Foreign Policy

What's the main problem in Russia today? Most people have a ready answer: President Vladimir Putin's strangulation of democracy. Yes, but there's a bigger one. That's whether Russia is stable enough to hold together.

The police officer stepped into the traffic, blocking our car. Tapping the hood twice, he waved us to the side of the road. My driver, Amir, who had been grinning broadly to the Persian pop his new speaker system thumped out, turned grim. "I don't have a downtown permit," he said, referring to the official sticker allowing cars in central Tehran at rush hour. "It could be a heavy fine."

The Iraqis who braved violence to vote on Sunday in the country's first free election in 50 years were, like voters everywhere, expressing democratic belief in ownership over their political future. Many also believed, in accordance with the teaching of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the moderate Iraqi Shia leader, that voting was a religious obligation.

Last week President Bush again laid out a faith-based view of the world and again took heat for it. Human history, the president said in his inaugural address, "has a visible direction, set by liberty and the author of liberty." Accordingly, America will pursue "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" -- and Mr. Bush has "complete confidence" of success. Critics on the left and right warned against grounding foreign policy in such nanve optimism (a world without tyrants?) and such unbounded faith.

In a second inaugural address tinged with evangelical zeal, George W. Bush declared: "Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world." The peoples of the world, however, do not seem to be listening. A new world order is indeed emerging -- but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited.

The Conference featured some of the world's leading experts on Al Qaeda, Islamic fundamentalism, and transnational terrorism. The meeting took place in the historic and beautiful Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill.

Both critics and admirers of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will agree on one thing: The man does not lack boldness or an appetite for risk-taking.

Consider some examples. In 1999, as army chief, he seized power from the elected -- if rather ineffectual -- government of Nawaz Sharif after the prime minister had tried to oust him.

In his just released book What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building, Noah Feldman presents a penetrating analysis of the present and future complexities involved in rebuilding Iraq. He fosters an urgent discussion on why America's ethical obligations to the Iraqi people should be at the forefront of the nation building process. Drawing on both historic and modern day examples, Feldman reveals why Iraq poses more ethical dilemmas than any prior nation undertaking. He offers a coherent case on how and why the U.S.

The U.S. military, with help from Kurdish-dominated Iraqi national guard units, has done its part in taking Fallujah. But the war against the insurgency will not be won by military means alone. The ultimate objective is political: drawing Iraq's Sunni Arabs into elections and the constitutional process that will follow. The only route to a peaceful Iraq runs through negotiations -- and those must include all the country's major groups, not only those who have already agreed to attempt federal democracy.