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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Mozambique enters its tenth year of peace following a brutal and destructive civil war, the signs of continued democratic transformation and pro-market economic reform appear rosy, at least at first glance. Donors and the international community have quietly lauded Joaquim Chissano's recent announcement that he is "not disposed" to seek a third term as president of this former Portuguese colony of 17 million on the southeast coast of Africa. Together with President Frederick Chiluba's similar announcement in Zambia a few months ago, it looks to many like an indication that these two African democracies are maturing and consolidating the gains that they have made in recent years.

Mozambique's continued place atop the list of the world's fastest-growing economies has been seen as another signal that commitment to the "Washington Consensus" will provide the funds required to bring infrastructure, schools, and health care to the rural majority. It is no wonder, then, that Mozambique finds itself highlighted as a success story for the United Nations in conflict-ridden Africa. Many credit Mozambique's remarkable transformation to the UN's efforts to sustain the drawn-out peace negotiations, demobilize more than 90,000 soldiers, rebuild a unified national army, and foster the rise of a legitimate, peaceful opposition. Donor investments continue to support Mozambique today, funding more than half of the government's annual budget.

On the ground in Mozambique, however, the continuation of this upward trajectory looks anything but guaranteed. The newspapers hint at trouble just beneath the surface: two major bank failures, the assassination of the country's most respected independent journalist, the continued depreciation of the currency, and stop-and-start talks between the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (or Frelimo, as the ruling party is usually called) and its main political rival, the Resist^encia Nacional Moçambicana (Renamo), about how to share power at the local level. In November 2000, when police in the city of Montepuez killed demonstrators challenging the government's claim to have won that year's national elections, tensions nearly exploded into large-scale violence. ¹

The UN's work in Mozambique was unprecedented in scope, and the results have been dramatic. Two consecutive free elections and growth rates approaching 10 percent a year over the past decade cannot be ignored. Some might argue that the items of bad news cited above are merely "bumps on the road" toward lasting peace, as Mozambicans of all stripes learn to resolve problems through dialogue and democratic competition. But a deeper look at Mozambique's political and economic situation suggests a bleaker interpretation.

The truth is that a number of deep cleavages threaten the future of Mozambique's democratic transition. What are these fundamental divisions? And more importantly, how can the political system be reformed in order to prevent them from worsening or even erupting into renewed civil war? A search for answers should begin with some basic background on Mozambique and its troubled recent history.

The book chapter is a revised and updated version of "Asymmetrical Federalism and State Breakdown in Russia," which originally was published in 1999 in Post-Soviet Affairs.

The only Reader on post-Soviet Russian politics, this important book brings together the best published work from a wide variety of sources. Unusually for a Reader, it also includes many up-to-date, specially commissioned contributions. Some forty of the world's leading specialists on Russian politics, a third of them Russians, cover institutional design, elections, parties, federalism, regional politics, presidency and legislature, economic reform and economic interests, foreign policy, public opinion, the mass media, and prospects for democracy.

Substantial editorial introductions to every section provide the student with essential background information, detailing the historical development, contemporary relevance, and current debates for each topic area and each individual chapter. The chapters themselves have been carefully selected and edited to be as useful and relevant as possible to all students of contemporary Russian politics,

With analysis of major recent developments, including the Duma election of 1999, the Presidential election of 2000, and the institutional changes launched by President Putin, this is the most comprehensive and authoritative guide to political institutions and processes in Putin's Russia.

The horrifying events of 11 September 2001 serve notice that civilization will confront severe challenges in the twenty-first century. As national security budgets expand in response, we should recognize that only a broad conception of security will be adequate to meet some of the threats that we may face. Biological security provides a powerful example. It must address both the challenge of biological weapons and that of infectious disease. The right approach should benefit public health even if major acts of biological terrorism never occur. Our thinking about biological security must transcend old misplaced analogies to nuclear and chemical security.

Nuclear security has been based on nonproliferation, deterrence, and defense, with intelligence woven throughout. Nonproliferation seeks to prevent the diversion of materials from civilian programs to military or terrorist weapons. Should nonproliferation fail, the United States relies on deterrence through the threat of retaliation. Defense, active or civil, has so far been less central.

Effective biological security requires a different mix. For all its challenges, nuclear nonproliferation is comparatively robust, in part because the production of weapons-usable uranium or plutonium provides a conspicuous bottleneck through which any nuclear program must pass, unless those materials are stolen. This is why preventing nuclear theft is such a high priority in the post-Cold War world. Biological agents

are easier to acquire. Most can be found in naturally occurring outbreaks. Weaponizing these agents has proved challenging for terrorist groups, but the Aum Shinrikyo's unsuccessful efforts to spray the anthrax organism throughout Tokyo in 1993 warned that attempted mass urban attacks were no longer in the realm of the fantastic.

The transfer of dangerous biological agents should be controlled where possible, and the spread of the technologies and personnel to weaponize them should be impeded. But any biological nonproliferation regime will necessarily be less robust than its nuclear counterpart, because the relevant materials, technologies, and knowledge are far more widespread.

Biological terrorism also challenges requirements for successful deterrence. Because some diseases incubate for a week or more, identifying the perpetrators of an attack may prove difficult. A terrorist group might even hope that its attack would go unrecognized; when followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh infected 750 Oregonians with salmonella in 1984, it took over a year before the infection was determined to have been intentional. Finally, as with any form of terrorism, some groups may simply be unconcerned about retaliation.

In the face of these difficulties, good intelligence is all the more important. Warning and prevention are preferable to coping with the consequences of an attack, but we must also be ready should an attack occur. This requires that greater emphasis be placed on improving public health, a kind of homeland defense that is applicable to both unintentional and intentional disease outbreaks.

Because of disease incubation times, the first responders to a biological attack may well be health-care workers at hospitals and clinics rather than specialized units. The speed and effectiveness of a response will depend on disease surveillance: the recognition by health-care workers that certain illnesses appear unusual and the rapid notification of the proper authorities. Because incubation times often exceed international travel times, both domestic and international components are required. But the domestic component of disease surveillance in most nations, including the United States, is too weak, and international networks are inadequate. Donor nations need to increase support for these efforts. And there are many other needs, such as developing and stockpiling sufficient vaccines, antibiotics, or antivirals and otherwise preparing to meet the enormous challenges that would be posed by a major outbreak. It is time to quicken the pace of these efforts, to which departments of health are as central as departments of defense.

Disease surveillance and response are not nonproliferation measures, so cannot substitute for an effective verification regime under the Biological Weapons Convention. But biological security requires the developed world, especially the United States, to see that its ongoing self-interest is closely allied with sustainable public-health improvements in the developing world. And the explosion of biotechnology, with the weapons implications that follow from it, requires the scientific community to discuss its responsibilities in earnest.

STANFORD, Calif.- For the past seven years, the United States has been negotiating a verification protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, hoping to put teeth into the convention's ban on biological weapons production. The Bush administration recently rejected the latest draft of the protocol, viewing it as irredeemably flawed. This is a good time to ask what a new American strategy should be for security against biological threats. It is difficult to predict the likelihood or scale of biological attack. The right policy will provide benefits whether or not an attack occurs.

The first step is conceptual: we must stop thinking about biological security in the way we think about nuclear security. Few aspects of the United States strategy for nuclear security carry over cleanly to the biological case. Security against nuclear attack has relied upon nonproliferation and deterrence, with comparatively little role, so far, for defense. Security against biological-weapons threats should lean primarily on defense.

Nonproliferation, for example, is far more difficult in the biological case. Biological agents are microscopic organisms that can be grown with equipment readily available all over the world -- although the resulting weapons have proved difficult for terrorists to master. Many of the organisms can be acquired during naturally occurring outbreaks. Controls remain valuable, but they will never play the central role that they do in nuclear security. And as biotechnology explodes in the coming decades, nonproliferation will face ever greater challenges.

Deterrence may likewise be of limited use in preventing attacks with biological weapons. While the use of battlefield biological weapons may be deterred by threats, biological terrorism could remain largely immune. The incubation times of most diseases -- for example, seven to 17 days for smallpox -- may lead terrorists to hope they can cover their tracks through covert releases of biological agents. Deterrence relies on the threat of punishment. An attacker who cannot be identified cannot be threatened.

When the Aum Shinrikyo cultists sprayed an anthrax organism in Tokyo -- they did so unsuccessfully several times before their deadly 1995 nerve-gas attack -- they made no announcements and the attacks went unnoticed. When followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh infected 750 Oregonians in 1984 with salmonella, it took over a year for the attack to be distinguished from a natural outbreak.

Rather than nonproliferation and deterrence, biological security must emphasize civil defense. Civil defense in the biological realm means improving the public health system. Most important, it requires improving disease surveillance. Unusual disease outbreaks must be recognized quickly, so that a rapid response is possible. Health care workers in clinics, hospitals and private practice must know how to identify such outbreaks and be ready and able to pass their information rapidly to city, state and national authorities.

This kind of preparedness would also help to prevent unintentional outbreaks of disease. Because infected passengers can travel the world in less time than it takes for a disease to incubate, it is crucial, for the national interest as well as for humanitarian reasons, to improve disease surveillance overseas. The United States welcomes 50 million visitors every year and imports $40 billion worth of food. Disease cannot be stopped at the border. The United States must act internationally as well as nationally.

Because biological security would offer protection against both natural and nefarious transmission of disease, a sound policy would directly benefit society even if no attack ever happened. Effective biological security requires that we fit the cure to the disease.

This volume contains the proceedings of a conference held at the Center for International Security and Arms Control in May 1996. The meeting was the latest in a series that CISAC had held over the years with Russian specialists from the Center for Scientific Research of the Committee of Scientists for Global Security, the Ministry of Defense, and the Russian Academy of Sciences. The general rubric under which these meetings were organized is "Strategic Stability to the Year 2000."

The May meeting had a special significance because 1996 was a year of presidential elections in both Russia and the United States, and the prospect of these elections was inevitably reflected in the discussions. But another general point emerged in the meeting, and that was the need to pay more attention to the strategic relationship between Russia and the U.S. Much had been done since the end of the Cold War to wind down the nuclear competition between the two countries, and agreements have been signed to reduce the enormous nuclear arsenals built up during the Cold War. There is much to be done, however, to ensure that this course is continued. The uncertainty
about ratification of START II by the State Duma, and the proposals in the U.S. Congress for deployment of a national ABM system both cast doubt on the possibility of further reductions in strategic offensive arms. The prospects for pushing nuclear weapons into the background of international politics are clouded by the renewed Russian interest in the role of tactical weapons in regional conflicts, and by U.S. interest
in the use of nuclear weapons to deter chemical and biological weapons attacks.

The issues discussed in the conference are embedded in broader political relationships, and this meeting suggested the need for a more intensive and broader strategic dialogue. In both countries there had been a lessening of interest in issues of arms control, but the process of reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons, to which both states are formally committed, is a complex and contentious one, which requires
political trust and careful management. Hence, the importance of a strategic dialogue which examines the conceptual basis of Russian-U.S. relations. Several participants in the conference spoke of the need to transform, or move away from, nuclear deterrence.
Many proposals were advanced for further cooperation in arms control and disarmament. But it is clear that much remains to be done to move Russian-U.S. relations onto a more stable footing.