says it does
_ not expect talks to succeed overnight, only
The horrific Gujarat that they should seriously address Kashmir.
And it sounds very logical and practical to
riots would have been urge discussions about both issues: Kashmir
unthinkable before and normalizing relations. India, however,
Pakistan's terrorism had has not only already accepted but proffered
this principle-in the almost forgotten Simla
spread its poison. Accord of 1972, in the framework evolved at
Lahore in 1999, and at the Agra summit in
2OOl. But Pakistan's present leaders have repeatedly and bluntly
dismissed the first two efforts and were largely responsible for the
breakdown of the third. India's doubt therefore remains: if Pakistan's
leaders sneer at past negotiations, how credible is their supposed will-
ingness to talk at any place at any time?
Even more disturbing for India are two other problems with
Pakistan's position: how to reconcile its consistent animosity with any
genuine interest in a settlement, and what that settlement could add
up to. For talks to become possible, India will have to see an end to,
or at least a major decrease in, terrorism. Pakistan, however, feels
it cannot let go of the most effective weapon it has ever found to
pressure India, without which it fears India will not discuss Kashmir.
But for India, this use of terror is not just an attempt to wrest away
Kashmir but an expression of unremitting antagonism: Pakistan's
real aim, in this view, lies beyond Kashmir in the destabilization of
India as a whole.
The Pakistani position that Kashmir is the basic problem in Indo-
Pakistani relations really needs a thorough evaluation. Musharraf
himself, in a speech in April 2000, provided the realistic assessment
that animosity between India and Pakistan would persist even if the

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 UntanglingIndia and Pakistan
Kashmir problem were solved. Indians would reject his reasoning-
that India, by nature and policy, seeks regional hegemony. But they
would agree sadly with his conclusion because they see animosity
toward India as inherent in Pakistan's power structure. The army has
sought permanent primacy in Pakistan, and the rallying cry of "the
nation in danger" has been essential to securing that primacy.
Furthermore, one must consider what Pakistan demands of India.
Pakistan is seeking a drastic change in the status quo, whereas
India sees the sanctification of the status quo as the maximum conces-
sion it can make. Pakistan's rejection of current conditions is summed
up by Musharraf's comment that if the status quo were the solution,
what has Pakistan been fighting for? Hard as it is for the Pakistanis
to accept, can there be any real answer except that what they have
been fighting for is no longer feasible? However wrapped up in
the language of morality or principle or human rights, what Pakistan
demands of India is what only a country defeated in war-and pretty
badly defeated at that-could ever be expected to surrender. For that
simple reason alone, holding Indo-Pakistani relations hostage to
Kashmir is deeply unproductive.

IDENTITY CRISIS

To UNDERSTAND the vast gap between India and Pakistan-and to

assess what can be done about it-one needs to understand the history
behind their emergence as independent states. That history is ex-
tremely complex, but one should start with a fundamental fact: there
is no parallel in history to the modern Indian state. Never have so
many diverse groups-linguistic, racial, regional, and religious-in
such huge numbers, been encompassed within a democratic framework.
Because no such state had ever existed, many said India could not
succeed. In particular, those demanding Pakistan's creation claimed
that the Muslims of India were a separate "nation" and could live only
in a state in which Muslims were the majority. (They also demanded
that Muslim-majority areas should be part of Pakistan; hence their
claim to Kashmir.) Opposing this was the nationalist belief that
Indians were all one people, whose varying faiths and practices enriched
a common culture. We must recall that initial difference because it

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June2003 [119]

 K ShankarBajpai
persists in a baleful new form: Pakistan alleges that India is not recon-
ciled to the two countries' partition in 1947 and is still seeking to undo
it, whereas India increasingly believes that Pakistan's use of terrorism
is actually part of an effort to destabilize India as a whole.
Working out Hindu-Muslim relations has been the greatest challenge
facing India's social equilibrium since its independence. Tensions
between members of the two communities have erupted too often in
violence, so Indians are very conscious that their record is blemished.
But efforts to improve relations and progress in doing so are surely
manifest. Pakistan, however, not only derides India's efforts and
condemns its secular aims as hypocrisy, but officially propagates
the teaching of the most awful depiction of
The days are long gone Hindus. The point is made not in any
since each country polemical sense but to bring out the fact that
Hindu-Muslim tensions in India are to no
recognized that they small degree exacerbated by the nature of
had a common Indo-Pakistani relations. The days are long
gone since each country recognized, through
responsibility to calm such measures as the 1950 pact between Prime
communal tensions. Ministers Jawaharlal Nehru and Liaquat Ali
Khan, that they had a common responsibility
to calm communal tensions. Now, as established sovereign states, they
consider such problems domestic and beyond any outsiders' purview.
The issue is further complicated by being one-sided. At the time of
Partition, there were some 11 million-15 million Hindus and Sikhs in
what is now Pakistan, and about 30 million-35 million Muslims
in what was left of India. Today, India's Muslims number about 14o mil-
lion (more than Pakistan has), whereas in Pakistan virtually no Hindus
or Sikhs remain. This simple fact reveals the two states' differing
approaches toward minorities.
Not having India's problem of solidifying a nationhood that includes
a major minority-if indeed 140 million people can be considered a
minority in any sense other than the purely mathematical-Pakistan
takes no account of the pressures facing India. The constant insistence
that Muslims are a separate people and, worse, the terrorist on-
slaughts in the name of Islam strike at the heart of India's social order.
Indeed, these actions persuade many Indians that at least some Pakistani

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 UntanglingIndia and Pakistan
policymakers encourage Hindu-Muslim disharmony as a way to
undermine their vastly larger neighbor.
Pakistan sees such possibilites because, although Indians are loath
to admit it, India's secularism faces grave threats. What happened in
Gujarat last year is a painful illustration of how past dangers can
resurface. Most outside observers view the rioting, which claimed as
many as 2,000 lives, as a manifestation of Hindu extremism and a
frightening weakening of secularism in India. Indians are conscious
of this danger and of its role in Gujarat. But what is relevant here is
that the unspeakable horrors would have been unthinkable before
Pakistan's terrorism in the name of Islam had spread its poison. It has
not been noted internationally that, like
Kashmir, Gujarat is a frontier state and as Although Indians are
such keenly feels the effects of Pakistani
terrorism. The animosity stoked by Indo- loath to admit it,
Pakistani tensions thus spilled over into India's secularism
Hindu-Muslim violence. Still, the fact that faces grave threats.
the outrages were contained within a single
state shows the strength of secularism in
India as a whole. The violence in Gujarat must be taken as a warning
of how vulnerable India's considerable success in building its unique
nationhood is to Pakistan's terrorist campaign. But India's reaction to
the riots also underlines both the strength of its secular pluralism
and the absolute importance of guarding it.
Pakistanis often say Kashmir is the unfinished business of Partition
and that it should be settled on the same principle: Muslims are a
separate nation and Muslim-majority areas of the subcontinent
ought to constitute Pakistan. Apart from the impossibility of a country
with 140 million Muslims ever accepting such a "principle," this
argument overlooks the dreadful accompaniments of Partition: un-
precedented massacres and migration as people crossed new borders.
Altering India's sovereignty over Kashmir (as opposed to giving greater
autonomy to the Kashmiris) would run the risk of sparking new violence
and bringing Hindu-Muslim tensions to a boil. The Indian position
is that Partition, although a wrenching change, is now a fact, and
everyone must adjust to it. What Pakistan is trying to do regarding
Kashmir is not to adjust to past change but to bring about a new change.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS. May/June2oo3 [121]

 K ShankarBajpai
Islamabad must consider, however, the huge risks of any such shift,
for even before September 11, 2001, they stood to affect Pakistan as
much as India. If the Pakistani government is genuinely committed
to its current promise to curb terrorism, it has a new reason for needing
communal harmony in India, just as India's efforts to strengthen such
harmony would benefit enormously from the growth of moderation
in Pakistan.
Fifty years of trying to pry Kashmir out of Indian hands has led
Pakistan to use terrorism as its instrument of choice. This policy has
served to strengthen within Pakistan forces that threaten that country's
stability as much as India's. It is for Pakistan to decide if the game is
worth the candle-and for those who wish to see a solution to help
Pakistan reach the right decision.

QUIDS AND QUOS

AND WHAT OF INDIA? With Pakistan feeling that it is being asked
to give up virtually all its aims regarding Kashmir, is India simply to
be left alone? Having suffered all these years from what it sees as
Pakistani efforts to undermine it, India could well take the position
that it owes nothing in return for being left in peace. In fact, the
compensation for Pakistan is its own salvation: there is simply no
getting away from the reality that the country's support for terrorism
has fueled a destabilizing domestic extremism. But realistically there has
to be a quid pro quo for Islamabad.
The Pakistani government will not be able to "sell" the abandonment
of terror just by urging its people to believe it is good for the country.
It must be able to say that India too has made a substantial concession.
Most policymakers in New Delhi understand this need, but the
challenge is to devise a package of reciprocal measures that includes
a sufficiently large obligation on India's part. Fortunately, that would
not be too hard to put together. Two major changes in India's present
position, advisable in their own right, add up to a demonstrably
significant concession. First, New Delhi can step back from its insis-
tence that talks commence only when terrorism is stopped altogether--
a substantial reduction in attacks, which alas has yet to materialize,
should be sufficient. Second, India should openly accept the United

112 2] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3

 UntanglingIndiaandPakistan
States as a facilitator of serious Indo-Pakistani dialogue, something
that Pakistan has long sought and India has long opposed. Such a
move would be as much a concession to reality as to Pakistan. U.S.
involvement in the conflict has been an
indisputable fact, and indeed lately a useful
one. If India accepts that the United States American involvement
will remain actively involved and that it is in the conflict has
best to try and shape that involvement, it
can bow gracefully without losing anything. become an indisputable
Other steps could also add weight to the fact, and indeed
package, such as restoring ambassador-level lately a useful one.
relations, ifIslamabad demonstrates serious
progress against terrorism.
The greatest misfortune stemming from Kashmir's grip on the
bilateral agenda between India and Pakistan is the absence of qualities
in the relationship that could bring about a fundamental change in
the political climate. If, for example, the two countries had developed
a strong economic interaction, there would be powerful vested interests
at work in both countries to keep tensions from getting out of hand.
Once such interests-and the wide-ranging contacts that flow from
them-take hold, solutions regarding Kashmir that neither side would
even look at under present circumstances could become thinkable.
Analysts often cite the example of France and Germany coming
together after far longer enmity than India and Pakistan have endured.
Putting aside other weaknesses of that comparison, what helped in
the Franco-German case was the specter of a common external threat
and the catalytic role of U.S. economic and military aid, both of
which are hardly conceivable in the Indo-Pakistani situation. But it
is also true that Franco-German cooperation became possible only
because far-sighted leaders in both countries recognized the harm
caused by historic animosity. And that has to be the starting point for
India and Pakistan as well.
Huge-and hugely difficult-changes for the two countries are
admittedly involved: realizing that current policies are not only futile
but pernicious; facing down the domestic political forces that would
seek to exploit new approaches; and throwing away the stiffing baggage
of some 6o profoundly divisive years. Fortunately, the blueprints for

FOREIGN AFFAIRS .May/June2003 [1231

 K ShankarBajpai
change are ready at hand: the agenda for reconciliation was spelled
out realistically at the three summits already mentioned (Simla,
Lahore, and Agra) and in two less remembered but even more specific
agreements signed at Male in 1997 and Lahore in 1998 between the
two nations' foreign secretaries. The agenda created at these various
meetings recognizes the importance of Kashmir and proposes also
to tackle other, more manageable disputes (such as those over the
Siachen Glacier, the Sir Creek maritime boundary, or the Tulbul
navigation project). The two sides also envisaged positive steps such
as increasing trade and investment, ending offensive propaganda,
promoting cultural and human contacts, and, not least, discussing
nuclear issues. (Today, one could add non-bilateral matters such as
Afghanistan; India and Pakistan both have obvious interests in that
country's stabilization.) In sum, the way forward is clear enough; only
the will to proceed is missing. A convincing commitment by Pakistan
to end its support for terrorism should then oblige India to resume a
constructive dialogue.

THE AMERICAN CONNECTION

A FINAL POINT to consider is the role of the United States. This role,
of course, is not entirely new, as Washington has often influenced
events between India and Pakistan. That influence has been seen in
India as hardening Pakistani antagonism, and these misgivings
linger. Ever since Pakistan's original 1954 alliance with the United
States, India has been able to breathe more freely about Kashmir only
at times when Washington has distanced itself from Pakistan. This
distancing has largely been U.S. policy since 1965, although there
have been exceptions such as the pro-Pakistan "tilt" during the 1971
Bangladesh war or the use of Pakistan to drive the Russians out of
Afghanistan. The growing, if still nascent, Indo-American relationship
of the 199os has also seen U.S. involvement in South Asia that has
been actually helpful to India-for instance, when India and Pakistan
faced off in 1999 at Kargil. As at Kargil, the combination of India's
military posture and U.S. diplomacy persuaded Pakistan to draw back
during last year's confrontation and enabled New Delhi to start cool-
ing things from the Indian side. The lull in the wake of the standoff

[1Z41 FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume82No. 3

 UntanglingIndia andPakistan
became possible not because Islamabad and New Delhi reached
any new understanding, but because both sides made promises of
restraint to Washington, which the United States in turn promised
to enforce. Although Indian suspicions about outside involvement in
Kashmir have not been removed, India continues working with the
United States to try and defuse regional tensions further.
Of course, New Delhi denies agreeing to anything more than
having Washington act as a channel of communication, but that is
precisely how the United States can contribute most usefully. What-
ever name Washington's role might be given, it has become a crucial
player and will remain so. What distinguishes the U.S. role today is
the virtual impossibility of seeing any lasting Indo-Pakistani tran-
quility without Washington's efforts. The United States can provide
no magic solution-and should not try to- _

but it is an important new element that can Lasting Indo-Pakistani

help change the circumstances between
India and Pakistan. peace is virtually
Each of the three governments faces very impossible without
difficult decisions. New Delhi must first Washington's help.
accept that it can make Pakistan yield its
presently successful strategy of proxy war
against India only by either resorting to outright war or learning to
get the best it can byworking with the United States. Islamabad must
understand both that it cannot wrest Kashmir from India and that
destabilizing India is as dangerous to itself as it is to India. And
Washington must accept that to achieve long-term stability in the
subcontinent, it may have to side with either India or Pakistan on
specific issues, and it must understand that its actions will be viewed
in the region in this zero-sum manner.
Washington must make long-term stability the focus of its
South Asia policy, and talks on Kashmir are a natural starting
place. But Washington's approach can work only if it bears in mind
exactly what talks are meant to facilitate: a new approach between
the two sides. India and Pakistan are currently in a dead end, and the
only way out of a dead end is to backtrack. But if India is to back
away from its present refusal to talk until terrorism ends com-
pletely, it needs some credible assurance that it will not be trapped

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June 2003 [12 5 ]

 K ShankarBajpai
again by impossible demands regarding Kashmir. Pakistan is correct
to expect that Kashmir will be the prime focus of discussions. But
the least India and outside players can expect from Pakistan is a
genuine attempt to ease the other difficulties in the relationship.
Washington's potential to help lies not in trying to invent, much
less enforce, a Kashmir solution, but in nudging the two sides into
a joint search for positive relations. If U.S. encouragement can
stimulate bilateral progress in improving ties, a solution to Kashmir
will eventually become possible. The ultimate responsibility, however,
lies with the two neighbors themselves. India and Pakistan both
face a common enemy in the form of terrorism; only a new effort at
cooperation will rid the region of this scourge.0

[126 ] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3

 Reviews & Responses

Liberty Leading the People by EugeneDelacroix

Zakaria argues that the best way to

turn developing countries into liberal
democracies is by fostering constitutional
liberty rather than democracy.
Putting Liberty First John B.Judis 128

Free Trade Optimism DaniRodrik 135

Democracy Promotion
PaulajDobriansky andThomas Carothers 141

Recent Books on International Relations 146

Letters to the Editor 168
 Review Essay

Putting Liberty First

The Case Against Democracy

fobn B. Judis

The Future ofFreedom. BY FAREED
ZAKARIA. New York: W. W. Norton,
2003, 256 pp. $24.95.
The U.S. State Department has a Bureau
of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
whose purpose is to "promote democracy
as a means to achieve security, stability,
and prosperity for the entire world" and
"identify and denounce regimes that
deny their citizens the right to choose
their leaders in elections that are free, fair,
and transparent." The Bush administration
has already promised to bring democracy
to Iraq after Saddam Hussein is ousted.
And Americans regularly condemn
China for being undemocratic and praise
Russia for its democratic advances.
Democracy is the way Americans distin-
guish the good guys from the bad, those
regimes worth supporting from those not,
and it is the first remedy prescribed for
any country whose practices are disliked.
But Fareed Zakaria, editor and colum-
nist at Newsweek International,argues in
The FutureofFreedom that many devel-
oping societies initially fare best under
what he calls "liberal authoritarian
regimes," and that "what we need in
[American] politics today is not more
democracy but less."
Zakaria's provocative and wide-ranging
book is eminently worth reading. If not
entirely persuasive when dealing with
contemporary American politics, he is
correct that Americans' obsession with
electoral democracy has clouded their
understanding of countries such as Rus-
sia, China, and South Korea and led at
times to disastrous policy choices. This
case has been made before, but never as
simply and clearly. His book displays a
kind of argumentation, grounded in
history and political philosophy, of
which there is precious little these days,
particularly among opinion columnists.

JOHN B. JUDIS is a senior editor at The New Republic.

[128 ]
 PuttingLiberty First
populist authoritarianism (as Germany
CHAD, NOT CHADS and Italy did between the world wars).
Zakaria's argument pivots on a distinc- He speculates that if elections were
tion between constitutional liberty and held now in many Middle Eastern or
democracy. He defines the former as North African countries, they would be
the protection of individual rights of won by fundamentalist parties that
speech, property, and religion through a would proceed to destroy whatever
system of law not subject to arbitrary modicum of liberty exists and probably
government manipulation. This phe- eliminate future elections as well.
nomenon developed gradually over Zakaria's role models are countries
time, he argues. Imperial Rome had a that first created a strong constitutional
system of law, but not constitutional liberal infrastructure, often under a lib-
liberty. England gained rudimentary eral authoritarian regime. They include
constitutional liberties after the Magna South Korea, Taiwan, Chile, and Sin-
Carta in 1215, and the United States was gapore. Before South Korea and Taiwan
founded as a system of constitutional instituted elections, many American
liberty in 1788. liberals denounced them for their lack
Zakaria defines democracy, in con- of democracy, and Singapore's govern-
trast, as a political system based on ment is still in disfavor.
"open, free, and fair elections." In 1830, His object lessons of what happens
the United Kingdom had constitutional when democracy is forced on a country
liberty but was not a democracy: only prematurely are Russia and Indonesia,
two percent of the population was eligi- where the United States and the Inter-
ble to vote. The United States became a national Monetary Fund (IMF) made
full-fledged liberal democracy after elections a condition of economic assis-
women won the vote in 192o and blacks tance during the late 199os. In the great
were guaranteed access to the polls in Russia-China debate over which should
1965, and now most of Europe consists come first, political reform or economic
of liberal democracies also. Singapore reform, Zakaria sides most definitely
today has liberty, but not democracy. with the Chinese.
Russia, on the other hand, has elections, What makes constitutional liberty
but under Vladimir Putin it is tossing possible? Zakaria is most persuasive in
out some of the constitutional liberties arguing that it is the development of
it acquired after the fall of communism. autonomous institutions within society
Zakaria argues that the best way to that are not beholden to state power-
turn developing countries into liberal and most important, those institutions
democracies is by fostering constitu- of property that are created by the de-
tional liberty rather than democracy. If velopment of capitalism. He writes, "If
electoral democracy is established in a the struggles between church and state,
society before it has achieved constitu- lords and kings, and Catholics and
tional liberty, it is likely to either end Protestants cracked open the door for
up as an "illiberal democracy" (like individual liberty, capitalism blew the
Russia) or degenerate into fascism or walls down." Market capitalism, not

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June 2003 [129 ]

wealth per se, creates an independent
bourgeoisie that upholds the universal
rule of law as a protection against feudal
state power.
Centuries ago, capitalism and con-
stitutional liberty failed to take root in
poverty-ridden subsistence economies,
but today, Zakaria argues, the most
inhospitable circumstances are found
in countries that have significant access
to unearned wealth-be it from oil rev-
enues in Saudi Arabia or from canal
revenues in Egypt. He calls these "trust
fund" societies. The ruling class lives
off the rents it collects, which it also uses
to buy off the citizenry. These societies
lack an independent, entrepreneurial
middle class, which could provide the
basis for constitutional liberty. Their
problem, Zakaria concludes, "is wealth,
not poverty."
The solution, he argues, is to force
them to devote their unearned revenues
to popular education and economic
development. That won't be easy in
Saudi Arabia, but Zakaria cites the
case of Chad as an example of what
should be done. In exchange for help-
ing Chad develop its oil fields, the
World Bank stipulated that 8o percent
of the revenues be spent on health,
education, and rural infrastructure,
5 percent be spent on people living
near the oil fields, and io percent be
left in escrow for future generations-
leaving the government only 5 percent
to spend on itself.
Zakaria does not comment specifically
on the prospects of democracy in a
post-Saddam Iraq, but the implications
of his analysis are clear. If the United
States invades and tries to move Iraq
toward democracy, it will face two
[130]
Council on
Foreign Relations
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 PuttingLiberty First
major obstacles: group rivalries and oil. not equivalent to, nor essential ingre-
What Zakaria writes of the Balkans dients of, what Zakaria describes as
could easily apply to a future Iraq: "The constitutional liberty elsewhere in
introduction of democracy in divided the book.
societies has actually fomented nation- Democracy, meanwhile, is now
alism, ethnic conflict, and even war." talked about in terms of "democratiza-
And Iraq's oil reserves, the second tion," which includes not only the exten-
largest in the world, could encourage sion of suffrage, but also the breakdown
another oil autocracy like Saudi Arabia of hierarchies and traditional authority,
if the revenues are not distributed on the opening up of closed systems
the model of Chad. To create a liberal through deregulation, and "pressures
democracy in Iraq, the United States from the masses." Democratization
and the international community will means the displacement of high culture
have to figure out a way to keep com- by blockbuster movies, romance novels,
munal tensions in check while devoting and commercial art. (When he writes
the bulk of the country's oil revenues about culture, Zakaria sounds like the
to the development of a middle class early-twentieth-century Spanish
that is not tied to the state or to oil- philosopher and "mass society" theorist
not an easy task. Jos6 Ortega y Gasset.) In politics, it
means the replacement of the party
THE REVOLTING MASSES system with presidential primaries and
In the second part of The Future of referenda, and of the independent
Freedom, Zakaria argues that the think tank by the policy group that is
United States suffers from an excess of in fact a lobbying organization. In
democracy, which is threatening liberty. business, it is associated with "market-
The analysis appears to come fill circle- ization" and means pension funds,
liberty leads to democracy and democracy credit cards, advertising by lawyers,
ends up undermining liberty, prompting and products geared to mass markets.
him to call for "a restoration of balance" Zakaria argues that democratization
between them. But when Zakaria writes in the political arena has created "an
about liberty and democracy in this sec- ever growing class of professional
tion, he uses different definitions, and consultants, lobbyists, pollsters, and
his analysis is less persuasive. activists.... By declaring war on elitism,
Liberty now refers to the conditions we have produced politics by a hidden
that accompanied the creation of con- elite-unaccountable, unresponsive,
stitutional liberty in the United States: and often unconcerned with any larger
delegated power, representative rather public interest." He attributes congres-
than plebiscitary government, checks sional gridlock to the elimination of
and balances on majority rule. Zakaria congressional hierarchies by the reforms
identifies these Madisonian constraints of the early 197os. He laments the de-
on direct democracy with liberty. Yet cline of the independent professional in
these do not exist in the same fashion business, which became evident during
in Singapore or Hong Kong, and are the recent financial scandals.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.May/June2003 11311

 Zakaria believes these ills could be
remedied by "reintegrating constitu-
tional liberalism into the practice of
democracy." He proposes organizations
by which professionals can police them-
selves and advocates the spread of
delegated institutions such as the
Supreme Court, the Federal Reserve
Board, and the Military Base Closing
Commission, which are accountable to
the public but distanced from partisan
and lobbying pressures.
Most of the problems Zakaria cites are
genuine, and some of the solutions he
suggests make sense. Nonpartisan com-
missions, which originated in the Pro-
gressive Era, have been useful in finding
solutions to politically charged issues such
as military base closing, and in the early
198os, Social Security. But they, too, have
sometimes been politicized. George W.
Bush's Social Security commission, for
instance, was stacked with proponents of
the administration's plan for privatization.
And self-policing certainly didn't work
well with the accounting profession.
One problem with this part of
Zakaria's analysis is the relationship
he draws between democratization
and Madisonian liberty, on the one
hand, and democracy and constitutional
liberty on the other. Democratization
certainly has a core meaning that cor-
responds to democracy. Expanding the
vote for blacks in the South involved
democratization and was a victory for
democracy. So was establishing the
Food and Drug Administration and
the Environmental Protection Agency,
which put some private economic
decisions under public oversight.
But Zakaria's concept of democrati-
zation also includes deregulation-the
[13 2]
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The Council considers both undergraduate and
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A regional specialization and language skills
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To apply for an internship, please send a
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Tel: (212) 434-9400
Fax: (212) 434-9893
humanresources@cfr.org • http://www.cfr.org
 PuttingLiberty First
removal of restrictions on the private law had held up, politicians would not
behavior of law firms or accountants. have had to spend all their time raising
Deregulation pertains to liberty, not money, nor be inordinately dependent
democracy. Marketization-the spread on fundraisers and lobbyists. But in
of capitalism into areas dominated by 1976, the Supreme Court, one of Zakaria's
production for use-is also not democ- favorite delegated institutions, ruled in
racy, but either an element of liberty or, Buckley v. Valeo that money was speech
as he argues in the first section of the and that Congress could not limit how
book, a precondition of it. Thus it does much a politician could spend. As a re-
not follow that all the ills stemming sult of this decision, politicians do have
from democratization are caused by too to spend all their time raising money
much democracy; the problem could and have become dependent on fund-
just as easily be too much liberty. raisers and lobbyists to help them.
The other problem is that Zakaria Here the Supreme Court was defend-
does not always put things in historical ing liberty, not democracy, and was
context, leading him to blame too trying to thwart democratization.
much democracy for ills that might The problem of campaign finance
have other causes. The influence of reform goes back to the early twentieth
special-interest groups on politics is century. The system of constitutional
not new, and was not brought about by liberty, which protected property rights,
recent election reforms. If anything, had led to growing economic inequal-
special interests today probably have ity. Political democracy was supposed
less influence over the political process to compensate for this by allowing each
than they did in the late nineteenth citizen an equal vote. But when large
century, as chronicled in Mark Twain property owners began using their
and Samuel Dudley Warner's classic wealth to finance political campaigns,
The GildedAge. And congressional the growing inequality of the property
deadlock did not emanate from the system corrupted the democratic polit-
reforms of the 1970s; James McGregor ical system. Campaign finance reforms,
Burns' 1963 book The Deadlock of beginning with Theodore Roosevelt's
Democracy was about the supposedly 19o8 measures, were intended to restore
halcyon days of the 1950s. equality to the political system by pro-
Zakaria argues that in trying to tecting it from the property system.
democratize politics, the campaign Something similar happened to the
finance reform bill of 1974 created new initiative and the referendum-Pro-
unaccountable power brokers and gressive Era efforts at democratization
forced politicians to devote all their that Zakaria claims led to less democracy.
time to fundraising and "ceaselessly These reforms were initially devised in
appeas[ing] lobbies." But he leaves out response to corrupt business control of
a crucial part of the story. The 1974 state legislatures. Americans, primarily
reforms limited not only the size of in the Western states, used initiatives to
contributions, but also how much regulate railroad freight rates, establish
politicians could spend. If the original presidential primaries and the direct

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2003 [133]

 John B. Judis
election of senators, give women the growth of free enterprise, based on
vote, and adopt workers' compensation liberty of property, has started to
and the eight-hour workday. But be- erode these foundations. Zakaria is
ginning in the 192os, businesses and utterly right about Russia, Indonesia,
the wealthy began using initiatives to and Iraq. Without constitutional lib-
promote their own, more conservative erty, too much democracy can lead to
ends. Like the campaign-finance re- disaster. The United States, however,
form efforts, initiatives and referenda has a different problem. It still has
were undone largely by the superior too little.0
power of business, which turned them
away from the ends they were supposed
to serve.
American democracy did indeed
originally flourish, as Zakaria argues
in the first part of his book, on the
basis of constitutional liberty. And in
the opening decades of the nineteenth
century, Americans assumed that the
two would always complement each
other: liberty of property would lead to
the diffusion of small property hold-
ings, which would in turn reinforce the
foundations of political democracy.
But it didn't turn out that way. The
yeoman farmer was replaced by the
wage-earner, and the small manufacturer
and craftsman by the large corporation.
By the early twentieth century, the in-
equality of the property system was
subverting political democracy, a situa-
tion that has led to a century of efforts
to reverse the trend. Some of these
reforms did overreach, but often they
were simply infected, distorted, or
overwhelmed by the very forces they
were designed to counteract.
The cycle of liberty and democracy
in the United States has thus not been
the one that Zakaria describes in the
second half of his book. Constitutional
liberty did lay the foundations for
liberal democracy, but the unimpeded

[134] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3

 Review Essay

Free Trade Optimism

Lessons From the Battle in Seattle

Dani Rodrik

A World Without Walls: Freedom, Even to its supporters, it appeared that

Development, Free Trade and Global
Governance. BY MIKE MOORE. New
York: Cambridge University Press,
2003, 302 pp. $28.00.
Within two months of taking office as
the new director-general of the World
Trade Organization (WTO), Mike Moore
was handed a major setback at the now-
famous "tear-gas ministerial" conference
of November 1999 in Seattle. With pro-
testers wreaking havoc outside, Moore, a
former prime minister of New Zealand,
was unable to prevail on the assembled
government officials to conclude an
agreement that would launch a new round
of trade negotiations. To the WTO'S
opponents, the collapse of the meeting
represented the high point of their crusade
against "corporate-led globalization."
the WTO had suffered a near-fatal blow,
from which it would recover only very
gradually, if at all.
Yet two years later, when trade minis-
ters met again in the more secluded envi-
ronment of Doha, Qatar, they were able
to walk out with an agreed framework in
hand. The Doha meeting launched a "De-
velopment Round" of trade negotiations
(which is still stumbling along) and inau-
gurated China as a member of the WTO.
The death knells for Mike Moore's wTo, it
turns out, had sounded prematurely.
Moore's determination to bridge the
gaps that separated the United States
from the European Union (Eu) and the
rich countries from the poor ones was
not the only reason for Doha's success.
Doha took place scarcely two months
after the September 11 terrorist attacks,

DANI ROD RIK is Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's

John E Kennedy School of Government and the author of Making Openness
Work: The New GlobalEconomy andthe Developing Countries.

[1351
 DaniRodrik
and the pressure was high, particularly
on the advanced countries, to prevent
another failure that would have sapped
confidence in the global economy's ability
to weather the shock. Of critical impor-
tance was the willingness of the United
States to accede-eventually and grudg-
ingly-to developing-country demands
in the area of intellectual property rights
by signing on to a statement that existing
WTo agreements do not and should not
prevent members from taking measures to
protect public health. Nonetheless, Moore
will be remembered by friends and foes of
the WTO alike as the man who put the in-
ternational trade regime back on track.
FROM DISASTER TO DOHA
The middle (and most interesting) part
ofA World Without Walls is devoted to
Moore's account of how he engineered
this remarkable turnaround. He is remark-
ably candid about many aspects of his
tenure, especially about the inauspicious
start he had, which followed a bitterly
fought contest between him and Supachai
Panitchpakdi of Thailand for the position
of director-general. The WTO'S member-
ship, unable to reach consensus on a
single name, eventually awarded the first
three years of the term to Moore and the
second three years to Supachai, who took
over from Moore as director-general in
September 2002. Moore thinks he had
majority support among the member-
ship, and it is clear that he feels cheated.
He describes the arrangement to split his
term as "a slightly sordid deal" and relates
matter-of-factly, and with no regrets, his
refusal to be photographed with Supachai
on Moore's first day in office.
Moore attributes the debacle at Seattle
to the lack of adequate preparation: his
[136 ] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No.3
leadership team was barely in place and
he had had little time to put his own
stamp on the process and on the negoti-
ating draft. Doha, he writes, was the
"mirror opposite." He describes his grueling
schedule ("traveled over 625,000 km,
visiting 182 cities and meeting with more
than 300 ministers"), his difficult time
with his opponents in nongovernmental
organizations, the petty politics of the
WTO, and his uneasy relationship with
his staff. And yet although Moore can
be quite frank and revealing about such
issues, he does not offer a systematic
behind-the-scenes account of how the
Seattle disaster was transformed into
the Doha consensus. One wishes he
had written more about the cajoling,
arm-twisting, and horse-trading that was
required to get key governments to fall
into line. Except for an occasional nod in
their direction, Moore says little about
the roles played by Robert Zoellick and
Pascal Lamy, the point persons on trade
for the United States and the EU, respec-
tively, or about his relationship with them.
Strategically, Moore's key accomplish-
ment was to recast the failed Seattle
agenda around the theme of development
and to promote a new development round
with agricultural liberalization as its cen-
terpiece. Moore was neither the first nor
the only voice arguing that the new round
should focus on the needs of developing
countries. The World Bank's president,
James Wolfensohn, and the British
minister for development, Clare Short,
among others, had called for a develop-
ment round before Seattle. But it was
Moore who took what most observers had
come to call the "Millennium Round" and
transformed it in the global consciousness
into a development round.

The dealmaker: Mike Moore, Costa Rica,August 28, 2001
To see why this was important and
what problems it solved, we need to go
back to Seattle. Moore knew that the
collapse of the talks there had less to do
with the demonstrations outside the con-
ference center than with the intransigence
of the governments inside. Their clashes
revolved around two main axes of conflict.
First, the United States-backed by the
Cairns Group of 17 agricultural exporters,
which it leads-locked horns with the EU
and Japan over agricultural liberalization.
The United States demanded significant
improvements in market access and a
phasing out of export subsidies for farm
products, which the EU rejected. Second,
developing countries felt that the previous
Uruguay Round of trade negotiations had
left them saddled with costly obligations,
that the TRIPS (trade-related aspects of
intellectual property rights) agreement
worked against them, and that the rich
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
REUTERS
countries had failed to live up to their
commitments (with respect to, for example,
liberalization of textiles trade and in-
creased financial assistance). The devel-
oping countries were opposed to the push
by advanced countries to expand the ne-
gotiating agenda to include new issues such
as investment, government procurement,
competition policy, environment, and
labor standards, which the developing
countries felt would impose costs and
obligations predominantly on them.
Agriculture thus became, in Moore's
words, the "deal-maker or deal-breaker,"
since without enthusiastic U.S. support
the new round would have gone nowhere.
Much of Moore's hard work between
Seattle and Doha was directed at putting
agriculture at the center of a "development"
agenda that would not only capture
the moral high ground but also make the
momentum for agricultural liberalization
May/June2003 [137]
unstoppable by enlisting developing-
country support on the issue. "By making
agriculture a development issue," Moore
writes in a revealing passage, "we brought
Africa, most of Asia and Latin America
together on a common agenda." This
brilliant tactic bridged both of the divides
that had led to the collapse of the Seattle
ministerial meeting. The EU could not
have blocked an agreement at Doha
without appearing to undermine devel-
opment, and developing countries could
walk away with a document that claimed
to put their interests at the center.
Unfortunately, Moore does not tell us
how he managed to convince developing
countries that an agenda little changed
from Seattle could now serve as the blue-
print for a development round. As the
locution of the quote above suggests, it
was hardly evident that an agenda centered
on agriculture would amount to a devel-
opment round. The developing countries'
interest in agricultural liberalization had
always been ambiguous. Aside from a
few middle-income members of the
Cairns Group such as Argentina, Brazil,
Chile, and Thailand, which are important
agricultural exporters, few developing
countries looked at this area as a major
source of gain. Research done at the World
Bank during the Uruguay Round had
highlighted the possibility that most sub-
Saharan African nations could actually
end up worse off as a result of a rise in
world food prices produced by a reduction
in European export subsidies. As Arvind
Panagariya, an economist at the University
of Maryland and a strong supporter of
trade liberalization, has noted, the vast
majority of the world's poorest nations are
net importers of agricultural products and
will end up paying higher prices for their
[138]
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 Free Trade Optimism
imports if agricultural export subsidies in
the rich countries are phased out. For the
most part, developing countries' interests
lie not in deep liberalization in agriculture,
but in restricting the agenda to a narrow
set of issues and in fixing the perceived
shortcomings of the Uruguay Round.
There were ways in which the negoti-
ating agenda could have been broadened
in a truly development-oriented way. To
take the most glaring omission, develop-
ing nations would have benefited most
from reform in an area in which the Doha
framework makes no commitments at all:
the liberalization of temporary interna-
tional labor flows. It is hard to identify
any other issue in the global economy
with comparable potential for raising
income levels in poor countries while
enhancing the efficiency of global resource
allocation. Even a relatively small program
of temporary work visas in rich countries
could generate greater income gains for
workers from poor countries than all of
the Doha proposals put together.
Instead, developing nations were
saddled with negotiations on ill-fitting
issues such as the environment, investment,
government procurement, competition
policy, and trade facilitation. This was
the price of leaning so heavily on agricul-
ture. These new areas were of particular
interest to the EU (and, in some cases, to
Japan), and their inclusion on the agenda
was the quid pro quo for the EU'S acquies-
cence on agriculture. The irony is that
the costs of this particular tradeoff will
be borne almost exclusively by developing
countries, in effect adding injury to insult.
Moore devotes a chapter to these new is-
sues, making the case that the developing
nations will eventually benefit by under-
taking reforms in these areas. But he is not
FOREIGN AFFAIRS. May/June2003
very convincing, and ultimately one gets
the feeling that his heart is not quite in it.
IDEALS VS. BUREAUCRACIES
Moore's strategy did pay off, and the
world's trade officialdom was spared
another embarrassment in Doha. But the
eventual outcome remains very much in
doubt. Negotiations are practically dead-
locked over agriculture, as they are over
TRIPS. Few knowledgeable observers
believe that much progress will be made
before trade ministers next meet in Can-
cdin, Mexico, in September of this year.
And even if there is progress, it will be
difficult to hail it as a great success for
development, no matter what the official
appellation of the round.
Moore's fascinating account of the
road from Seattle to Doha is sandwiched
between two long sections devoted to ru-
minations about the state of the world
and global governance. He takes on a wide
range of issues, from the moral basis for
free trade to the demographic challenge
awaiting advanced countries. These parts
read less well than the middle section of the
book, as they contain few new ideas and
seem to have been put together in a rush.
His arguments are typically presented by
weaving a string of declaratory statements
around supporting quotations from various
authors. What shines through all this is
Moore's unshakable faith in globalization
and his contagious confidence in the com-
bined ability of markets and democracies
to make the world a better place for the
vast majority of its inhabitants.
The world of ideas and action, as
Moore presents it, is divided between
those who favor free trade, freedom,
transparency, good governance, tolerance,
and competition, and those who stand
[1393
 DaniRodrik
for protectionism, repression, corruption,
monopoly, and isolationism. This stark,
good-versus-evil dichotomy keeps recurring
throughout the book and lends Moore's
arguments a strong moral undertone. But
is it a good guide to the real world? The
trouble with equating free trade with all
that other good stuff and protection with
its opposite is that it evades the hard ques-
tions. The choices the real world presents
are rarely as clear-cut as that between out-
ward orientation i la Hong Kong and iso-
lation Ala Myanmar. They typically have
to do with selecting an appropriate mix
of regulations, incentives, and market dis-
cipline that stimulates economic activity
while safeguarding public welfare.
What should we make, for example, of
South Korea's and Taiwan's trade and in-
dustrial policies in the 196os and 197s-
policies that would have run afoul ofWTO
rules many times over if those rules had
been in effect at the time? How could
China (or Vietnam) have grown so rapidly
in recent decades even though they lacked
the benefit of wTo membership? How do
we interpret the United States' own protec-
tionist history during the critical period of
the late nineteenth century when the for-
mer colony caught up with and surpassed
the United Kingdom's economic prowess?
All these countries were outward oriented
in their own fashion. But anyone who tries
to understand their success in terms of sim-
ple categories such as free trade versus
protection runs out of useful things to say
pretty quickly. Many of the critics of the
WTO take issue not with trade itself but
with the perceived defects and asymmetries
of the rules that govern trade. When de-
fenders of the wTo retreat behind simplistic
categories--free trade versus protection,
competition versus monopoly, openness
[140] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3
versus isolation-they lose the ability to
handle the challenges posed by these critics.
One of the paradoxes of this book is that
Mike Moore is no fan of international bu-
reaucracies. Indeed, some of his criticisms
of the WTo read like they could have come
out of leaflets distributed by the protesters
in Seattle. "There was a great difference
between the promise of the WTO and the
practice," he writes midway through
the book as he reminisces about his first
few days in Geneva. "In my experience," he
writes toward the end, "it's all too seldom
about the customers or countries, it's about
the expansion and power of the various in-
stitutions, whether in Geneva, Wellington
or Washington DC." (The International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank come
in for considerable criticism too.) Moore's
answer to the "recalcitrance and self-interest
of many of our bureaucrats" and "the ex-
cesses and ignorance of the more extreme
protestors" is a "voluntary global democratic
caucus"--a grouping of senior parliamen-
tarians, drawn from national legislatures, to
provide oversight of international organiza-
tions. Yet although he thinks the solutions
lie with greater democracy, transparency
and openness, he is often quite cynical
about the way the political process works.
Nevertheless, Moore remains an ardent
optimist. The world's national and interna-
tional institutions may not be ideal, but
they are better than any of the alternatives
that have been tried. When all is said and
done, he believes democratically elected
governments and markets will respond ap-
propriately to the challenges they face. The
forces of openness, freedom, competition,
and, of course, free trade will prevail.
Moore is too modest to say so himself, but
having able politicians at the helm of inter-
national institutions does not hurt either.0
 Response

Democracy Promotion
Explaining the Bush Administration's Position

The Core of U.S. of our overall national security doctrine

and commits us to help other countries
Foreign Policy realize their fill potential:
PAULA J. DOBRIANSKY In pursuit of our goals, our first impera-
tive is to clarify what we stand for: the
United States must defend liberty and
Thomas Carothers' article "Promoting justice because these principles are
Democracy and Fighting Terror" (January/ right and true for all people everywhere....
February 2003) critiques the Bush admin- America must stand firmly for the non-
istration's democracy promotion record negotiable demands of human dignity:
the rule of law; limits on the absolute
and offers some broad recommendations
power of the state; free speech; freedom
on how best to integrate human rights of worship; equal justice; respect for
causes into American foreign policy. women; religious and ethnic tolerance;
The author's long-term involvement in and respect for private property.
democracy-related activities and his passion
about this subject are commendable, but It is also a matter of record that this
both his analysis and his policy prescrip- administration, whenever it encounters
tions are unpersuasive. evidence of serious human rights violations
Carothers alleges that, driven by im- or antidemocratic practices in specific
peratives related to the war on terrorism, countries, has raised a voice of opposition
the administration has come to cooperate to such violations and sought to address
with a number of authoritarian regimes these problems. This is certainly the case
and turned a blind eye to various anti- with such countries as Pakistan, Indonesia,
democratic practices carried out by these and Malaysia, as well as Russia, Uzbek-
newfound allies. This claim is incorrect. istan, and China. In general, we do this
The administration's September 2002 irrespective of the identity of the offender
National Security Strategy, which lays and, when circumstances merit it, criticize
out our post-September n strategic vision, even some of our close allies. We manifest
prominently features democracy promotion. our concerns through a variety of channels,
The strategy describes it as a core part including diplomatic dialogue, both public

[141]
 PaulajDobrianskyand Thomas Carothers
and private, and the State Department's democracy arena, but for trying to do too
reports on human rights, international reli- much, for elevating democratic imperatives
gious freedom, and trafficking in persons. above those of trade and diplomatic
Bilateral efforts aside, a great deal of politesse. Yet we remain committed to
our multilateral diplomacy, including doing what is right. President George W.
American engagement at the UN and the Bush observed in his June 1, 2002, West
Organization of American States, is shaped Point speech, "Some worry that it is
by the imperatives of human rights and somehow undiplomatic or impolite to
democracy promotion. Although greatly speak the language of right or wrong. I
distressed by the selection of Libya to disagree. Different circumstances require
chair the UN Human Rights Commission, different methods, but not different
the United States intends to remain a moralities." When appropriate, we go
driving force at the commission and will beyond words and subject persistent
challenge this forum to filfill its mandate human rights violators to economic
to uphold international standards on sanctions and other forms of pressure. I
human rights. We have also worked cannot think of any other country that has
hand in hand with other democracies to been as willing as the United States
strengthen the Community of Democra- has to use both soft and hard power to
cies (cD). I led the American delegation promote democracy.
to last November's CD meeting in Seoul, To be sure, some have argued that we
where delegates adopted an ambitious plan should do even more, and specifically
of action with many specific initiatives that we should withhold military and
designed to enable emerging democracies intelligence cooperation from certain of
from different parts of the world to share our allies whose human rights records
"best practices" and help each other. leave much to be desired. As they see it, we
For the Bush administration, democracy improperly allow realpolitik considerations
promotion is not just a "made in the to trump the human rights imperatives.
U.S." venture, but a goal shared with But this argument is myopic. No respon-
many other countries. We also seek to sible U.S. decision-maker can allow our
broaden our partnerships with local and foreign policy to be driven by a single
global nongovernmental organizations imperative, no matter how important.
and international organizations, so that Thus, our policy toward a given country
we can work together on democracy or region is shaped by a variety of consid-
promotion, advancement of human rights, erations, including security concerns,
and humanitarian relief. In fact, the economic issues, and human rights im-
National Endowment for Democracy, peratives. The most difficult task of our
Freedom House, and other organizations statecraft is to strike the right balance
have played pivotal roles in the develop- among these imperatives and arrive at
ment of a democratic culture and the the policy mix that best advances an
strengthening of civil society. entire set of our values and interests.
Ironically, many of the world's countries, Invariably, it is a nuanced and balanced
including some of our allies, often chide approach that produces the best results.
us not for failing to do enough in the And invariably, this administration has

[142] FOREIGN AFFAIRS- Volume82No.3

 Democracy Promotion
struck the right balance. For example,
in the post-September n environment,
as we began to engage a number of
Central Asian governments whose help
we needed to prosecute the war against
al Qaeda and the Taliban, we simultane-
ously intensified our efforts to improve
the human rights situation in these coun-
tries. By cooperating on intelligence and
security issues, we have actually enhanced
our leverage on democracy-related matters.
Although a great deal more needs to be
done, we believe that this integrated
approach is working.
Any effort to juxtapose or contrast our
efforts to win the war against terrorism
and our democracy-promotion strategy is
conceptually flawed. Pan-national terrorist
groups (such as al Qaeda) and rogue
regimes (such as that of the Taliban or
of Saddam Hussein) pose grave threats
to democratic systems, as do the xeno-
phobic, intolerant ideologies that they
espouse. Accordingly, fighting against
these forces is both in our national security
interest and a key ingredient of democracy
promotion. And democracy promotion
is the best antidote to terrorism. Signifi-
candy, the Seoul Plan of Action, adopted
at the 2002 CD meeting, contains a series
of actions that democracies can take to
counter emerging threats through the
promotion of democracy.
Carothers also criticizes what he terms
an "instrumentalization" of our democracy
promotion. In essence, he complains that,
for example, the administration's efforts
to promote democracy in a post-Saddam
Iraq and, more generally, to advance
democracy across the Arab world are
somehow tainted because we have other
reasons for our actions-e.g., removing
the threat that Saddam's arsenal of weapons
FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June 2o3
of mass destruction and his long-standing
defiance of the international community
pose to the world. Democracy promotion,
it seems, should not only trump all other
foreign policy imperatives; it should always
be the one and only policy driver. This,
of course, would immunize human rights
offenders and despots who also present
security threats-not an outcome that
anyone who cares about human rights
causes should welcome. More generally,
the fact that we are advancing policies
that simultaneously promote democracy
over the long haul and mitigate the security
threats that we face in the near term un-
derscores the extent to which human
rights causes have become integrated into
our foreign policy. In a very real sense,
this is American statecraft at its best.
Despite the enormous demands of the
war against terrorism, this administration
has found time for and evidenced keen
interest in launching several major new
democracy-promotion initiatives. Al-
though human rights and democracy
causes have a long bipartisan pedigree, it
has been the Bush administration that has
reordered the country's approach to
development assistance so as to reward
and encourage "good governance" through
a pathbreaking initiative: the Millennium
Challenge Account (MCA). In 2003 alone,
the administration has requested $1.3 bil-
lion for the MCA, which means 15 percent
of our foreign assistance will be dedicated
to good governance, investment in people,
and economic development. In addition
to changing our own policy, the leader-
ship and commitment President Bush
displayed at the March 2002 Monterrey
summit on financing development have
convinced many of our allies, international
lending and aid-delivery institutions, and
[143]
 PaulaJDobrianskyand Thomas Carothers
the UN to change the ways in which they
do business.
The administration has also launched
a high-level initiative to improve political,
economic, and cultural participation by
women and combat discrimination
against them. This effort began in
Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime
practiced what amounted to gender
apartheid, and grew into a broad, sustained
campaign focused on those governments
that deprive women of political and
economic opportunity. This strategy is
spearheaded by the Office of Interna-
tional Women's Issues at the State De-
partment and has featured participation
by the president and the first lady, Secre-
tary of State Colin Powell, presidential
adviser Karen Hughes, and numerous
other senior administration officials.
Our overarching goal is to improve
women's access to education and health
and ensure that nowhere in the world are
women treated as second-class citizens,
unable to work, vote, or realize their
dreams. We have also launched a Middle
East Partnership Initiative that seeks to
support political, economic, and educa-
tional reform in that region.
Overall, the promotion of democracy
is a key foreign policy goal of the Bush
administration. This sentiment is reflected
in all of our international endeavors and
is animated by a mixture of both idealistic
and pragmatic impulses. We seek to foster
a global society of nations, in which
freedom and democracy reign and
human aspirations are fully realized.
PAULA J. DOBRIANSKY is Under-
secretary of Statefor GlobalAffairs.
[144] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3
Carothers Replies
I am frankly astonished that Undersecre-
tary of State Paula Dobriansky attempts
to refute the central thesis of my article:
that the war on terrorism has impelled
the Bush administration to seek friend-
lier relations with authoritarian regimes
in many parts of the world for the sake
of their cooperation on security matters.
It is simply a fact that since the terrorist
attacks of September 1i, 2oo1, the Bush
administration has sought closer ties and
enhanced security cooperation with a host
of authoritarian or semi-authoritarian
regimes-in Algeria, Bahrain, China,
Egypt, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait,
Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Uzbekistan,
Yemen, and even Syria.
Dobriansky claims that the adminis-
tration always strikes the right balance
between democracy and security, and
that whenever the administration has
encountered antidemocratic practices
on the part of its security partners, it has
raised a voice of opposition. As I high-
lighted in my article, in some cases, such
as Uzbekistan, the administration has
indeed tried to leaven its new security
embrace with urgings to do better on
human rights and democracy. Even in
such situations, however, the overall
message of the new relationships-
with their friendly, public words of
praise during high-level visits, their
heightened security cooperation, and,
often, their enlarged aid packages-is
one of support for undemocratic
regimes. Moreover, unfortunately, in
some cases the administration has not
voiced any substantial objection to
overtly antidemocratic practices.
 Democracy Promotion
For example, the renewed U.S.-Pakistan economic interests, and that, like many
relationship developed precisely in a period other countries, the United States
when President Pervez Musharraf was struggles very imperfectly to balance
carrying out a series of antidemocratic its ideals with the realist imperatives it
actions, including rewriting key parts of faces. A more honest acknowledgment
the Pakistani constitution to ensure his of this reality and a considerable toning
continued rule. President Bush has repeat- down of self-congratulatory statements
edly avoided making any criticisms of about the United States' unparalleled
these measures. At a press conference last altruism on the world stage would be a
August, he made America's priorities with big boost in the long run to a more
Pakistan crystal clear when, in response credible pro-democracy policy.0
to a direct question about Musharraf's
manhandling of the constitution, he said
the following: "My reaction about Presi-
dent Musharraf, he's still tight with us on
the war against terror, and that's what I
appreciate." About the Pakistani leader's
abridgment of human rights and democ-
racy, Bush could manage only a tepid
statement: "To the extent that our friends
promote democracy, it's important. We
will continue to work with our friends
and allies to promote democracy."
The point of my article was not to
excoriate the Bush administration for
struggling with the tension between
the war on terrorism and democracy
promotion. Rather, it was to discuss
the problem openly and clearly and to
identify where and how the tension can
be better mitigated.
Dobriansky's insistence that there is
no tension, and her relentless portrait of
the United States as a country uniquely
devoted to democracy promotion, is part
of a pattern of rhetorical overkill by ad-
ministration officials that weakens rather
than strengthens this country's credibility
in the eyes of others. People around the
world are quite capable of seeing that
the United States has close, even intimate
relations with many undemocratic regimes
for the sake of American security and

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June2003 [145]

 Recent Books
on International Relations
Political and Legal
G. JOHN IKENBERRY
The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of
WorldHistory.BY JOHN ROBERT
MCNEILL AND WILLIAM HARDY
MCNEILL. New York: W. W. Norton,
2003, 368 pp. $27.95.
A brilliant synthesis of world history by
distinguished father-and-son historians,
organized around the theme of unfolding
webs of human connection. All of human-
ity today lives in a "unitary maelstrom of
cooperation and competition," and the
global spread of ideas, information, and
experience constitutes the overarching
structure of human history. William
McNeill is one of the great masters of
world history, and J. R. McNeill has
pioneered the study of environmental
history. The collaborative result is a vivid
and illuminating vision of the human
experience spanning 12,ooo years. The
first human webs of our distant ancestors
were formed through the rise of speech,
migration, and primitive agricultural
groupings. Metropolitan webs became
integrated into the "old world web"
connecting Eurasia and North America,
and in the last century, local and regional
webs have merged into an increasingly
[146]
dense cosmopolitan web. Driven by
the search for efficiency and advantage,
humans have engineered increasingly
complex social organizations creating
the wealth and power-but also the
inequality and societal antagonisms-on
display today.
The Emergence ofPrivateAuthority in
GlobalGovernance. BY RODNEY
BRUCE HALL AND THOMAS J.
BIERSTEKER. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2003, 272 pp. $23.00.
States have historically been the dominant
source of authority in international rela-
tions thanks to monopoly on the legiti-
mate use of force. As this evocative book
points out, however, authority has begun
to take root in nonstate societal and
transnational spheres-particularly in
the global economy, where private trans-
national regimes have been devised by
banks and firms to regulate transactions.
Centuries-old traditions of self-regulatory
merchant law have grown into a highly
institutionalized semiprivate commercial
legal order in which states participate only
indirectly to provide enforcement. Other
chapters explore the moral authority of
transnational religious movements and
nongovernmental organizations, and the
final chapters examine the authority
exercised today by influential nontraditional
 Recent Books
private actors such as mafias and merce-
nary armies. Relations between authorities
are multifaceted and difficult to pin down-
and, indeed, the privatization of specific
jobs is now often promoted or welcomed by
the state. Nonetheless, the authors succeed These essays illuminate the ethical, legal,
in illuminating the many dimensions and
shifting terrain of state and nonstate author-
ity, even if the extent and consequences of
private governance remain ambiguous.
Unilateralismand US. Foreign Policy:
InternationalPerspectives.EDITED BY
DAVID M. MALONE AND YUEN
FOONG KHONG. Boulder: Lynne
Rienner, 2003, 460 pp. $23.50.
This book explores how American uni-
lateralism is perceived abroad and the
likely consequences for international
order. Focusing on the policies pursued
by the Clinton and current Bush ad-
ministrations, these foreign observers
see an unwelcome trend toward a go-it-
alone approach. Chapters focus on the
full diversity of policy areas: treaties
and international law, alliance coopera-
tion, economics and development, and
regional partnerships. In each instance,
America's ambivalence toward multi-
lateral commitment is on display. For
example, German legal scholar Nico
Krisch sees a growing cleavage between
the American role in making interna-
tional law and the United States' will-
ingness to abide by it. The book also
makes the important point that unilat-
eralism did not begin with the Bush
administration. Most of the authors
criticize American unilateralism as short-
sighted and argue that a systematic
turn to unilateralism will have grave
consequences for international order
and the long-term American position.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2o03
HumanitarianIntervention:Ethical,
Legal, andPoliticalDilemmas. BY J. L.
HOLZGREFE AND ROBERT
KEOHANE. NewYork: Cambridge
University Press, 2003, 400 pp. $25.00.
and political conditions under which
humanitarian intervention can be justified,
while revealing the dangers and complexi-
ties of such force. Several essays center on
the legal debate that seeks to identify prin-
ciples and precedents for new doctrines
of humanitarian intervention. But a few
authors also argue that such doctrines can
be abused by powerful states-indeed,
principles of sovereignty provide a necessary
bulwark for the weak against such abuse.
Other essays focus on ethical questions and
offer more basic challenges to constraints
on the use of force inherent in prevailing
international law or the UN charter. The
Kosovo intervention appears repeatedly
as emblematic of the thorny tradeoffs
between the protections of sovereignty and
the necessity of humanitarian action. In
a final set of essays focusing on political
issues, Keohane argues that sovereignty in
troubled societies must be "unbundled" to
allow the reinforcement of domestic sover-
eignty, which strengthens the institutions of
self-governance, and the abandonment
of external sovereignty in favor of sustained
international involvement. No other vol-
ume on humanitarian intervention better
showcases the diverse intellectual terms or
political stakes currently in play.
Democracy Challenged-The Rise ofSemi-
Authoritarianism.BY MARINA OTTAWAY.
Washington: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 2003, 256 pp. $44.oo.
In this important new study, Ottaway ar-
gues that countries that combine elements
[147]
 Recent Books
of authoritarianism and democracy are
not best understood as imperfect democ-
racies or transitional governments. Instead,
she sees them as deliberately organized
and durable regimes that adopt the for-
mal trappings of democracy but allow
little real competition for power. Kazakh-
stan, Morocco, Peru, Singapore, and
Malaysia are examples of a growing num-
ber of semi-authoritarian regimes that
can be remarkably stable, yet are also prone
to unpredictable political and leadership
succession crises. Ottaway argues that
these hybrid regimes require a rethinking
of assumptions about the spread and
promotion of democracy. These are not
countries that will respond easily to out-
side carrots and sticks. Their civil societies
tend to be disconnected from politics,
and the creation of more open civic
space can lead to ethnic nationalism
(as in Yugoslavia), or religious funda-
mentalism (as in Egypt). The challenge
for democracy promoters is to focus
more on deep socioeconomic sources of
semi-authoritarianism and adjust the
timeline for democratic progress.
Economic, Social,
and Environmental
RICHARD N. COOPER
2o.'21Vision: Twentieth-Century Lessons
forthe Twenty-first Century. BY BILL
EMMOTT. New York: Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 2003, 373 PP. $25.00.
Like most books about the future, this
one is mainly about the past. The author,
editor of The Economist for the past decade,
has an easy, informal, gently ironic style,
[148] FOREIGN AFFAIRS
is good at asking questions, and provides
at least hints of the answers. He notes
the remarkable progress of much of the
globe since World War II and asks whether
it can be continued for another 25, 50, or
even ioo years. His explanation for the
success is twofold: U.S. leadership in
the world and the vitality of capitalism as
a mechanism for organizing production.
The book sketches possible future chal-
lenges to both: European envy, Japanese
vulnerability, Chinese ambition, and
widespread political turbulence in the
first case; economic instability, inequality,
and environmental degradation in the
second. The author concludes on a note
of paranoid optimism-that the challenges
will be serious and will require skillful
management, but that they will not in
the end be devastating to continuing eco-
nomic and political progress. The book
offers cautious optimism about the out-
look for the twenty-first century. Above
all, it exudes common sense.
The DemographicDividend.A New
Perspective on the Economic
Consequences ofPopulation Change. BY
DAVID E. BLOOM, DAVID CANNING,
AND JAYPEE SEVILLA. Santa Monica:
Rand, 2003, 88 pp. $18.oo (paper).
Social analysts have generally paid too
little attention to demographic trends, as
conventional wisdom holds that rapid
population growth inhibits improvement
in living standards. This short monograph
by three authors associated with Harvard's
School of Public Health attempts to
clarify the complexities of demographic
change and economic growth. Modern
societies have typically passed through a
demographic transition in which the
labor force grows more rapidly than total
Volume82No. 3
 Recent Books
population because a decline in mortality that was historically unimaginable. Corn
precedes a decline in fertility. In the right today cannot propagate without human
polic environment--one conducive to assistance, and it has been altered
education and to saving-this transition through centuries of genetic modification
creates the potential for exceptionally to improve its yield, stamina, and other
rapid economic growth, as has been qualities. It is a remarkable lens through
experienced in recent decades by Ireland which to view social change over the
and by several East Asian countries. The centuries, proving that globalization is
authors draw attention to this opportu- nothing new.
nity for many developing countries over
the next 2o years, urging these countries Japan'sPolicy Trap: Dollars,Deflation, and
to take advantage of the situation. Simi- the CrisisofJapaneseFinance.B Y A Ki o
larly, rich countries need to prepare for MIKUNI AND R. TAGGART MURPHY.
significant aging of their populations Washington: Brookings Institution
and, in some cases, for shrinking labor Press, 2002, 294 pp. $38.95.
forces-an altogether new experience JapanesePhoenix: The Long Road to
in the modern era. Economic RevivaL BY RICHARD KATZ.
Armonc M. E. Sharpe, 2003, 320 pp.
Corn and Capitalism:How a Botanical $68.95 (paper, $24.95).
BastardGrew to GlobalDominance. BY These two new books on the economic
ARTURO WARMAN, TRANSLATED malaise in Japan are informative about
BY NANCY L. WESTRATE. Chapel Hill: the distinctive character of the Japanese
University of North Carolina Press, economy, but differ in their approach and
2003, 288 pp. $49.95 (paper, $24.95). assessment of Japan's prospects. Katz, a
Mexican anthropologist Warman provides journalist, is explicitly prescriptive and
an illuminating history of the past Soo years optimistic, although he predicts it will
viewed through the evolution and mi- take a decade for true reform of banks,
gration of corn, from its original home corporations, and the labor market, as
in the highlands of Mexico to the far well as of the government's approach
corners of the earth-it reached southern to all three-reforms that in his view
and southwestern China less than four are necessary for serious resumption of
decades after its discovery by Spanish Japanese growth. He is impressed,
conquerors. Along with other products however, by the significant changes that
from the New World-peanuts, potatoes, have taken place during the past decade,
sweet potatoes, cassava, tobacco, and such as those in foreign direct investment.
cacao-corn radically transformed Despite having a long way to go, these
agriculture, and hence society, in many reforms are pointed in the right direction.
parts of the world. Corn's high yield, Mikuni and Murphy, both investment
ease of cultivation and preparation, high analysts, paint a much harsher picture.
nutritional value, and great storability They see more posturing than real change
permitted rapid population growth where and a continuation of the bureaucratic
it was previously insupportable and made war economy established in the late
possible the African slave trade on a scale 193os and preserved after Japan's defeat

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June 2oo3 [149]

 Recent Books
in World War II, when Tokyo's objective
shifted from war mobilization to growth
in productive capacity and exports. The
result is low profitability and persistent
excess capacity. The authors believe it
will take a severe and prolonged recession
to shake the populace into replacing the
ruling elite with individuals committed
to fundamental change. The authors are
wedded to a dubious thesis that Japan's
persistent trade surpluses have been
contractionary for the economy, but this
detracts only modestly from their many
astute and sometimes provocative observa-
tions about the Japanese economic and
political system.
The Company: A Short History ofa
Revolutionary Idea. BY JOHN
MICKLETHWAIT AND ADRIAN
WOOLDRIDGE. New York: Modern
Library, 2003,192 pp. $19.95.
We take the company for granted; it is
how businesses are typically organized.
In this engaging and well-written short
book, the authors, both correspondents
for The Economist, demonstrate that
although there are some older antecedents,
the modern company dates from the
mid- nineteenth-century United King-
dom and United States. The modern
company has two key characteristics: a
separate, indefinite legal existence and
owner liability limited to the capital
advanced to the company. The former
permits the company to make contracts
for buying and selling and to outlive its
founders, while the latter allows it to
raise capital in abundance. The modern
company has proven to be a remarkably
productive form of social organization
and it has adapted very well to a
wide variety of conditions. But as the
[150] FOREIGN AFFAIRS
authors remind us, it is not truly
independent, remaining a creature
of the political system to which it is
ultimately responsible.
Military, Scientific,
and Technological
LAWRENCE D. FREEDMAN
FixingIntelligence.-For a More Secure
America. BY WILLIAM E. ODOM.
New Haven: Yale University Press,
2003, 212 pp. $24-95.
With a background in Army intelligence
and as the former head of the National
Security Agency, Odom is well placed
to write about how the intelligence com-
munity might be usefully restructured
following September u, although this
book is based on a 1997 study. Given
the inherent limitations of books about
organizational structures and an explicit
reluctance on the part of Odom to discuss
what intelligence agencies should be
looking for rather than how, this is a
forcefully and cogently argued book.
It is a necessary read for anyone con-
cerned about the future of intelligence.
Odom has an insider's sense of where
the bureaucratic obstacles lie. He is
clearly no fan of the CIA and damns
the FBI when it comes to counterintel-
ligence. His main proposals are to
make the director of central intelligence
completely independent of the CIA,
to improve capacities for intelligence to
support military operations, and to have
a separate manager for each of the
"collection disciplines" of signals,
imagery, and human intelligence.
Volume82No. 3
 Recent Books
Asymmetrical Warfare: Today's Challenge to
US. MilitaryPower.BY ROGER
BARNETT. Washington: Brassey's,
2003, 183 pp. $39.95.
If the United States can threaten force only
in terms that the political marketplace can
bear-in line with international law,
moral precepts, the sensitivities of allies,
and a determination to avoid casualties-
then how can it practice deterrence
against contemporary enemies that take
advantage of these constraints? This to
Barnett is the challenge of asymmetrical
warfare today, which he believes can be
overcome only by a readiness to tran-
scend these constraints, accepting the
filU nastiness of war while seeking to
bolster deterrence by improving strategic
defenses. The argument is vigorous and
challenging, although Barnett provides
few grounds for supposing that political
and military leaders will adopt as robust
an approach as he would wish. More
seriously, he does not adequately address
the role of alliances in isolating enemies
nor the question of whether America's
enemies will really adopt the appropriate
asymmetrical strategies he fears-inflicting
maximum harm on noncombatants and
civil society.
The New Face of War. How War Will Be
Fought in the 21st Century. BY B RUCE
BERKOWITZ. New York: Free Press,
2003, 272 pp. $26.oo.
This is yet another book on the future
of war, examining how it might be fought
rather than by whom and for what. In
this version, both the United States and
its enemies operate on a global scale
using decentralized units, each exploiting
information technology to sustain com-
munications and get ahead of the other's
FOREIGN AFFAIRS .May/June200 3
decision-making. The style is rather
jaunty, but there is real value in Berkowitz's
ability to identify many prominent
concepts that influence current thinking.
He refers to key figures and the strategic
debates in which they were engaged,
often stretching back into the Cold
War, showing their interaction with
emerging technologies and institutional
structures. For example, he details how
John Boyd conceived of the observation,
orientation, decision, action (OODA)
loop, why Andrew Marshall began to
focus on asymmetries, even when dealing
with the Soviet Union, and how David
Ronfeldt and John Arquilla hit upon
the idea of cyber-warfare and net-
worked armies. This contributes to
our understanding of the development
of strategic thought. There is an effective
demolition of the notion that attacks
on information systems alone, however
strategic, can ever be sufficient. Berkowitz
shows sympathy for those attempting to
push innovative projects through large
bureaucracies.
Secret Empire: Eisenhower,the CIA, and
the Hidden Story ofAmerica's Space
Espionage. BY PHILIP TAUBMAN.
New York Simon & Schuster, 2003,
464 pp. $27.00.
During the 195os and early 196os, the
development of first the u-2 reconnaissance
aircraft and then spy satellites transformed
the world of intelligence. Although the
outlines of this story are well known,
particularly concerning the u-2, Taubman
provides a wealth of detail on all aspects
of these projects, based on many interviews
and copious research. He weaves together
complex strategic, organizational, and
engineering issues, managing to convey
11511
 Recent Books
the drama and excitement of a race to
find some way of getting consistent and
reliable intelligence on Soviet nuclear
missiles at a time when the United States
was widely assumed to be falling behind.
The story shows Dwight Eisenhower at
his most decisive and shrewd, ready to
listen to the advice of tough-minded
outsiders, such as James Killian of MIT
and Edwin Land of Polaroid, and to
hand over critical projects to the CIA.
AvoidingArmageddon. BY MARTIN
SCH RAM. New York: Basic Books,
2003, 256 pp. $26.oo.
The advantage of this book is that it
conveys a sense of the grimmer aspects
of the modern world from the bottom
up. Based on a series for the Public
Broadcasting System, it covers the
dangers of nuclear war in the first part,
chemical and biological weapons in the
second, terrorism in the third, and some
ideas for a better world in the fourth.
Perhaps inevitably, the first three parts
are more convincing than the fourth,
which underscores the need to deal
with issues such as AIDS and poverty
but does not address how to resolve the
political conflicts that are most likely
to trigger the terrible possibilities de-
scribed in earlier parts. The book's real
value lies in its accounts of those caught
up in efforts to produce noxious weapons
and those trying to establish control
over those weapons, as well as of victims
of past tragedies from Chernobyl to the
sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway
to the Kurds in Halabja, Iraq.
ModernizingCbina's Military:Progress,
Problems, andProspects. BY DAVID
SHAM BAUG H. Berkeley: University of
[152] FOREIGN AFFAIRS
California Press, 2003, 414 pp. $34.95.
This superb book provides an authori-
tative and comprehensive account of the
attempt by China's People's Liberation
Army (PLA) to cope with the transfor-
mation in the strategic environment
brought about by the unique power and
the military technologies of the United
States. The book covers all aspects of
military affairs, from the PLA'S position
in the political system to budgets and
procurement issues, as well as doctrine
and force structure. Shambaugh also
provides a cool analysis of the difficulties
China would face in a war with Taiwan.
He has amassed a remarkable amount
of evidence, which allows him to draw
careful but confident conclusions. In
general he supports the view that China
is still decades behind the United States
in advanced technology, and in many
areas the gap is widening, although he
notes the recent efforts put into ballistic
missiles and information technology. His
basic message to the Bush administration:
Keep watching and keep talking, but
don't panic.
Ending the Vietnam War.A History of
America's Involvement in and
ExtricationFrom the Vietnam War. BY
HENRY KISSINGER. New York: Simon
& Schuster, 2003, 640 pp. $18.oo.
The material in this book is already
largely familiar to students of the Viet-
nam War, but up until now Kissinger's
account of the protracted extrication
from Vietnam under the Nixon and
Ford administrations has been spread
over a number of different volumes.
The story is told with great style, but
the added convenience has not come
with any added reliability.
Volume82No. 3
 Recent Books
critiques Texas politics and the Bush clan,
he also dissects Texas' ruling Anglo-Celtic,
The United States Dixiecratic elite with the malicious preci-
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD sion only an intimate, home-state enemy
can bring to bear. Lind delivers a heartfelt
and stinging indictment of the Dixiecrats-
Alexander Hamilton:A Life. BY WILLARD the ex-Democrats, now Republicans,
STERNE RANDALL. NewYork: whose political traditions go back to the
HarperCoUins, 2003, 480 pp. $32.50. Confederacy. This book lays bare some
Hamilton's ideas on both foreign and of the essential forces driving American
domestic policy have resonated through politics and will likely achieve one of its
every American generation. To write a main goals: to unmask Texas as a Southern
first-rate Hamilton biography would be rather than a Western state. But Lind
one of the most important and, given should beware of underestimating his foe.
the craze for biographies of the founders, Dixiecratic rule in the South survived
most lucrative tasks an American historian the loss of the Civil War, Reconstruc-
could undertake. This book, alas, does not tion, the New Deal, the industrialization
fit that bill. There is too much heavy of the South, and the Civil Rights move-
breathing over incidents such as the Peggy ment. Ruthlessly pragmatic where its
Arnold affair, too much lubricious analysis vital interests are concerned, Dixiecratic
of punctuation irregularities (don't ask) political culture is flexible enough to endure
in Hamilton's letters to his sister-in-law, as a vital if not always constructive force
and much too much attention to side issues in American life.
such as Vermont's long quarrel with New
York. By contrast, major episodes such Woodrow Wilson. BY H. W. BRANDS. New
as Hamilton's role in the fight to ratify York: Times Books, 2003,192 pp. $20.00.
the Constitution and his efforts to put theThis short and sympathetic biography is
public finances of the new republic on a best in detailing Wilson's path to World
War I, and its greatest failure is its refusal
sound footing receive less attention, and less
insight, than they require. Inexplicably, to engage Wilson on race. Like most
the last ten years of Hamilton's career post-Civil War Southern whites, Wilson
get fewer than ten pages. The book embraced the Democratic Party with its
seems less finished than abandoned. unbending support of white supremacy,
segregation, and lynch law. The first
Made in Texas. George W Bush and the Southern president since the Civil War,
Southern Takeover ofAmerican Politics. Wilson not only gave the pro-Klan Birth
BY MICHAEL LIND. NewYork: Basic ofa Nation a White House screening, he
Books, 2002, 224 pp. $24.00. imposed Jim Crow policy in the District
This tale grounds the Bush presidential of Columbia and blocked a Japanese
dynasty in the culture and politics of the effort to include a declaration on racial
one U.S. state to have been an interna- equality in the League of Nations charter.
tionally recognized independent republic. To investigate this side of Wilson's career
Lind, a fifth-generation Texan, not only and relate it to the universal principles by

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June200 3 [153]

 Recent Books
which he defined his political mission isn't The PassionsofAndrewJackson. BY
to give him a politically correct posthu- ANDREW BRUSTEIN. NewYork:
mous spanking; it is to examine some of Knopf, 2003, 320 pp. $25.0o.
the essential political and psychological is- The seventh president of the United
sues that shaped this remarkable man. States was the last one to have fought-
Brands has only one paragraph for all this as a boy of thirteen-in the American
and thus has produced what could be the Revolution. Founder of the modern
last Wilson biography written as if the American party system, war hero, expan-
color line played no role in early-twentieth- sionist, Indian remover, slave owner,
century American politics. populist, proponent of the annexation
of Texas, Jackson is one of the most sig-
A Consumers' Republic."The Politics ofMass nificant and, despite landmark studies
Consumption in PostwarAmerica. by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Robert
BY LIZABETH COHEN. NewYork: Rimini, one of the most understudied
Alfred A. Knopf, 2003, 48o pp. $35.00. figures in American history. This new
This ambitious and sometimes insightful book, an examination ofJackson's charac-
history of the post-World War II trans- ter based on close readings of his often
formation of American society gamely creatively spelled personal writings and
struggles with the big questions. Yet correspondence, shows a Jackson marked
despite some illuminating discussions of by the strengths and weaknesses of his
the class, race, and gender implications frontier milieu. Driven by a rigid code
of federal education and credit policy, of honor, shaped by a distinctive border
Cohen dissipates her attention on too culture, moved by passionate loyalties but
many marginal phenomena to tell a easily stung by real or imagined insults,
coherent story. For example, various Brustein's Jackson embodies the America
inspiring examples of "progressive" grass- he led. Brustein has the talent, industry,
roots activism receive ritualistically lavish and command of the archival sources to
attention, even when on Cohen's own become a powerful voice in a historical
evidence they prove to be historical dead movement that will place the neglected
ends. Consequently, Cohen's attempted but formative years between 1824 and i86o
critique of the Consumers' Republic (her back where they belong: at the center of
evocative name for the post-World War America's historical self-understanding.
II era of mass consumption) dissolves
into a series of gripes. Cohen must de-
cide whether she wants to be a historian
of a more left-wing America that, in her
Western Europe
view, should have been, or of the America STANLEY HOFFMANN
we actually have. Her gifts are such that,
whichever choice she makes, she can Desolation andEnlightenment. BY IRA
produce interesting and valuable work. KATZNELSON. NewYork: Columbia
Until then, even well-disposed readers University Press, 2003, 224 pp. $27.50.
may find her analysis not just too left These four learned, often agonizingly
but too muddled. probing essays examine the political and

[154] FOREIGN AFFAIRS' Volume82No. 3

 Recent Books
intellectual catastrophe brought about the "policy for the past" to the general
by total war, totalitarianism, and the history of the Federal Republic's evolution
Holocaust, as well as the reactions and from a scarcely sovereign half-state under
attempts at reconstruction by distinguished Allied supervision to an essential ally of
intellectuals, mainly from the United the West in the Cold War. This transfor-
States. It is not surprising to find Katznel- mation allowed many Nazi criminals to
son discussing Karl Polanyi's classic The go unpunished. Ethically, it was highly
GreatTransformationand Hannah Arendt's debatable, but politically, it succeeded
The Origins of Totalitarianismas keys for in forging a kind of unity around West
understanding how the Enlightenment Germany's new democracy and its leader,
came to its disastrous end. And the chapter Konrad Adenauer. From a Machiavellian
on the Columbia University seminar on viewpoint, the policy paid off-especially
the state, a workshop created in 1945, is in curing most Germans of antisemitism.
an account of the themes and arguments
of, and participants in, an ambitious Language,Politics,and Writing."
attempt at defining new possibilities for Stolentelling in Western Europe. BY
a liberal state. What Katznelson calls PATRICK MCCARTHY. New York:
the "political studies enlightenment" is Palgrave, 2002, 304 pp. $59-95.
indeed alive. But how well is it? Desolation Having read this often dazzling collec-
andEnlightenment is a long meditation tion of essays on literature and politics,
on the fate and possibilities of liberal I still do not know what its learned author
thought after the collapse of so many means by "stolentelling." He is fascinated
hopes and assumptions of liberalism in by the many uses of language for "com-
the first half of the twentieth century. mitted" writing about politics and for
escape from politics, for buttressing
Adenauer's Germany and the Nazi Past. power and for protest, for describing
BY NORBERT FREI, TRANSLATED the working class and for celebrating
BY JOEL GOLB. New York: Columbia imperialism. Many important writers,
University Press, 2002, 365 pp. $35.00. from James Joyce to V. S. Naipaul, from
As Fritz Stern states in his preface, George Orwell to Seamus Heaney, are
Norbert Frei "has an eye for complexity." discussed here, as well as several movie
This thorough piece of research throws directors, sociologists, and statesmen.
much light on the West German side of McCarthy offers perceptive commentary
de-Nazification and the profound contrast on all of them, thanks to his inexhaustible
to measures taken by the Allies. The latter curiosity and attention to the many
tried to promote extensive purges, whereas functions and types of language. The
the new West German regime showed other side of this talent is that he leaves
far greater leniency, especially through the reader somewhat exhausted-fixing
the amnesty laws of 1949 and 1954, and by one's eye to a kaleidoscope for hours is
trying to reduce the number of suspected both exhilarating and bewildering. Each
war criminals singled out for trials. Frei's of these essays should be savored separately.
account is especially valuable because of Their collection may be a case of too
his choice of cases and his skill in linking many admirable things.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS May/June2003 [155]

 Recent Books
Hitlerandthe Power ofAesthetics. BY Jews in Europe during World War II
FREDERIC SPOTTS. NewYork: has created a furor because of its cover:
Overlook Press, 2003, 420 pp. $37.50. gold ingots assembled in the form of a
A diplomat turned historian, Spotts swastika against a white cross background.
offers a fascinating contribution to our If anything, the content of the book is
understanding of Hitler's complex, far more explosive. It is a detailed, often
chaotic, and catastrophic personality, blunt report of contentious diplomacy
and a compelling study of Hitler's artis- involving not only the notoriously resistant
tic policies in the Third Reich. Hitler banks and government of Switzerland,
considered himself an artist first and a but also other countries whose desire to
political leader and savior second. He provide justice on Eisenstat's terms was
was convinced the arts were important less than forthcoming-including Ger-
for, and should be used to affect, the many on the issue of slave labor; Austria,
people's culture. His talent for grand used to seeing itself as a victim of, not a
rise en scenes was of course connected partner in, Nazism; and France, whose
to an admiration of Wagner that, Spotts legal culture is very different from that of
tells us, was not shared among other the United States. What gives Eisenstat's
Nazi leaders. Hitler's taste for grandiose story its strength is his undiplomatic but
(and ruinous) architecture, dislike of talented set of portraits of all the people
modern painting, passion for collecting involved. What emerges most clearly
artwork, ignorance of chamber music from ImperfectJustice is the determination
and indifference to symphonies, friend- and commitment of the author.
ship with Albert Speer, and bad taste
in sculpture, are all documented, along
with his manipulation of artists and his
role as art dictator. Spotts believes
Western Hemisphere
that if Hitler had been "like Mussolini, KENNETH MAXWELL
a cretinous philistine without interest
in the arts, he would have been less Bad NeighborPolicy: Washington's Futile
destructive." One thing is certain: his War on Drugs in Latin America. BY
interest in these domains exceeded TED GALEN CARPENTER. New
his talents by far. York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003,
288 pp. $24.95.
ImperfectJustice:LootedAssets, Slave A refreshingly candid, controversial, and
Labor,and the UnfinishedBusiness of hard-hitting assessment of Washington's
World WarIi. BY STUART E. increasingly expensive, internationalized,
EI SE N STAT. New York: Public Affairs, and, according to Carpenter, utterly fu-
2003, 400 pp. $30.00. tile campaign against illegal drugs.
Eisenstat's account of his mission to This "war" was first proclaimed three
negotiate compensation from European decades ago by President Richard Nixon.
countries for the "looted assets, slave Yet more illegal drugs now flow into
labor," and other misfortunes (such as the United States than did during the
unpaid insurance policies) that befell mid-i98os, and consumer demand has

[156] FOREIGN AFFAIRS' Volume82No. 3

 Recent Books
created an international industry in tentment, alienation, and rebelliousness
which the average drug-trafficking of the marginalized poor in Venezuela
organization can afford to lose 90 per- are the roots of the political crisis and
cent of its product and still remain of the continuing social polarization
profitable. Meanwhile, Washington's that makes arbitration between the
abrasive tactics and focus on "supply government and the opposition so
side" interdiction have increasingly led difficult. Despite Chivez's radical nation-
Latin American governments to wage alist language and independent foreign
vigorous wars against their own citizens. policy, according to the authors, the
In the United States, the tactics promoted day-to-day practice of his regime is, or
by drug-war zealots and some local law was until recently, more pragmatic than
enforcement agencies pose a serious threat revolutionary. For them, the military coup
to civil liberties. Carpenter vigorously and countercoup of April 2002 reveal
argues for a radical change in policy: both the fragility of the Chavista coalition
"The only realistic way out of this morass in the face of continuing econmic dete-
is to adopt a regime of drug legalization" rioration as well as the political immaturity
and the termination of what he sees as of the emerging opposition.
counterproductive "prohibitionist"
strategies. Will any politicians take up Presidents Without Parties: The Politicsof
his challenge? Unlikely. Is a sober debate Economic Reform in Argentina and
needed on the 3o-year failure of U.S. Venezuela in the 1990S. BY JAVIER
drug policies? Without question. CORRALES . University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press,
Venezuelan Politics in the Chdvez Era: 2002, 364 pp. $55.oo.
Class, Polarization& Conflict. EDITED Political science prognostications about
BY STEVE ELLNER AND DANIEL Latin America can quickly become re-
H ELLINGER. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, dundant. This book is a case in point.
2003, z57 pp. $49.95. Corrales argues that scholars and the
An extremely valuable and balanced general public have not given sufficient
overview of Venezuela under the erratic attention to the role political parties
reign of President Hugo Chivez, this play in democracies, especially in the
timely book provides much of the essential implementation of the market-oriented
background that has, so far, been notably reforms that took place during the 199os.
absent in the policy debate. The authors Corrales argues that political parties are
see a cumulative historical failure in not only central instruments of popular
Venezuela to translate the benefits of representation, but also key tools of
cyclical primary export booms into social governance, essential to economic man-
and economic progress for the majority agement. For example, during the 199os,
of the population. Although Chivez Argentina seemed the paragon of resolve
came to prominence as the leader of two and Venezuela the epitome of economic
failed military coups, he gained power decay. In Argentina, the executive intro-
eventually through elections and on the duced its economic policies with the
back of a popular movement. The discon- consent of the ruling party, whereas in

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June2003 11571

 Recent Books
Venezuela relations between the executive
and the ruling party became intensely
acrimonious. The problem with this thesis
is that, in the longer term, neither worked:
the Argentine reforms proved no more
self-sustaining than did those in Venezuela.
"The collapse of 2oo2 seems all the
more inexplicable, given the achieve-
ments of the 199os," Corrales ruefully
notes in the preface. Thus, although
this book usefully brings political parties
back into the equation, it does not resolve
the conundrum of Latin America's chronic
failures or the reasons for the fragility
of its rare successes.
A History ofArgentina in the Twentieth
Century. BY LUIS ALBERTO ROMERO,
TRANSLATED BY JAMES P.
BRENNAN. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press,
2002, 368 pp. $6o.oo.
A fascinating and well-translated account
of Argentina's misadventures over the last
century by one of that country's brightest
historians. Absorbing vast amounts of
British capital and tens of thousands
of European immigrants, Argentina
began the century with great promise.
In 1914, with half of its population still
foreign, a dynamic society had emerged
that was both open and mobile. But the
country also became divided between
new, modernizing urban sectors and
highly traditionalist, often rural-based,
old elites-a split that retarded the
development of an all-encompassing
sense of nationality. Romero examines
the frustrating 193os, the rise and fall of
Juan and Eva Per6n, the bitter challenges
from extremists on the left and on the right
during the 197os, the varied economic
and military fiascos that undermined
[158] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3
and discredited the military rulers, the
return of democracy, and the economic
and financial turmoil that accompanied
the transition. Especially interesting is
Romero's blunt account of Carlos Menem's
presidency and the odd relationship that
developed between the group of tech-
nocrats headed by the minister of the
economy, Domingo Cavallo, and Menem's
cronies. Corruption, Romero asserts,
was "widely employed to wear down
resistance and co-opt adversaries." This
was, of course, the Argentina that was
the great favorite of "emerging market"
investors, was blessed by the Interna-
tional Monetary Fund, enjoyed what its
then foreign minister described as a
"carnal" relationship with the United
States, and about which trade union
leader Luis Barrionuevo observed,
"Nobody makes money by working."
Eastern Europe
and Former Soviet
Republics
ROBERT LEGVOLD
Khrushchev: The Man andHis Era.
BY WILLIAM TAUBMAN. NewYork:
W. W. Norton, 2003, 768 pp. $35.00.
Few have written a political biography
that better captures both a historic figure
and the history of which he was a part.
Taubman's towering work is stunning
not only for its scale and diligence-every
aspect checked and cross-checked, no
source neglected-but for the skill with
which he reconstructs what is essentially
a history of Soviet politics during a key
 Recent Books
phase. Khrushchev, from his peasant legislators, or regional bosses, let alone a
coal-miner childhood through his rocket- democratic opposition. Her study is not
like rise as a young apparatchik in the of Russian political life writ large, but of
1920s and 1930s to his place at the top of Russian leadership and the politics that
the post-Stalin heap, was the essence swirl around and emanate from it.
of a middle-aged Soviet regime. At once
bumptious, clever, ruthless, idealistic, Ukraine'sForeignand Security Policy
personally insecure, and politically bold, 1991-2000. BY ROMAN WOLCZUK.
Khrushchev embodied as much as guided New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003,
the system. But guide he did, from the 272 pp. $90.00.
assault on the Stalin cult, through the 1956 Wolczuk serves up the most comprehen-
East European uprising, the Berlin con- sive, systematic, and balanced assessment
frontations, and the Cuban missile crisis. of Ukraine's foreign policy currently
In the retelling, Taubman adds a wealth available. It is literally a tous azimuts study,
of behind-the-scenes detail. The book is for he begins by examining Ukraine's
a gift, as fascinating as it is important. relations with the Slavic states on "the
north-eastern azimuth," then the central
Putin'sRussia. BY LILIA SHEVTSOVA. and east European neighbors and the
Washington: Carnegie Endowment rest of the West on the "western azimuth,"
for International Peace, 2003, 298 pp. and finally "the southern azimuth"-
$40.00 (paper, $19.95). the Black Sea neighbors. Of course, the
Whatever the oxymoron used to describe Russian axis dominates the others. Yet
it--"managed democracy" (Putin's favorite), the strength of this book stems from the
"electoral monarchy," or "totalitarianism respect it pays to the complex, multidi-
in a pluralistic society"-Putin has mensional context of Ukrainian foreign
managed to create it, Shevtsova contends. and security policy, including key relation-
And at its core is the "authoritarian ships with Poland, Romania, and a
presidency." With typical subtlety, however, number of significant subregional group-
she does not make Russia's recidivism ings. Assessing the core challenge facing
out to be one man's handiwork. Rather, Ukraine-maneuvering between a West
Putin is as much an echo of the elite's unwilling to welcome it in and a Russia
emptiness and small-mindedness, the reluctant to let it go-Wolczuk thinks
public's mix of yearning and apathy, the country has fared pretty well, although
and the system's lack of fundamental and he does not slight the way its leader-
institutional sinews as he is a transcendent ship's own failures have made the task
force. This is Shevtsova's most Russian more difficult.
work, argued with scarcely subdued
passion and the feel of someone caught HistoryDerailed-CentralandEasternEurope
up in these tides. Out of her blunt, often in the LongNineteenth Century. BY IVAN
acerbic, account comes shrewd insights T. BEREND. Berkeley: University of
into Putin's transformation from an California Press, 2003, 6oo pp. $39.95.
implausible, contrived successor into a For Berend, history is a whole, and when
dominator unchallenged by oligarchs, cultural, economic, social, and political

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June2o3 [159]

 Recent Books
trends are taken together, they distin- culminating in the mass killing of Jews
guish central and east Europeans from in Vilnius and Jews and Poles in western
the rest of Europe, notwithstanding Ukraine under the Nazis and after.
important differences between the Balkans Snyder's ultimate query in this fresh
and east-central Europe. The region, and stimulating look at the path to
he argues, has long lived in the shadow nationhood is how the bitter experi-
of the European states to the west, some- ences along the way, including the
times avidly borrowing from them, as bitterest-ethnic cleansing-are to be
with early-nineteenth-century German overcome. A wise contemporary Polish
romanticism, which soon turned into a leadership has managed by accepting
century-long grounding for eastern its borders to the east and letting go of
Europe's special, embattled nationalisms. the history that produced them, while
More often, however, the influences seeking its future through integration
coming from Europe's other half were into the West.
warped or stymied by the frustrations
and excesses of peoples denied a natural Gulag.A History.BY ANNE APPLEBAUM.
path to freedom, as well as by social New York: Doubleday, 2003,
and economic forms laggard since the 736 pp. $35.00.
sixteenth century. Berend, a first-rate Gulag, the searing acronym for the
economic historian, treats the often Soviet bureaucracy that administered
neglected economic dimension with penal labor camps, ruled a sprawling
special skill. empire comprising 476 complexes.
Each complex contained thousands of
The Reconstruction ofNations. Poland, individual camps, through which more
Ukraine, Lithuania,Belarus, 1569-1999. than i8 million people passed between
BY TIMOTHY SNYDER. New Haven: 1929 and 1953, maybe 3 million or more
Yale University Press, 2003, of whom perished. Applebaum exam-
3 84 pp. $35.00. ines this monster from many angles,
In 1569, the new Polish-Lithuanian including its origins, its "function,"
Commonwealth encompassed virtually especially in the Stalinist system, its
the whole of what is today Poland, exponential growth after 1929 and in
Belarus, Ukraine, and most of the the 1940s, as well as moments in the
Baltic states. For the Lithuanian and "meat grinder" (as it was known):
arrest,
Polish nobles who constituted this first transit, in, out, and back. Her separate
version of the "nation," it was a capa- portraits of the guards, the "thieves in
cious notion, tolerating varied language, law," the common criminals (whose
religious, and political loyalties. Its crime may have been coming to work
core character, Snyder contends, endured ten minutes late), and the political
until the 1863 revolution, surviving even prisoners (whose transgression may
the eighteenth-century partitions that have been telling a political joke) have a
erased the commonwealth from the special vividness and poignancy. Gulag
map. The rise of ethnic nationalism is a tightly told, complex, heartbreaking,
following 1863 undid the earlier openness, and mind-bending story.

[16o] FOREIGN AFFAIRS. Volume82No. 3

 Recent Books
Middle East
L. CARL BROWN
The Arab World Competitiveness Report
2002-2003. EDITED BY PETER K.
CORNELIUS. New York: World
Economic Forum, 2003, 4a2 pp. $49.95.
The World Economic Forum, which
has produced annual global competi-
tiveness reports since 1979, offers its
first such report focused on the Arab
world. The work of 29 specialists,
mainly economists, this substantial
study serves as a fine complement to
the UN'S recent Arab Human Develop-
ment Report 2002 (reviewed in these
pages in September/October 2002).
Part one contains 14 separate chapters on
subjects ranging from economic growth
to education, with several addressing
foreign trade. Part two offers country
profiles detailing the key foreign-trade
indicators for the Arab countries (except
Iraq and Sudan, the latter to be included
in a forthcoming competitiveness report
on Africa). Part three provides the find-
ings of a survey of top business executives
in ten Arab countries. The tabulated
results, addressing such issues as the
business costs of corruption, research-
and-development spending by firms,
brain drain, the quality of the countries'
public schools, and much more, are
fascinating (although the book warns
that the sample was small). One sees
much more positive executive responses
to business conditions in the Persian
Gulf states and a less favorable response
in Lebanon, where an entrepreneurial
ethos once reigned.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June 2oo3
Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century:
From Triumph to Despair.BY ADEED
DAWIS HA. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2003, 352 pp. $29.95.
A principal organizing theme for Arab
history since the last decades of the nine-
teenth century would be what Time
magazine halfa century ago archly dubbed
the Arab "urge to merge." Dawisha tackles
this intimidatingly big subject with success.
He has mastered the vast literature on
the subject, weeding out the contentious
or just plain wrong accounts and integrat-
ing the several good studies that get it
right. Added to this is his own consider-
able expertise and an impressive use of
Arab memoirs. Dawisha corrects the
excessive claims to a pre-1914 Arabism,
stresses the importance of the Arab ideo-
logue Sati' AI-Husri, and presents the
contending alternatives of an Arabism
accepting state sovereignty as opposed to
political unity. Moreover, he gives major
attention to the heyday of Arabism under
Gamal Abdel Nasser (grippingly depict-
ing the mass fervor that Arab nationalist
movements evoked at their peak) and
traces Arabism's decline from the breakup
of the Egyptian-Syrian union in 1961 and
even more the disastrous Arab defeat by
Israel in 1967.
The Tragedy ofthe Middle East. BY BARRY
RUBIN. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2003, 296 pp. $28.00.
Rubin argues that Middle Eastern rulers
hang onto control with police-state tactics
and mollify the masses with anti-Western
and anti-Israeli rhetoric. Economic de-
velopment gets short shrift. Palestinians
have never really accepted the existence
of Israel. Even the Islamists, while opposed
to the existing regimes (Iran aside), fit
[161]
 Recent Books
into the resulting political gridlock since cleric Ayatollah Hussain-Ali Montazeri,
regimes can concede some Islamist goals the opposition press, and the poignant
while diverting Islamist rage to the satanic account of the few Iranian secularists
outsider. Rubin's penultimate chapter who, at the time of the Revolution, drafted
shifts focus to argue that America's Middle a liberal constitution but saw their efforts
East policy has been strikingly benign, shunted aside by the institutionalized
implying that Middle Eastern rulers or clerical authoritarianism that emerged.
their populaces must be cynical or perverse There are also insightfil asides on such
not to appreciate this. Rubin is a seasoned matters as feminism and Islam in Iran
specialist. His empirical case is not trivial and the political artwork ubiquitous on
and his listing of radical statements by walls and billboards. Abdo and Lyons
sundry Arab and Iranian leaders is telling. depict Khatami and his inner circle in
Nonetheless, other accounts might plau- much less sanguine terms than can be
sibly distinguish more among the states found in several previous accounts, seeing
lumped together here, explain the deep- them as not all that persistently liberal.
seated antipathy to the outsider (the United
Kingdom yesterday, the United States Turkish ForeignPolicy in an Age of
today), and put more emphasis on the Uncertainty.BY F. STEPHEN LARRABEE
role of Israel in the developments he AND IAN 0. LESSER. SantaMonica:
depicts. The Tragedy ofthe Middle East, Rand, 2002, 218 pp. $24.o0 (paper).
written in these times, is likely to be read In a competent and compact survey of
as a brief for massive regime change contemporary Turkish foreign policy
throughout the Arab world and Iran. that gives due emphasis to its multilateral
dimensions, both domestic and foreign,
Answering Only to God- Faith and Larrabee and Lesser treat separately
Freedom in Twenty-first-Century Iran. Turkish foreign relations with the Euro-
BY GENEIVE ABDO AND JONATHAN pean Union, Greece and the Balkans,
LYONS. New York: Henry Holt, 2003, Eurasia, the Middle East, and the United
320 pp. $25.00. States while managing to interrelate
The first foreign correspondents to reside these separate subjects. They have taken
in Iran permanently since the 1979 Islamic recent studies (including their own)
Revolution, Abdo and Lyons reported and effectively updated accounts of
from there from June 1998 until early several aspects of Turkish foreign policy,
2oo. This husband-and-wife team was including the slow and by no means as-
obliged to flee Iran in January of that sured Turkish effort to join the EU, the
year, just before being expelled or worse. tentatively better relations with Greece,
Their individual and joint reportage, all the still unresolved issue of Cyprus, the
well contextualized by a use of available on-balance slight Turkish advances into
scholarly literature on Iranian history and Central Asia since the end of the Cold War,
culture, provides a readable, somewhat Turkish-Israeli ties, the serious Turkish
discursive survey of Iran today. Especially concern about the Kurds in Turkey and
effective are the pages devoted to President beyond, and Turkey's complex relations
Mohammed Khatami, the opposition with the United States.

[162] FOREIGN AFFAIRS Volume82No. 3

 Recent Books
A popular practice of foreign corre-
spondents upon finishing a tour is to
Asia and Pacific write a book analyzing the big-picture
developments in the country they are
LUCIAN W. PYE
leaving. At the end of his China as-
signment for the FarEasternEconomic
Korean Endgame ,A StrategyforReunfication Review, Kaye went against that tradition
and US. Disengagement.BY SELIG S. by focusing instead on the personal
HARRISON. Princeton: Princeton and private encounters he and his Tai-
University Press, 2002, 352 pp. $29.95. wanese wife had with an extraordinary
At a time when North Korean nuclear cast of interesting and eccentric per-
developments have created a crisis in sonalities. The title refers to a previously
world affairs, we are fortunate to have this unknown distant relative who turns up
thoughtful and provocative book. Based on for dinner and travels with the Kayes
meetings with both Kim I1Sung and his and their Tibetan lama friend to West
son, Kim Jong I1,Harrison presents expla- China. Their adventures include meet-
nations of Pyongyang's actions that are ing with a troop of itinerant actors,
more sympathetic and intelligent than religious pilgrims, wandering farm
the official pronouncements of the North hands, a police officer, and many others.
Korean government. He sees reunification Even while visiting standard tourist
as a realistic goal through a confederation spots, such as Xian and the terra cotta
of North and South, with all surrounding warriors, they managed to have unlikely
powers pledging the neutralization and meetings, and Kaye is able to turn
denuclearization of the peninsula. He their visit to a Beijing hospice into a
argues that the United States should with- touching account of old revolutionaries
draw its forces from South Korea over a preparing for death. The book reads
ten-year period and seek to be an honest more like a novel filled with fascinating
broker between North and South. With the characters than an attempt to explain
end of the Cold War, North Korea lost current developments in China.
the security backing of both Russia and
China, and thus, in Harrison's view, it feels The Rules ofPlay:Nationalldentity and the
vulnerable to American attack, justifying Shaping ofJapaneseLeisure. BY DAVID
the restart of its uranium-enrichment pro- RICHARD LEHENY. Ithaca: Cornell
gram. Although Harrison does not prepare University Press, 2003, 208 pp. $29.95.
us for the severity of the tensions caused It is common knowledge that the Japan-
by North Korean actions, he does cover a ese are workaholics, but few people are
wide range of issues and much inside his- aware that the Japanese government
tory, making this read still valuable. has put substantial effort and resources
into advancing the quality of its people's
Cousin Felix Meets the Buddha:And Other leisure time. The government has reacted
Encounters in China and Tibet. BY not just to the image of the Japanese as
LINCOLN KAYE. NewYork: Farrar, compulsive workers, but also to the
Straus & Giroux, 2003, 394 PP. $27-50. more sophisticated idea that leisure

FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June2003 [163]

 Recent Books
practices determine the lifestyle of a that China is still an empire because
people. The government's theory is that of traditions of rule and because more
leisure is basic in defining national identity
than a third of its land is inhabited
and that if Japan is to catch up with the mainly by non-Han Chinese people.
West, it needs a more modern national The imperial system in its formal sense
lifestyle. As a result, the Japanese politi- collapsed with the 1911 revolution,
cal leadership sought to get the public and communism brought a new official
to abandon traditional leisure practices ideology, but Mao ruled in the style of
and adopt more Westernized ones. Leheny a emperor. Terrill has extensive knowledge
is an authority on tourism, and hence of Chinese history that he imparts with
considerable attention is given to the graceful style and in fascinating detail,
government's attempts to establish but he is not wedded to the idea of a
modern tourist attractions in Japan and permanently "enduring China." He sees
to encourage the Japanese to use their the current situation of the People's
leisure time to travel abroad so that Republic as filled with fundamental
foreigners will perceive the Japanese as problems, which will soon cause the
modern people. collapse of the empire and the emergence
The New ChineseEmpire: Beying's of a potentially democratic China.
The contributors to the symposium
PoliticalDilemma and What It Means volume are among the most skilled
for the United States. BY ROSS experts in what was once called
TERRILL. New York: Basic Books, "Pekingology." These scholars have
2003, 432 pp. $30.00. tracked with great care who is on
China'sLeadership in the 21st Century: The the rise in Chinese politics and who
Rise ofthe Fourth Generation.EDITED is in decline, who belongs to which
BY DAVID M. FINKELSTEIN AND network, and where key individuals
MARYANNE KIVLEHAN. Armonk: M. stand on critical policy issues. The
E. Sharpe, 2003, 302 pp. $74.95. arrival of what is called the "fourth
From two very different perspectives, generation" of Chinese leaders means
these books seek to predict where China is that there is now a new cast of charac-
headed. Terrill seeks answers to China's ters that students of Chinese politics
future by interpreting its contemporary must learn. The all-star team of authors
developments in the context of China's includes Cheng Li, Murray Scott
great traditional civilization and deep Tanner, Joseph Fewsmith, Bruce Dick-
cultural constraints, while the contributors son, Carol Lee Hamrin, and David
to the symposium volume focus on Shambaugh. Their collective analyses
the immediate decision-makers and conclude that China does indeed face
their predispositions. the impressive array of problems that
Terrill sees China as still caught up Terrill identifies, but they too see positive
in its imperial tradition of rule by em- signs in a more professional political
perors and mandarins, and thus, for him, elite and more thoughtful intellectuals
it lacks the "traits of a nation and does now emerging.
not behave like a nation." He argues

[16 4] FOREIGN AFFAIRS- Volume82No. 3

 Recent Books
Chan, a veteran observer of African
Africa international relations, sets himself the
difficult task ofjudging the political
GAIL M. GERHART record of Zimbabwe's controversial
president. He lowers expectations by
The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil Wars. BY eschewing analysis of psychological
DOUGLAS H. JOHNSON. motives and instead stresses an evaluation
Bloomington: Indiana University of actions. He looks at Mugabe's diplo-
Press, 2003, 254 pp. $24.95. matic moves to end Mozambique's civil
This authoritative and detailed study of war (bold and successful), his maneuvers
Sudan's contemporary conflicts aims to to defeat rival leaders and movements
discourage "quick fix" thinking by tracing over two decades (savage and successful),
the historical patterns of power and politics and his confrontations with foreign
that have brought the country to its current opinion regarding land seizures (risky,
impasse. It shows how Sudanic states of ruthless, but partly successful). Apart
the precolonial era established exploitative from the land-ownership issue, Chan
relations with their hinterland populations, says little about Mugabe's domestic record
which the colonial powers did nothing to of corruption and economic decline.
redress, leaving modern Sudan to come Many readers will wish for a more probing
to independence with no consensus on conclusion than his final judgment that,
national goals and no strategies of devel- after a complex political life, Mugabe is
opment. The emergence of militant Islam "complexly bad." Nevertheless, in spite
in the late nineteenth century bequeathed of a colorful but rather tangled writing
to Sudan a narrow and ambiguous nation- style, there is much here that is interesting
alism that strongly reinforced center- and insightful, including a discussion of
periphery tensions. Cold War influences Zimbabwe's frustrated intellectuals.
and the interest of foreigners in Sudan's
water and oil resources further compli- Window on Freedom:Race, Civil Rigbts, and
cated an already complex struggle for ForeignAffairs, 1945-1988.EDITED BY
power and territorial control from the BRENDA GAYLE PLUMMER. Chapel
196os onward. Never just a matter of Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
competition between religions, races, or 2003, 272 pp. $45.00 (paper, $18.95).
regions, Sudan's multiple internal conflicts Each contributor to this first-rate collec-
today are as seemingly intractable as ever, tion examines how the movement for
despite serious peace efforts. Students and racial equality in America can be better
researchers will benefit from the extended understood if placed in the context of
bibliographical essay and chronology competitive international relations.
included in this excellent book. Most chapters highlight the first two
postwar decades, when a complex and
RobertMugabe: A Life ofPowerand halting process of triangulation developed
Violence. BY STEPHEN CHAN. Ann between Washington policymakers, race-
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, focused domestic constituencies from
2003, 243 pp. $27.95. right to left, and foreign critics. The

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June 2003 [165]

authors argue that domestic calls for reform
proved largely unavailing until America's
international image and prestige came
under withering fire from newly inde-
pendent African and Asian countries in
the fledgling United Nations and expo-
sure of American hypocrisies about race
handed the Soviet Union a powerful Cold
War card. Specific topics include the
impact of Gunnar Myrdal's 1944 classic
An American Dilemma, the waning inter-
national traction of white supremacist
ideologies, shifting attitudes toward
Europe's postwar "brown babies," the
"unwelcome mat" put out for African
diplomats in metropolitan Washington, and
the political reverberations of Bandung
and Birmingham. Rich footnoting makes
this work a very good resource for students
of racial factors in international relations.

Africa's Stalled Development."International

Causes and Cures. BY DAVID K.
LEONARD AND SCOTT STRAUS.
Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2003,
15o pp. $17.95.
Leonard and Straus, of the University
of California at Berkeley, synthesize
much recent writing on African political
economy into an intriguing big picture
that both analyzes the past and prescribes
for the future. Without denying the over-
generalizations involved, they hope to
jolt the aid establishment toward funda-
mentally new perspectives. They offer
strong evidence that Africa's past economic
and political interactions with the inter-
national system have created a set of
incentives that are deeply dysfunctional
for economic development. Old patterns
have fostered weak states, antidemocratic
leadership, and widespread civil conflict.
To break these patterns, the authors want

[166]
 Recent Books
to restructure the incentives produced by indicates that most South Africans
the current conjunction of debt, foreign must experience diminishing perceptions
aid, and technical assistance to economies that their physical security is under
that often depend on enclave production threat from their "enemies." Also, local
of exports. Their proposed cures are im- and national elites must make concerted
mediate debt cancellation and reductions efforts to build a public commitment to
in most forms of foreign aid for govern- the full spectrum of democratic values:
ments with demonstrable commitments multipartyism, the rule of law, and a
to democracy and development, followed prioritization of individual liberty over
by a system of multilateral guarantees to social order.0
protect these legitimate governments from
armed threats by rebel groups (who sustain
themselves through illegal means such as
the capture of profit-making enclaves).
An over-idealistic but thought-provoking
contribution to development debates.

Overcoming Intolerancein South Africa:

Experiments in DemocraticPersuasion.
BY JAMES L. GIBSON AND AMANDA
GOUWS. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2002, 278 pp. 855.00.
Commentators since the late 198os have
identified political intolerance as a serious
obstacle to successful democratization in
South Africa. This study tackles the issue
as a problem in social psychology, using
interview data from a broad 1996-97
survey. It confirms that intolerance is
widespread: about two-thirds of South
Africans favor banning the group they
dislike the most, and almost three-fourths
would prohibit that group from demon-
strating-even when their most disliked
group is a mainstream political party.
Experimental questions show that tolerant
attitudes are held less strongly than in-
tolerant ones, especially among Africans.
Most Africans are not influenced to
modify their hard-line views even by
Constitutional Court judgments that
promote civil liberties. To lower intol-
erance levels significantly, the study

FOREIGN AFFAIRS -May/June2003 [167]

 Letters to the Editor
PaulKellogg on French anti-Americanism;
Matthew Evangelistacounters critic on Chechnya;
Allen McDuffee, Adam M Smith, andothers

WHY THE FRENCH FUSS
To the Editor.:
Walter Russell Mead ("Why Do They
Hate Us?" March/April 2003) revisits
what has lately become a sore point in
transatlantic relations-French anti-
Americanism. The two intellectuals
whose works he reviews-ean-Franqois
Revel and Philippe Roger-have tried
to divine the cause of what might best
be described as a malaise. But, as Mead
himself recognizes, what passes for French
anti-Americanism seems more like a
collection of misguided ideas with no
relation to fact than anything else.
It is difficult to believe that Charles
Maurras-a royalist journalist of the early
twentieth century and a Vichyite impris-
oned after World War II-carries any
intellectual weight today. His loathsome
antisemitic ideas about America never
troubled with anything resembling fact.
Mead's comment that "the rise of the
United States established a new super-
power league in world politics in which
France can never compete" is ioo percent
correct. But what other nation can
effectively compete? His contention that
English displaced the French language
in science is badly mistaken. German
was the language of science for much of
the twentieth century. Since 1870, the
Germans have thrice soundly whipped
the French militarily. So why not French
anti-Germanism?
If anything, the French would like to
regain their past glory on the continent.
In today's terms, that means speaking
for Europe-something the French have
not managed to do. With the rise of the
European Union, the issue of independ-
ence and national identity has yet to be
fully addressed.
Europe was physically destroyed after
World War II. The United States was not.
So we saw much of Europe-particularly
the French and the Germans-balking
at going to war without having exhausted
all peaceful alternatives. That's not
really anti-Americanism, although it
may be seen as such. It seems more
like good sense.
PAUL KELLOGG
New York, NY
LIVE OR LEARN
To the Editor.
I was thankfil to see John Waterbury
("Hate Your Policies, Love Your
Institutions," January/February 2003)
make the distinction between the way
people in the Middle East feel about
Americans and the way they view U.S.
policy toward their part of the world.
This was a luxury I always felt was afforded
me during my visits to the region, and a

[168] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume82No. 3

 Letters to the Editor
favor that we as Americans rarely return
to them. In spite of this strength, some
flaws exist.
Waterbury's use of the term "Muslim
Middle East" raises concern, especially
when describing those who "express anger
toward the United States," as though
feelings of frustration are absent among
Christians, Druze, or those of any other
religion. This type of portrayal misrepre-
sents the nature of the issue; it dismisses
this frustration as a concern unique to
Muslims, thereby absolving the United
States of responsibility for its problematic
policy toward an entire region.
In turn, Waterbury ignores a major
problem with his argument-the issue
of access-until his next-to-last para-
graph. He fails to recognize the fact
that the American institutions of which
he speaks educate and train the elite in
Middle Eastern countries, producing
the correct popular perception that
these are elite institutions. The over-
whelming majority of the population
cannot afford to attend them: in fact,
the American University of Cairo's
undergraduate tuition rate for the year
is currently $11,700, while the country's
gross national income per capita is
only $1,53o, and most Egyptians live
on $2 per day. The result is envy among
the tolerant and resentment among the
less than tolerant, sentiments much
different from "love your institutions."
Perhaps more alarming is his suggestion
that the United States ought to use the
educational system in its "'soft power'
arsenal." This type of endeavor violates
the very spirit of the education he champi-
ons, that of "flexibility and choice, critical
thinking and problem solving.., education
that encourages the open debate of issues,
FOREIGN AFFAIRS •May/June 2oo3
the cultivation of a skeptical attitude
toward received wisdom, and habits of
weighing and assessing evidence in an
effort to solve real problems." It also
undermines the intentions of the founders
of these schools as well as academic free-
dom and intellectual integrity.
ALLEN MCDUFFEE
GeorgeMason University
THE CURE IS WORSE ...
To the Editor:
Susan Raymond's article ("Foreign
Assistance in an Aging World," March/
April 2003) calls for new priorities in
foreign aid based on the growing num-
ber of elderly in developing countries and
consequently the surge of chronic-as
opposed to catastrophic, communicable-
diseases in the industrializing world.
Unfortunately, following Raymond's
prescriptions would greatly limit the
effectiveness of aid, both on the ground
and as perceived by donor states.
First, although the developing world
has seen impressive gains in life expectancy
and simultaneous declines in birth rates,
the vast majority of this "demographic
transition" can be attributed to two
developing states-China and India-
with the former receiving almost no
U.S. aid. This transition has been much
more slowly realized in other developing
nations. In fact, the demographic transi-
tion and the consequent rise in chronic
disease are most evident in those countries
that have become most developed; thus
Raymond's prescriptions imply a new focus
on aid for those countries increasingly
able to cope without it.
Indeed, in the vast majority of
developing nations-primarily, albeit
not exclusively, in Africa, which is
[16 9]
 Letters to the Editor
home to the greatest number of uN-defined
least developed countries (LDCS)--it is a
continued focus on catastrophic ailments
that will have the biggest effect. HIV/AIDS,
tuberculosis (TB), malaria, and other com-
municable, catastrophic illnesses dispro-
portionately strike those in the prime of
their economic lives and remain the fiinda-
mental hurdle to development in nearly
all LDCS. Thus, as has already been seen
in states such as Uganda, redressing this
limitation will have the largest impact on
these countries' developmental potential
and quality of life.
Second, Raymond's proposals will do
little to enhance increasingly stingy for-
eign aid budgets in donor countries. In
democracies, taxpayers demand that aid
be manifestly beneficial; Raymond's
focus would put the bulk of benefits
off by as much as a generation, a difficult
"investment" for politicians to sell to
voters. Conversely, putting a cap on
AIDS or TB would have immediate,
tangible effects. Additionally, a focus
on chronic disease, instead of commu-
nicable, catastrophic ailments, neglects
the benefits to the developed world of
concentrating on these latter illnesses.
Globalization has ensured that com-
municable diseases know no boundaries,
and the rise in same-disease incidence
(TB, for example) in developing and
developed states shows the dangers to
the North of uncontrolled illnesses in the
South. Chronic diseases, no matter
how prevalent, remain noncontagious.
Moreover, Raymond's prescriptions
could not come at a more inopportune
time. Developing countries are finally on
the agenda of industrialized states.
The Monterrey conference on financing
development and the formation of the
[170] FOREIGN AFFAIRS" Volume 82 No. 3
still-undersubscribed Global AIDS, TB,
and Malaria Fund indicate both some
early successes and some important
shortcomings. Thus, following Raymond's
proposals risks an even greater political
calamity: compelling donors to concentrate
on comparatively successful developing
countries at the expense of those in
greatest need.
ADAM M. SMITH
Former World Bank staff member
YOU BE THE JUDGE
To the Editor.-
In the January/February 2003 issue
of ForeignAffairs ("The WTO on Trial"),
Susan Esserman and Robert Howse
review the World Trade Organization's
dispute-settlement record and conclude
that critics' claims ofjudicial activism are
largely unfounded. If only that were true.
As Esserman and Howse correctly
note, binding dispute settlement is one
of the most important innovations in
the WTO, and this innovation brings
with it great promise. Yet, with that
promise comes great danger as well.
The authors examine three alleged
instances of activism: the anti-
globalization movement's claims
regarding the beef hormones case, the
environmental community's concerns
with the shrimp-turtle dispute, and the
question of the WTO Appellate Body's
acceptance of amicus curiae briefs.
Having analyzed these three claims, the
authors conclude that the Appellate Body
has not engaged in judicial activism and
that it has followed the "cautious
approach" of adopting legal interpreta-
tions most deferential to sovereignty
incases where the treaty texts have
been ambiguous.
 Letters to the Editor
The claims the authors chose to evalu-
ate, however, are hardly the strongest ones
that can be leveled at the Appellate Body's
judicial activism. Having erected this straw
man, they breezily conclude that "sweeping
criticisms ofjudicial activism ... do not ...
withstand scrutiny." In fact, they grossly
understate the problem. The legality of
national trade-remedy laws was enshrined
in the original WTO agreements, yet the
dispute-settlement body has consistently
engaged in rule creation, protecting unfair
traders and striking down domestic
remedies imposed by, for example, the
European Union, the United States,
Argentina, Thailand, and Mexico. The
Appellate Body has failed to uphold a
single safeguard measure challenged at
the WTO (striking down measures by the
United States, Argentina, Chile, and
South Korea), effectively rendering the
Agreement on Safeguards useless. In
several unfair-trade cases, wTo decisions
have simply rejected prior General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade determi-
nations that supported the use of trade
remedies, without any basis to conclude
that the members intended to reverse the
prior holdings. It is difficult to see how
the Appellate Body's (and the panels')
actions in the area of trade remedy do
not constitute the very judicial activism
of which the authors have seemingly
acquitted it. As Daniel Tarullo of
Georgetown University has warned,
support for future international agree-
ments and liberalization will inevitably
be undermined by the wTo's activism.
appear to protect their interests, which
is utterly inconsistent with the notion
of a "judicial" system. Transparency is
lacking, panel members are appointed
ad hoc, and WTO Secretariat officials
"staff" panel decisions.
In recent years, we have seen waves of
protests-e.g., Seattle, European reaction
to beef hormones, environmentalists'
reaction to shrimp-turtle, congressional
denunciations of judicial activism, etc.
Although some will dismiss such concerns
as being "beneath" a "judicial" system, in
fact, if we expect any democratic influence
on the international system, such concerns,
rather than lawyers' analyses, may prove
to be the real test of whether or not the
system is too "judicially active."
The members of the WTO must insist
that panels stop "making" law. Inter-
nationally, if a sovereign nation has not
agreed to give up its right to do something,
it retains that right. Internationally, if
the rules are ambiguous, they are to be
interpreted in favor of the challenged
nation's sovereign rights (as Esserman
and Howse note, unclear rules are
"another reason for the Appellate Body
to exercise restraint"). Until the WTO
dispute-settlement body understands
and applies these crucial doctrines, it
will put the entire system at risk.
JOHN RAGOSTA, NAVIN JONEJA,
AND MIKHAIL ZELDOVICH
Internationaltrade attorneys, Washington,
D.C., and Toronto
JUST AND UNJUST WORDS

Nor does this new "world trade court" To the Editor.

provide even a modicum of the proce- In an otherwise thoughtful and well-
dural protection expected of any court informed review of my book, The Chechen
empowered to dispense binding justice. Wars ("Crisis in the Caucasus," March/
Private parties do not have the right to April 2003), Charles King makes two

FOREIGN AFFAIRS.May/June2003 [171]

 Letters to the Editor
charges to which I feel obliged to respond.
First, he claims that my critique of a U.S.
double standard on Russia's human rights
violations is misplaced. Second, he suggests
that I may have committed libel against
several scholars whose views I criticize.
On the first point, King suggests that it
is "sophomoric" of me to ask why Western
governments have held Russia to a lower
standard of compliance with international
humanitarian law than they did Serbia
under Slobodan Milosevic. "The answer,"
according to King, "is that Russia is not
Serbia." King claims that "merely pointing
out the inconsistency here is a lame cri-
tique," for "inconsistency, after all, is the
indispensable prerogative of great powers."
This remark represents just the sort of
attitude I set out to criticize. Consider, by
contrast, Michael Walzer's observation,
from his classicJust and Unjust Wars, that
"the exposure of hypocrisy is certainly the
most ordinary, and it may also be the most
important form of moral critique." My
chapter on Western responses to Russian
war crimes was intended as a critique of
U.S. policy and of Western observers
who use the language of the laws of
war-whose ethical foundation is just war
theory-without interpreting them
accurately. I had already indicated that
"motives of realpolitik influenced the
Clinton administration during the first
war as it sought to bolster a political
regime that it considered friendly to
U.S. interests." King's interpretation is
thus the common wisdom and does not
get us very far.
In his second charge, King claims
that I have made "highly inaccurate, if
not libelous" accusations against Anatol
Lieven, Jack Matlock, Jr., and Robert
Bruce Ware to the effect that they "have
somehow given Moscow a pass on wartime
atrocities." I stand by my criticisms that
these analysts have misinterpreted
fundamental tenets of the laws of war by
conveying the view that the just ends
of the Chechen wars--the preservation of
Russia's territorial integrity, defense
against kidnapping and terrorism--make
otherwise unjust means more acceptable.
As Ware put it, "if we accept the objectives
then it appears that we must tolerate some
of the methods, for it is unlikely that objec-
tives could be achieved with methods that
were substantially different." I reject King's
claim that I have quoted any of the authors
out of context or selectively, let alone that
I could plausibly be charged with libel.
Having met both Lieven and Matlock
and having enjoyed reading their own
sometimes polemical works, I doubt very
much that they would be so thin-skinned
as to pursue such a frivolous charge.
Ware is another story. In any case, readers
can draw their own conclusions.
MATTHEW EVANGELISTA
Professor,Departmentof Government,
Cornell University

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