Political science professor and APARC director emeritus Daniel I. Okimoto has received the Japanese Foreign Minister's Commendation. This commendation is awarded is in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the U.S.-Japan relationship. The years 2003 and 2004 mark the 150th anniversary, respectively, of American naval officer Commodore Perry's leadership of a squadron of sailing sloops and steam-powered warships into Edo Bay (now Tokyo Bay) in 1853; and the signing of the Treaty of Peach and Amity in 1854.

The commendation is awarded to 158 individuals and organizations in Japan and the United States who have contributed to enhancing the U.S.-Japan relationship. Okimoto received the award based on his research on Japan's political economy, foreign policy, the U.S.-Japan relationship, and increasing the understanding of Japan in the United States. He has hosted a series of exchanges among legislators from the United States and Japan to build understanding between the two countries. Okimoto has also written about the Japanese American experience in his autobiography, American In Disguise.

In a May 14 lecture hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Francis Fukuyama, PhD -- professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University and renowned author of The End of History and the Last Man -- discussed the problem of weak, underdeveloped nation-states; the effectiveness of various approaches to strengthening such states; and the importance of culture, context and history in the task of state-building. His lecture, titled "State-building: A Framework for Thinking about the Transfer of Institutions to Developing Countries," drew a full room of attendees to the Bechtel Conference Center in Encina Hall

A former member of the RAND Corp. and the U.S. Department of State who has written widely on issues of democratization and international political economy, Fukuyama first presented a framework with which nation-states can be evaluated according to two key criteria: the strength of the state, and the scope of its functions. The first refers to a state's ability to enforce its own laws and policies; the second refers to how involved the state becomes in carrying out various societal functions, ranging from basic functions such as maintaining law and order and protecting public health, to more "activist" functions such as running industries and redistributing wealth.

Fukuyama asserted that from a development standpoint, nation-states should be strong but should carry out only the minimum necessary functions. He said that only one country he has studied -- New Zealand -- has effectively moved toward this ideal in recent years. He noted that many struggling, developing nations, such as Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan and Turkey, are overly ambitious in their scope -- attempting to run vast industries, for example -- but are weak and unable to carry out their policies because of factors like corruption. Other states that Fukuyama identified as "failed states," such as Haiti and Sierra Leone, are both limited in scope and weak, attempting to carry out only the most basic governmental functions and not doing it very well.

Fukuyama then discussed and evaluated various approaches to strengthening developing nations. He noted that in recent years much emphasis has been placed on encouraging such nations to reduce the scope of their functions, through deregulation and privatization, but said the effectiveness of this approach is now in question. A more effective approach, he said, is helping weak nation-states build their own strong institutions, such as political parties, public health networks and central banking.

Unfortunately, Fukuyama said, sometimes the efforts of outside organizations to strengthen a country's institutions only make things worse, because solutions are imposed from outside rather than developed from within. "Ideally, we would want a country's own public health system to handle that country's problems with AIDS or malaria," he said. "But when you flood the country with your organization's own doctors and nurses and infrastructure, what do the local doctors do? They quit their government posts to get on the payroll of your NGO." In a few months or years, when the organization withdraws its support, Fukuyama noted, the system collapses, because it was not built to be self-sustaining.

At the end of his talk, Fukuyama emphasized the importance of understanding local culture, context and history in the task of state building. For example, he said, those who run programs aiming to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa should consider working with traditional faith healers, as they are an important part of the healthcare system in Africa.

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, a senior research scholar with the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at the Stanford Institute for International Studies and a senior adviser to CISAC's Preventive Defense Project, has been selected as a 2004 Carnegie Scholar.

The 15 scholars chosen this year by the Carnegie Corporation of New York will each receive up to $100,000 for a period of two years to pursue research. They join 52 others awarded the fellowships since 2000.

"The Carnegie Corporation has a long history of supporting path-breaking work in international security, and I am truly honored to be included in such a distinguished group of scholars," said Sherwood-Randall. "Given the state of the world -- and the fact that there are few foreign and defense policy goals that we can successfully pursue unilaterally -- I intend to use this support to generate new ideas about the leadership of America's key alliances and partnerships."

Sherwood-Randall's research topic is "Transforming Transatlantic Relations: A New Agenda for a New Era." Her study will seek to understand the elements of continuity and change in the global security environment in order to determine whether and how America's most important alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, can remain relevant and effective. She intends to publish the results of her work in a journal-length article as well as produce policy memoranda and briefings for appropriate officials in the U.S. government and relevant international organizations.

Sherwood-Randall served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia during the first Clinton Administration (1994-1996). She played a key role in creating a cooperative context for denuclearization efforts in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan and in establishing security ties with the new states of Central Asia. Prior to her government service, Sherwood-Randall served as co-founder and associate director of the Harvard Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, as chief foreign affairs and defense policy advisor to Sen. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., and as a guest scholar in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution.

Sherwood-Randall received her B.A. from Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges, magna cum laude. She received her doctorate in International Relations from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

Chosen in a highly competitive process -- from an initial group of 144 nominees, 54 were invited to provide complete proposals -- the 15 selected Carnegie Scholars will explore issues critical to economic growth and human development. These include the American electoral process; political theory of international law; school reform from an international perspective; a reconsideration of the Iran hostage crisis; the logic of suicide terrorism; local control and federal reform of education; how U.S. transatlantic relations can remain relevant and effective; Hispanic students' achievements in elementary education; justice in education; political obligations in World War I America; the rise of far-right extremist groups and the role masculinity plays in their resurgence; the role of the United States in the 21st century; and the rebirth of democracy in Iraq.

"The annual announcement of the Carnegie Scholars is an opportunity to celebrate original and creative thinking on a wide array of social issues important to the Corporation's strategies," said Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, who inaugurated the Scholars Program in 1999 to support innovative and path-breaking scholarship.

"Criteria for selection were based on stringent academic standards and the relevance of the project to Corporation program priorities," said Neil Grabois, Carnegie Corporation's vice president and director for strategic planning and program coordination, who facilitated the various levels of deliberations. "The program's definition of excellence incorporates demonstrating intellectual risk-taking, framing unusual questions, possessing the capacity to communicate clearly and effectively on complex themes, and advancing scholarship in the Corporation's programs."

The Carnegie Corporation of New York was created by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding. As a grant-making foundation, the Corporation seeks to carry out Carnegie's vision of philanthropy, which he said should aim to do real and permanent good in the world. The Corporation's capital fund, originally donated at a value of about $135 million, had a market value of $1.8 billion on Sept. 30, 2003. The Corporation awards grants totaling approximately $80 million a year in the areas of education, international peace and security, international development and strengthening U.S. democracy.

Faced with the deadly menace posed by transnational terror organizations, the nations of the world must redouble their cooperative efforts. The tasks ahead -- to disrupt terror groups and preempt their attacks -- require intense coordination among a multitude of national intelligence, national law enforcement, and military organizations. Unprecedented cooperation among all of the nuclear powers is needed to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terror groups.

Yet, paradoxically, the two nations that have suffered the worst terror attacks -- the United States and Russia -- are regressing more and more to national strategies. They have been unwilling to make the extra effort to reap the benefits of real international cooperation.

I believe that the United States' strategic vision of the war on terrorism is flawed. I fear it is following the isolationist path of the United States after World War I rather than pursuing the broad international programs it successfully undertook to protect its security interests after World War II.

The terrorists posing the greatest threat to the United States and to Russia are transnational, with cells in many different countries. To support their training and operations, they raise funds in many countries and maintain these in international bank accounts. They use satellite-based television as their principal means of propaganda, the World Wide Web as their principal means of communication and international airlines as their principal means of transportation. Their efforts to get weapons of mass destruction are based on penetrating the weakest security links among the nations possessing these weapons, and their successful guerrilla operations depend on their ability to get support from sympathizers among the more than 1 billion Islamic people around the world.

An international operation is clearly needed to successfully deal with this threat. But the United States is not making full use of other nations and international institutions to dry up the terrorists' funds in international bank accounts, to gain intelligence on their planning for future attacks, to penetrate their cells so that it has a chance of preempting these attacks, to organize all nuclear powers with effective security of their nuclear weapons and fissile material, and to conduct counterinsurgency operations wherever they are needed. Dealing effectively with transnational terror groups that operate with impunity across borders requires an international operation with the full cooperation of allies and partners in Europe and Asia.

This is not "mission impossible." In 1993, the United States was able to get all of the former members of the Warsaw Pact to join up with NATO in forming the Partnership for Peace to cooperate in peacekeeping operations. In 1994, the United States with the full cooperation of Russia was able to negotiate an agreement by which all nuclear weapons were removed from Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kazakhstan and by which substantial improvements were made in the security of nuclear weapons in Russia. In 1995, the United States was able to get an agreement under which NATO took responsibility for the peacekeeping operations in Bosnia, an operation that was believed at the time to be as dangerous and filled with religious and sectarian strife as Iraq today, and it was able to get dozens of non-NATO nations -- notably including Russia -- to join it in that operation.

Securing Russian cooperation required listening to Russian views and making accommodations wherever possible. As U.S. defense secretary, I had to meet with my Russian counterpart four different times before I came to understand how to structure the command in Bosnia in a way acceptable to both Russians and NATO. The general lesson from this example, which is still applicable today, was best expressed by Winston Churchill, who observed during World War II, "The problem with allies is they sometimes have ideas of their own." But in reflecting on that problem, he also said, "The only thing worse than fighting a war with allies is trying to fight a war without allies."

What lessons can we learn from Churchill today? Had the Bush administration understood better the dangers of the post-conflict phase, surely it would have worked harder to get the support of those countries before invading Iraq. In any event, after the war it would have reached out to them and tried to achieve an accommodation that would have allowed their support during the reconstruction phase.

Instead, the administration took the position that any nation that was not with the United States during the war would not have a role in the reconstruction. To compound the problem, the United States did not seek meaningful assistance from the United Nations. Today, in the light of the difficulties experienced in restoring security in Iraq, the administration is reaching out to the United Nations and requesting that it play a major role in the political reconstitution of Iraq, but it is still not working effectively with the governments of France, Germany and Russia.

Just as the United States erred in believing that it did not need more international support in Iraq, so did the Russian government err in believing that it did not need more international support as it reconstituted its government after the Soviet era. The Putin administration believed -- correctly -- that it could turn around the Russian economy without significant assistance from other countries, and it believed that it could deal most effectively with its terrorist threat without interference from other countries. It also apparently believed that moving toward a level of democracy conflicted with the controls necessary for economic recovery and for fighting its terror war. So today we see a Russia that has enjoyed a healthy 7 percent growth rate each of these past five years, but has stopped -- indeed reversed -- its move towards becoming a liberal democracy. This reversal over the long term will have profoundly negative consequences for the Russian economy and for the Russian people, and unquestionably it is setting Russia on a course that will alienate it both from the United States and the European Union.

Both the Bush administration and the Putin administration have apparently made the decision that they can achieve their goals without broad international support. Both governments have erred in that judgment. But it is not too late to correct the judgment, and I fervently hope that both of governments will do so. The most important step in that process is reviving cooperation between the United States and Russia.

In the past ten days, the US-led Coalition effort to rebuild Iraq as a stable, unified, and democratic state has fallen into crisis. The most alarming aspect is not the Baathist-inspired violence in Fallujah, bloody and horrific though that fighting has been. This has been a limited uprising from the minority Sunni section of the country, many of whose politicians have now entered the peaceful political game. It does not threaten the overall viability of the political transition program in Iraq.

The Shiite uprising that began a few days ago is another story, however. Scholars and historians of Iraq have long warned that an uprising among the Shia would spell doom for the Coalition, and for any hope of peaceful transition to a decent form of governance. We are not yet facing a generalized Shiite resistance. Rather, we are locked in a confrontation with a ruthless young thug, Muqtada al-Sadr, who leads an Iranian-backed, fascist political movement that spouts a shallow mix of Islamist and nationalist slogans in a bid to conquer power.

Among most Shia -- including, crucially, Iraq's most widely revered religious leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani-Muqtada Sadr is a reviled figure, a crude street tough with no religious qualifications and no positive political program, who has used coercion and intimidation as a substitute for genuine religious knowledge and authority. Unfortunately, however, since the Coalition began a crackdown ten days ago on his malicious operation, Sadr has maneuvered brilliantly to portray himself as the leader of a broader nationalist and Islamist insurgency. Now, growing numbers of frustrated and marginal young Iraqi men -- including it appears, some Sunni elements -- are rallying to his cause.

If we do not confront this new resistance in a politically agile and militarily forceful and adept manner, everything we have done to help Iraqis rebuild their country as a democracy could unravel in a matter of weeks.

The democratic transition is moving forward, in many inspiring ways. With US assistance, civil society is organizing, political parties are beginning to mobilize, and hundreds of "democracy dialogues" are discussing the country's constitutional structure and future. Two UN teams are consulting with Iraqis on how to structure the interim government that will assume power on June 30, and how to structure and administer the elections for a transitional government, due by this December or January.

However, elections can only go forward and the transition succeed if the agents and means of violence are brought under control.

Underlying the current upsurge in violence has been the mounting problem posed by heavily armed militias in the Shiite south. Loyal to political parties and religious militants, riven by factional divides, determined to impose an Iranian-style theocratic dictatorship, and lavishly armed, funded, and encouraged by various power factions in Iran, these radical Islamist militias (as well as Sunni and Kurdish peshmerga militias in the north) have been casting a long shadow over the political process in Iraq. In many provinces, the militia fighters outnumber and certainly outgun the new Iraqi armed forces.

Several Islamic fundamentalist parties have been playing a clever double game. As their representatives in Baghdad negotiate and compromise with other parties, exhibiting sweet reason and moderation, their militias have been stocking heavy arms, menacing opponents, and preparing for the coming war in Iraq.

Unless the militias are demobilized and disarmed, a transition to democracy in Iraq will become impossible. Rather, at every step of the way -- from the formation of parties, to the registration of voters, to the election campaign, to the casting and counting of votes -- the democratic process will be desecrated by violence, fear, and fraud.

Key officials within the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) have begun to recognize the urgency of this issue. Over the last three months, a plan has quietly been prepared and negotiated for the comprehensive disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of all the major militias. But this plan, which relies heavily on financial and employment incentives for voluntary compliance by the major militias, can only work if all the militias are disarmed. Those forces that will not negotiate and cooperate must be confronted and disarmed by force.

This brings us to the events of the last week, to the person of Muqtada Sadr, and to the biggest, most ruthless militia that stands indefatigably outside any process of negotiation and voluntary disarmament. A fiery thirty-one-year-old mullah, whose father and brothers were martyred in the Shiite resistance to Saddam, Muqtada has nothing of the Islamic learning and sophistication that would put him anywhere close to the religious stature and authority of an Ayatollah. But he knows how to organize, mobilize, and intimidatehas used the reputation of his father among the poor urban masses, and the language of historic resistance to external impositions, to mobilize a growing following among downtrodden young urban men in particular. His support is confined to a small minority among the Shia of Iraq, but it is the kind of minority, demographically, that makes revolutions and seizes power, and its devotion to his declarations and obedience to his commands is apparently intense.

In recent months, Sadr's militia -- the al-Mahdi Army -- and his loose political movement that surrounds it have been growing alarmingly in size, muscle, and daring. They have seized public buildings, beaten up university professors and deans, taken over classrooms and departments, forced women to wear the hijab, set up illegal sharia courts, imposed their own brutal penalties, and generally made themselves a law onto themselves. As with the Nazis or any other totalitarian movement, all of this street action and thuggery is meant to intimidate and cow opponents, to create the sense of an unstoppable force, and to strike absolute fear into the hearts of people who would be so na?ve as to think they could shape public policy and power relations by peaceful, democratic means.

As with the Nazis, Muqtada has been guilty of brazen crimes well before his effort to seize power openly. A year ago, Sadr's organization stabbed to death a leading moderate Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Abdel-Majdid al-Khoei, who would have been a force for peaceful democratic change and a dangerous rival to Sadr. The murder took place in the Imam Ali mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine. That is the level of respect that Sadr manifests for his own religion. Just three weeks ago, on the night of March 12, apparently in alliance with fighters from other Shiite militias and with the local Diwaniyya police force, the Mahdi Army invaded the Gypsy town of Qawliyya after a dispute over what Sadr's forces alleged were morals violations by the town. After pumping round upon round of automatic rifle fire, mortars, and RPGs into Qawliyya, the Mahdi Army brought in bulldozers and literally leveled a town of some thousand people. We still do not know how many people died in this blatant act of ethnic cleansing (as the towns folk had been warned in advance of the impending doom, and many if not most were able to flee). But at the very least, Iraq now has hundreds of internally displaced people from this incident of terror, and eighteen refugees apprehended by Sadr's forces endured ten days of brutal beatings in the organization's detention center. By the logic of Muqtada Sadr, this is the kind of "rule of law" Iraq needs.

In recent weeks, Sadr's propaganda, both in his oral statements and through his weekly newspaper, the Hawza, have become increasingly incendiary, propagating the most outrageous and explosive lies (for example, that the US was responsible for recent deadly bombings) deliberately designed to provoke popular violence. Finally, on March 28, after months of costly delay, the Coalition finally began to move against this monster. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer ordered the closure of the newspaper, and Muqtada Sadr reacted by ordering his followers to rise up violently against the Coalition. Perhaps in response, the Coalition finally ordered the arrest on April 4 of a senior Sadr aide, Mustafa al-Yacoubi, and 24 others -- including Sadr himself -- for the murder of al-Khoei. About half the suspects, including Sadr, are still at large.

Sadr responded to these arrests by unleashing a revolutionary campaign to seize power. Having already stormed numerous public building in recent months, his followers took over the offices of the Governor of Basra and assaulted police stations in several cities, including Karbala with its sacred Shiite religious shrines to the Imam Abbas and the Imam Husayn. In Najaf his followers invaded Shia Islam's holiest center, the Shrine of the Imam Ali. These attempted power grabs are not new. Last October, Coalition forces intercepted 30 busloads of a thousand heavily armed Sadr followers as they were headed down from Baghdad to Karbala to seize control of its shrines and the central city.

On Monday, the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III, declared Muqtada Sadr an "outlaw." Now there is no turning back. If any kind of decent, democratic, and peaceful political order is to be possible in Iraq, the Coalition will need to arrest Muqtada Sadr, crush his attempt to seize power by force, and dismantle his Mahdi army.

We are now embarked on a dangerous and bloody campaign in which, tragically, many more American, other Coalition, and Iraqi lives will be lost. But if we do not confront this military challenge now, while we work to rebuild a broader consensus among Iraqi political forces on the rules of the game and the shape of the new political system, we will lose the second war for Iraq, with frightening implications not only for the peace and stability of that country and the wider region, but for our own national security.