Stanford University

'New Russia' Ailing; Stand Up, Mr. Bush

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Michael A. McFaul
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Michael A. McFaul, et al - At a time when relations between the United States and some of its traditional allies are strained, President Bush must be looking forward to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's visit this week. The two men seem to have genuine rapport, and although Putin did not endorse the U.S. decision to invade Iraq, he does speak from Bush's script on the global war on terrorism. Bush also knows that Russia is in a position to offer real help in tackling critical security threats to the United States. The president hopes to secure commitments from Putin for Russian troops in Iraq and for cooperation in attempts to slow Iran's development of nuclear weapons and for help in defusing the standoff with North Korea.
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Rushing Elections Will Only Hurt Iraq

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
Larry Diamond
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Michael A. McFaul and Larry Diamond - Everyone seems in a hurry to put Iraqis in control of their country. French President Jacques Chirac last week launched the campaign for Iraqi elections sooner rather than later, and many others -- from Iraqi leader Ahmed Chalabi to American campaign strategists -- have since joined the chorus. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell has suggested a deadline of six monthsfor Iraqi leaders to put in place a constitution.
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Shine the Light of Liberty in Russia as Well

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
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Michael A. McFaul - In a recent speech to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the National Endowment of Democracy (NED), President George W. Bush made a compelling case for the United States continuing to engage in promoting democracy worldwide. In a speech of strategic vision that both Ronald Reagan and Woodrow Wilson would have been proud to deliver, Bush stated that "the advance of freedom is the calling of our time; it is the calling of our country." He asserted that "liberty is the design of nature; we believe that liberty is the direction of history... and freedom--the freedom we prize--is not for us alone, it is the right and capacity of all mankind."
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Stable and Stagnant Relations

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
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Commentary
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Michael A. McFaul - The debate about the future of Russian democracy in the United States has been ongoing for several years. However, the accumulation of democratic setbacks over the past three years, the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in October and an electoral process assessed as being "not fair" by the OSCE in December have elevated the debate to the level of policymakers within the Bush administration.
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Lets Get Serious About Democracy in the Greater Middle East

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Michael A. McFaul
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Michael A. McFaul - A bipartisan consensus is emerging in America about the need to help bring greater freedom and democracy to the Greater Middle East. It is from this region that the most imminent threats to Western security are likely to emanate in the 21st century. It is here that the dangerous mix of extremist ideologies, terrorism, and access to weapons of mass destruction is most likely to occur. And it is certainly no accident that the most dangerous part of the world where the war on terrorism will be won or lost is also the least free.
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Was Bush Right About the War?

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
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Two years ago today, American troops and their coalition partners invaded Iraq. Saddam Hussein, President Bush argued, was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons to augment his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Before the menace grew any stronger, Saddam had to be toppled.

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Constructing Self-Enforcing Federalism in the Early United States and Modern Russia

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All federal systems face the two fundamental dilemmas of federalism: too strong a center risks overawing the subnational units; and too weak a center risks free-riding that makes the system fall apart. Resolving the two dilemmas is problematic because mitigating one dilemma exacerbates the other. We develop a model of federal institutions that shows the circumstances under which both dilemmas can be solved so that federal institutions are self-enforcing. We apply our approach to modern Russia where we suggest that when the center is too strong, its ability to extract rents increases and the benefits for maintaining participation in the federal bargain disappears. We also suggest strong parallels between Russia and those of the early United States under the Articles of Confederation.

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Michael A. McFaul
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Political Charades

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
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As a visiting scholar at Moscow State University in the fall of 1990, Michael A. McFaul collaborated with three other academics then based at the university -- Steve Fish, Sergei Markov and Nikolai Zlobin -- to start a Russian-American discussion group on democratic politics. In various forms, our tusovka continued to meet for the next decade. Many of the participants in this discussion group are the central characters in Andrew Wilson's important new book, "Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World."
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End of Partnership

Authors
Michael A. McFaul
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U.S. Vice President criticized the policy of Russian authorities for cutting back civil rights and blackmailing its neighbors in his characteristically harsh manner. Kremlin sources referred to his speech as poorly informed and not objective. Others, both in Moscow and in the West, called it a return to the Cold War. Some denied that the vice president's speech represented the actual intentions of the Bush administration. Maybe all of those statements are nothing more than propaganda. But it is more likely that reflect a deep lack of understanding of American foreign policy and its foreign policy culture.
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First Drafts of Korea: The U.S. Media and Perceptions of The Last Cold War Frontier

In conjunction with Dr. Gi-Wook Shin's study of American and South Korean media coverage of the alliance and the peninsula, this conference will convene influential American journalists who covered momentous events and significant trends in the two Koreas. The macro-level, data-driven media study reveals how U.S. coverage of Korean issues has evolved over time as well as how perception gaps have grown up in the U.S.-ROK alliance. But how did American reporters and editors decide what to cover? What drove U.S. interest in Korea? And what were the challenges in covering Korea, both South and North? This conference will showcase the views of journalists on the front line who made key decisions about what to cover and why. These coverage decisions and the stories that followed shaped how Americans conceptualize both Koreas, the U.S.-ROK alliance, and the North Korean nuclear crises.

This one-day workshop will feature four panels: (1) democracy, anti-Americanism and the rise of Korean nationalism, (2) the challenges of covering North Korea, (3) the two North Korean nuclear crises, and (4) public diplomacy and the Korean peninsula.

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Karl Schoenberger Former foreign correspondent Panelist Los Angeles Times
Doug Struck Reporter Speaker Washington Post
Brian Myers Reporter Speaker Atlantic Monthly
Anna Fifield ReporterReporter Speaker Financial TimesFinancial Times
David Sanger ReporterReporter Speaker New York TimesNew York Times
Barbara Slavin Reporter Speaker USA Today
Balbina Hwang Senior Special Advisor Speaker Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, U.S. State Department
David Straub Former Director of Korean Affairs Panelist U.S. State Department
Daniel C. Sneider Associate Director for Research Panelist Shorenstein APARC, Stanford University
Donald Macintyre Pantech Fellow Panelist Shorenstein APARC at Stanford University, Time Magazine
Chris Nelson Editor Panelist The Nelson Report
Caroline Gluck Reporter Panelist BBC Taiwan
Martin Fackler Reporter Panelist New York Times, Tokyo
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