For over five years the war in Chechnya has occupied a central and neuralgic place in Vladimir Putin's political agenda. In unleashing a renewed military campaign in September 1999-abrogating the cease-fire agreement that had terminated the earlier 1994-1996 war launched by then president Boris Yeltsin-President Putin sought to win American and Western acquiescence in, if not support for, Russia's military campaign by framing the conflict as a war on international terrorism.

However, far from extinguishing the conflict, or confining it within the territory of Chechnya, these policies have contributed to the spread of violence and instability far beyond the borders of the Chechen republic. Instead of pursuing strategies that would address the larger socioeconomic crisis of the predominantly Muslim regions of the Northern Caucasus, marginalize extremists, and win broad support from the population of the region, the brutality of Russian military forces and their local allies in the war in Chechnya and the repressive actions of the security services in neighboring republics have fanned the flames of hostility to Moscow and created conditions for the spread of radical Islamist ideologies and the recruitment of new adherents across the Northern Caucasus.

President Putin has treated the problems facing Russia as a product of state "weakness" and has called for strengthening Russia's unity and state power in response. Ostensibly in order to better combat terrorism, he has introduced a series of measures aimed at strengthening Russia's political unity and executive power at the expense of political pluralism, freedom of information, and civil society development. But by weakening or undermining Russia's fragile and weakly developed system of institutional checks and balances on central power, and reducing the transparency and accountability of official behavior, these policies may well be exacerbating rather than mitigating the challenges facing Russia today.

What began as a secular conflict over the political status of Chechnya has progressively been transformed into a wider struggle involving more radical fighters from other Muslim republics with an avowedly Islamist agenda that now threatens to destabilize the broader region of the Northern Caucasus. The past few years have also seen a rising tide of terrorist actions directed against local authorities and security services in other republics of the Northern Caucasus as well as against the Russian government and population more broadly, including terrorist acts aimed at targets in the city of Moscow itself.

From the dramatic seizure of some 800 hostages in a Moscow theater in October

2002, in which 129 hostages died from the effects of a lethal gas used by Russian security services in a bungled rescue operation, to the September 2004 horrific siege of an elementary school in Beslan, Southern Ossetia, in which over 300 civilians died-over half of them children-these episodes have not only challenged the official assertions that the war could be confined to Chechnya alone but have dramatized the inability of the Russian government to adequately protect the security of its population.

The inept and chaotic handling of many of these terrorist attacks has brought into stark relief the poor performance of the security services, the incompetence of local officials, serious intelligence failures, and above all widespread official corruption. In the Beslan episode, to take just one example, the siege was carried out by some thirty-two terrorists, of several different nationalities, who were apparently able to bribe their way across a series of checkpoints to enter the republic and to utilize weapons and explosives stored on the site beforehand. The local authorities and the federal security services proved incapable of coordinating their actions to control the situation, and the Moscow-appointed president of the republic proved completely inept. Indeed, the most courageous and effective actor was Ruslan Aushev, the former president of Ingushetia, a figure removed from power by Moscow for resisting pressure for more coercive policies.

The Putin government has used these events to justify a series of measures which

are ostensibly intended to more effectively combat terrorism but which appear to

have little relation to the real terrorist threat. First, it has refused to seek a political solution to the conflict in Chechnya and has deliberately sought to undermine possible negotiations or international mediation and to delegitimize potential negotiating partners by demonizing a broad array of Chechen political figures within the country and abroad as "terrorists."

Conflating Chechen resistance with international terrorism, President Putin has explicitly refused to distinguish between more moderate figures and extremists and has exaggerated their ties to international terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda.

Domestically, the Russian government has used security concerns to justify ever greater restrictions on freedom of information, on civil rights, and on the role of nongovernmental organizations, particularly those engaged in the defense of human rights. The military and the organs of law enforcement have been given an ever freer hand, rarely if ever held accountable for their abusive behavior and atrocities against civilians.

Refugee camps in the neighboring republic of Ingushetia were closed and the international non-governmental organizations providing medical care and humanitarian assistance to refugees there were compelled to depart. The mass media have largely lost their independence and editors and journalists have been dismissed or attacked for expressing critical views.

A whole series of measures aimed at further centralization of political power and the strengthening of the executive branch have eroded the already fragile elements of federalism and separation of powers in the Russian political system. The autonomy and political influence of regions and republics has been sharply reduced. Parliament, now dominated by a single pro-presidential party, no longer acts as an independent check on executive power, and liberal political parties and their leaders have been marginalized. Most recently, the popular election of regional governors was abolished in favor of their appointment by Moscow, and a discussion is now under way of bringing even local government under tighter central control by eliminating the election of mayors as well.

Moreover, a high proportion of President Putin's appointees to key positions in

the regions are drawn from the military and security services, selected for their presumed loyalty to the president but often lacking political skills or understanding of local conditions. But the substitution of appointed for elected officials does not necessarily guarantee either loyalty or competence.

In the absence of a competitive party system in which political parties help create a web of ties between the central government and local populations, Putin's centralizing measures could well widen the chasm between state and society.

This growing emphasis on centralization, unity, repression, and secrecy is arguably exacerbating rather than mitigating the problems and making state power even more dysfunctional. In Chechnya and in the broader Caucasus region the brutality as well as the corruption of Russian military and security forces and their local allies-and their extensive reliance on torture, mass roundups, indiscriminate executions, disappearances of civilians, and simple extortion-has embittered many toward Moscow and made it increasingly difficult to win "hearts and minds" and build popular support. Indeed, the lack of transparency, and the difficulty of holding Russian officials accountable for abusive behavior, has led unprecedented numbers of Russian citizens frustrated by the unresponsiveness of their own government to seek redress at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Lacking a positive agenda for ameliorating socioeconomic conditions in the Northern Caucasus, the expanding operations of security forces across the Northern Caucasus, the closure of mosques, and the wave of often indiscriminate arrests have served to drive Islam underground and facilitated the spread of extremist ideologies. Without a coherent and sustained program of economic development that would create employment, housing, and education and offer alternative opportunities to an impoverished and alienated population, particularly young males, and absent a serious effort to eliminate corruption, these trends are likely to worsen.

Russia under Putin is facing a somber future.

Ten years ago, on January 25, 1995, Russian early-warning radars detected a scientific rocket launched from Norway. Details of what followed have never been officially disclosed, but the detection apparently generated an alarm that made its way to the Russian political leadership. The nuclear forces' command-and-control system worked exactly as it was supposed to, stopping the alert without launching an attack, but the accident vividly demonstrated the dangers inherent in the launchon-warning posture of nuclear forces.

The Soviet Union and the United States are the only nuclear states to have implemented launch-on-warning, a combination of early-warning systems to detect a missile attack and command-and-control systems that can launch a retaliatory strike while the aggressor's missiles are in flight. The United States and Russia have preserved this capability as an option for using their strategic nuclear weapons.

The dangers of this rapid-response nuclear posture are widely recognized, but the United States and Russia have nevertheless failed to address this issue. Reducing the level of readiness, known as de-alerting, has not come to the forefront of the U.S.-Russian agenda. One of the reasons for this is their reluctance to enter into new arms control agreements, which are thought to be necessary for a coordinated action in this area. Careful examination of the arguments for de-alerting, though, suggests that there are a number of steps that the United States and Russia could and should take unilaterally.

Discussion of launch-on-warning dangers usually concentrates on the decline of Russian early-warning and command-and-control systems. As a result, most de-alerting measures proposed on the U.S. side are seen primarily as a way to create incentives for Russia to reciprocate. But this perspective overestimates Russia's reliance on the launch-on-warning posture and underestimates the dangers associated with that of the United States.

History shows that the Soviet strategic forces could never rely on radars and satellites to get a timely and accurate assessment of an incoming attack. As a result, the Soviet military never displayed high enough confidence in its early-warning system to make a launch decision based solely on the information provided by the early-warning system.

The United States, on the other hand, built a highly capable and sophisticated earlywarning system. It provides global coverage and very high probability of detection of a missile launch, which allows the United States to have a very high degree of confidence in the system. Paradoxically, this confidence potentially makes a catastrophic technical malfunction more dangerous than in the Russian case, since operators might be less likely to question the data provided by the system.

Although it is difficult to quantify the two systems' vulnerability to a possible technical malfunction, the less sophisticated Russian system does not necessarily pose a substantially greater risk of a catastrophic accident than its U.S. counterpart. This means that efforts to reduce the readiness level of the U.S. forces would bring benefits regardless of reciprocity.

Concerns about the deterioration of the Russian early-warning system are well founded. With the breakup of the Soviet Union most radars were left outside of the Russian territory, and many are not operational. The system's space-based tier is hardly better off. Russia is currently operating only three early-warning satellites, while a complete constellation would require ten satellites. Russia would need at least five satellites to provide minimum coverage of the U.S. territory.

Although the Russian system's decline is indeed serious, it does not necessarily increase the dangers associated with launch-on-warning. A loss of early-warning capability would pose a dire risk only if it were sudden and unexpected or discovered at the time of an attack. But this is not the case in Russia, where deterioration of the early-warning network has been gradual and well understood.

Since the early-warning system is an essential element of a launch-on-warning posture, it is understandable that a number of proposals that aim at reducing the risks of accidental launch suggest helping Russia to repair or upgrade its system. Instead of reducing the risk, however, upgrades would most likely increase risk by introducing new elements into the already complex system and increasing confidence in its performance.

Instead of trying to help Russia repair its early-warning system, efforts should be directed at helping Russia change the command-and-control procedures to accommodate the loss of early-warning capability. These changes would almost certainly result in a shift away from the launch-on-warning posture, reducing the risk of an accidental launch.

Trust And Do Not Verify

One reason de-alerting measures have not yet been implemented is that most of them are thought to require intrusive verification procedures. Indeed, measures like removal of nuclear warheads from missiles or limiting strategic submarine patrol areas, proposed by many, would be very difficult to implement in a transparent and verifiable manner.

Transparency, however, is not required to achieve the main goal of de-alerting-reduction of the risk associated with the launch-on-warning postures. The benefits of de-alerting do not depend on the ability to verify them. For example, submarines that are out of range of their targets cannot take part in a launch-on-warning strike regardless of whether the other side is able to verify their locations. Of course, without verification the opponent would have to assume that these submarines are in full readiness, but there is nothing wrong with that as long as we do not consider de-alerting a substitute for disarmament.

In fact, transparency makes de-alerting not only harder to implement but potentially dangerous. If measures that reduce the readiness level are visible and verifiable, an attempt to bring missiles back into operation could create instability in a crisis situation, when countries could find themselves in a rush to re-alert their forces. The dangers associated with this kind of instability could well outweigh any benefits of de-alerting.

Ideally, de-alerting measures should be designed in a way that would make them undetectable. That way, each side could reap the benefits-missiles not being available for launch-on-warning-while avoiding the instabilities associated with re-alerting.

Unilateral Solutions

The greatest challenge to de-alerting is not devising technical proposals but finding ways to convince the United States and Russia to implement them. This would be very difficult, for the United States and Russia have grown wary recently of negotiated agreements that would impose limits on their strategic forces. However, de-alerting seems ideally suited for unilateral non-binding declarations that might work now.

Russia and the United States could begin with a public commitment to de-alert a portion of their strategic arsenals. Of course, there will be plenty of questions about the value of a commitment that is neither enforceable nor verifiable. But this value would be quite real if both sides follow through and change their practices and procedures to exclude at least part of their forces from the launch-on-warning arrangements. The risk of a catastrophic accident will be reduced and these practices could then be extended to the whole force, further reducing the risk.

Making practical steps toward reducing the danger of accidental launch will not be easy. But de-alerting is one of those few arms control issues that still enjoy fairly strong political and public support. This support certainly creates an opportunity for action.

A new united nations report recommending the most sweeping reform in the institution's history offers a global vision of collective security for the 21st century that is as committed to development in poor nations as it is to prevention of nuclear terrorism in rich ones.

The point is, according to the report's research director, Stephen Stedman, a threat to one is a threat to all in today's world. "Globalization means that a major terrorist attack anywhere in the industrial world would have devastating consequences for the well-being of millions around the developing world," the document states. The report's value lies in putting forward a comparative framework of collective security that addresses all the compelling threats of the day, Stedman explained. "The recommendations really are the most important possible makeover of the institution in 60 years," he said. "I think something is going to come out of it." Stedman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at the Stanford Institute for International Studies (SIIS), was recruited a year ago by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to direct research for the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change. Stedman is an expert on civil wars, mediation, conflict prevention, and peacekeeping.

Annan created the 16-member blue-ribbon panel, made up mostly of former government leaders and ministers, in the wake of widespread heated criticism of the United Nations following the U.S.-led war in Iraq. In Annan's annual report to the General Assembly in 2003, he said, "Rarely have such dire forecasts been made about the U.N. ... We have reached a fork in the road ... a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the U.N. was founded." The panel was charged with analyzing global security threats and proposing far-reaching reforms to the international system.

On December 2 the panel, chaired by former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun, issued its 95-page report: "A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility." The document identifies six major threats to global security:

-War between states;

-Violence within states, including civil wars, large-scale human rights abuses, and genocide;

-Poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation;

-Nuclear, radiological, chemical, and biological weapons;

-Terrorism; and

-Transnational organized crime.

Although states do not face these threats equally, a collective security system must take all member states' threats seriously and deal with them equitably, the report noted. It specifically mentioned the world's appallingly slow response to AIDS.

The report makes 101 recommendations for collective prevention and response to the threats, including ways to reform the United Nations. Annan described these in a December 3 editorial in the International Herald Tribune as "the most comprehensive and coherent set of proposals for forging a common response to common threats that I have seen."

The document also reaffirms the right of states to defend themselves-even preemptively-when an attack is imminent, and it offers guidelines to help the Security Council decide when to authorize the use of force. Stedman said other significant proposals involve improving biosecurity, strengthening nuclear nonproliferation, and defining terrorism. Panel members agreed that any politically motivated violence against civilians should be regarded as terrorism and condemned.

The panel was very critical of the Human Rights Commission, a body that has often harmed the United Nations' reputation by permitting the membership of some of the worst human-rights violators, including Cuba, Libya, and Sudan. The report also discussed the need for new institutions, such as a peace-building commission, that would support countries emerging from conflict.

Scott Sagan, co-director of CISAC, described the report as hard-hitting, although he said he would have tried to extend the withdrawal clause of the nonproliferation treaty from three months to a year. "I think it's the beginning of some major changes that will be helpful," he said. "We need to get states to work together to reform the U.N. rather than sniping at it."

CISAC was closely involved in the panel's work and was named in a cover letter accompanying the report from Panyarachun to Annan. Co-director Chris Chyba served on the panel's 30-member resource group, providing expertise on nuclear nonproliferation and bioterrorism. Bruce Jones, a former CISAC Hamburg Fellow, acted as Stedman's deputy, and Tarun Chhabra, a graduate of CISAC's undergraduate honors program and recent Marshall Scholarship recipient, worked as a research officer. Political science Professors David Laitin and James Fearon, and SIIS Senior Fellow David Victor, provided, respectively, expertise on terrorism, civil wars, and the environment, Stedman said. "There is an immense amount of Stanford influence in the report," he added.

CISAC also hosted a nuclear nonproliferation workshop for the panel on campus last March and helped organize a meeting during the summer in Bangkok. SIIS co-hosted a conference on governance and sovereignty on campus in April and a meeting at Oxford University in June. CISAC provided workspace to give the research team a quiet place to focus on writing the report's first draft in August.

The report has attracted intense international media interest in part because it calls for expanding the U.N. Security Council, its top decision-making group, from 15 to 24 members. The panel was unable to agree on one proposal and offers two options that would make the council more representative and democratic. "I believe either formula would strengthen the legitimacy in the eyes of the world, by bringing its membership closer to the realities of the 21st century-as opposed to those of 1945, when the U.N. Charter was drafted," Annan wrote in the International Herald Tribune.

According to Stedman, the media has highlighted the Security Council's proposed expansion because so many nations have a stake in it. "But in the absence of a new consensus on international peace and security, expansion of the council will not be effective," he explained.

In March, Annan will use the report to inform a series of proposals he will present to the 191 U.N. member states. These, in turn, will be submitted to a summit of world leaders before the General Assembly convenes next September in New York. Stedman said he has been asked to stay on for another year as a special advisor to the secretary general to keep the United Nations "on message" during negotiations.

Engagement by the United States, which has openly questioned the institution's relevance, will be critical to implementing the report's recommendations, said Stedman, who added that the superpower can benefit from a revamped United Nations. "Putting threats to the United States into a global framework makes it more secure," he said.

Stedman noted that one of the most disturbing aspects of the panel's consultations was listening to government representatives from civil-society organizations dismiss the seriousness of bio- and nuclear terror threats against the United States. "They were essentially denying this as a real threat to American security," he said. "I said it's as real a threat to the U.S. as other threats are to you."

When Stedman accepted the job, he thought he would spend 80 percent of his time on research and writing and 20 percent on consultations and negotiating. In fact, he said, it was the other way around. "It's unlike anything I've ever done," he said. "It's been a blast." In contrast to academia, where a researcher presents his or her best findings and defends them, Stedman was faced with 16 people who would push back, reject, or accept his work. "I had to work to change language to include their concerns," he said. "My biggest concern at the beginning was that the report would be based on the lowest common denominator. It's not."

Stedman said the panel members remained open-minded throughout the year. "They showed flexibility, listened to arguments, and changed their minds," he said. "Our job was to be as persuasive, rigorous, and comprehensive in our analysis as we were able to achieve."

In the end, Stedman said, the report belongs to the panel. "Parts of what the exercise shows is that access to those making policy is really important," he said. "If you do really good work and you have access, you have a chance of being heard. Kofi Annan gave me that opportunity."

Among the growing number of recent cases where international actors have become engaged in trying to rebuild a shattered state and construct democracy after conflict, Iraq is somewhat unique. The state collapsed not as a result of a civil war or internal conflict, but as a result of external military action to overthrow it. We are still very much in the middle of an internationally assisted political reconstruction process in Iraq, and we will not know for a year or two, or maybe five or ten, the outcome of the postwar effort to rebuild the Iraqi state. Nevertheless, some important lessons can be identified.

Prepare For A Major Commitment

Rebuilding a failed state is an extremely expensive and difficult task under any circumstance, and even more so in the wake of violent conflict. Success requires a very substantial commitment of human and financial resources, delivered in a timely and effective fashion, and sustained over an extended period of time, lasting (not necessarily through occupation or trusteeship, but at least through intensive international engagement) for a minimum of five to ten years.

Commit Enough Troops

One of the major problems with the American engagement in Iraq is that there were not enough international troops on the ground in the wake of state collapse to secure the immediate postwar order. As a result, Iraq descended into lawless chaos once Saddam's regime fell. The United States Army wanted a much larger force on the ground in order to secure the postwar order, something like 400,000 troops rather than the total invasion force of less than 200,000 that was ultimately authorized. Of course, what is needed is not simply enough troops but the right kind of troops with the proper rules of engagement. It does no good to have troops on the ground if they simply stand by and watch what is left of the state being stolen and burned. One lesson of Iraq is that international post-conflict stabilization missions need to be able to deploy not just a conventional army but a muscular peace implementation force that is somewhere between a war-making army and a crime-fighting police, between a rapid reaction and riot control force.

Mobilize International Legitimacy and Cooperation

In the contemporary era, a successful effort at post-conflict reconstruction requires broad international legitimacy and cooperation, for at least two key reasons. First, the scope and duration of engagement is typically more than any one country-and public-is willing to bear on its own. The broader the international coalition, the greater the human and financial resources that can be mobilized, and the more likely that the engagement of any participating country can be sustained, as its public sees a sense of shared international commitment and sacrifice. Second, when there is broad international engagement and legitimacy, people within the post-conflict country are less likely to see the intervention as the imperial project of one country or set of countries. All other things being equal, international cooperation and legitimacy tends to generate greater domestic legitimacy-or at least acceptance-for the intervention.

Generate legitimacy and trust within the post-conflict country

No international reconstruction effort can succeed without some degree of acceptance and cooperation-and eventually support and positive engagement-from the people in the post-conflict country. Without some degree of trust in the initial international administration and its intentions, the international intervention can become the target of popular wrath, and will then need to spend most of its military (and administrative) energies defending itself rather than rebuilding the country and its political and social order. Unfortunately, these qualities were lacking in the occupation of Iraq, and the Iraqi people knew it. From the very beginning, the American occupation failed to earn the trust and respect of the Iraqi people. As noted above, it failed in its first and most important obligation as an occupying power-to establish order and public safety. Then it failed to convey early on any clear plan for post-conflict transition.

All international post-conflict interventions to reconstruct a failed state on more democratic foundations confront a fundamental contradiction. Their goal is, in large measure, democracy: popular, representative, and accountable government, in which "the people" are sovereign. But their means are undemocratic: in essence, some form of imperial domination, however temporary and transitional. This requires a balancing of international trusteeship or imperial functions with a distinctly non-imperial attitude and some clear and early specification of an acceptable timetable for the restoration of full sovereignty. As much as possible, the humiliating features of an extended, all-out occupation should be avoided.

Hold Local Elections First

One of the toughest issues on which to generalize concerns the timing of elections. Ill-timed and ill-prepared elections do not produce democracy, or even political stability, after conflict. Instead, they may only enhance the power of actors who mobilize coercion, fear, and prejudice, reviving autocracy and even precipitating large-scale violent strife. In Angola in 1992, in Bosnia in 1996, and in Liberia in 1997, rushed elections set back the prospects for democracy and, in Angola and Liberia, paved the way for renewed civil war. There are therefore compelling reasons, based in logic and in recent historical experience, for deferring national elections until militias have been demobilized, new moderate parties trained and assisted, electoral infrastructure created, and democratic media and ideas generated. International interventions that seek to construct democracy after conflict must balance the tension between domination for democracy and withdrawal through democracy. In these circumstances, two temptations compete: to transform the country, its institutions and values, through an extended and penetrating occupation (à la British colonial rule), and to hold elections and get out as soon as possible. The question is always, in part, how long can international rule be viable? In Iraq, for better or worse, the answer-readily apparent from history, and from the profound and widespread suspicion of American motives in the region and among Iraqis themselves-was: not long.

Disperse Economic Reconstruction Funds and Democratic Assistance As Widely As Possible

Both for the effectiveness and speed of economic revival, and in order to build up local trust and acceptance, there is a compelling need for the decentralization of relief and reconstruction efforts, as well as democratic civic assistance. The more that the international administration, as well as private donors, works with and through local partners, the more likely that their relief and reconstruction efforts will be directed toward the most urgent needs, and the better the prospect for the accumulation of political trust and cooperation with the overall transition project. In Iraq there was a particularly compelling need for the creation of jobs, which might have been done more rapidly by channeling repair and reconstruction contracts more extensively through a wide range of local Iraqi contractors, instead of through the big American mega-corporations.

Proceed With Some Humility

This encompasses perhaps the ultimate, overarching contradiction. It is hard to imagine a bolder, more assertive, and self-confident act than a nation, or a set of nations, or "the international community," intervening to seize effective sovereignty in another nation. There is nothing the least bit humble about it. But ultimately the intervention cannot succeed, and the institutions it establishes cannot be viable, unless there is some sense of participation and ultimately "ownership" on the part of the people in the failed and re-emerging state. This is why holding local elections as early as possible is so important. It is why it is so vital to engage local partners, as extensively as possible, in post-conflict relief and economic reconstruction. And it is why the process of constitution making must be democratic and broadly participatory.

As the conflict in Iraq reminds us, nation building confounds its architects' designs with almost predictable regularity. Investments of time, resources, and specialized knowledge have not enabled large-scale political engineering. Instead, would-be nation builders have been frustrated by a proliferation of unintended consequences and their inability to elicit societal participation in their projects. Results depend more upon initial conditions prior to an intervention than the nation builder's exertions upon arrival.

Hence, the U.S. has performed most poorly when its mission required the most work (e.g., Somalia, Haiti, Iraq). Conversely, it has done best where it did less (Germany, Japan), deferring to old-regime civil servants and upgrading already functional institutions. Given the humbling record of Western powers at navigating the perils of macro-level political planning, the "how" of nation-building should be considered, in the formulation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a known unknown.

More likely, it is a known unknowable. The extent of unintended consequences and contingency in largescale political engineering makes disappointment certain and disaster likely.

Twentieth-century experiences belie the notion that nation-building successes will solve the problem of state failures. Forces trying to impose regime change and raise new state structures immediately grapple with societal inertia and their own deficit in understanding local politics.

This dilemma pushes would-be nation builders down one of two undesirable paths. Either they recognize their inability to restructure indigenous political arrangements or they attempt to do so in vain. Despite plans of change at the outset of nation building, those executing the project soon embrace a change of plans.

Thus, even the most committed states have been hampered by an inability to develop political capacity on the ground and improve upon the initial endowments of the country being occupied. Institutional value-added has been minimal, reflecting the problem of state instability back upon those who expected to solve it.

These patterns raise serious doubts about the chances of success in even the most well-intentioned of regimechange missions. They demarcate the limits of projecting state power abroad, whether for humanitarian or security purposes. The failures of imposed regime change lead to the conclusion that indigenous gradual political development-with all of its potential for authoritarianism and civil unrest-may be the optimal path for sustainable democratization and state building.

When comparing the uneven history of post-colonial development with the poor record of nation building we are left paraphrasing Churchill's endorsement of democracy as the worst kind of government except for the alternatives: Sovereign political development may be the worst form of government except for all those kinds of nation building that have been tried.

Infrastructural weakness is not a technical problem surmountable through systematic review of prior experiences. Indeed, the notion of "learning past lessons" deceptively implies that the current generation of academics and policymakers can succeed where their predecessors failed. The idea that nation building is a flawed but salvageable project prejudges its fundamental viability.

Once we have set our sights on rescuing an enterprise that has repeatedly frustrated its architects and their subjects, we screen out alternatives that more effectively serve the same development goals. We also risk funneling research down an intellectual cul-de-sac, at great cost in time, resources, and lives lost for those participating in failed regime-change missions. Therefore, a more productive direction for contemporary interest in nation building may mean backing up and reassessing the core problem of weak states, on one hand, and the limits of foreign intervention, on the other. Ensuring a positive impact on the country considered for intervention requires orienting the enterprise away from the takeover of state functions and toward the short-term provision of aid to local communities.

Apart from the futile pursuit of infrastructural power or the doomed deployment of despotic power (coercion), one can envision a third kind of influence, "regenerative power," which is exercised during relief efforts, such as emergency assistance following natural disasters.

Regenerative power involves neither the adoption of domestic state functions nor physical coercion. It denotes the ability of a state to develop infrastructure under the direction of the local population. For example, it means rebuilding a post office, but not delivering the mail. It is typified by the U.S. response to natural disaster relief within its own borders and abroad.

Regenerative power turns nation building on its head. Rather than imposing a blueprint from outside, participants respond to the needs of the affected community. It is restorative rather than transformative. There is no preexisting master plan for what the "final product" will be, but rather an organically evolving process in which the assisting group serves at the direction of the people being assisted.

The exercise of regenerative power is inherently limited in scale since it depends on local engagement rather than elite planning. It is inimical to macro-level ambitions but it also acquires a bounded effectiveness that imposed regime change lacks. Where nation building attempts to overwrite existing organization and only belatedly incorporates local understanding, disaster relief efforts and regenerative projects begin from the assumption that local communities know best their own needs. Existing social networks and patterns of authority are an asset, not a hindrance, and local know-how offers the principal tool for resolving local crises.

Rather than pursuing the often destructive delusion of interventionist state transformation, regenerative power starts from an interest in using state power for constructive purposes and a sober assessment of the limits of that aim. The assisting foreign groups serve under the direction of indigenous political leaders toward the achievement of physical reconstruction and emergency service provision.

With remarkable prescience Rumsfeld commented in October 2001, "I don't know people who are smart enough from other countries to tell other countries the kind of arrangements they ought to have to govern themselves."

The experience of twentieth century U.S. interventions and ongoing operations in Iraq supports his insight. Proponents of nation building or shared sovereignty arrangements have exaggerated the ability of powerful states to foster institutions in developing countries. The empirical record, from successful outcomes in Germany and Japan to dismal failures across the global south, shows the societies alleged to be most in need of strong institutions have proven the least tractable for foreign administration. Rather than transmitting new modes of organization, would-be nation builders have relied upon existing structures for governance.

This dependence on the very context that was intended for change reveals how little infrastructural power nation builders wield. They are consistently unable to implement political decisions through the local groups. Contrary to recent arguments that sustained effort and area expertise can enable success, nation building has foundered despite such investments.

Understanding that nation building is a "known unknowable" is crucial for redirecting intervention where it can be more effective. Advocates of humanitarian assistance should consider the merits of smaller, regenerative projects that can respond better to uncertainty and avoid the perils of large-scale political engineering.

Coit D. Blacker, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, recently named Professor Michael McFaul as the new director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). McFaul, a reknowned specialist on the former Soviet Union, is currently associate professor of political science at Stanford as well as the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also an alumnus of Stanford University.

In appointing McFaul to lead CDDRL, Blacker expressed his confidence that the center will continue to establish itself as one of the leading research units in the United States devoted to exploring the interactions between the establishment of democracies, promoting development, and the rule of law. The center's previous director was Stephen D. Krasner, who took Ppublic service leave from Stanford in the winter of 2004 to serve as the director for policy planning at the U.S. Department of State.

Before joining the Stanford faculty in 1995, McFaul worked for two years as a senior associate for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in residence at the Moscow Carnegie Center. McFaul is also a research associate at the Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) and a senior adviser to the National Democratic Institute. He serves on the board of directors of the Eurasia Foundation, Firebird Fund, International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy, Institute of Social and Political Studies, Center for Civil Society International, and Institute for Corporate Governance and Law; the steering committee for the Europe and Eurasia division of Human Rights Watch; and the editorial boards of Current History, Journal of Democracy, Demokratizatsiya, and Perspectives on European Politics and Society. He has served as a consultant for numerous companies and government agencies.

McFaul's current research interests include democratization in the post-communist world and Iran, U.S.-Russian relations, and American efforts at promoting democracy abroad. With Abbas Milani and Larry Diamond, he codirects the Hoover project on Iran.

McFaul is the author and editor of several monographs including one with Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge University Press, 2004). With Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004); with James Goldgeier, Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); with Timothy Colton, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (Cornell University Press, 2001); Russia's 1996 Presidential Election: The End of Bi-Polar Politics, (Hoover Institution Press, 1997); with Tova Perlmutter, Privatization, Conversion and Enterprise Reform in Russia (Westview Press, 1995); Post-Communist Politics: Democratic Prospects in Russia and Eastern Europe (CSIS, 1993); and, with Sergei Markov, The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy: Political Parties, Programs and Profiles (Hoover Institution Press, 1993). His articles have appeared in Constitutional Political Economy, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, Journal of Democracy, Political Science Quarterly, Post-Soviet Affairs, and World Politics.

McFaul also comments on current Russian and U.S.-Russian affairs, including articles in the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Moscow Times, New Republic, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, Washington Post, Washington Times, and the Weekly Standard, as well as television appearances on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, and PBS. During the 1995 parliamentary elections in Russia, he worked as senior consultant and commentator for CBS News. During the 1996 presidential election, 1999 parliamentary election, and 2000 presidential election in Russia, he served as a commentator and adviser for CNN. While in Moscow in 1994-95, he also coproduced and appeared in his own television program on democracy for the Russian Television Network (RTR).

McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his BA in international relations and Slavic languages and his MA in Slavic and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford where he completed his PhD in international relations in 1991.