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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Excerpted from Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008) The conventional explanation for Vladimir Putin’s popularity is straightforward. In the 1990s, under post-Soviet Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, the state did not govern, the economy shrank, and the population suffered. Since 2000, under Putin, order has returned, the economy has flourished, and the average Russian is living better than ever before. As political freedom has decreased, economic growth has increased. Putin may have rolled back democratic gains, the story goes, but these were necessary sacrifices on the altar of stability and growth.

This conventional narrative is wrong, based almost entirely on a spurious correlation between autocracy and growth. The emergence of Russian democracy in the 1990s did indeed coincide with state breakdown and economic decline, but it did not cause either. The reemergence of Russian autocracy under Putin, conversely, has coincided with economic growth but not caused it (high oil prices and recovery from the transition away from communism deserve most of the credit). There is also very little evidence to suggest that Putin’s autocratic turn over the last several years has led to more effective governance than the fractious democracy of the 1990s. In fact, the reverse is much closer to the truth: To the extent that Putin’s centralization of power has had an influence on governance and economic growth at all, the effects have been negative. Whatever the apparent gains of Russia under Putin, the gains would have been greater if democracy had survived.

Bigger is not Better

The myth of Putinism is that Russians are safer, more secure, and generally living better than in the 1990s—and that Putin himself deserves the credit. The Russian state under Putin is certainly bigger than it was before. In some spheres, such as paying pensions and government salaries on time, road building, or educational spending, the state is performing better now than during the 1990s. Yet given the growth in its size and resources, what is striking is how poorly the Russian state still performs. In terms of public safety, health, corruption, and the security of property rights, Russians are actually worse off today than they were a decade ago.

Security, the most basic public good a state can provide for its population, is a central element in the myth of Putinism. In fact, the frequency of terrorist attacks in Russia has increased under Putin. The murder rate has also increased, and public health has not improved. Despite all the money in the Kremlin’s coffers, health spending averaged 6 percent of GDP from 2000 to 2005, compared with 6.4 percent from 1996 to 1999. Russia’s population has been shrinking since 1990, thanks to decreasing fertility and increasing mortality rates, but the decline has worsened since 1998. Noncommunicable diseases have become the leading cause of death (cardiovascular disease accounts for 52 percent of deaths, three times the figure for the United States), and alcoholism now accounts for 18 percent of deaths for men between the ages of 25 and 54.

In short, the data simply do not support the popular notion that by erecting autocracy Putin has built an orderly and highly capable state that is addressing and overcoming Russia’s rather formidable development problems.

A Eurasian Tiger?

The second supposed justification for Putin’s autocratic ways is that they have paved the way for Russia’s spectacular economic growth. As Putin has consolidated his authority, growth has averaged 6.7 percent. The last eight years have also seen budget surpluses, the eradication of foreign debt and the accumulation of massive hardcurrency reserves, and modest inflation so far. The stock market is booming, and foreign direct investment, although still low compared to other emerging markets, is growing rapidly. Since 2000, real disposable income has increased by more than 10 percent a year, consumer spending has skyrocketed, unemployment has fallen from 12 percent in 1999 to 6 percent in 2006, and poverty has declined from 41 percent in 1999 to 14 percent in 2006. Russians are richer today than ever before.

The correlations between democracy and economic decline in the 1990s and autocracy and economic growth in this decade provide a seemingly powerful excuse for shutting down independent television stations, canceling gubernatorial elections, and eliminating pesky human rights groups. These correlations, however, are mostly spurious.

Economic decline after the end of communism was hardly confined to Russia. It followed communism’s decline in every country throughout the region. Given the dreadful economic conditions, every postcommunist government was compelled to pursue some degree of price and trade liberalization, macroeconomic stabilization, and, eventually, privatization. During this transition, the entire region experienced economic recession and then began to recover several years after the adoption of reforms. Russia’s economy followed this same general trajectory—and would have done so under dictatorship or democracy.

Putin’s real stroke of luck came in the form of rising world oil prices. Growing autocracy inside Russia obviously did not cause the rise in oil and gas prices. If anything, the causality runs in the opposite direction: increased energy revenues allowed for the return to autocracy. With so much money from oil windfalls in the Kremlin’s coffers, Putin could crack down on or co-opt independent sources of political power; the Kremlin had fewer reasons to fear the negative economic consequences of seizing a company like Yukos and had ample resources to buy off or repress opponents in the media and civil society.

If there is any causal relationship between authoritarianism and economic growth in Russia, it is negative. Russia’s more autocratic system in the last several years has produced more corruption and less secure property rights. Asset transfers have transformed a thriving private energy sector into one that is effectively state-dominated and less efficient. Renationalization has caused declines in the performance of formerly private companies, destroyed value in Russia’s most profitable companies, and slowed investment, both foreign and domestic.

Perhaps the most telling evidence that Putin’s autocracy has hurt rather than helped Russia’s economy is provided by regional comparisons. Between 1999 and 2006, Russia ranked ninth out of the 15 post-Soviet countries in terms of average growth. Similarly, investment in Russia, at 18 percent of GDP, although stronger today than ever before, is well below the average for democracies in the region.

One can only wonder how fast Russia would have grown with a more democratic system. The strengthening of institutions of accountability—a real opposition party, genuinely independent media, a court system not beholden to Kremlin control—would have helped tame corruption and secure property rights and would thereby have encouraged more investment and growth. The Russian economy is doing well today, but it is doing well in spite of, not because of, autocracy.

Larry Diamond—Hoover Institution senior fellow, CDDRL democracy program coordinator, and former senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq—has just discussed causes and consequences of corruption and international efforts to control it with a room full of visiting fellows. This is not just a group of learned political scientists, however, and Diamond does not hesitate to follow a sophisticated piece of analysis with a hard-nosed, view-from-the-ground assessment. He has, for instance, just told the fellows what he thinks of a major development institution. (“I think the World Bank needs to be ripped apart and fundamentally restructured.”) He has extended the concept of a “resource curse” to include not just oil but also international assistance. (“In many countries, aid is like oil; it’s used for outside rents.”) He has recommended that institutions learn the “dance of conditionality” and exercise selectivity, choosing countries to invest in based on demonstrated performance. But the 27 fellows around the table know a thing or two about corruption. Most of them face it in their home countries; many of them have made fighting it part of their work. And almost all of their hands go up to tell Diamond that there is something he missed, or something he got right.

This year’s 27 Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development—outstanding civic, political, and economic leaders from developing democracies—were selected from more than 500 applicants to take part in the program, which FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) hosted July 30–August 17, 2007. They traveled to Stanford from 22 countries in transition, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And like their academic curriculum during the three-week program, which examines linkages among democracy, economic development, and the rule of law, their professional experiences and fields of study center on these three areas, assuring that each fellow brings a seasoned perspective to the program’s discussions.

“Should the United States promote democracy? Can the United States promote democracy?” The curriculum for the first week focused on defining the concepts of “democracy,” “development,” and the “rule of law” and identifying institutions that support democratic and market development. Using selected articles and book chapters as starting points for discussion, CDDRL Director Michael A. McFaul and Marc Plattner, National Endowment for Democracy vice-president for research and studies, began the weeklong module with an examination of what democracy is and what definition or definitions might apply to distinguish electoral democracy, liberal democracy, and competitive authoritarianism. Another question discussed was whether there was such a thing as Islamic democracy, Asian democracy, Russian democracy, or American democracy.

Faculty including Diamond, CDDRL associate director for research Kathryn Stoner, Stanford president emeritus and constitutional law scholar Gerhard Casper, Stanford Law School lecturer Erik Jensen, and economists Avner Greif and Seema Jayachandran “team-taught” individual sessions as the week progressed. Fellows and faculty discussed how to define and measure development, the role and rule of law in societies, how legal systems affect democratic development, constitutionalism, electoral systems, parliamentary versus presidential systems, horizontal accountability, and market development. Fellows worked in groups to discuss and present their conclusions about an issue to their colleagues, comparing experiences and sharing insights into how well political parties and parliaments constrained executive power and how civil society organizations contributed to democratic consolidation.

In addition to discussing their personal experiences with democracy promotion, economic development, and legal reform, fellows met with a broad range of practitioners, including USAID deputy director Maria Rendon Labadan, National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit Judge Pamela Rymer, IREX president Mark Pomar, Freedom House chairman and International Center on Nonviolent Conflict founding chair Peter Ackerman, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict president Jack DuVall, The Orange Revolution documentary filmmaker Steve York, and government affairs attorney Patrick Shannon. Guest speakers talked about their fieldwork, offered practical advice, and answered fellows’ questions.

This component grounded the classroom discussions in a practical context. “It was important for our visiting fellows to interact with American practitioners, both to learn about innovative techniques for improving democracy practices but also to hear about frustrations and failures that Americans also face in working to make democracy and democracy promotion work more effectively,” explained McFaul. “We Americans do not have all the answers and have much to learn from interaction with those in the trenches working to improve governance in their countries.”

As the program’s curriculum shifted to democratic and economic transitions for week two, McFaul and Stoner-Weiss balanced the structure of the classroom with guest lecturers, a documentary film premiere, and field trips to Google headquarters and San Francisco media organizations to put into practical context the components discussed theoretically in the classroom. The field trip to San Francisco included a session with KQED Forum executive producer Raul Ramirez, a briefing with the editorial board at the San Francisco Chronicle, and a discussion of links between violence against women and children and poverty, health, and security at the Family Violence Prevention Fund.

“We are building an extraordinary community of democratic activists and officials who have a deeper understanding of the types of institutions that secure freedom, control corruption, and foster sustainable development.” The third week’s curriculum looked at international and domestic efforts to promote democracy, development, and the rule of law. This integrative module drew on the teaching caliber of Stephen D. Krasner (FSI senior fellow), Peter B. Henry (Graduate School of Business), Allen S. Weiner and Helen Stacy (Stanford Law School), and Nicholas Hope (Stanford Center for International Development) as well as Casper, Jensen, McFaul, and Stoner-Weiss. Through case studies and, in particular, comparison of successes and failures in the fellows’ own experiences, faculty and fellows explored and assessed international strategies for promoting rule of law, reconciliation of past human rights abuses, democracy, and good governance. The discussions, occasionally contentious, circled in on a set of central questions: Should the United States promote democracy? Can the United States promote democracy? What are the links between democracy and increasing the rule of law, controlling corruption, rebuilding societies shattered by massive human rights violations, and promoting good governance?

Despite the intellectual rigor of the coursework and discussion, and the exploration of practical applicability with guest speakers and field trips, the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program was designed as much to stimulate connections among field practitioners and to provide a forum in which to exchange ideas. “Through the summer fellows program, we are building an extraordinary community of democratic activists and officials who have a deeper understanding of the types of institutions that secure freedom, control corruption, and foster sustainable development, and who are keeping in touch with us and with one another,” said Diamond. “When I meet our ‘alumni’ fellows in subsequent years, they speak movingly of the bonds they formed and the insights they gained in these three fast-paced weeks.”

To ensure they fulfill their goal of building a small but robust global network of civic activist and policymakers in developing countries, CDDRL launched a Summer Fellows Program Alumni Newsletter. The newsletter is based on an interactive website that will allow the center to strengthen its network of leaders and civic activists and facilitate more groundbreaking policy analysis across academic fields and geographic regions, the results of which will be promptly fed back to its activist alumni in a virtual loop of scholarship and policymaking. “We envision the creation of an international network of emerging political and civic leaders in countries in transition,” said Stoner-Weiss, “who can share experiences and solutions to the very similar problems they and their countries face.”

 

SSFDD ALUMNI FOCUS: VIOLET GONDA
A producer and pre s ent er for SW Radio Africa (London), Violet Gonda was a Stanford Summer Fellow on Democracy and Development in 2006, the same year her station was named the International Station of the Year by the Association of International Broadcasters. "CDDRL brings together a cross-section of people from different backgrounds, different careers," Gonda said. "Politicians, lawyers, activists ... all in the same room. It is an amazing group of people."

Banned from returning to her home country because of her journalism work at the radio station-"we are welcome in Zimbabwe but only in the prisons"-Gonda "literally eat[s], breathe[s], and dream[s] Zimbabwe." The summer fellows program, she said, gave her a broad perspective on what's going on in other countries; "it is so intensive ... you can really compare and contrast democracy on every continent." One thing Gonda found is that "when you look at these leaders, you'd think they all were born of the same mother ... and the ways people respond to these crises are the same."

Gonda had such a positive experience at Stanford that she decided to apply for, and was accepted to, the prestigious John S. Knight Fellowships for journalists for the academic year 2007-08. "It's always been Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe," she said. "Now I finally have time to sit down and read a book, write an article, go to seminars, sharpen my skills." She is not exactly sitting still however. In December she gave a presentation on Zimbabwe's political situation for the Center on African Studies, and will also be discussing Zimbabwe at the Palo Alto Rotary Club and the Bechtel International Center. "Media in America does not have a lot of international news, particularly on Africa," Gonda said. "So it's a good opportunity to talk about Zimbabwe, and I will take advantage of it."

She is also working on developing new content for SW Radio Africa and plans to interview FSI scholars she met through the summer fellows program so "We are building an extraordinary community of democratic activists and officials who have a deeper understanding of the types of institutions that secure freedom, control corruption, and foster sustainable development." that Zimbabweans can understand what is going on in different countries. Close contact with program alumni means that she has friends and colleagues in other parts of that world who can be called on for their perspective on situations. While SW Radio Africa's mission is "to record and to expose" developments in Zimbabwe, Gonda explained, "it's good to compare, to show people we are not alone, that this is happening elsewhere."

Latin America today is split between those who share former President of Peru Alejandro Toledo's positive outlook and those who think that the '21st century socialism' of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez offers the way forward for the region, despite the fact that Chavez's solutions are heavily dependant on the revenues generated by high oil prices. On May 28 Dr Alejandro Toledo discussed the current state of affairs in Latin America with members of the London-based Henry Jackson Society.

The society is dedicated to researching and debating the principles of democratic geopolitics. Dr Toledo debated with members how the Latin America as a region can take real strides in reducing poverty, improving development and strengthening democracy, as well as develop its role as an essential part of the global economy.

The truth is, we remain trapped in an awful quagmire, writes Larry Diamond in the Huffington Post and FSI In The World, a new faculty blog for the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. So what needs to be done?

After the exhausting and dispiriting testimony of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to Congress this week, it is now even more starkly apparent that we are stuck in Iraq with no exit strategy. The plan of the Bush administration, and of these military and diplomatic leaders, is still to "stay the course" and hope things will finally take hold in Iraq: hope that the competing Iraqi parties and factions will finally settle their biggest political differences; hope that the Iraqi Army will finally show the ability to face down threats to security and hold the country together; hope that "strategic patience" will eventually allow us to draw down our forces to a level that will not stretch the U.S. Army to the breaking point. But as a group of mid-level American military officers who served in Iraq observed in a devastating edited volume of this name, "Hope is Not a Plan."

To be fair, the U.S. military surge in Iraq (and its attendant shift in strategy on the ground), has achieved many positive things. Iraqi and American casualties have fallen sharply (by more than two-thirds on some measures) from their peak levels in 2006 and early 2007. The Iraqi army and police have grown by roughly 100,000, in addition to some 80,000 local community militia forces ("concerned local citizens") armed and paid by the U.S. As a result of increased force levels and a dramatic change in strategy toward engaging the Sunni Arab communities (including forces once active in the resistance), Al Qaeda has been driven out of most Sunni Arab communities, particularly in Anbar province, and its fearful grip on that section of the country has been broken. This has been the most important achievement of the surge. In many Iraqi urban neighborhoods, both in Baghdad and in other cities, particularly in the once lawless Anbar province, Iraqis have been able to return to the streets and to something approaching normal commercial and social life.

One of the biggest blunders has been the analytical failure to see that the Shiite Islamist political party's political triumph in Iraq would bring a strategic bonanza to Iran--effective control of at least the southern half of Iraq. These are not small achievements. Unfortunately, in the absence of a larger and more tough-minded strategy, they are also not sustainable ones.

John McCain may have been right for the moment when he declared to the Kansas Veterans of Foreign Wars on April 7, "We are no longer staring into the abyss of defeat." Unfortunately, in the context of continued political stalemate in Baghdad and the absence of a viable political strategy for stabilizing Iraq, the second part of his sentence simply does not follow: "... and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success." Rather, as Petraeus and Crocker unwittingly made clear, what we can look forward to is the indefinite commitment of 130,000 to 140,000 American troops, holding together a country that would otherwise shatter into much wider bloodshed. Hope is not a formula for success.

The truth is, we remain trapped in an awful quagmire. No less staunch a Republican than Senator Richard Lugar observed in the Senate hearings this week, "Simply appealing for more time to make progress is insufficient." Senator McCain lacks the candor or clarity of mind to recognize that absent a new political strategy, we are stuck in a holding pattern, propping up a badly divided and corrupt political class in Baghdad. At least he has had the candor, however, to acknowledge that, under these circumstances, American troops might have to be in Iraq for another 10, 20, or 100 years.

Senators Clinton and Obama, in turn, recognize that the United States cannot maintain large numbers of American troops in Iraq for anything like that long. Not only will Iraqi resistance forces rise up against it again, but these commitments are draining our fiscal and military vitality.

Even if we were to leave Iraq tomorrow, it would take years to rebuild, re-equip, and reset the American armed forces to their pre-war levels of capacity and readiness. In a survey of American military officers by the Center for a New American Security, 88 percent thought the war had stretched the US military dangerously thin. And then there is the question of what kind of Army we will be left with as we have to lower standards further and further to find the "recruits" to sustain this military quagmire. CNN reported on April 7 that one out of every eight new recruits requires a waiver because of past criminal behavior or other prior misconduct. The percentage of high school graduates among recruits has declined to 79%. Retired General Barry McCaffrey said recently that ten percent of Army recruits "should not be in uniform." And when the Vice-Chief of Staff of the Army testifies (as General Richard Cody did last week) that repeated deployments are placing "incredible stress on our soldiers and their families" and that "our readiness is being consumed as fast as we can build it," you know we have a serious problem.

Yet Clinton and Obama don't see the other side of this awful reality: that a swift, unconditional timetable for withdrawal of the kind they propose (on the order of one to two combat brigades per month) would likely see Iraq slip back into all-out civil war -- unless something dramatic changes in the political landscape there.

We urgently need an exit strategy from Iraq, but it cannot simply be to declare we are leaving by some fixed, early date -- and goodbye and good luck. Without the prospect of a substantial American military drawdown on the near horizon, Iraq's political factions will lack the incentive to make the hard choices for a sustainable compromise that might hold the country together. But in the absence of an intense diplomatic effort to broker this compromise, the prospect of imminent American withdrawal will not induce compromise, but rather rigidity and the psychology of preparing for an imminent civil war.

So what needs to be done?

To begin with, we need a more hard-headed analysis of our real interests. For years now, the Bush administration has leaned toward the Shiite Islamist political party, ISCI (the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, formerly the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI). ISCI and its militia, the Badr Organization, which has heavily penetrated the Iraqi army and police, were formed in exile in Iran in the 1980s and grew up under the heavy influence there of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. They subscribe to the hard-core Khomeini of system "velayat al faqih" -- rule by the Islamic jurist. And they have welcomed numerous Iranian agents into Iraq to help them establish that system.

Of the many grand blunders of the Bush administration in Iraq, one of the biggest has been the analytical failure to see that ISCI"s political triumph in Iraq would bring a strategic bonanza to Iran -- effective control of at least the southern half of Iraq. To pave the way for this, ISCI and its leader, the ailing Islamist cleric, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, have long sought to gather all nine provinces in the Shiite southern half of the country into a single super-region, which would enable ISCI to establish political hegemony over the entire Shiite region, control most of the country's oil resources (based mainly in the Basra area of the far south), and dominate the politics of the center.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's recent ill-fated crackdown on the Mahdi Army militia of Muqtada al-Sadr was not just about establishing order in the south. A more important subterranean motive (for which the United States allowed itself to be used) was to remove the chief obstacle to ISCI's bid for hegemony in the south. Sadr and his disparate political and militia forces oppose the creation of a Shiite super-region, and constitute the most significant political rival to ISCI (and its junior partner in Shiite politics, Nuri al-Maliki's Dawa party). ISCI's calculation has been that if Sadr could be neutralized, its path to victory in the coming provincial elections in October could be cleared, and then it could press forward with its aim of gathering all nine southern provinces into one.

We should have no illusions: Sadr is a nasty, deeply illiberal character. His militia forces, or those who swagger around, draped in weapons, seizing territory and imposing Islamic order in his name, often approximate the Taliban in their level of commitment to human rights, women's rights, religious freedom, and the rule of law. But Sadr's political movement is a broad tent that also includes more nationalist Shiite elements who share with one another (and with many Sunni Arab factions with whom they have been in contact) a determined resistance to ISCI's and Iran's bid to control southern Iraq, and through that region, the country as a whole. In other words, the participation of the Sadrist movement in electoral politics at least preserves political fluidity and pluralism. Its elimination, while leaving ISCI and its tightly knit militia network in control of much of the security apparatus and of existing provincial governments in the south, paves the way for Iranian domination.

One of the greatest and most bitter ironies of the Bush administration's posture in Iraq has been its persistent failure to see how it was handing the greatest threat to security in the region -- the Islamic Republic of Iran -- a grand strategic prize. So far, the Iranian regime has largely succeeded in its goals of bogging the U.S. down in a bleeding insurgency, draining its military and its treasure and sapping its will, until the point that Iraq (so they think) will fall into their hands like a ripe apple. No wonder the Iranian ruling elite so often seems to be smiling like a mafia gang on its way to eliminating its rivals. As one Iraqi recently observed to me, "The Iranians are more intellectual, more strategic, and more patient than the U.S. The Bush administration's approach in Iraq has been purely tactical. When the U.S. spends a billion dollars in Iraq, Iran spends $50 million and gets more."

It is not clear that this strategic victory for Iran in Iraq can be prevented at this point. Certainly it will not come from the Kurds, who have long since struck a cynical bargain with ISCI: they can have their Shiite super-region, and in return the Kurds want to absorb into their Kurdistan region the city and province of Kirkuk, whose vast oil resources would make eventual Kurdish independence a much more viable proposition.

It does not take much facility in political arithmetic to figure out who are the big losers in all of this: first of all the Sunni Arabs (about twenty percent of Iraq's population), who have no major oil producing assets in the provinces where they predominate, and who believe the creation of a Shiite super-region would be a formula for their own permanent marginalization and impoverishment. The other big loser would be all those Iraqis (surprisingly, a majority) who continue to believe in the idea of a united Iraq, and who are adamantly opposed to Iranian domination.

For this reason, the bargain between ISCI and the Kurds (codified in the 2005 constitution) cannot be the basis of a stable and democratic Iraq. It leaves out two crucial sections of the population: first, the Sunni Arabs, and second, a majority of Iraq's Shia as well, who fought Iran in a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s and do not want their territory to become a satellite of Iran's Islamic Republic. If the United States were to withdraw from an Iraq configured along these lines, civil war would almost certainly follow. It would pit an ISCI-dominated government in the south and in Baghdad, backed by Iran, against a loose coalition of Sunni Arab and Shiite nationalist resistance, backed by Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni Arab states in the region alarmed by Iran's expanding power (which also includes a determined drive to acquire a nuclear weapons capacity). And in the chaos, there would also be a welter of more local-level fights for dominance.

The only way out of this nightmare scenario is a coherent, well-prepared, vigorous effort to broker a constitutional compromise before it is too late. The parameters of the necessary bargain have been clear for many years. ISCI would need to give up its ambition of a single, nine-province super-region, but could be granted a federal system with the eventual ability to lobby for creation of smaller regions (of up to three provinces each, as the interim Iraqi constitution had allowed for). The Kurds would get to keep their own region as part of a federal system, but the development of new oil fields would remain a prerogative mainly of the central government, not, as the Kurds and ISCI wish, regional governments. The Sunnis would have to reconcile themselves to being a minority political force in Iraq, but their provinces would be assured a fair and automatic distribution of the oil revenue, more or less in proportion to each province's share of the population.

There are a number of other issues to be worked out as well (including the reintegration of former Baathists below the top level into government, and the pruning of ISCI loyalists from the commanding ranks of the security forces, especially the police). But the pivotal elements of a deal involve the structure of the federal system and the control of oil production and distribution of its revenue.

The constitutional deal that is needed cannot be brokered by the United States alone. A "diplomatic surge" is urgently needed, in which the U.S. would partner with the UN and the European Union. For an administration that has been loathe to surrender control in Iraq, this is a difficult step, but without it, there will be no political breakthrough, and thus no exit from the quagmire.

In the context of such a grand bargain, the United States could draw down somewhat more gradually than Clinton and Obama now envision, perhaps getting down over the course of about three years to a small residual security force to protect American civilian operations in Iraq. If the provincial elections scheduled for this October can come off without massive intimidation and bloodshed, that will help, as it will likely deliver setbacks tin the south to ISCI and Dawa (who have governed poorly) and generate a more pluralistic political terrain, in which power in the Shiite south is shared by a more diverse set of actors.

It is far from clear that Iran, so close to winning its prize, would not sabotage such an outcome. Direct and intensive engagement with the Iranian regime would also be needed. This could offer the Iranians other incentives as part of a larger deal that would include verifiable suspension of their nuclear program. It could also play on the prospect of what they could themselves could face in an Iraq without the United States: a divided Shiite community, part of which is rising up in resistance to their dominance, allied with a united Sunni community with the broad backing of other Arab states in the region. And all of this before they had acquired the nuclear weapon they think will give a huge boost to their regional power.

A certain amount of brinksmanship would be needed to demonstrate to Iran that the alternative to compromise in Iraq is that they could wind up trading places with us, being bled and drained in an insurgent war while their enemies score opportunistic gains. In that case, the strategic prize could become an albatross around the neck of a regime that faces huge economic and political problems within Iran itself.

The above offers no sure path out of Iraq. Should diplomacy fail, we would be left with little choice but to prepare to withdraw, perhaps rapidly and in extremis, letting the regional actors and the Iraqis themselves pick up the pieces. It would be an ugly and costly scenario. But the credible threat of it might be the one thing that tips Iraq's polarized parties toward accommodation. And bad as it would be for a time, it could hardly be worse than having the United States bogged down in Iraq, desperately holding our military fingers in the dike for the decades that Senator McCain seems prepared to envision, while both our military capacity and our soft power drain away.

What does it cost to produce a barrel of oil? CDDRL research associate and PESD affiliate Christine Jojarth provides a systematic answer to this question, taking into account geography, the "difficulty" of the oil field, and other factors. The results help quantify how much extra revenue is flowing to oil producers worldwide.

Projects to enhance health security and child survival in Africa with improvements in water and sanitation, examine why poor business-management practices persist in India, study the relationship of legal courts to politics and human rights, and understand why the Middle East has lagged in economic progress were recent recipients of grants totaling just under $1 million from Stanford's Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies.

"These projects have great potential to advance academic knowledge, social capital and human development around the world, and to create a healthier, more promising future for hundreds of millions of people," President John Hennessy said. "When we launched The Stanford Challenge, we committed to marshal university resources to address the great challenges of the 21st century in human health, the environment and international affairs, and it is gratifying to see the response from our remarkable faculty."

The 2008 projects and their principal investigators follow:

Enhancing Health Security Through Infrastructure and Behavioral Intervention: Water, Sanitation and Child Survival in Africa. Alexandria Boehm and Jenna Davis, Civil and Environmental Engineering; Abby King, Health Research and Policy and Medicine; Gary Schoolnik, Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology. The project seeks to improve the health and well-being of the 1.2 billion people in low-income countries who lack access to clean water and the 2.6 billion who lack access to sanitation services, with a focus on mortality reduction in children. It will be carried out in sub-Saharan Africa, where the toll of water- and sanitation-related illness on health is severe, and will investigate the extent to which information and education about water and sanitation at the household level motivates behavior changes that result in reduced morbidity. Results will inform international efforts to design and implement effective water supply and sanitation interventions for more than 400 million Africans currently lacking access.

Why Are Indian Firms Poorly Managed? A Survey and Randomized Field Intervention. Nicholas Bloom and Aprajit Mahajan, Economics; Thomas C. Heller and Erik Jensen, Law School; John Roberts, Graduate School of Business. The biggest single reduction in poverty in the history of mankind was achieved by the industrialization of China since 1978, which lifted almost 500 million people out of poverty. India has not experienced this level of poverty reduction because its manufacturing firms have not achieved the productivity gains seen in China. Recent evidence suggests one key factor is the poor management practices adopted by Indian firms. This project examines why poor management practices persist in India and are much more common there. It focuses in particular on evaluating the relative importance of informational, legal and development barriers. The project will undertake a field survey of Indian firms to evaluate their knowledge of modern management techniques and a field intervention aimed at upgrading management practices in a randomized sample of Indian firms, comparing their progress to a control group of untouched firms.

Courts, Politics and Human Rights. Joshua Cohen, Philosophy, Political Science, and Law School; Terry L. Karl, Political Science; Jenny S. Martinez, Law School; Helen Stacy, Law School. This project examines the role of courts as the centerpiece of strategies for promoting human rights by asking if courts should be a preferred human rights venue or if there are other more accessible and effective ways to secure human rights. It addresses three broad themes: the interplay between national, regional and international courts in the protection of human rights; the role of governments and nongovernmental organizations in influencing legal proceedings; and how courts construct historical truth and shape public opinion, memory, attitudes and discourse about human-rights abuses. The multidisciplinary project will span countries, regions, issue areas and historical timeframes to ask what reasonably can be expected from international, regional and domestic courts in safeguarding human rights.

The Middle East and the World Economy. Matthew Harding, Economics; Lisa Blaydes, Political Science. This project examines why the Middle East has lagged in economic progress compared to much of the developing world and the implications of this underdevelopment for two overarching trends in Middle Eastern politics today: authoritarian government and Islamic fundamentalism. The researchers also will examine how political instability originating in the Middle East has affected world oil prices and world markets by constructing economic models of the world economy. The project seeks broadly to understand the macro- and microeconomic determinants of Islamic fundamentalism and authoritarian rule, and the extent to which these two outcomes have affected the stability and prosperity of the world economy. It measures global factors resulting from increased globalization and quantifies their impact on the development of economies in the Middle East.

The $3 million Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies was first established in 2005 by the Office of the President and the Stanford International Initiative to support new cross-campus, interdisciplinary research and teaching among Stanford's seven schools on three overarching global challenges: pursuing peace and security, reforming and improving governance at all levels of society, and advancing human well-being.

The first $1 million in interdisciplinary grants was awarded in February 2006; the second round of grants was awarded in February 2007.

"In all three rounds of funding, it has been heartening to see the imaginative and innovative ways that Stanford faculty are combining intellectual forces across disciplines to tackle some of the most pressing and persistent problems of our day," said Coit D. Blacker, chair of the International Initiative Executive Committee and director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. "It is especially gratifying to see the younger faculty competing for these grants, eager to generate new knowledge and new solutions and help train a new generation of leaders."

Priority in funding has been given to teams of faculty who do not typically work together, who represent multiple disciplines and who address issues falling broadly within the three central research areas of the Stanford International Initiative. Projects are to be based on collaborative research and teaching involving faculty from two or more disciplines and, where possible, from two or more of the university's seven schools.