President George W. Bush has demonstrated impressive flexibility in reshaping his approach to foreign policy to deal with the new international challenges brought to the fore by the terrorist attacks.

Before Sept. 11, President Bush embraced a humble mission for the United States in the world. This country, he believed, had to "preserve the peace" by seeking to maintain the basic balance of power between nations. Now, Bush has abandoned the preservation of the old system. Instead, he seeks to change it by promoting liberty, freedom and eventual democracy in countries ruled by autocrats.

In doing so, Bush lines up next to "idealists" or "liberals" such as Ronald Reagan, Woodrow Wilson and Immanuel Kant, and implicitly distances himself from realists focused solely on the balance of power such as Richard Nixon, Thucydides and his own father, the 41st president.

In a second remarkable change, Bush has become a supporter, at least rhetorically, of nation building. Before Sept. 11, the Bush administration derided nation building as a Clinton-era distraction from the more important issues in international politics. Now, Bush has clearly identified the connection between rebuilding the failed state of Afghanistan and American national security interests. If Congress approves his proposals, Bush will be the author of the greatest increase in the American foreign aid budget since John F. Kennedy's presidency.

Third, the Bush administration before Sept. 11 expressed disdain for multilateral institutions. But in his speech this month before the United Nations, Bush outlined an ambitious proposal for revitalizing the United Nations and American cooperation with this most important multilateral institution.

To be credible, President Bush needs to do more to demonstrate his commitment to the promotion of democracy, nation building and multilateralism. Bush must show that he wants to see political reform in Saudi Arabia as well as in Iraq. Words about promoting liberty ring hollow if they apply only to some people.

To show seriousness on nation building, Bush should press for increases in the peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan. Those working to rebuild Afghanistan unanimously complain that the lack of security throughout the country is the No. 1 impediment to their work.

To make credible his pledge to reinvigorate the United Nations and other multilateral institutions, the president should complement his pledge to enforce U.N. resolutions on Iraq with a rededication of American participation in other international regimes. Bush could start with the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, an agreement that American officials helped craft.

Because many are suspicious of the president's recent embrace of democracy promotion, nation building and multilateralism, he must demonstrate a sustained commitment to his new foreign policy strategy.

If Bush has shown a willingness to consider new ideas about foreign policy, his critics -- both at home and abroad -- have demonstrated amazing conservatism. In a reversal of positions, those most opposed to Bush's new approach to foreign policy now seek to "preserve the peace" by defending the status quo. The core flaw in this is the assumption that the old international system was working. It was not.

Before Sept. 11, the United Nations had failed to enforce its own resolutions on Iraq. If the "international community" cannot act to execute its will when dealing with such grave issues as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, then it has no credibility on anything.

The international community is ineffective in dealing with despotism, poverty and human rights violations because it seeks to preserve state sovereignty above all else. Fifty years ago, this was a progressive idea, which brought about the end of colonialism. Today, it is a regressive idea, which preserves the sovereignty of dictators who defy international law, denying the sovereignty of their people.

It is odd to hear the international community invoked so often as the defender of high ideals and then see representatives from Iraq in the U.N. General Assembly. Should the United States really be a member of the same organization that includes Saddam Hussein? Eventually, autocracy should go the way of slavery and colonialism as simply unacceptable.

To be effective, the international community and the United States need each other. U.N. Security Council resolutions can only be enforced if the United States helps to enforce them. The United Nations can only assist in the building of new states or prevent the destruction of vulnerable regimes if the United States participates, and vice-versa. The international community has no army and no economy, but even the mighty and rich United States can't afford to remake the world alone. For an effective partnership, change has to come from both sides.

Michael McFaul is an associate professor of political science and Hoover Fellow at Stanford University and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

PALO ALTO, CALIF.
A year ago, a group of terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Egypt attacked the United States using box cutters as their weapons and citing extremist versions of Islamic fundamentalism as their cause.

Today, the Bush administration and Congress are focused almost solely on Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction, with almost no reference whatsoever to his ideology.

This narrow focus has only a loose relationship to the grander vision of "securing freedom's triumph" that President Bush has outlined as the mission of American foreign policy in the new millennium.

As currently framed, the debate about Iraq has produced three dangerous distortions. First, the discussion has confused the means-ends relationship between weapons of mass destruction and regime change. Suddenly, both hawkish Republicans and antiwar Democrats now have asserted that the destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction is the new paramount objective in the war on terrorism.

For the hawks, regime change is the means to achieving this objective. Those less eager to go to war assert that this same goal can be achieved by other means, such as sending in the weapons inspectors or even by a surgical strike against weapons facilities.

Both sides of this debate are focused on the wrong objective. Regime change – democratic regime change – must be the objective. If over the next years and decades, a democratic regime consolidates in Iraq, then it will not matter to the United States if Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or not.

Does anyone in the United States know how many weapons of mass destruction the British or French have? Does anyone even lose much sleep over the fact that Russia still has thousands of nuclear weapons and launch vehicles capable of reaching the US in a matter of minutes?

Specialists are rightly worried about the safety and security of Russian weapons, but most Americans no longer make plans for what to do in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack. It was not a robust nonproliferation regime, coercive weapons inspections, or a preemptive war against the Soviet Union that produced this shift in our attitudes about Russia's weapons of mass destruction. Rather, it was regime change in the Soviet Union and then Russia.

Someday, the same will be true in Iraq. Israel already destroyed Iraq's nuclear weapons program once in 1981, delaying but not eliminating the threat. The real objective of any strategy toward Iraq, therefore, must be the creation of a democratic, market-oriented, pro-Western regime.

The singular focus on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction – not unlike the misplaced focus on arms control during the cold war – prevents the US from pursuing a grander strategy that could secure the more important objective of democratic regime change. Moreover, many of the means for achieving this objective are nonmilitary by nature, an aspect forgotten in the discussion.

A second distorting consequence of the current debate is that we have become obsessed with one leader, one country, and one category of weapons, none of which were involved directly in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Iraqi dictatorship (and not simply President Hussein) is certainly part of the problem, but Iraq cannot be the only front of the war on terrorism. In fact, victories on other fronts could create momentum for the Iraqi regime's demise. Ronald Reagan's strategy for defeating communism did not begin with a military invasion of the Soviet Union, but rather aimed first to roll back communism in peripheral places like Poland, Afghanistan, and Nicaragua. Imagine how isolated Hussein would be if democratic regimes took hold in Iran, Palestine, and Afghanistan.

A third distortion of the debate is the near silence about the kind of regime the Bush administration plans to help build in Iraq after the war. The Bush administration is busy making the case against Hussein, but has devoted much less attention to outlining the plan for a new regime in Iraq. Will it be one state or three, a federal or unitary state, governed by the US or the United Nations? How many decades will occupation last?

We need to have the same "frenzied" debate about Iraq's reconstruction that is now being devoted to Iraq's deconstruction. A serious discussion of the postwar regime in Iraq will help inspire support in Congress, the international community, and within Iraq. Now is the time to be concrete about future blueprints.

To be credible, the message of change must also be directed at other dictators in the region. The probabilities of fanatics coming to power in Pakistan and using weapons against American allies are greater than the probabilities of Hussein doing the same.

Without reform, revolution in Saudi Arabia is just as likely as an Iranian attack on American allies. Failure to define a grand strategy of transformation in the region will condemn American soldiers to fighting new dictators like Hussein over and over again.

Political parties are one of the core institutions of democracy. But in democracies around the world -- rich and poor, Western and non-Western -- there is growing evidence of low or declining public confidence in parties. In membership, organization, and popular involvement and commitment, political parties are not what they used to be. But are they in decline, or are they simply changing their forms and functions? In contrast to authors of most previous works on political parties, which tend to focus exclusively on long-established Western democracies, the contributors to this volume cover many regions of the world. Theoretically, they consider the essential functions that political parties perform in democracy and the different types of parties. Historically, they trace the emergence of parties in Western democracies and the transformation of party cleavage in recent decades. Empirically, they analyze the changing character of parties and party systems in postcommunist Europe, Latin America, and five individual countries that have witnessed significant change: Italy, Japan, Taiwan, India, and Turkey. As the authors show, political parties are now only one of many vehicles for the representation of interests, but they remain essential for recruiting leaders, structuring electoral choice, and organizing government. To the extent that parties are weak and discredited, the health of democracy will be seriously impaired.

Pakistan's descent into authoritarian rule starkly depicts the "triple crisis of governance" that threatens many third-wave democracies. If these problems of governance are not addressed, a new "reverse wave" of democratization could be imminent.

This second edition of the highly regarded Politics in Developing Countries again presents case studies of experiences with democracy in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East, along with the editors' synthesis of the factors that facilitate and obstruct the development of democracy around the world. The new edition adds a chapter on South Africa and brings the other nine studies current through 1994.

The recent developments covered in the book include:

• the reemergence of democratic politics in Chile
• the impeachment of President Collor and the crisis of democracy in Brazil
• the growing pressure for substantive democratization in Mexico
• the 1994 elections in Chile, Brazil, and Mexico
• the leadership transition in Turkey following the death of President Ozal
• the growing ethnic and religious strife in India
• the overthrow and reemergence of democracy in Thailand and the country's economic boom
• the quest for democratic consolidation in South Korea under new President Kim Young Sam
• the political and economic crisis in Nigeria
• the difficulties facing the one-party dominant regime in Senegal following the 1993 elections
• the 1994 elections and democratic transition in South Africa

In response to scores of requests, this textbook edition of Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries has been abridged to convey the core arguments of the book in a format appropriate for classroom use.

The authors explore the complex and reciprocal interactions between a society's dominant beliefs, values, and attitudes about politics and the nature of its political system. Among the issues they address are: to what extent is political culture cause or effect; how can its causal importance for democracy be weighed; what are the most important elements of a democratic political culture; and how are these elements developed over time?

Contents

The American policy of assisting "freedom fighters" in their struggle against "Marxist" regimes in the Third World- the so-called Reagan Doctrine- represents one of the most significant foreign policy innovations of the Reagan presidency. By the close of the Reagan administration, the policy appeared to have achieved sweeping results in forcing communism to retreat in Afghanistan, Angola, and Kampuchea. Proponents of the policy have attributed the 1988 peace settlement between Angola, Cuba, and South Africa, and subsequent discussions on Angolan national reconciliation, to the Reagan doctrine"s success.