“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.

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.

The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University is pleased to announce its new class of Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development. This year's fellows - 27 outstanding civic, political, and economic leaders from 22 countries in transition - have been selected from more than 500 applications.

Fellows's Biographies

David Abesadze, Republic of Georgia, is the head of policy analysis division in the Political Department of the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and is also an assistant professor of social and political studies at Tbilisi State University, where he teaches a graduate course on the politics of development. Through the SSFDD program, he hopes to broaden his theoretical knowledge of development by examining influential works in the field, and to explore how case-specific methodologies and policies have been used to solve development problems.

Huda Ahmed, Iraq, is the 2006-07 Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow of the International Women Media Foundation at M.I.T., an intern at the US National Public Radio, and also a reporter for Knight Ridder in Baghdad. Prior to joining Knight Ridder, she worked as a reporter for The Washington Post in Baghdad, and translated for both The Daily Baghdad Observer and Al Jumhurriya Daily under the former regime. Ahmed's s work has ranged from portraying the heart-rending struggles of women and children in war and politics, to documenting human rights abuses by police and occupying forces. At SSFDD, she is interested in learning more about international conflicts, international law, human rights reporting, media and cross cultural research.

Jafar Alshayeb, Saudi Arabia, is the elected Chairman for the Qatif Municipal Council and a regular political commentator for many local and international media channels. He sponsored the "Tuesday Cultural Forum," a weekly gathering of community leaders and activists that promoted dialogue on social and political issues. Alshayeb, a founding member of human rights and NGOs, has also led charity foundations and youth programs dedicated to social development, and participated in the National Dialogue Meetings in Saudi Arabia. Through SSFDD, he would like to explore new ideas and exchange experiences in the fields of social development and democratic transformation.

Dr. Abduljalil Al Singace, Bahrain, is the media director of the Bahrain Academics Society and an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Bahrain. Abduljalil co-founded the Movement of Liberties and Democracy (HAQ), where he is responsible for media communications, human rights reports, and the establishment of relationships with international organizations. At SSFDD, Abduljalil is interested in learning more about the use of media in democratic development.

Dr. Donya Aziz, Pakistan, is a member of Pakistan's National Assembly and the joint secretary of the country's majority party, the Pakistan Muslim League. She currently serves as the Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Population Welfare, and sits on various National Assembly committees including defense, health and foreign affairs. During her time at SSFDD, Donya hopes to learn more about how she can contribute to a future where Pakistani women are able to fully exercise their democratic, political, and professional rights.

Dr. Mohammad Azizi, Afghanistan, is the economic adviser to the Embassy of Afghanistan in Tokyo and the chairman of Center for Policy Priorities (CFPP) in Afghanistan. As a human rights activist and advocate for the empowerment of people in public decision-making, he frequently delivers lectures on international economics, public policy, and macroeconomics and received the Most Active Young Afghan award in 2005, by the New York- based organization Afghan Communicator. Mohammed is particularly interested in democracy promotion in Afghanistan.

Kingsley N. T. Bangwell, Nigeria, is the founder and executive director of the Youngstars Foundation, an organization mobilizing youth participation in democracy and development in Nigeria and Ghana, where his most recent undertaking was a three-part youth training project on good governance and civic participation in several provinces across Nigeria. In the past, he has served as the Nigerian representative in the World Youth Alliance and as a consultant for the British Council on a youth publication project, which he co-authored. He intends to discover the best ways to foster active youth involvement in good governance and political participation in fledgling democracies.

Alina Belskaya, Belarus, was forced to flee her country under threat of imprisonment for her involvement in demonstrations against the authoritarian regime of A. Lukashenka. In Belgium, where she currently lives, she works for the German Marshall Fund on issues related to the Euro-Atlantic integration of Belarus and the wider Black Sea region. A member of the Crisis Management Initiative, she also sits on the board of the Youth Atlantic Treaty Association. Alina would like to learn more about the role of NATO in democratization and the role of grass roots movements in improving socioeconomic conditions of communities.

Jay P. Chaudhary, Nepal, popularly known as Jay Nishaant, is the television producer and host of the TV program Tatastha Tarka (the "Independent Argument"). This weekly political and current affairs talk show on Nepal's largest private sector channel, Kantipur Television Network, is one of the most widely viewed prime time talk shows in the country. In the past, Jay has implemented several democracy promotion programs in Nepal as Manager of Media and Democracy Projects of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. Jay is interested in learning more about how to sustain a grass roots movement to institutionalize democracy in Nepal.

Garrett J. Cummeh III, Liberia, is the director of the Center for Transparency and Accountability in Liberia (CENTAL), a research-based local advocacy NGO, dedicated to promoting the tenets of transparency and accountability. Since 2004, he has worked on transparency issues by forming the Campaign Monitoring Coalition (CMC), which carried out the first ever Campaign Finance Monitoring in Africa, during the 2005 transitional elections in Liberia. He is presently the Executive Secretary of the National Coalition of Civil Society Organizations in Liberia. During the SSFDD program, Garrett would like to learn more about post conflict governance and rebuilding, as well as strategies to strengthen Liberia's compliance with and implementation of measures against corruption.

Maria Eismont, Russia, is the director of the independent print media program of the New Eurasia Foundation. The program aims to increase the quantity and quality of independent newspapers in Russia's regions. In an effort to improve both business and editorial practices of the regional press, this program provides training and consulting to the staff of independent regional newspapers. Previously, Maria worked as a journalist in several Russian leading publications and covered the regions of Chechnya, Kosovo, and Central Africa for the Reuters news agency. Maria is interested in learning and sharing information on developing a free press.

Rabih El Chaer, Lebanon, is the advisor to the minister of public works and transportation and counsels on public policy, crisis management, legislative proposals, image building and political strategy. As a human rights activist, Mr. Chaer founded the Maharate Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting freedom of expression and media accountability in the Arab region. He is a regular contributor to An-Nahar, Lebanon's leading Arabic language daily newspaper. Rabih has been a regular guest on television news programs since 1993 and is known for his outspoken advocacy of democracy, freedom and political reforms. At Stanford, he wants to gain more substantial knowledge of US electoral campaigns, political party organization, and lobbying.

Safinaz El Tarouty, Egypt, is an assistant lecturer in the Political Science Department of the British University in Egypt, and a researcher at Partners in Development (PID), a think tank where she organizes forums on various aspects of constitutional reform in Egypt. Her Master's thesis was the first academic study on the issue of reform within the National Democratic Party in Egypt and her current Ph.D. dissertation at Cairo University examines the social changes and transformation in Egypt's ministerial elite. Safinaz is particularly interested in issues dealing with political parties, elections, women electoral participation and judicial supervision of elections.

Iulian Fruntasu, Moldova, is the Director of European Initiatives Program of the Soros Foundation-Moldova, which provides assistance with the implementation of the Moldova Action Plan in grant-giving to operational projects. He was also a former diplomat involved in arms-control issues and a member of missions of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. As a noted author of several books and articles, he is known for his insightful political commentary on democratic development and international relations. Iulian is interested in exploring issues dealing with development and democracy assistance and internet media regulations.

Giao N. Hoang, Vietnam, is the vice director of the Center for Legal Research & Services, senior lecturer at Vietnam National University Law School, and chairman of the Center for Research and Consulting on Policy, Law, and Development. He teaches public international law and human rights law and researches issues related to the rule of law and reform in Vietnam. He manages about thirty projects to promote the rule of law, good governance, and democracy at the grassroots level in over twenty provinces in Vietnam. He comes to SSFDD hoping to learn more about the relationship of political parties to governments in democratic countries and how to prevent parties from abusing the government's power.

Franck Kamunga Cibangu, DRC, is a human rights and humanitarian law activist currently based in Kenya. He is the director of the Droits Humains Sans Frontières NGO, and coordinator of the Africa Democracy Forum, a pan-African network of 300 NGOs and activists working together on democracy, governance, and human rights. He also does research for the United States Peace Institute and the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa, and is a member of the Steering Committee of the African Migration Alliance, which focuses on migration issues in Africa. In the past, he has served as legal adviser at the Independent Electoral Commission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His areas of interest for SSFDD include judicial training in electoral systems, conflict resolution, and human rights advocacy.

Maina Kiai, Kenya, is the first chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, an independent state institution established by the Parliament to lead in the protection and promotion of human rights in the country. From 2001 to 2003, Mr. Kiai was the Africa Director for the International Human Rights Law Group in Washington, DC. From 1999-2001 he was the Africa director of Amnesty International in London, UK, which he joined from the Kenyan Human Rights Commission, and NGO where he was executive director. Mr. Kiai was described by the New York Times as Kenya's leading human rights activist in 1997. He hopes the summer program will assist him in developing strategies for effective redress and promotion of human rights, and advancing the development of independent media.

Hasmik Minasyan, Armenia, is the Policy Officer of the 'Right to Be Heard' Program of Oxfam GB, where she works on issues related to poverty reduction. As part of this position, she coordinates the Civil Society Partnership Network, a network of twenty-six NGOs working on poor development in Armenia, and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) Armenia National Coalition. In 2006, she organized the MDG Celebrity Concert, which mobilized more than ten thousand people. Her primary interests at SSFDD are the development of civil society and democratic political institutions in transitional countries.

Yang Peng, China, is the general secretary of the China Center for Public Policy in Beijing and the director of the China Beijing Enterprise Culture Institute. A highly accomplished scholar, he also helped to promote civil rights protection activities and has become one of China's most important democratic intellectuals. He was also the chief designer of the Alxa Ecological Protection Association, now the largest and most influential environmental NGO in China. He is interested in peaceful democratic transition problems and design of democratic institutions.

Aasiya Riaz, Pakistan, is joint director of Pakistan Institute for Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), an independent research and training institution strengthening democratic governance in Pakistan. She was also a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy where she worked on subjects such as US think tanks and civil-military relations. Aasiya has worked with the mainstream press and electronic media in Pakistan as well, as serving as the editor of the international monthly magazine Pakistan Calling. During the SSFDD program, she would like to focus on strengthening democracies in transition and civil-military relations.

Kate Sam-Ngbor, Nigeria, is the public policy advisor of the Rivers State government. She was instrumental in the design of the popular "Democracy and Good Governance" pilot program by USAID, which played an influential role in the eventual return of democracy to Nigeria. A journalist by trade, she was the chairperson of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists and later the chairperson of the Nigeria Union of Journalists. She has also founded and/or helped to organize a number of NGOs on topics from sustainable development to women's rights. She comes to SSFDD to learn about judicial integrity, respect for the rule of law, freedom of the press, among other interests.

Zvisinei Sandi, Zimbabwe, is a lecturer at Masvingo State University and founder and secretary general of the Senior Society for Gender Justice. She is a journalist and an academic who has worked for the state-controlled Zimbabwe Newspapers Group and later for the independent Financial Gazette. She hopes to use her time with SSFDD to become a more effective human rights advocate and observe the approaches different countries take to the teaching of democracy, good governance, and the rule of law.

Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine, is the director of the NGO Kyiv Media Law Institute and a lecturer at the School of Journalism at the Kyiv National University. As a member of several governmental advisory bodies and the secretary of the Public Council on Freedom of Speech and Information, Mr. Shevchenko has drafted a number of influential pieces of legislation that have became laws in Ukraine. He looks forward to the great opportunity of establishing professional relations with his counterparts from other countries as well as experts on democracy, economic development and the rule of law in transitioning economies.

Majid Tavallaei, Iran, is the managing director of Nameh Research and Information Institute, which aims to provide novel approaches to achieving non-violent transitions for a democratic Iran. As the editor-in-chief of the monthly journal, Naameh, which the Islamic Republic of Iran has banned, he has contributed over 40 articles on pertinent social-political issues in Iran. He is also one of the founding members of the Iranian People's Liberation Party (IPLP), a social democracy platform that promotes new civic movements. He hopes his time at SSFDD will help develop further his understanding of effective political activism.

Vera Tkachenko, Kazakhstan, is a lawyer and currently a candidate for an MSc in Criminal Justice Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. For the last 6 years, as one of the regional directors of the international NGO Penal Reform International, she has been working on criminal justice reform issues in Central Asia. Her main interests pertain to the effective development of criminal justice systems with sustainable institutions, traditions and legal frameworks, and mainstreaming and actualizing the legal reform as part of a broader democratization process.

Roya Toloui, Iran, is a clinical pathologist, feminist, journalist, and human rights activist from Kurdistan, Iran. Roya has promoted social activism through the Kurdish women's magazine, Rasan, as editor-in-chief and the Kurdish Women Supporting Peace and Human Rights in Kurdistan, as a founding member. She was arrested on August 2, 2005 for her outspoken criticism of the authorities and upon her release on bail she fled to Iran and sought refuge in the United States. In November 2006, she won the Freedom of Expression Award from international PEN and OXFOM/NOVIB. During her time at SSFDD, Roya hopes to join other activists to form solidarity and support in the struggle for democracy.

Dr. Hossam Youssef, Egypt, is a Commissioner Judge at the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court. He is also a Lecturer at the Cairo University School of Law, where he teaches Constitutional Law and Contracts under both the American and Egyptian legal systems. Additionally, he is a member of the board of directors at The Egyptian Mineral Resources Authority, and is a Legal Advisor to the Egyptian Minister of Petroleum, advising the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum on oil and gas concessions. At SSFDD, Hossam hopes to learn more about how the mechanisms of the American legal system are used to protect human rights and preserve the rule of law.

Every day, the United States burns through 20.7 million barrels of oil. China, the world's second largest consumer, uses about 6.9 million barrels a day. Although the United States is the third leading oil producer in the world (behind Saudi Arabia and Russia), its appetite is so enormous that it overwhelms the country's production capacity. Its known reserves, about 21 billion barrels, would supply only enough to keep the country running at full speed for about three years.

So when STANFORD gathered five faculty members to talk about the implications of U.S. dependency on foreign oil, we expected grave declarations of alarm. But their concern did not square with the growing chorus of citizens and elected officials about why reducing this dependency is so important.

On the next five pages, faculty from political science, economics, law and engineering explain why the debate about energy security is missing the point, and what they think needs to be done.

STANFORD: How would you frame the issue of dependency on foreign oil? What should we be concerned about?

David Victor: The problem is not dependence per se. In fact, dependence on a world market produces enormous benefits, such as lower prices. Nor is the problem that energy's essential role in the economy means that dependence must be avoided. The real problem is that energy - oil, especially - doesn't operate according to normal market principles. Something like 75 percent of the reserves of oil and gas are controlled by companies that are either wholly owned or in effect controlled by governments, and there's enormous variation in how those companies perform. Some of them are just a disaster, like [Mexico's state-owned oil company] Pemex, and others can work at world standards, like Saudi Aramco or Brazils Petrobrás. Some of these governments, such as Venezuela, use oil revenues for political purposes that undermine U.S. influence. High prices do not automatically generate new supply or conservation, partly because suppliers can drop prices to undercut commercial investment in alternatives. Second, we have what has become known as "the resource curse." There'sa lot of evidence that the presence of huge windfalls in poorly governed places makes governance even worse. Revenue that accrues to oil-exporting governments is particularly prone to being misspent, often in ways that work against U.S. interests.

Scott Sagan: I agree that calling the problem "energy dependence" and therefore seeking energy independence is the wrong way to think about this problem. Talking about energy independence feeds the xenophobic impulse that occurs all too easily in American politics. And it suggests to other countries that they should seek independence rather than a more cooperative approach. I see very negative consequences politically in the signal that attitude sends. Think about the current nuclear crisis with Iran. Iran claims that it needs independent uranium enrichment capabilities to have "energy sovereignty." Such uranium enrichment production could be used, however, for civilian nuclear power or for making a bomb, creating enormous nuclear weapons proliferation problems. We're feeding into that kind of thinking when we use the same language about independence when referring to oil. And it produces uncooperative effects elsewhere. The Chinese, for example, cut a deal with Sudan as a means of creating energy security for themselves. It inhibits efforts of the international community to encourage that government to behave responsibly.

John Weyant: There is a distinction between dependence, meaning how much of the oil the United States consumes is imported, and vulnerability, meaning how at risk our economy and our social order are to oil-supply disruptions. That vulnerability is defined by how much of the total supply of oil in the world market comes from unreliable sources. So you have to look at oil supply on a global scale, not just in the United States. It's the instability of the supply that affects price.

Victor: I like John's term "vulnerability," and it leads us to various kinds of actions to reduce our vulnerability to the market rather than trying to make us completely independent. One of them has been around since the '70s - building and coordinating strategic stockpiles so that they are supplied into a single world market. Traditionally that could be done by the major Western countries because they were the major oil consumers. One of the big challenges for policy makers today is how to get India and China to think about the operation of this world market in the same market-based way that we think about it, and to get them to build up those stockpiles and coordinate them with our own. There's some evidence that that kind of coordination can reduce our vulnerability.

Weyant: There's this fallacy among the public that if we don't import so much oil, other oil-exporting countries are going to be hurt and we will be unaffected if oil supplies are cut off. But these countries are sometimes major trading partners of allies, and asking those allies to take a hit on our behalf just leads to other economic problems. If the economies in China and Europe and Japan, who are all major trading partners, go down, it affects how much they can buy from us. It's another reason we can't be xenophobic and just look inward on an issue like this. You get these international trade flows outside the energy sector that could be pretty devastating.

STANFORD: Last summer we saw crude oil prices hit $70 a barrel and gas prices went well above $3 per gallon nationwide. That momentarily changed consumer behavior, and reduced demand. Are high prices a good thing?

Michael May: The key factor in normalizing market conditions is assuring the market that high prices are here to stay. Major oil companies like Exxon and bp have been putting their money to other uses than exploration. They have been buying back shares and increasing returns to stockholders because that's the way Wall Street drives them. That might change if prices stayed high. It probably won't be $70 a barrel, but even $50 a barrel as a base price is almost twice the historic average. The extent to which investors become convinced that that's going to be the future average will have some bearing as to how much money they spend on exploration. Toyota and General Motors and others can make hybrids or much more efficient cars, but it takes billons of dollars of investment, and if the price of gasoline goes down, they have less incentive. When gas is cheap, driving an SUV is not such a big deal.

Victor: The reason some of these companies are buying back the shares is not just because of Wall Street but because they don't have a lot of truly attractive opportunities for investing in new production. Most of the oil reserves are either legally off limits for the Western oil companies or international oil companies generally, or they're de facto off limits because they're in places where it's so hard to do business. Although the public is seized by the high price of energy, the major energy companies are seized by concerns that prices are going to decline sharply. If there is a recession, which would dampen demand for energy, or the capacity to produce oil around the world improves, then prices will decline. It has happened in the past. That fear really retards a lot of investment because these investments have a very long capital lifetime, and you need to protect them against low prices over an incredibly long time horizon.

Michael McFaul: It's very important to understand that oil companies owned and operated by governments are not necessarily profit-maximization entities. Take Gazprom, the gas company of Russia. It is closely aligned with state interests, so profit isn't its only motivation. It will use its money for strategic purposes as defined by Vladimir Putin, not as defined by the shareholders of Gazprom. For instance, early in 2006, Gazprom cut off gas supplies to Ukraine, mostly for geopolitical reasons. Why is Hezbollah so well armed? Because of Iran, which uses oil revenue for strategic purposes; it is not used for investing in a company or investing in the market per se. This is part of the problem of the "resource curse" David referred to. If oil is discovered in a country before democratic institutions are in place, the probability of that country becoming democratic is very low. In countries where the state does not rely on the taxation of its citizens for its revenues, it doesn't have to listen to what its citizens want to do with that money. So instead of building roads or schools or doing things that taxpayers would demand of them, they use their money in ways that threaten the security of other countries, and, ultimately, their own.

Victor: It's important that we not overstate the extent to which users of energy are going to respond automatically to high prices, and the personal vehicle is a great example. Fuel accounts for about 20 percent of the total cost of operating a vehicle. Traditionally it's only been 10 or 15 percent, but we are much wealthier today than we were three decades ago when we had the [first OPEC oil embargo]. I think that helps explain a lot of the sluggishness in response in the marketplace. People are buying smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, but that trend will only go so far because there are other factors that determine what kinds of vehicles people purchase. In the United States and most advanced industrialized countries, most oil is used for transportation, where oil products have no rival. It is hard to switch. In most of the rest of the world, oil gets used for a variety of other purposes, including generating electricity. Those markets are probably going to be more responsive to the high price of oil because they're going to have opportunities to switch to other fuels. The United States used a lot of oil to generate electricity in the early 1970s and when that first oil shock came along, essentially all of that disappeared from our market. That's part of the reason why the U.S. energy system responded fairly quickly to the first oil shock, and why changes in behavior are harder to discern in the current crisis. There is no easy substitute for gasoline.

May: If we generally agree that high oil prices, on the whole, are a good thing because they cause investment in more production and more efficient uses of oil, then it would follow that the rapid growth in consumption in China is also a good thing and we should welcome it, right?

Victor: I disagree with that. In effect what we have right now is a "tax" that's been applied to the oil market due to the various dysfunctions of the way it operates and to unexpectedly high demand in the United States and China. The revenue from that tax is accruing to the producers, and if we think about how to get out of the mess here, then what we want to do is in effect apply a tax to the oil products. If we raise the price of these products to reflect the real total cost of our vulnerability to the world oil market, those companies have an incentive to go off and look for alternatives.

May: So you're saying the same thing: that high oil prices, whether from this tax or otherwise, are a good thing.

Weyant: It depends significantly on who is collecting the tax.

McFaul: Yes, the fundamental question is how the money is being spent. If I had high confidence that the money was going to reinvestment, then I could agree that high prices are good, but that's not what is happening. The Soviet Union's most dangerous adventures in the Third World correlated with the high oil prices in the 1970s. You can see the direct effect. And when the prices came down, the Soviet Union collapsed. The same is true with Iran today. They are being very aggressive in the region - in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Afghanistan - trying to become the Middle East hegemon. This would not be happening if they didn't have all these clients - Hezbollah, Hamas, their friends in Iraq - that they can support with millions of dollars. Going back a few decades, where did Osama bin Laden come from? Where did support for the Taliban come from? It came from this tax that David is talking about. If we're talking about security issues and oil, this is much more serious than supply disruption to the United States.

Victor: I agree with Mike 100 percent. If you look at where the revenues are going from Iran, Venezuela and so on, there's a long list of folks who are doing things that are contrary to our interests with the money that ultimately is coming out of the pockets of American consumers. Dealing with that is job one.

STANFORD: So how would you counsel American policy makers? What needs to happen to reduce our vulnerability over the long term?

Sagan: The vulnerabilities we have today should provide an incentive to make some critical investments and to change our thinking, but we're not really doing that. I was quite surprised at how much I agreed with one aspect of the second Bush inaugural address. [He said] let's start talking about our addiction to oil and all the problems associated with that, but I've been completely disappointed with the lack of follow-through. And part of the problem is this notion of energy independence. We need diversity in our research and development spending across the board, on a variety of technologies. We're going to produce energy security to a large degree by finding cooperative solutions that are efficient and secure for many countries working together. We need to see our national security as being very dependent on others and that's not entirely a bad thing.

Victor: There is one cluster of technology that's going to be exceptionally important - electric vehicles. The all-electric vehicle has been kind of a disaster. We tried to do that in California without much success at all. The new set of pluggable hybrid vehicles, which you plug in at night and charge up, are more promising. If such technologies make it feasible to reduce some of the transportation dependence on oil, then markets will be forced to become more "normal" and more responsive. Electric cars and other technologies can help to keep prices lower and ultimately help make the transition completely away from oil over a period of 30 or 50 years.

Weyant: We only think about energy as a nation when prices are high, and so there's a short attention span on the issue. That makes it really hard to sustain a policy that would be rational over the long term. If we're going to have a big R&D program, for example, you need to invest in technologies and sustain the investment over a long time horizon. If you couple this short attention span with our aversion to taxes, at least historically, you end up with policies that are almost designed from the outset to fail. The political tide is turning a little bit so a well-designed tax might be possible. Maybe you don't raise taxes now but you assure that the price of a [hybrid] car won't go below a certain level and that'll help create a little more confidence with the marketplace. If you just focus on research and development without getting the economic incentives right, you come up with all kinds of great gizmos that no one will actually make or use.

McFaul: We've been talking mostly about how to manipulate the market to change people's behavior and I think that's quite right. I can't tell you how many people I saw come out of a Palo Alto theater after seeing Al Gore's movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and jump into their gas-guzzling machines. I would like to tax those machines; use economic tools to change people's behavior in a way the movie didn't. This has to become a public policy issue. It's not right now. Think about the way the market for cigarettes worked in this country 50 years ago, and think of how it is structured now. We have not just taxes but regulation - they can't be advertised on television - and a national campaign trying to educate people about the health concerns. We need a similar effort on this issue.

Sagan: When you watch the Super Bowl you don't see advertisements for cigarettes, but you do for Hummers. There's no attempt at all to educate people about the relationship between these longer-term problems and what you do individually. And that takes decades.

Victor: One of the acid tests for whether the nation is pursuing a coherent energy policy is our policy on ethanol. Ethanol is important because it is a partial substitute for oil-based gasoline. In this country, almost all of the ethanol that is delivered to the marketplace is made from corn, which is economically inefficient. But we do that because the corn grows in the heartland, such as Iowa - an important state electorally. There have been lots of proposals to, for example, erase the tariff on imported ethanol. Brazil produces ethanol from sugar cane and it's much cheaper and more efficient. But the farm lobby always intervenes and these proposals languish, with the result that the U.S. ethanol industry never faces the rigors of world competition. So long as energy is bouncing around lower on the list of priorities, it will be difficult to have a coherent policy.

Weyant: It would be far better if people were willing to bite the bullet and say this is a problem and it's not going to be painless to solve it, but if we play our cards right it's not going to reduce our standard of living much. Convincing the public is really one thing that might be worth some more effort. It's a cacophony to them.

STANFORD: What is your greatest hope and your worst fear with regard to demand for oil?

Victor: My greatest hope is that inside the Chinese government and inside the Indian government people know that this independence view of the world energy market is completely wrongheaded. Maybe that will create an opportunity for the United States and India and China along with other major oil consumers to collectively manage this issue, and the consequences of doing that will spill over onto other areas of cooperation. My greatest fear, in addition to the things we've already discussed, is that the United States will use the oil issue to beat up on the Chinese and the Indians, and that our relationship with those countries, which is already fragile, will make it harder to work together on other things that also matter.

May: My greatest hope is that the United States, China, India and other major countries work together towards a more hopeful future, including improving the global environment, providing a counterbalance to mischief in the Middle East, and promoting a transition to modernization and away from extremism. My greatest fear is that the little termites who are nibbling at what is currently a somewhat sensible Chinese policy will have their way, either because the country's economy slows down - which it will inevitably - or for some other reason, and we'll wind up fighting each other or destroying each other's capabilities.

McFaul: My greatest sense of optimism comes from this discussion, and about what my colleagues in this discussion said about China, because from the surface it looks like there's a much more pernicious policy of China going its own way. I've learned today that in fact there are very reasonable voices within the Chinese government, and I hope that there will be in my own government. My greatest fear is that there will continue to be politicians who control oil revenues who do things that do not serve international security, and I'm speaking not only of Iran. My nightmarish scenario is that 10 years from now Iran, Iraq and, God forbid, Saudi Arabia are controlled by hostile governments that want to use the revenues that we pay them for their oil to harm us. I give that a low probability, but in terms of things that worry me about our security, it's the instability of those oil-exporting regimes.

Sagan: The hope is that this current crisis will provide the right set of incentives to encourage investment in a diverse set of energy R&D programs across the board, and will encourage cooperation between countries in energy research and development. That would help educate and change the culture of the United States away from a gas-guzzling, governor-in-the-Hummer culture. The fear is that this will become yet one more excuse to move to a more xenophobic policy that discourages cooperative international policies.

Weyant: Remember David Stockman, the erstwhile head of the Office of Management and Budget? I ran into him in Washington and he literally said to me, "Don't worry about oil security and disruptions or any of that stuff. We've got battleships to take care of this problem." That shocked me to no end, and my response was "Do you really want to be in that position, where that's your only option?" Your whole response is "We're best in the battleship field and you shouldn't mess with us?" This type of attitude is what worries me the most.

Sagan: We were earlier talking about the resource curse, and this strikes me as an example of the hegemon's curse. To not take the necessary steps on economic policies or energy policies because you think you've got a military backup solution. If our military strength causes us to be passive or uncooperative on the economic or energy front, it will have a boomerang effect that will really hurt us.