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The market for wine in China is still in its beginning stages. Total consumption is less than 1/3 liter per capita (although it is higher for urban residents, more than 1 liter per capita). Domestic wine satisfies most of the demand and, despite it poor reputation, is gradually improving in quality. As income levels increase, there are good opportunities for imported wines. Although the wine market in China is emerging from almost zero consumption a decade ago, there is already a small but loyal following in major urban areas. It is this demand which is driving the emergence of the industry. The income elasticity of wine (according to our study) is more than 2 (as income doubles, consumption increases fourfold. The urban consumer class, which is estimated to exceed the total population of the United States, will almost certainly develop into a large market for both imported and domestic wine in the future.

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Scott Rozelle
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The Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SPRIE) is a multidisciplinary research program of the Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) at Stanford University which focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship in leading high technology regions in the United States and Asia. SPRIE has an active community of scholars at Stanford as well as research affiliates in the United States, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and India.

New Fellowships

As part of a new initiative on Greater China, SPRIE will select two outstanding post-docs or young scholars as the inaugural SPRIE Fellows at Stanford for the academic year 2005-2006 for research and writing on Greater China and its role in the global knowledge economy. The primary focus of the program is the intersection of innovation and entrepreneurship and underlying contemporary political, economic, technological, and/or business factors in Greater China (including Taiwan, Mainland China, Singapore). Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, university-industry linkages, globalization of R&D, venture capital industry development, networks and flows of managerial and technical leaders, and leading high technology clusters in Greater China. Industries of ongoing research at SPRIE include semiconductors, wireless, and software.

SPRIE Fellows at Stanford will be expected to be in residence for at least three academic quarters, beginning the Fall quarter of 2005. Fellows take part in Center activities, including research forums, seminars, and workshops throughout the academic year, and are required to present their research findings in SPRIE seminars. They will also participate as members of SPRIE's team in its public and invitation-only seminars and workshops with academic, business, and government leaders. Fellows will also participate in the publication programs of SPRIE and APARC. The Fellowship carries a stipend of $40,000.

How To Apply

Applicants should submit

  1. A statement of purpose not to exceed five single-spaced pages which describes the research and writing to be undertaken during the fellowship period, as well as the projected product(s) that will be published;
  2. a curriculum vitae (with research ability in Chinese preferred); and
  3. 2 letters of recommendation from faculty advisors or other scholars. All applicants must have Ph.D. degrees conferred by August 30, 2005.

Address all applications to:

Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship,
Asia-Pacific Research Center,
Encina Hall -East 301,
Stanford University,
Stanford, California
USA 94305-6055

Questions? Please contact Rowena Rosario, Administrative Associate

Deadline for receipt of all materials: January 14, 2005

Applicants will be notified of fellowship decisions in March 2005

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Focus on Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Greater China

SPRIE is a multidisciplinary research program at Stanford University which focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship in leading high technology regions in the United States and Asia. SPRIE has an active community of scholars at Stanford as well as research affiliates in the United States, Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and India. During 2005, SPRIE is expanding a new initiative on the rise of leading high technology regions in Greater China and their impact on the global knowledge economy. Specific research topics include university-industry linkages for commercialization of technology, globalization of R&D, venture capital industry development and its impact on new venture formation, and networks and flows of managerial and technical leaders. In addition, industries of ongoing research at SPRIE include semiconductors, wireless, and software.

New SPRIE Research Fellows: Research Assistantships with Support for International Field Research

As part of this new initiative on innovation and entrepreneurship in Greater China, SPRIE will select outstanding Stanford students as the inaugural SPRIE Research Scholars. SPRIE Research Scholars will work with SPRIE faculty and senior researchers at Stanford for two (or more) academic quarters in 2005 to gather and analyze data, conduct interviews in Silicon Valley, contribute to publications, and advance progress on the overall project agenda. During summer 2005, they will conduct SPRIE field research through interviews or surveys with business and government leaders in Beijing, Shanghai, or Hsinchu. As part of SPRIE's international research team, they will have the opportunity to interact closely with project leaders and visiting scholars at Stanford as well as partners in Asia, such as the Ministry of Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, or Zhongguancun Science Park in Mainland China or the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan. They will also participate in SPRIE's public and invitation-only seminars and workshops with academic, business, and government leaders. The financial award will include RA support at 15-20 hours/week (or equivalent) plus summer stipend to cover travel, living expenses, and research.

How To Apply (limited to current Stanford graduate students and exceptional seniors and juniors)

Successful candidates will have demonstrated a track record of superior analytical ability, strong oral and written communication skills (including full fluency in English and Chinese), knowledge of high technology and entrepreneurship, high motivation, and willingness to be part of a dynamic international research team.

Applicants should submit

1) A brief statement (not to exceed one single-spaced page) which describes the candidate's interests and skills,

2) a curriculum vitae, and

3) contact information for 2 references, preferably recent professors, advisors, or employers

Send applications to

SPRIE

Encina Hall East 301

Stanford University

Stanford, CA 94305-6055

Questions? Please contact Wena Rosario, Administrative Associate.

Deadline for receipt of all materials: December 31, 2005

Applicants will be notified of decisions in January 2005.

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Steven Miller is Director of the International Security Program, Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly journal International Security, and co-editor of the International Security Program's book series, BCSIA Studies in International Security (which is published by the MIT Press). Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and taught Defense and Arms Control Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is co-author of the recent monograph, War with Iraq: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives (2002) and a frequent contributor to Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Miller is editor or co-editor of some two dozen books, including, most recently, Offense, Defense, and War (October 2004), The Russian Military: Power and Policy (September 2004), Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict- Revised Edition (2001), and The Rise of China (2000).

 

Miller is the co-chair of the U.S. Pugwash Committee and a member of the Committee on International Security Studies (CISS) of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Council of International Pugwash, the Advisory Committee of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), and the Scientific Committee of the Landau Network Centro Volta (Italy). He is a former member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). Within Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Miller serves on the steering committees of the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern and East-Central Europe and of the Harvard Ukrainian Project.

Suggested readings for the seminar:

 

(1) Teresa Johnson, "Writing for International Security: A Contributor's Guide." International Security, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall 1991), pp. 171-180.

(2) For a critical view of the journal: Hugh Gusterson, "Missing the End of the Cold War in International Security," in Jutta Weldes, et al., Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 319-345.

(3) For a survey of the evolution of the journal: Steven Miller, "International Security at 25: From One World to Another," International Security, Vol 26, No. 1 (Summer 2001), pp. 5-39.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Steven E. Miller Editor in Chief, International Security, and Director, International Security Program Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
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President Bush's 2002 nuclear posture differs sharply from its predecessors and is relevant to the President's recently repeated assertion that he will strike first against any country that might pose a threat of using weapons of mass destruction.

The main new trend in the posture is that the US will be prepared to use nuclear weapons in a much wider range of circumstances than before. Such an emphasis has not been seen since the days of "flexible response" forty or so years ago, when tactical nuclear weapons were deployed in Europe and elsewhere.

Yet, nuclear weapons don't help much with the kinds of missions the US prepares for, including the ones noted in the posture, such as digging out deep underground facilities that might contain bio-warfare agents. Deep underground facilities are difficult or impossible to destroy without large nuclear explosions that create large amounts of fallout. Nuclear weapons are more suited for use against shallow-buried facilities (of the order of ten meters deep) but even in those cases, Hiroshima-type yields are needed, and complete destruction of the bio-agents cannot be guaranteed. Other uses mentioned to justify the posture are even more marginal in their feasibility.

Given the overwhelming US conventional advantage and the relative invulnerability of the US to all but nuclear weapons, the US nuclear posture should aim at minimizing the chances of nuclear weapons spread rather than seeking marginal gains with tactical nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are equalizers. Why bring them back into the forefront of regional problems, whether in the Middle East or anywhere else?

Increasing the US nuclear threat will increase the motivation of adversaries, big or small, to improve and extend their own nuclear force, or to get one if they don't already have one. The US cannot subsequently be confident that it will be the only power to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. There are now several demonstrations of the relative ease with which states can acquire nuclear weapons. North Korea, a poor nation of 17 million people, made and separated with little help enough plutonium for perhaps one or more weapons. South Africa made at least six weapons with essentially no help. Other cases tell the same tale.

The nuclear genie is long out of the bottle and the relative stability that characterized the Cold War is also gone. Instead, the US has been pursuing an aggressive strategy of military expansion around the world and ever closer to other states' vital interests. Quite apart from the wisdom of that strategy, is it wise to couple it with an increased nuclear threat to possible adversaries, as the posture does?

In the past, the existence of a real or putative nuclear threat has been a serious motivation for states to improve and extend their own nuclear force, or to get one if they didn't already have it. That was true of the US, USSR, China, and others. The US, as the world's strongest and least vulnerable major power, should pursue a strategy that minimizes the most serious risk rather than increase it for marginal, and questionable, benefits. The posture implies a strategy that does the opposite.

A nuclear posture better suited to our times would recognize these changes. It would lay the policy basis for the following difficult, long-term, but necessary steps:

1. Minimizing the demand for nuclear weapons, focusing on Asia. Asia contains most of the world's population and might, in a few decades, have most of its wealth. Three states there (four if Israel is included) have nuclear weapons; several more could readily have them. The US nuclear posture should provide US initiatives toward a more stable security order there, one in which peaceful states will not be threatened by nuclear or potentially nuclear rivals. The Non-Proliferation Treaty provides a basis -the only existing basis- for such an order, but it needs to be updated with more inducements in the way of technical cooperation and reassurance, and more clearly defined internationally agreed sanctions if the treaty is disregarded. The US nuclear posture in essence forswears the lead in this endeavor.

2. A pattern for nuclear arms reductions that would include eventually limitations on all arsenals. Openness here is as important as numbers. The US and Russia have most of the weapons but, after the first hundred or so survivable weapons, it matters less and less how many a state has. An internationally recognized framework is needed that can be applied to the regions of the world where nuclear rivalries threaten. Instead, the US has gone the other way, with a sketchy US-Russia agreement that delays the time scale for reductions and does not provide any precedent for international agreements on inspections.

3. A strategy for addressing the problem of nuclear terrorism. The most serious dimension of that problem--the possibility of a terrorist nuclear weapon --is closely related to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and capabilities. Any strategy to avoid that has an important international dimension. Hundreds of tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, most of it surplus in the US and former Soviet Union from the Cold War, need to be better secured and accounted for. A solution to the problem of keeping nuclear weapons and materials out of the tens of millions of shipping containers that crisscross the world requires international cooperation on standards, procedures, cost sharing, and inspections. A good start has been made toward these goals, mainly through the Nunn-Lugar programs, but more money and agreements are needed. A modern nuclear posture should establish the policy basis for securing those resources and agreements. There is at present no comprehensive global strategy for securing such vital agreements and establishing the institutions to enforce them. Consistent, high-priority US participation is vital to secure other countries' participation.

4. A strategy for reducing the risks of accidental nuclear launch while at the same time maintaining invulnerability of the reduced deployments. The nuclear posture briefly mentions the "rigorous safeguards" on US weapons systems and proposes to deal with the problem of accidental or unauthorized launch of "certain foreign forces" via nuclear missile defense. That is at best a partial and certainly a distant remedy. Maintaining the human and financial infrastructure for nuclear weapons system will become more difficult in the US as well as elsewhere. Given the relationship among nuclear deterrent forces, the problem cannot be solved unilaterally. A program that would use US technical leadership to improve warning and control for all states threatened by nuclear weapons is also needed. It is needed now in South Asia. Later, it could help limit crises with or among Russia and China, and help prevent proliferation in the Middle East. President Reagan, with a portion of Star Wars, and, before him, President Eisenhower, with Open Skies, had something of the kind in mind. It is time to begin thinking about how this would look in modern form.

In summary, a nuclear posture for a world with more dispersed power centers and more widely available nuclear technology should have more, not less, emphasis on international agreements. President Eisenhower stated fifty years ago that "Only chaos will result from our abandonment of collective international security." That is even truer in today's world than it was then. The present administration seems to have a bias against such agreements, which are slow to bear fruit and do not win votes. That is shown in the posture itself, which states that arms control measures will not stand in the way of nuclear weapons development.

Yet these and other agreements are essential to deal with the dangers of proliferation to unstable states, with the possible use of international trade for terrorism, and with the risk of accidents and unauthorized launch. Nuclear deterrence continues to be needed, but the last thing a modern posture should do is to bring nuclear weapons back into the forefront of regional deterrence.

Ironically, when it has committed itself to the task, the US has used international agreements more effectively than any other nation. The Cold War-- better called a Cold Peace perhaps, since the military lines of demarcation never changed while the safeguarding of Western values and collapse of the Soviet Union were brought about mainly by economic and political instruments-- saw a rise in US power and influence in good part through the use of US-led international agreements in the areas of trade and security, areas that are necessarily related. Now is not the time to give up that approach, especially not in matters relating to nuclear weapons.

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CDDRL Faculty Associate, Michael McFaul and Hoover Institution Fellow, Abbas Milani argue that Iran's nuclear program does not pose a direct threat to the United States. US leaders, therefore, need a radical new approach that would nurture change from within Iran rather than impose change from without.

Even when the European-Iranian agreement to halt Iran's uranium-enrichment program looked solid, the United States was blunt in its disapproval. The ink was barely dry on the accord when the Bush administration, it appears, began trying to derail it.

First, rather than endorse the accord, Secretary of State Colin Powell essentially accused the Iranians of lying when they said their nuclear program was for peaceful purposes. He announced that new intelligence showed Iran is developing a nuclear warhead to arm its Shahab-3 ballistic missiles. Then, at a Nov. 20 meeting of heads of state in Santiago, Chile, President Bush stated unequivocally that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon.

Why would the administration take such a combative stance? Because hard-liners within the administration thought Tehran would use the settlement to buy time for building nuclear weapons, and that the United States would be better off bombing Iran's suspected weapons sites.

Proponents of using military force against Iran have not yet won the argument within the Bush administration. But the past two weeks of strong pronouncements about the threat Iran poses suggest that the military option may be gaining ground. And Iran's last-minute attempts to maintain some enrichment capabilities -- which by press time Friday were threatening to kill the European agreement -- no doubt strengthened the hard-liners' hand.

Before the United States even considers such a drastic step as airstrikes against suspected nuclear weapons sites -- or even trying to compel the United Nations to endorse new economic sanctions against Iran -- it is essential that our leaders be clear about what they are trying to accomplish in Iran and whether such actions will help or hurt.

If the ultimate goal is to create a democracy -- one that would not fear the United States and therefore have less use for the bomb -- then dual-track diplomacy with Iran's government and with its people is more likely to work than military action.

Probably the most important question the administration's leaders should ask themselves is whether Iran, even a nuclear-armed Iran, poses a direct threat to the United States and its allies.

The answer, we believe, is no.

The mullahs who rule Tehran long ago gave up their ideological quest to "export'' revolution. Like the last generation of octogenarians who ruled the Soviet Union, Iran's leaders today want nuclear weapons as a means to help them preserve their power, not to help them spread their model of theocratic rule to other countries.

Deterrence works

In other words, even if Iran's rulers succeeded in building nuclear bombs, they would be very unlikely to take on the United States and its vast nuclear arsenal or to attack Israel. (The mullahs in Tehran understand that any nuclear attack against Israel would trigger full retaliation from the United States.) In dealing with Iran, deterrence works.

Tehran would also be unlikely to pass a bomb to Islamist terrorists, despite its support of Arab terrorist organizations that continue to attack Israel. One reason, again, is deterrence. Iran's rulers know that the United States would probably be able to trace the weapon back to them and retaliate.

The threat of a nuclear Iran comes, instead, from the reaction it is almost sure to spark in the region and the world, possibly sending Egypt and Saudi Arabia on their own quests for nuclear weapons.

Such an arms race would undermine the longstanding Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, an agreement signed by nearly 190 countries, that has proved indispensable in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Bush administration hard-liners want to save that arms-control treaty by using arms. In advocating a "surgical'' military strike against Iran's most important nuclear facilities, including the once hidden enrichment plant in Natanz, they cite Israel's airstrike against Iraq's nuclear complex at Osirak in 1981 as a model of success. They argue that an American (or Israeli) strike would not end Iran's nuclear aspirations, but would dramatically slow its program and make the mullahs reconsider the costs of trying to restart it.

Attack would backfire

But a pre-emptive military strike would instead do just what the hard-liners in Tehran hope for: It would unite their people behind them.

Even a precise bombing campaign would kill hundreds if not thousands of innocent Iranians; destroy ancient buildings of historical and religious importance; trigger an Iranian counterstrike, however feeble, against American targets and friends in the region, and spur the mullahs to increase their direct support for American enemies in the Shiite part of Iraq.

Even more important, an attack would only encourage Tehran to redouble its efforts to build a bomb, just as Saddam Hussein sped up his efforts after the 1981 strike. It would also hurt the democratic opposition movement inside Iran, which is already in retreat and cannot afford another setback. After an attack, Iranians, not unlike Americans, are sure to rally around the flag and their government.

If the administration decides, in the end, that American military options are limited and counterproductive, the only serious way to impede the development of Iranian nuclear weapons is through negotiation. Iran's recent accord with France, Britain and Germany is only temporary, and negotiations are expected to continue.

If the United States were to jump in now, it could try to ensure that our European allies accept nothing less than a permanent and verifiable dismantling of Iran's enrichment capabilities, as well as banning any plutonium production.

Allowing the Iranians to enrich even some uranium, which they say will be used merely to feed their nuclear power plant, makes it too easy to cheat. To make the deal work, the United States would need to join with Europe, Russia and China in pledging to guarantee Iran a permanent and continuous supply of enriched uranium. To make the deal even more attractive, the fuel could be offered at reduced prices.

Even under the strictest inspection regime, Iran's leaders will cheat, as they have often done in the past, and they will eventually divert enriched uranium from peaceful to military purposes. But the harder and more transparent the allies can make it, the longer it will take Iran to begin building bombs.

In the long run, the world's only serious hope for stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons is the development of a democratic government in Tehran. A democratic Iran will become an ally of the Western world no longer in need of a deterrent threat against the United States.

Democracy in Iran therefore obviously serves U.S. national interests. Yet Bush administration officials (as well as their predecessors in the Clinton, Bush and Reagan administrations) have not succeeded in developing a strategy for advancing the cause of Iranian democracy.

New strategy

What is needed is a radical new approach that would nurture change from within the country, in alliance with Iran's democratic movement, rather than impose change from without.

A first step would be to establish an American presence in Tehran, as many in Iran's democratic opposition have proposed. Now decades old, the U.S. policy of isolating Iran has not weakened but instead strengthened its autocratic government.

Of course, we are not suggesting that the United States open an embassy in Tehran and turn a blind eye to human rights abuses; that would only contribute to the further consolidation of the mullahs' hold on power. But we are suggesting a new strategy that would allow American government officials, as well as civic leaders, academics and business people, to engage directly with Iranian society.

This engagement cannot occur on a widespread scale without some level of diplomatic relations and some revision of the American sanctions against Iran. Then, more Western foundations would be able to make grants to pro-democracy Iranian organizations, while business people -- and especially the Iranian-American business community in the United States -- would be able to leverage their capital and know-how to influence economic and political change inside Iran. A U.S. presence in Iran would, not incidentally, also enhance the West's ability to monitor Iran's nuclear program.

Critics of engagement argue that diplomatic relations with Iran will reward this "axis of evil'' member for years of supporting terrorism and pursuing nuclear weapons. In fact, an American presence in Iran is the mullahs' worst nightmare.

Iran's government has long used its ongoing tensions with the United States, as well as the embargo, as an excuse for the economic difficulties that are, in fact, the direct results of the regime's incompetence and corruption. Tehran's leaders have conveniently labeled nearly all of their opponents as "agents of America.''

Most important, part of the regime's self-declared legitimacy lies in its claim to be the only Muslim country fighting what it sees as U.S. imperialism. If the United States could prove it's not an enemy of the Iranian people, the legitimacy of Iran's leaders would diminish.

Reagan's course

In the first years of his presidency, Ronald Reagan labeled the Soviet Union the "evil empire'' and went out of his way to avoid contact with such a regime.

Over time, however, Reagan charted a new course of dual-track diplomacy. He engaged Kremlin leaders (well before Gorbachev) in arms control, while also fostering contacts and information flow between the West and the Soviet people in the hope of opening them up to the possibilities of democracy.

In the long run, it was not arms control with the Soviets, but democratization within the Soviet Union, that made the United States safer.

If George W. Bush desires a foreign-policy legacy as grand as Reagan's, now is the time to think big and change course as dramatically as Reagan did.

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In this paper, we demonstrate how household investment is affected by participation in

migration in rural China. After describing investment patterns across different regions of rural China, we use a heuristic model to describe a relationship between migration and investment and to generate a set of testable hypotheses. We test the hypotheses using household data that we collected in rural China in 2000 and find that in poorer areas migration increases consumptive investment by nearly 20 percent. We find no evidence of a link between migration and productive investment.

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The United Nations High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change completed its comprehensive review of collective security, recommending historic changes to the U.N. in its report, "A more secure world: Our shared responsibility." Among the panel's 101 recommendations for the U.N. and member states are expansion of the U.N. Security Council and creation of a Peacebuilding Commission to advance proactive, preventive global security measures.

The report culminates a year-long project for which SIIS Senior Fellow Stephen J. Stedman served as research director. The 16-member panel, commissioned by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and chaired by former Thailand Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun, represents the U.N.'s most comprehensive effort to analyze collective security, since the founding of the international body in 1947. The select panel sought international input in an effort to honor the perspectives of all member states, as it analyzed current threats and identified specific security measures.

Nations are the "front line in today's combat," Annan said, introducing the report. He added, "The task of helping states improve their own capacities to deal with contemporary threats is vital and urgent. The United Nations must be able to do this better. The panel tells us how."

The report 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, chemical, biological and radiological weapons; terrorism; and transnational organized crime.

The panel proposed expanding the U.N. Security Council--for which it put forth two options--as well as creating a Peacebuilding Commission to help the Security Council pursue the recommended preventive security strategies. One proposal for Security Council expansion would appoint new permanent members, and the other would establish new long-term, renewable seats. Neither option creates any new vetoes.

In a cover letter to the secretary-general, Panyarachun thanked CISAC and Stedman for supporting the panel's work. CISAC Co-Director Christopher F. Chyba served on the panel's 30-member resource group, providing expertise on nuclear nonproliferation and bioterrorism. CISAC hosted a nuclear nonproliferation workshop at Stanford for the panel last March, and Panyarachun discussed security issues with representatives from China, India, Pakistan, Russia and the United States at CISAC's Five-Nation Project meeting in Bangkok last summer. Stedman's research staff included Bruce Jones, a former CISAC Hamburg Fellow, and Tarun Chhabra, a graduate of CISAC's undergraduate honors program.

Annan has asked Stedman to stay at the United Nations another year to help gain worldwide support in implementing the panel's recommendations.

The panel's report received prominent news coverage, including a front-page New York Times article ("Report urges big changes for the U.N.," by Warren Hoge, Dec. 4), and in the Economist an invited article by Annan ("Courage to fulfill our responsibilities," Dec. 4) as well as several other pieces in the Nov. 24 and Dec. 4 issues.

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Earlier this month, the so-called EU Three--Britain, France and Germany-- achieved an important victory for global security, convincing Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing activities pending further negotiation on its nuclear question. Though Iran claims that it does not desire a nuclear bomb, the West has long been skeptical of the oil-rich state's contention that it seeks a nuclear fuel cycle for energy purposes alone. Europe and the United States (and of course Israel) will sleep better knowing that Tehran is not pursuing enrichment activities, whatever their alleged purpose.

But the EU3 agreement, which fails to discuss consequences for Iran if it breaks the deal, is vulnerable to being undermined not only by Iran but also by the United States; both have already raised eyebrows in the wake of the accord. Iran raced to produce uranium hexafluoride, a gas that can be enriched into bomb fuel, before it began to observe the temporary suspension on Monday. And both President George W. Bush and outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell have publicly aired their suspicions that Iran will continue its drive for nuclear weapons under cover of the deal.

At the moment, administration hawks are pressing to confront the mullahs at the United Nations Security Council, where economic sanctions could be considered; calls for using force and for regime change are likely to follow.

Military action is inadvisable at this point, because of a dearth of solid intelligence and the secretive, geographically diffuse nature of Iran's nuclear sites. If the issue reaches the Security Council with the United States and Europe continuing along divergent paths, the inevitable deadlock will deal a severe and lasting blow to international security. Therefore, the agreement must be fortified to keep the Iranians honest, the Europeans effectively engaged and the U.S. hawks bridled.

This can be achieved through a U.S.-European accord laying out trigger mechanisms for specified consequences if Iran violates certain benchmarks. For example, if Iran fails to allow inspectors the access accorded by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty's additional protocol--which Iran is provisionally observing pending ratification--or resumes enrichment and centrifuge-building activities, it could face severe economic sanctions, censure by the Security Council (necessitating cooperation from Russia and China), or in the event of hostility, a forceful response.

We don't know yet whether Tehran will play by the rules. The regime has mastered the art of behaving badly and then seeking rewards for getting back into line. To date, the Europeans have played into its hands, offering carrots for compliance without wielding sticks to punish violations.

Therefore, the Bush administration's apparent comfort with a military option can serve as an important deterrent against Iranian cheating, arming the EU3 agreement with teeth that it would not otherwise have. Iran desires economic incentives but does not yet desperately need them; without a credible threat of U.S.-backed sanctions imposed by the international community, the mullahs can simply decide one day that the restrictions have ceased to be worth their while, and break any deal as though it were merely a business contract.

For the United States, accepting the EU3's carrot-based approach (provided the benchmarks are added) will show the world that it still supports negotiated diplomacy and multilateralism, even in cases where military threats loom. Participating in this framework will also send a message to Iran that the United States is not ruling out renewed relations. This would resonate with the largely pro-American Iranian populace, who despise their regime and are seeking inroads to break free of it.

But if the United States instead presents itself as a unilateralist maverick, it will hinder its own interests; the only thing Iranians disdain more than the mullahs is outside meddling with their deeply nationalistic desire for self-determination. The more overtly hostile the United States acts toward Iran, the more the mullahs are able to spin America's posture to alienate Iranians against the "Great Satan."

The way to keep the Iranian regime in check while speeding its demise is to insure the nuclear agreement through benchmarks and triggers, and then give the mullahs exactly what they ask for in terms of increased access to international institutions like the World Trade Organization.

Such carrots can also be Trojan Horses, allowing the forces of democratic reform within Iran to blossom by enabling pro-democracy elements to make global connections. The U.S. and Europe should saddle up those horses together.

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