As if the U.S. military weren't busy enough in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's now got another project looming: building an entirely new Africa Command from the ground up. For years, the Department of Defense split the continent between three existing commands - Central, European, and Pacific. But on February 6, 2007, the George W. Bush administration announced that Africa was finally going to get individual attention.

If the move was meant as demonstration of Africa's crucial importance to the United States, however, it was received as more of an insult. From the moment that U.S. Africa Command (Africom) was even mentioned, rumors began to fly. The command was surely looking for a permanent home on the African continent, critics said, and the new military organization would lead to a burgeoning U.S. military presence in the region. Some, including most of the governments in Sub-Saharan Africa, feared a sort of neocolonial U.S. engagement. Meanwhile, Africom failed (and still fails) to clearly explain its mission, adding credibility to the rampant doubts.

Two years later, fevers have cooled, but Africom remains a contentious issue. Here's a look at what the command really is (and isn't), and why it fits in quite nicely with the world of counterinsurgency traditionally left to commanders in the Middle East and Central Asia.

"Africom was created to fight terrorism."

Only in part. To understand the question, it's important to look first at one of the most seemingly simple yet actually most devilish questions about the command: What does Africom really do? After the command's launch two and a half years ago, even the U.S. government struggled to figure that out. Africom's civilian counterparts in the State Department, for example, felt both confused and threatened. How did they fit in, now that Africom would be running the show? The command's impenetrable and vague mission statement doesn't help matters. Africom, it says, "conducts sustained security engagement through military-to-military programs, military-sponsored activities, and other military operations as directed to promote a stable and secure African environment in support of U.S. foreign policy."

This internal lack of direction is one reason that Africom has been so vulnerable to criticism. It's clear that Africom's main job is to get to know African militaries - to help train them, to help boost their professionalism, and to generally serve as a good example to countries, many of which have never had a military that was subservient to a civilian government. Part of this will be enabling African countries to staff U.N. peacekeeping missions, a project already begun under the State Department's Global Peace Operations Initiative.

But after that, things get fuzzier. Analyst J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Project at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, mentions energy security as one primary goal. "[T]he significance of Africa for the United States' energy security cannot be underestimated," he wrote in The Brown Journal of World Affairs in the Fall/Winter of 2008. Places such as Nigeria are becoming the default big suppliers as policymakers shift dependence away from the Middle East.

And yes, terrorism is important too, not least because it's probably the most pressing concern from the U.S. perspective. One good indication about how the United States started looking at Africa after the September 11 attacks was the Pan-Sahel initiative, an attempt to boost the capacity of local troops in Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger to find and root out local terror. A second initiative, the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative, followed two years later, adding five more countries to the list. Such programs reflected a shift in security mentalities that began to see poverty, discontent, and poor governance as root grievances associated with terror. And they'll certainly continue under Africom.

So for those worried about an oppressive U.S. military presence in Africa, the question may be less what the U.S. troops are doing as what missions they are training African troops to carry out. And here, it is myopic to see Africa purely in terms of terrorism, oil, and peacekeeping. All three of these key interests, while critical to the United States, are less likely to be the complaints of your average African. Much more needed than counterterror squads is good policing, any resident of Johannesburg or Lagos will tell you. But pickpockets and armed robbers don't score too high as U.S.-dubbed strategic threats.

For some African countries, a strong military may even be counterproductive, particularly if other sectors of the government fail to improve in tandem. As one analyst put it at a recent conference on Africom, making the military more professional than the government sounds like a recipe for a coup. Look no further than Guinea for proof: The military takeover of November 2008, was initially greeted with protests of joy on the streets of a country cursed by decades of lethargic and corrupt civilian leadership. If that military has been trained in counterterrorism tactics, one can imagine the relative ease with which they could put down any would-be opposition.

"Africom wants to find a base on the continent."

No -- at least, not now. Of all the rumors that clouded Africom's rollout two years ago, none was more persistent than the idea that Africom was looking for an African base. It didn't help dispel whispers when several African governments unilaterally condemned Africom and refused to welcome U.S. troops; Liberia was the only country that offered to play host.

But Africom is not searching for a base today, even if it had been before getting so seriously spurned. From its current locale in Stuttgart, Germany, Africom is well positioned for its so far limited tasks (which, as mentioned, still need clear definition) and has no desire to move. It has no permanent troops at its disposal, so the command has to request men through the Department of Defense as tasks arise. And as for the rest of Africom's 1,300-staff, which includes 300 Special Operations, 250 intelligence, and a big chunk of civilians, getting around Africa is actually easier from Stuttgart than, say, Monrovia. To fly from West to East Africa, you have to fly through Europe anyway.

Might Africom have a real presence in Africa someday? Many believe that the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), founded separately in 2002 and now under Africom's purview, might be a sign of what is to come. Based in Djibouti, the 1,500-person troop and civilian contingent has been active in regional training programs, counter terror, intelligence operations, and humanitarian assistance. Call it a trial run?

"Africom will militarize foreign aid."

Perhaps. A major objection to Africom has been the fear that the new command would "militarize" foreign aid, with soldiers taking over traditionally civilian tasks. The danger would be twofold: Not only would the military be less effective in carrying out humanitarian jobs, but it would compromise the neutrality of independent aid workers, as the line between military and civilian blurred. The State Department was among the first to raise this concern. As an Office of the Inspector General report released this summer explained, there was "considerable internal debate [within the Africa Bureau] about the wisdom of military funding of U.S. development and public diplomacy activities in Africa."

The fear stems from the very real dominance of Africom, and the Defense Department in general, over the State Department when it comes to manpower, funding, and agility. Africom's emphasis on development as one of the major means of "conflict prevention" also raises questions about what the military will be doing. And the military's hands are usually far less tied by paperwork, earmarks, and procurement restrictions than civilian agencies, particularly the notoriously bureaucratic U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Lacking any clear policy on the matter, a de facto solution has arisen, summed up neatly in the Department of Defense's field manual on Stability Operations: "Many stability operations tasks are best performed by indigenous, foreign, or U.S. civilian professionals. Nonetheless, U.S. military forces should be prepared to perform all tasks necessary to establish or maintain order when civilians cannot do so." In other words, if State can't do it, Defense will -- so long as it has the funding and authority.

The jury is still out as to whether this emerging shift of responsibility is a good one. Sometimes, the military is indeed right for the job -- for example, when the task is actual military training, funds for which are today still allocated to State. There are also nonmilitary situations in which soldiers can be useful: When the civilian government in South Africa was still denying the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the U.S. military helped train South African soldiers in prevention -- a sort of "back door" public health measure. Africom's military staff would rather not become the developers, and they readily acknowledge that this is not, and should not be, their role. But lacking the civilian capacity to fill the gap, they might just have to adapt.

"The fight between the Department of State and the Department of Defense in Africa is over."

If it is, Congress didn't get the memo. Over the last two years, there has been a decrease in the tension between the U.S. State Department and the Department of Defense over the division of tasks in Africa. But while the two agencies are now largely in agreement that Africa needs a civilian surge (Defense Secretary Gates once lamented that the military personnel on one aircraft carrier outnumbered the entire Foreign Service), Congress hasn't caught up. Revamping the State Department with a massive increase in personnel, funding, and jurisdiction, a promise made by current U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is as yet a pipe dream.

Why is it so hard to get funding for State? In many ways, State's relative decline is a vicious cycle: Congress believes that State lacks capacity to carry out projects, so it assigns them elsewhere, often to Defense, which is relatively more equipped. Each time this happens, State loses a chance to build itself up, and so Congress's impressions are reinforced.

To be fair, some in Congress may be starting to catch on. A recent flap over information operations (IO), the blanket term for military programs meant to "influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own," according to the Department of Defense dictionary, shows that Congress is beginning to question whether the DoD should always win out over State. IO overlaps with Public Diplomacy, a task traditionally held within the State Department but increasingly carried out by Defense. The House Committee on Appropriations recently cut the Department of Defense's budget for IO in half, explaining, "The Committee has serious concerns about not only the significant amount of funding being spent on these programs, but more importantly, about the Department's assumption of this mission area within its roles and responsibilities."

Still, no big change is in sight for the balance of power between the military and civilian sides. For the moment, Africom will have to muddle along.

"Africom will be a command 'unlike any other'"

It will have to be. Africom promises to be "A Different Kind of Command," with staff from multiple U.S. agencies and a mandate that differs substantially from other military posts. Africa command even drew on a revolutionary new military doctrine that added steps to the traditionally defined four-phase process of U.S. military engagement: deter/engage, seize initiative, dominate, and transition. Africom falls into a new "phase zero," before any of these other four: conflict prevention. According to a participant at a recent Africom conference, that means doing everything possible to avoid having to get involved in "another 25-year Plan Colombia" to clean up a long-term, well-entrenched mess -- a reference to the $5-billion plus involvement of the United States in that country's drug and insurgency problems.

What remains to be seen is how well this mission can come together. Africom has quite a similar job to, say, forces in Afghanistan who are hoping to rebuild broken militaries, foster economic growth, and all the while boost daily security. The counterinsurgency and the African Security worlds are beginning to merge, or at least mix, in the world of ideas in Washington. The two groups may well share also their failure or success.

"Allowing skilled emigration is stealing human capital from poor countries."

No. Many of the same countries courted by the United States through aid and trade deals complain bitterly of the "brain drain" of their doctors, scientists, and engineers to the United States and other rich countries. If correct, these complaints would mean that current immigration policy amounts to counterproductive foreign policy. Thankfully, however, the flow of skilled emigrants from poor to rich parties can actually benefit both parties. 

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This common idea that skilled emigration amounts to "stealing" requires a cartoonish set of assumptions about developing countries. First, it requires us to assume that developing countries possess a finite stock of skilled workers, a stock depleted by one for every departure. In fact, people respond to the incentives created by migration: Enormous numbers of skilled workers from developing countries have been induced to acquire their skills by the opportunity of high earnings abroad. This is why the Philippines, which sends more nurses abroad than any other developing country, still has more nurses per capita at home than Britain does. Recent research has also shown that a sudden, large increase in skilled emigration from a developing country to a skill-selective destination can cause a corresponding sudden increase in skill acquisition in the source country.

Second, believing that skilled emigration amounts to theft from the poor requires us to assume that skilled workers themselves are not poor. In Zambia, a nurse has to get by on less than $1,500 per year -- measured at U.S. prices, not Zambian ones -- and a doctor must make ends meet with less than $5,500 per year, again at U.S. prices. If these were your annual wages, facing U.S. price levels, you would likely consider yourself destitute. Third, believing that a person's choice to emigrate constitutes "stealing" requires problematic assumptions about that person's rights. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that all people have an unqualified right to leave any country. Skilled migrants are not "owned" by their home countries, and should have the same rights to freedom of movement as professionals in rich countries.

"It's a waste of money to train people who just plan to emigrate."

Not really. The belief that skilled emigrants must cause public losses in the amount of their training cost is based on a series of stereotypes. First, large numbers of skilled emigrants are funded by themselves or by foreign scholarships. A survey of African-born members of the American Medical Association conducted by one of the authors found that about half of them acquired their medical training outside their country of birth. Second, many skilled emigrants serve the countries they come from for long periods before departure. The same survey found that African physicians in the United States and Canada who were trained in their country of birth spent, on average, over five years working in that country prior to emigration. This constitutes a substantial return on all investment in their training.

Third, there is the stereotype that skilled migrants send little money to their home countries, as they tend to come from elite families and bring their immediate families with them when they leave. But new research reveals this to be simply unfounded. Skilled migrants also tend to earn much more than unskilled migrants, and on balance this means that a university-educated migrant from a developing country sends more money home than an otherwise identical migrant with less education. The survey of African physicians mentioned above found that they typically send home much more money than it cost to train them, especially to the poorest countries. This means that for a typical African country as a whole, even if 100 percent of a physician's training was publicly funded, the emigration of that physician is still a net plus.

Fourth, it is simply not true that all higher education in low-income countries must take place under massive public subsidy. When publicly subsidized higher education is the only way for someone who is not already wealthy to acquire higher education, that person's emigration necessarily means that the subsidy emigrates too. But even in very low-income countries, there are alternative ways of financing higher education. One is to create ways for students to pay up front for their own training, as Makerere University in Uganda has done, but many African universities do not. Another is for the government to give student loans so that students can pay for their own training after the fact, which Kenya has done, but many African governments do not. Both of these break the necessary link between the departure of a worker and the departure of a public subsidy.

In the Philippines, training of the vast majority of nurses who leave the country is financed by the students themselves, the recruiters, or the foreign employers, not by the public; there is no reason whatsoever why similar professional schools could not be established throughout Africa.

"Skilled migrants who leave for a rich country never come back."

False. A striking example comes from recent research in the Pacific, which has amongst the highest rates of skilled emigration globally. Consider Tonga, a small island nation with a population of only 100,000, where skilled workers might stereotypically be thought to have little incentive to go back. Even in this case, by age 35, just over a third of the nation's academic brightest who had migrated after high school were already back working in Tonga. And in Papua New Guinea, half of the most academically skilled migrants had returned home by their early 30s.

In the United States, more than 20 percent of foreign students receiving Ph.D.s already have firm commitments to return to their home countries at the time of graduation, and many more will likely return in subsequent years. Of course there is large variation across countries: Migrants are much more likely to return to booming economies with good job prospects, as is seen by the flows of Indian tech workers back to India in the last decade. But even in cases where few migrants return, those that do may be particularly motivated by a desire to help their home country and may return to key leadership positions. One recent calculation finds that since 1950, 46 current and 165 former heads of government received their higher education in the United States.

"The emigration of doctors kills people in Africa."

Hardly. Allowing or encouraging doctors to leave Africa for rich destination countries can reduce the number of doctors within the countries they come from, although even this is not clear if more people undertake medical training with the hope of migrating. However, the level of medical care provided by doctors in Africa depends on a vast array of factors that have little or nothing to do with international movement -- such as scant wages in the public health service, poor or absent rural service incentives, few other performance incentives of any kind, a lack of adequate medical supplies and pharmaceuticals, a mismatch between medical training and the health problems of the poorest, weak transportation infrastructure, or abysmal sanitation systems.

To illustrate just one of these -- the lack of rural service incentives -- policies that limit international movement choices per se do not change the strong incentive for African physicians to concentrate in urban areas far from the least?served populations. Nairobi is home to just 8 percent of Kenya's population, but 66 percent of its physicians. More Mozambican physicians live in the capital Maputo (51 percent) than in the entire rest of Mozambique, though Maputo comprises just 8 percent of the national population. Roughly half of Ethiopian physicians work in the capital Addis Ababa, where only one in 20 Ethiopians lives.

This and the many other barriers to domestic effectiveness of physicians may explain why, across 53 African countries, there is no relationship whatsoever between the departure of physicians or nurses and poor health statistics as measured by indicators such as child mortality or the percentage of births attended by modern health professionals. If anything, the relationship is positive: African countries with the largest number of their physicians residing abroad in the rich country are typically those with the lowest child mortality, and vice versa. This suggests that whatever is determining whether or not African children live or die, other factors besides international migration of physicians are vastly more important. Fiddling with immigration or recruitment policies of destination countries do precisely nothing to address those underlying problems.

"Skilled emigrants build trade and investment ties."

Not always. Just as fears about possible negative effects of brain drain are typically overblown, so is the hype over the ability of countries to tap their diaspora to set up trade and investment. The well-known case of emigrants in Silicon Valley facilitating the growth of the Taiwanese, Chinese and Indian information technology industries is an important example demonstrating that high-skilled workers abroad can have transformative impacts on home country industry. But unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule.

In particular, skilled migrants from small islands and from sub-Saharan Africa, where highly skilled emigration rates are the highest, are not likely to be engaging in trade or investment. New surveys find that less than 5 percent of skilled migrants from Tonga, Micronesia and Ghana have ever helped a home country firm in a trade deal, and when they have, the amounts of such deals have been modest. Few migrants from these countries had made investments in their home countries -- at most they had sent back amounts of US$2,000-3,000 to finance small enterprises.

However, skilled workers do engage with their home countries in a number of other ways apart from remittances. They can be an important source of tourism for their home countries; more than 500,000 visitors to the Dominican Republic each year are Dominicans living abroad. They are also tourism promoters: 60-80 percent of skilled migrants from four Pacific countries and Ghana advise others about traveling to their home countries. They indirectly spur trade, through consuming their home country's products, and they transfer knowledge about study and work options abroad. The lack of involvement in trade and investment therefore largely reflects a lack of productive opportunities at home, not a lack of interest on the part of migrants in helping their home countries.

Conventional wisdom once held that the wealth of a country declined when it imported foreign goods, since obviously cash was wealth and obviously buying foreign goods sent cash abroad. Adam Smith argued that economic development -- or the "wealth of nations" -- depends not a country's stock of cash but on structural changes that international exchange could encourage. In today's information age, the view has taken hold that human capital now rules the wealth of nations, and that its departure in any circumstance must harm a country's development. But economic development is much more complex than that.

But thanks to new research, we have learned that the international movement of educated people changes the incentives to acquire education, sends enormous quantities of money across borders, leads to movements back and forth, and can contribute to the spread of trade, investment, technology, and ideas. All of this fits very uncomfortably in a rhyming phrase like "brain drain," a caricature that would be best discarded in favor of a richer view of the links between human movement and development.

"God Is Dead."

No. When Friedrich Nietzsche announced the death of God in 1882, he thought that in the modern, scientific world people would soon be unable to countenance the idea of religious faith. By the time The Economist did its famous “God Is Dead” cover in 1999, the question seemed moot, notwithstanding the rise of politicized religiosity -- fundamentalism -- in almost every major faith since the 1970s. An obscure ayatollah toppled the shah of Iran, religious Zionism surfaced in Israel, and in the United States, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority announced its dedicated opposition to “secular humanism.”

But it is only since Sept. 11, 2001, that God has proven to be alive and well beyond all question -- at least as far as the global public debate is concerned. With jihadists attacking America, an increasingly radicalized Middle East, and a born-again Christian in the White House for eight years, you’ll have a hard time finding anyone who disagrees. Even The Economist’s editor in chief recently co-authored a book called God Is Back. While many still question the relevance of God in our private lives, there’s a different debate on the global stage today: Is God a force for good in the world?

So-called new atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have denounced religious belief as not only retrograde but evil; they regard themselves as the vanguard of a campaign to expunge it from human consciousness. Religion, they claim, creates divisions, strife, and warfare; it imprisons women and brainwashes children; its doctrines are primitive, unscientific, and irrational, essentially the preserve of the unsophisticated and gullible.

These writers are wrong -- not only about religion, but also about politics -- because they are wrong about human nature. Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. As soon as we became recognizably human, men and women started to create religions. We are meaning-seeking creatures. While dogs, as far as we know, do not worry about the canine condition or agonize about their mortality, humans fall very easily into despair if we don’t find some significance in our lives. Theological ideas come and go, but the quest for meaning continues. So God isn’t going anywhere. And when we treat religion as something to be derided, dismissed, or destroyed, we risk amplifying its worst faults. Whether we like it or not, God is here to stay, and it’s time we found a way to live with him in a balanced, compassionate manner.

"God and Politics Shouldn’t Mix.

Not necessarily. Theologically illiterate politicians have long given religion a bad name. An inadequate understanding of God that reduces “him” to an idol in our own image who gives our likes and dislikes sacred sanction is the worst form of spiritual tyranny. Such arrogance has led to atrocities like the Crusades. The rise of secularism in government was meant to check this tendency, but secularism itself has created new demons now inflicting themselves on the world.

In the West, secularism has been a success, essential to the modern economy and political system, but it was achieved gradually over the course of nearly 300 years, allowing new ideas of governance time to filter down to all levels of society. But in other parts of the world, secularization has occurred far too rapidly and has been resented by large sectors of the population, who are still deeply attached to religion and find Western institutions alien.

In the Middle East, overly aggressive secularization has sometimes backfired, making the religious establishment more conservative, or even radical. In Egypt, for example, the remarkable reformer Muhammad Ali (1769-1849) so brutally impoverished and marginalized the clergy that its members turned their backs on change. When the shahs of Iran tortured and exiled mullahs who opposed their regime, some, such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, concluded that more extreme responses on the part of Iran’s future religious rulers were necessary.

Shiism had for centuries separated religion from politics as a matter of sacred principle, and Khomeini’s insistence that a cleric should become head of state was an extraordinary innovation. But moderate religion can play a constructive role in politics. Muhammad Abdu (1849-1905), grand mufti of Egypt, feared that the vast majority of Egyptians would not understand the country’s nascent democratic institutions unless they were explicitly linked with traditional Islamic principles that emphasized the importance of “consultation” (shura) and the duty of seeking “consensus” (ijma) before passing legislation.

In the same spirit, Hassan al-Banna (1906-1949), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, began his movement by translating the social message of the Koran into a modern idiom, founding clinics, hospitals, trade unions, schools, and factories that gave workers insurance, holidays, and good working conditions. In other words, he aimed to bring the masses to modernity in an Islamic setting. The Brotherhood’s resulting popularity was threatening to Egypt’s secular government, which could not provide these services. In 1949, Banna was assassinated, and some members of the Brotherhood splintered into radical offshoots in reaction.

Of course, the manner in which religion is used in politics is more important than whether it’s used at all. U.S. presidents such as John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama have invoked faith as a shared experience that binds the country together -- an approach that recognizes the communal power of spirituality without making any pretense to divine right. Still, this consensus is not satisfactory to American Protestant fundamentalists, who believe the United States should be a distinctively Christian nation.

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"God Breeds Violence and Intolerance.

No, humans do. For Hitchens in God Is Not Great, religion is inherently “violent … intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism and bigotry”; even so-called moderates are guilty by association. Yet it is not God or religion but violence itself -- inherent in human nature -- that breeds violence. As a species, we survived by killing and eating other animals; we also murder our own kind. So pervasive is this violence that it leaks into most scriptures, though these aggressive passages have always been balanced and held in check by other texts that promote a compassionate ethic based on the Golden Rule: Treat others as you would like them to treat you. Despite manifest failings over the centuries, this has remained the orthodox position.

In claiming that God is the source of all human cruelty, Hitchens and Dawkins ignore some of the darker facets of modern secular society, which has been spectacularly violent because our technology has enabled us to kill people on an unprecedented scale. Not surprisingly, religion has absorbed this belligerence, as became hideously clear with the September 11 atrocities.

But "religious" wars, no matter how modern the tools, always begin as political ones. This happened in Europe during the 17th century, and it has happened today in the Middle East, where the Palestinian national movement has evolved from a leftist-secular to an increasingly Islamically articulated nationalism. Even the actions of so-called jihadists have been inspired by politics, not God. In a study of suicide attacks between 1980 and 2004, American scholar Robert Pape concluded that 95 percent were motivated by a clear strategic objective: to force modern democracies to withdraw from territory the assailants regard as their national homeland.

This aggression does not represent the faith of the majority, however. In recent Gallup polling conducted in 35 Muslim countries, only 7 percent of those questioned thought that the September 11 attacks were justified. Their reasons were entirely political.

Fundamentalism is not conservative. Rather, it is highly innovative -- even heretical -- because it always develops in response to a perceived crisis. In their anxiety, some fundamentalists distort the tradition they are trying to defend. The Pakistani ideologue Abu Ala Maududi (1903-1979) was the first major Muslim thinker to make jihad, signifying “holy war” instead of the traditional meaning of “struggle” or “striving” for self-betterment, a central Islamic duty. Both he and the influential Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966) were fully aware that this was extremely controversial but believed it was justified by Western imperialism and the secularizing policies of rulers such as Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

All fundamentalism -- whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim -- is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation. Qutb developed his ideology in the concentration camps where Nasser interred thousands of the Muslim Brothers. History shows that when these groups are attacked, militarily or verbally, they almost invariably become more extreme.

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"God Is for the Poor and Ignorant."

No. The new atheists insist vehemently that religion is puerile and irrational, belonging, as Hitchens argues, to “the infancy of our society.” This reflects the broader disappointment among Western intellectuals that humanity, confronted with apparently unlimited choice and prosperity, should still rely on what Karl Marx called the “opiate” of the masses.

But God refuses to be outgrown, even in the United States, the richest country in the world and the most religious country in the developed world. None of the major religions is averse to business; each developed initially in a nascent market economy. The Bible and the Koran may have prohibited usury, but over the centuries Jews, Christians, and Muslims all found ways of getting around this restriction and produced thriving economies. It is one of the great ironies of religious history that Christianity, whose founder taught that it was impossible to serve both God and mammon, should have produced the cultural environment that, as Max Weber suggested in his 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, was integral to modern capitalism.

Still, the current financial crisis shows that the religious critique of excessive greed is far from irrelevant. Although not opposed to business, the major faith traditions have tried to counterbalance some of the abuses of capitalism. Eastern religions, such as Buddhism, by means of yoga and other disciplines, try to moderate the aggressive acquisitiveness of the human psyche. The three monotheistic faiths have inveighed against the injustice of unevenly distributed wealth -- a critique that speaks directly to the gap between rich and poor in our society.

To recover from the ill effects of the last year, we may need exactly that conquest of egotism that has always been essential in the quest for the transcendence we call “God.” Religion is not simply a matter of subscribing to a set of obligatory beliefs; it is hard work, requiring a ceaseless effort to get beyond the selfishness that prevents us from achieving a more humane humanity.

"God Is Bad for Women."

Yes. It is unfortunately true that none of the major world religions has been good for women. Even when a tradition began positively for women (as in Christianity and Islam), within a few generations men dragged it back to the old patriarchy. But this is changing. Women in all faiths are challenging their men on the grounds of the egalitarianism that is one of the best characteristics of all these religious traditions.

One of the hallmarks of modernity has been the emancipation of women. But that has meant that in their rebellion against the modern ethos, fundamentalists tend to overemphasize traditional gender roles. Unfortunately, frontal assaults on this patriarchal trend have often proven counterproductive. Whenever "modernizing" governments have tried to ban the veil, for example, women have rushed in ever greater numbers to put it on. In 1935, Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi commanded his soldiers to shoot hundreds of unarmed demonstrators who were peacefully protesting against obligatory Western dress in Mashhad, one of Iran’s holiest shrines. Such actions have turned veiling, which was not a universal practice before the modern period, into a symbol of Islamic integrity. Some Muslims today claim that it is not essential to look Western in order to be modern and that while Western fashion often displays wealth and privilege, Islamic dress emphasizes the egalitarianism of the Koran.

In general, any direct Western intervention in gender matters has backfired; it would be better to support indigenous Muslim movements that are agitating for greater opportunities for improved women’s rights in education, the workplace, and politics.

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"God Is the Enemy of Science."

He doesn’t have to be. Science has become an enemy to fundamentalist Christians who campaign against the teaching of evolution in public schools and stem-cell research because they seem to conflict with biblical teaching.

But their reading of scripture is unprecedentedly literal. Before the modern period, few understood the first chapter of Genesis as an exact account of the origins of life; until the 17th century, theologians insisted that if a biblical text contradicted science, it must be interpreted allegorically.

The conflict with science is symptomatic of a reductive idea of God in the modern West. Ironically, it was the empirical emphasis of modern science that encouraged many to regard God and religious language as fact rather than symbol, thus forcing religion into an overly rational, dogmatic, and alien literalism.

Popular fundamentalism represents a widespread rebellion against modernity, and for Christian fundamentalists, evolution epitomizes everything that is wrong with the modern world. It is regarded less as a scientific theory than a symbol of evil. But this anti-science bias is far less common in Judaism and Islam, where fundamentalist movements have been sparked more by political issues, such as the state of Israel, than doctrinal or scientific ones.

"God Is Incompatible with Democracy."

No. Samuel Huntington foresaw a "clash of civilizations” between the free world and Islam, which, he maintained, was inherently averse to democracy. But at the beginning of the 20th century, nearly all leading Muslim intellectuals were in love with the West and wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France. What has alienated many Muslims from the democratic ideal is not their religion but Western governments’ support of autocratic rulers, such as the Iranian shahs, Saddam Hussein, and Hosni Mubarak, who have denied people basic human and democratic rights.

The 2007 Gallup poll shows that support for democratic freedoms and women's rights is widespread in the Muslim world, and many governments are responding -- albeit haltingly -- to pressures for more political participation. There is, however, resistance to a wholesale adoption of the Western secular model. Many want to see God reflected more clearly in public life, just as a 2006 Gallup poll revealed that 46 percent of Americans believe that God should be the source of legislation.

Nor is sharia law the rigid system that many Westerners deplore. Muslim reformers, such as Sheikh Ali Gomaa and Tariq Ramadan, argue that it must be reviewed in the light of changing social circumstances. A fatwa is not universally binding like a papal edict; rather, it simply expresses the opinion of the mufti who issues it. Muslims can choose which fatwas they adopt and thus participate in a flexible free market of religious thought, just as Americans can choose which church they attend.

Religion may not be the cause of the world’s political problems, but we still need to understand it if we are to solve them. "Whoever took religion seriously!” exclaimed an exasperated U.S. government official after the Iranian Revolution. Had policymakers bothered to research contemporary Shiism, the United States could have avoided serious blunders during that crisis. Religion should be studied with the same academic impartiality and accuracy as the economy, politics, and social customs of a region, so that we learn how religion interacts with political tension, what is counterproductive, and how to avoid giving unnecessary offense.

And study it we'd better, for God is back. And if "he" is perceived in an idolatrous, literal-minded way, we can only expect more dogmatism, rigidity, and religiously articulated violence in the decades ahead.

Want to Know More?

Karen Armstrong has spent the past 25 years writing about the centrality of religion to the human experience. Before her most recent book, The Case for God (New York: Knopf, 2009), she wrote The Bible: A Biography (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007), an account of the not entirely orthodox way that the Bible came into being.

Over the last few years, the so-called New Atheists have become increasingly vocal about the dangerous shortcomings of religion in such books as Sam Harris' The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004), Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2007).

Recently, some books have sought out a middle ground between atheism and fundamentalism. These include Robert Wright's The Evolution of God (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009), which incorporates evolutionary psychology to explain shifts in belief over time, and Economist editors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's God is Back (New York: Penguin, 2009), examining the curiously vital relationship between modernity and religion.

Religion scholar John Esposito and polling expert Dalia Mogahed argue in Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think (New York: Gallup Press, 2007), a book based on more than 50,000 interviews in Muslim countries, that Westerners have been getting Islam wrong for decades.

"Obama has solved the problem."

If only it were true. Many associate America's low standing with the presidency of George W. Bush. The American public's satisfaction with the U.S. position in the world fell from a high of 70 percent in 2002 to a low of 30 percent in 2008. Members of the international community were of like mind. In 2008, only 31 percent of Germans, 22 percent of Egyptians, 41 percent of Chinese, 19 percent of Pakistanis, and 47 percent of Mexicans had a favorable opinion of the United States. In 2009, however, favorability ratings of the United States increased sharply in most parts of the world.

This improvement is widely hailed as a result of an ‘Obama effect' -- the new president's approach coupled with the idea that his mere election has improved America's global image. But scratch a little bit below the surface and you will find a faultline that threatens the Obama presidency. Standing goes beyond favorable opinion polls.

Consider, for example, that even as respondents see the U.S. in a more positive light, there are strong indications of continuing, deep global dissatisfaction with American economic and military policies. Foreign opinion shows significant disapproval of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the lack of U.S. multilateralism, U.S. neglect of others' interests, U.S. economic impact, and overall U.S. influence.

The danger for Obama looms in the pressure between two tectonic plates. On the one side are high expectations and optimism that Obama will address global complaints about U.S. policy. On the other side, U.S. interests, domestic politics, and the difficulty of global problems will prevent him from acting the way others might like in many areas. The result could be a political earthquake of reaction against America that sends the country's standing reeling again.

Similar declines in standing have occurred before in U.S. history (for example during the Vietnam war and early Reagan years) and by some measures (e.g. the level of agreement with U.S. votes in the U.N. General Assembly) the latest plunge in standing started before the Bush administration. It is worth noting that the recent improvements in standing preceded Obama. Falling favorability ratings in most countries bottomed in 2007 and then began to improve.

"‘Standing' is too vague a term to measure."

No. OK, "U.S. standing" -- its position with respect to reputation, stature, or prestige in world affairs -- is not as concrete or easily measured as say cruise missiles, wheat bales, or Eurodollars. And there is much we do not understand about it. But standing nonetheless captures a critical dimension of a country's reputation that cannot be represented by measures of its material capabilities.

In accounting terms, standing is like "goodwill" -- it reflects the intangible assets of a country above and beyond its net tangible assets -- a kind of reputation that makes it valuable among "clients." Standing offers long-term political capital in international politics -- and as we will see, at home as well.

Standing has two major facets: credibility and esteem. Credibility refers to the U.S. government's ability to do what it says it is going to do -- to stand up for what it believes, and to stand against threats to its interests and ideals. Esteem refers to America's stature, or what America is perceived to stand for in the hearts and minds of foreign publics and policymakers. Credibility and esteem can be mutually reinforcing, but they can also be difficult to pursue in tandem -- a trade-off implied by Machiavelli's famous dictum: "It is much safer to be feared than loved."

"Opposition to the U.S. is mainly based on its outsized power."

Not even close. U.S. standing has varied greatly around the world, despite constant U.S. primacy over the past two decades. The decline in standing was uneven across different world regions: very strong in the Middle East and Europe; strong in Latin America and Southeast Asia; and, with some notable exceptions, less pronounced in Africa and South and East Asia. The recent recovery in these opinion polls has also been uneven, with the most significant improvements in Europe and the Americas.

Regional interests mattered, and differed, across the regions. In the Middle East, the professed U.S. policy of democratization since 2002 threatened authoritarian regimes; and perceived U.S. disengagement from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reinforced the view that the United States was neither a fair nor an engaged arbiter in the conflict. In East Asia, the continued availability of American markets for East Asian exports had a strong effect on national prosperity, which enjoyed strong support among elites and the public. In addition, many Europeans viewed the American turn toward unilateralism and the doctrine of preemptive war as unraveling the multilateral fabric of Europe's preferred international order. Obama's leadership style is reassuring European publics without eliminating lingering suspicions that the change may be one of style rather than substance.

American standing is also influenced by the presence of a major regional power. Where such a power exists and is hostile, as in Cold War Europe (Soviet Union), or potentially not entirely benign, as in contemporary East Asia (China), American standing is bolstered by fears that domination by the regional power would be even worse. Even in the Middle East, Iran's regional aspirations give the United States some strong support among the elites of Sunni states.

Not only does U.S. standing vary across regions and countries, it also varies within countries between elites and the public. An important predictor of U.S. standing among foreign elites is whether U.S. policy is perceived to be helping or harming their interests. The public, however, tends to focus on the justness and morality of U.S. conduct. When foreign publics believe the United States is not playing by the rules, is applying double standards, and is engaging in hypocrisy, U.S. standing suffers. The legacy of Iranian hostility towards the United States has roots in America's 1953 overthrow of populist leader Mohammed Mosaddeq and support for the shah despite the U.S.'s professed adherence to the principles of self-determination and liberal democracy.

"The U.S. model is losing out to its competitors."

Not yet. There is no clear finding that U.S. relative standing is suffering in terms of credibility or esteem based on the rise of "competing" models of politics and policy offered by China, Europe, or Russia. Polls in 2009 suggest recent declines in the relative attractiveness of these actors. At the same time, the economic meltdown of 2008-09 has led to widespread critiques of the U.S. economic model. A liberal Chinese economist bemoaned that "the popular view is that the American model is failing." A Social Democrat in Germany's parliament concluded, "[the U.S. model] has lost its attraction entirely."

During the last four decades American standing has sometimes seen major declines, but has typically bounced back because the American model continued to have strong appeal (i.e., esteem). One indicator of this is the continuing attractiveness of the U.S. higher education system and the fact that many who come to study in the United States end up staying. U.S. universities are being used for models and actively establishing programs in places like Qatar, Singapore, and China.

That said, the potential for a resurgence in America's current standing varies by region, and how America responds to the global financial and economic crisis is especially important. If the United States provides fewer global and regional public goods, such as economic or military assistance, its standing will diminish in East Asia and erode even further in Europe. Similarly, if growing U.S. budget deficits require cuts in the recent expansion of American aid programs in Africa, this might also erode American standing in a continent where trends have been more positive in recent years.

"Partisanship stops at the water's edge."

That was then. There is today a substantial divergence of partisan views on U.S. standing in the world. For Republicans, standing seems to evoke hard-power notions of "resolve," which favor the credibility side of standing. Democrats appear to emphasize ideas that highlight esteem, like "legitimacy" and "moral standing."

This partisan gap is also apparent in public perceptions of U.S. standing, which widened considerably during Bush's tenure. Partisan differences over America's position in the world, however, predate the controversies of the Bush presidency. And though the partisan gap has narrowed since mid-2008, it has not disappeared, nor is it likely to. This is because where Democrats and Republicans stand on American standing is shaped by which party controls the presidency. For example, Democrats' satisfaction with U.S. standing was higher under Clinton, and now that a Democrat is in the White House, it is on the rise again. By contrast, Republican satisfaction rose when Bush assumed the presidency, and it has fallen under Obama.

Significantly, this partisan polarization has soared since the end of the Cold War. Partisan differences over America's global position averaged by presidency indicate new highs under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The average partisan gap of 18 percent in the assessment of presidential performance across the Eisenhower, Johnson, and Reagan administrations rose more than 50 percent, to an average 28 percent difference. in the Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies.

Partisan difference, however, is not the whole story. Both Republicans and Democrats believe that U.S. standing declined between 2002 and 2009. Dissatisfaction among Democrats increased sharply during the first term of the Bush presidency; Republican dissatisfaction surged during the second term, probably due to growing doubts about the competence of the Bush administration. Such doubts, at home and abroad, were likely affected by U.S. fortunes in Iraq that improved in the wake of Bush's gutsy surge plan.

Overall, Americans are currently unhappy with the country's low standing abroad. Public satisfaction with America's standing has declined almost every year since 2002 and is now less than half its peak level. Public confidence in how the rest of the world sees the United States has followed a similar trajectory, declining from 75 percent who believed that the United States had a positive international image before the September 11 terrorist attacks to just 45 percent today.

"Standing does not matter."

Dead wrong. During the Cold War, the United States was anxious that its reputation for protecting its allies, especially those in Europe, be seen as credible by both Soviet leaders and Europeans. As Lyndon Johnson explained to Martin Luther King, Jr. in early 1965, "If I pulled out [of Vietnam] ... I think the Germans would be scared to death that our commitment to them was no good, and God knows what we'd have in other places in the world."

More recently, the Bush Doctrine was reversed in Bush's second term in part due to falling support abroad -- involving both credibility and esteem -- that made it harder for the United States to get what it wanted.

Of course, many other factors affect foreign-policy success and we should not delude ourselves that standing is the critical factor. Moreover, standing should never be the sole consideration behind U.S. foreign policy. There will inevitably be trade-offs between other pressing interests in particular situations; for example, the United States may need to act to protect itself from an imminent threat, and this action may diminish its standing among some audiences.

It is important, however, to acknowledge more explicitly the costs and benefits of maintaining standing in policymaking. For decision makers under pressure, it is tempting to focus only on what is concrete and immediate and has short-term impact. But just as it is dangerous for business leaders to focus only on quarterly profits and ignore their firm's long-term health, so too must U.S. leaders consider the nation's stock of credibility and esteem.

U.S. standing affects other nations' willingness to offer it the benefit of the doubt. Moreover, U.S. credibility and esteem help to mold Americans' sense of unity and collective purpose. Standing is easy to neglect, but wise policymakers should consider its impact and sometimes protect it even when there are short-term costs.

Managing standing requires using different tools for different jobs. Standing is a nuanced phenomenon that varies across regions, between foreign elites and the publics, and between partisans in the United States. Policymakers must attend to those distinctions in specific ways. And the United States must heed the bond between power and standing by providing public goods through effective leadership that coordinates other states and shares costs.

Improving standing requires moving beyond public diplomacy. The problem is not just communication, but policy execution. As Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently put it, "Each time we fail to live up to our values or don't follow up on a promise, we look more and more like the arrogant Americans the enemy claims we are."

Finally we need better data and analysis on U.S. standing. The United States supports periodic National Election Surveys at home; questions about standing should be added to the survey and public funds for other indicators -- such as foreign media analysis -- are needed.

The dynamics of U.S. standing are complex, and we grasp only imperfectly the sources and impact of U.S. credibility and esteem in the world. Yet standing matters for U.S. foreign policy, and American leaders must pay attention to it or face real-world consequences.

"The Recent Elections Are Revolutionary for Japan."

Hardly. A "revolution" implies a sudden, pervasive, and marked change in society or political economy. But the Democratic Party of Japan's (DPJ's) politicians are not revolutionaries. Like those of the long-reigning Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), they are political opportunists without any long-standing ideological position or dominant constituency. Their only common desire is to be elected.

Nor is the leadership of the new ruling party all that different from the old. Many members of the DPJ leadership were at one point members of the LDP: Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, DPJ Secretary-General Ichiro Ozawa, Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa, and State Minister for Financial Services Shizuka Kamei, to name a few. Around half of the cabinet attended the University of Tokyo, the traditional feeder for government elites.

The Japanese people don't seem to think they've elected revolutionaries either. In polls, Japanese voters said they weren't electing radical change as much as expressing dissatisfaction with the LDP. Poll after poll indicates that constituents do not think Hatoyama is a great leader. And only a quarter of voters think the DPJ will lead Japan in the "right direction."

"The DPJ Is the Party of Economic Reform."

If only. In Japan, reform has become such an empty buzzword that one wonders why the media bothers to repeat it. Past prime ministers have cast themselves -- and, by extension, their parties -- as reformist. The DPJ has done the same. But looking closely, the chances for systemic economic reform under Hatoyama seem slim.

The reason is structural. Like the LDP, the DPJ accepts into its party a wide range of ideological, corporate, and political interests. Local support groups (known as koenkai) provide some funding to the party but primarily sponsor individual candidates. At a national level, the result is political indecisiveness, interparty bickering, and gridlock.

Were the DPJ to change this system, it would need to bolster party unity, appeal to progressive constituencies with a transformative economic plan, and then gin up grass-roots support. It hasn't done this -- nor does it show any sign that it's planning to do so. The DPJ's principle fundraising organ, the People's Reform Council, taps into the same export-led, old-economy industry groups that the LDP does, suggesting that its reform proposals will not fundamentally upset the cozy status quo.

The DPJ's indebtedness to many masters shows in its economic platform, a hodgepodge of conflicting proposals. The new ruling party claims it will reduce the LDP's "wasteful spending," but it also advocates increased spending on households -- without explaining why or how it plans to fund that priority. It wants to "strongly promote" measures to prevent global warming, but it also wants to eliminate highway tolls, placating some businesses but increasing carbon dioxide emissions. And it wants to allow local governments to control national funds, but it also somehow advocates a smaller national budget.

Since the election, Hatoyama's government has come to see the difficulties of governing a fragmented coalition with no clear mandate in such a dour economic climate. The government faces depressed tax revenue, increased debt-service costs, and ballooning indirect obligations. Plans to privatize the postal system have been delayed. Moreover, news of heated internal bickering over the terms of business-loan repayments and currency-market interventions has undercut the DPJ's credibility on economic reform. The party that promised change looks like it is delivering more of the same.

"The DPJ Will Shift Power from the Bureaucracy to the Political Process."

Don't count on it. There is a reason why around three-quarters of bills presented to the Diet come through Japan's notorious, entrenched bureaucracy.

In Japan, laws are usually vetted by ministerial advisory councils, drafted by the bureaucracy, reviewed by the relevant minister, reviewed again by the relevant Diet committee, and finally rubber-stamped in a plenary Diet session. This is not because the bureaucracy has a chokehold on the legislative process, but because politicians lack the time, energy, staff, and expertise necessary to write bills.

Anywhere between 15 and 100 bills are made into law with each Diet session, to say nothing of hundreds of regulations, international accords, and ordinances. Almost every one is the product of a diffuse and lengthy decision-making process. The system is structured to devote resources for that process to the bureaucratic ministries, not the Diet.

Indeed, each Diet member has just three legal aides, while every ministry has hundreds of experienced workers, often with decades of expertise devoted to creating laws. The Diet (including the cabinet) receives just 7 percent of the governance budget, whereas some of the most influential ministries, such as the Finance Ministry, receive more than three times that amount.

To make law-writing a function of elected officials rather than bureaucrats, Hatoyama would need to increase cabinet ministers and vice ministers' terms. They currently serve for just a year -- not long enough to exert the day-to-day supervision needed to make bills. But such a move would require a radical reorganization of Japan's postwar parliamentary electoral institutions. That's something no one is even considering.

The DPJ offers no real countermeasure to shift power back to the cabinet. Rather, the ruling party has called for the creation of a few smaller cabinet-focused committees to replace a few older party-centric and ministry-centric committees. It has also restricted the media's access to the bureaucracy -- hardly signaling its commitment to a more democratic and transparent legislative process.

"The DPJ Will Dramatically Alter the U.S.-Japan Relationship."

Nonsense. Numerous vital factors weigh against a U.S.-Japan split. First, any change in the DPJ's policy position is likely just rhetorical. Despite Hatoyama's recent remarks that Japan should pursue a more independent path from the United States, the two countries have declared their intentions to "deepen the alliance." It's a case of national interest trumping political rhetoric: Most Japanese, including DPJ ministers, see close ties with the United States as critical to security in what remains a dangerous region.

If anything, the DPJ will try to diversify the relationship with the United States -- changing the emphasis and being honest about Japan's capabilities -- not weaken it. The party has long advocated tighter U.S.-Japan economic ties and collaboration on nonmilitary areas such as energy and the environment. "Japan's relations with the U.S. have been heavily biased toward defense," Hatoyama recently said. "Now it's time to shift our focus to economic ties."

But above all, the Japanese want to feel secure while countries like North Korea are so close. Therefore, Japan will continue to have strong ties with the U.S. military superpower, upholding the relationship that has helped keep Japan safe for decades.

"The DPJ Will Turn Japan into an Anti-American, Anti-Capitalist Society."

Not in your lifetime. In a now-famous essay in the September issue of the Japanese magazine Voice, Hatoyama mused about the coming retreat of American pre-eminence and U.S.-style capitalism. In its place, he favored a more European version of economic management. Alarm bells rang in the United States after parts of the essay were translated and published in the New York Times. Japan watchers, who have known consistency in the U.S.-Japan relationship for decades, scrambled to interpret the remarks.

But according to Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest-selling newspaper, Hatoyama's office had not given the New York Times permission to publish the truncated, translated essay and thought it took his points out of context. Plus, one doubts that Hatoyama would have quoted the French phrase "liberté, égalité, fraternité" if he meant it for an American audience. And Hatoyama quickly backtracked from the essay, saying it represented his personal views, not those of his party.

This whole episode simply represents a new party getting its sea legs. Japan is not going to suddenly "turn socialist." To be sure, Japan's economy has some socialist elements -- particularly in the cozy relationship between the government, manufacturing, and the financial sectors, something Tokyo-based economist Jesper Koll has called "financial socialism." Fixing holes in the Japanese social safety net, such as those in unemployment and welfare benefits, are obvious policy priorities (just as health care is in the United States).

But Japan remains a free-market, export-driven economy, and policymakers fully appreciate that liberal markets and entrepreneurship are necessary for job creation.

"As Japan Shifts Away from the United States, It Will Shift Toward Asia."

Not true. For Japan, fostering good relations with the West is no longer incompatible with fostering good relations with its Asian neighbors.

In the past, there were two schools of thought on Japan's foreign policy: the look-East school and the look-West school. Fifty years ago or more, these two sides debated fiercely whether Japan needed to align itself with countries like China or with countries like the United States. But circumstances were different then. Japan today can forge new levels of trust with China, South Korea, and Southeast Asia, all without estranging itself from its Western allies.

Hatoyama's desire for a more "independent" Japan means he wants his country to operate on a more equal footing with the United States, something that policymakers in Washington have been cajoling Japan to do for decades. Japan can shed its "American lap dog" image, giving its political leadership role in Asia more credibility.

Finally, the foreign policy of Japanese Democrats is quite similar to that of U.S. Democrats: an emphasis on multilateralism and consultation, strengthening international organizations and treaties, and setting a priority on nonmilitary foreign-policy tools, such as climate-change mitigation, regional cooperation, and trade policy. Tokyo might decline to refuel U.S. Navy ships in the Indian Ocean or make other gestures to mute opposition at home, but it is already considering sending economic aid to Afghanistan.

Japanese executives and political advisors at a recent U.S.-Japan panel held at the Carnegie Council opined that the DPJ's ambitious policy platform might fail but its victory has opened the door to a new conversation in Japan. The Japanese can now ask themselves a fundamental question: What do we want? The answer may be: a return to some traditional values, such as fairness, but also a fiercer competition of ideas. The realm of the possible has been slightly expanded in Japan. For that, observers of Japan should celebrate.

"Asymmetrical Warfare Has Come a Long Way Since Lawrence."

It has come full circle. It's easy to assume that the Counterinsurgency Field Manual -- the U.S. military's new, post-Iraq-surge bible on unconventional warfare -- is something of a revolution in military thought. Afghanistan itself is rewriting the rules of war every day, it seems. But history has a funny way of repeating itself. The U.S. generals dictating strategy to their troops would have done better to pass around a 1917 publication by Lawrence of Arabia, "27 Articles."

Like the Counterinsurgency Field Manual, which was written at a time when the U.S. military was losing Iraq, "27 Articles" was composed during difficult days. It was the height of the Great War in August 1917, following the astonishing capture of Aqaba in the desert campaign against the Ottoman Empire. The British were using Arab insurgents to harass the Turks, and the high command in London, fearing that Aqaba's conqueror, Lawrence of Arabia, could be killed at any moment, tasked him with codifying what he had learned in dealing with his Arab allies. It was meant to be a manual for British officers serving in the field with Faisal, the Hashemite prince and insurgent leader, and his troops. So, in the midst of leading his guerrilla campaign, Lawrence wearily began typing "27 Articles" in the heat of the desert sun.

The work he produced is nothing less than a new way for Western nation-builders to look at the world. A century ahead of his time, Lawrence realized that without the political backing of the Arab population, he could not win -- but with their support, he could not lose. Lawrence describes not only how to run a successful insurgency but how to create a nation. Sounds awfully similar to U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's mantra that protecting the Afghan people -- and thus winning their hearts and minds -- is the key to success for the NATO mission in Afghanistan. McChrystal acknowledges another dictum of Lawrence: that he is still trying to do way too much with Western troops when Afghans themselves should be doing the brunt of the work. No wonder he wants to double the Afghan Army to 400,000 in the coming years.

"Lawrence's Major Contribution Was on the Battlefield."

Wrong. It was his philosophy that stands the test of time. As coalition troops are belatedly learning in Afghanistan today, the most important component of asymmetrical warfare is far from the battlefield, among the everyday people. It was here that Lawrence truly excelled. To win militarily, Lawrence knew that one first had to become an astute observer of local governance. Western elites must work with a country's politics in its current form, rather than looking for an Ahmed Chalabi who promises to magically instill a more Western style of rule, one that is wholly alien to the local culture. In the case of Faisal's legions, the unit of politics was the decentralized tribe. In modern Iraq, politics breaks down along religious and ethnic lines, with the three primary building blocks being the Shiites, the formerly ruling Sunnis, and the Kurds. Ignoring such indigenous structures makes political failure near inevitable -- as seen in today's Iraq.

Once analyzed, the organic political structures must then become a central part of any nation-building strategy. Local elites must be made stakeholders. "Do not try to do too much with your own hands," Lawrence famously warns in "27 Articles." "Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them."

All of this, Lawrence cautioned, should be done only when the potential gains warrant the immense difficulties and costs incurred. A Western country should only engage in arduous nation-building when its primary national security interests are at stake. In the Great War, Lawrence was acutely aware of just how badly Britain needed to defeat Turkey and isolate Germany, and he was convinced that it was possible to energize the Arab revolt to that end. No doubt Lawrence would have also approved of U.S. efforts to reconstruct Germany and Japan in 1945. But he would have been far more skeptical of U.S. interventions in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo that had seemingly little to do with immediate U.S. needs. As with these examples, most nation-building efforts peter out long before they realize their overly ambitious goals.

"Lawrence Got Too Close to the Arabs."

No way. On the contrary, Lawrence's success can be largely attributed to his proximity to Arab society. His were not the placid ruminations of some creaky scholar locked away in a cloister, but rather the day-to-day lessons drawn from a career of holding the Arab army together. He was immersed in the politics, culture, and language of his Arab counterparts. Being a student of the classics, Lawrence would have known the Greek word for what he was aiming at: "praxis," the unity of thought and action. Combining the two has been an ideal almost entirely forgotten by modern nation-builders.

The contrast between Lawrence's intimacy with Arab culture and the U.S. military's absolute inexperience with Vietnamese, Iraqi, and now Afghan society is stark. In the case of Iraq, a scant few of the large staff recruited by then-Viceroy Paul Bremer had any background at all in the Middle East. Many of President John F. Kennedy's senior advisors could not have passed an introductory course in Vietnamese history, culture, economics, or anthropology. In both cases, nation-building efforts were doomed from the start; it is impossible to transform a society about which one knows precious little.

"Lawrence's Dreams for the Arabs Were Unrealistic."

No. And they were certainly better than what actually occurred. Lawrence's vision for the Arab world, explained in his masterpiece Seven Pillars of Wisdom, was one in which boundaries would correspond to local politics rather than the whims of the great powers sketching lines on a map. The revolt was "an Arab war waged and led by Arabs for an Arab aim in Arabia," he wrote. Greater Syria (today's Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine) was the testing ground. Lawrence and Prince Faisal established a government based on local ethnic lines ruled by Feisal, a man with enormous street credibility. He spoke the local dialect of Arabic, was the son of the keeper of the holy places at Mecca, and had led Syria's war of liberation from the Ottomans. Lawrence thought that if the Arab world as a whole could be divided along similar ethnic and religious lines and run by leaders such as Faisal, stable regimes would be the result.

Although such a regional order might sound fatally utopian today, it was in fact the failure to implement it that wreaked so much future turmoil. Upon taking Damascus in October 1918, Lawrence tragically learned that his vision would never come true. He had been a geopolitical tool in the hands of his British masters, who offered Greater Syria to both the Arabs and the French. Two years later in 1920, with the tacit support of London, the French militarily destroyed Faisal's kingdom at the Battle of Maysalun. Britain and France had succeeded in replacing Ottoman rule with their own colonial oversight. But they ignored the lessons Lawrence had unearthed, disdaining local political opinion in Syria and the Arab world. Lacking local legitimacy, the colonizers had to rely on either imperial diktat or local repression to hold the pieces together. The imperial powers doomed themselves to running perpetually unstable and unsustainable colonies. And they doomed the Middle East to decades of the same.

More had been lost in Syria than just Faisal's throne and Lawrence's vision. The Middle East missed its best opportunity for building a stable Arab government in the region. That's a prospect the same great powers would no doubt cheer today. Lawrence might have been able to deliver -- if only London had listened.

"Iraq and Afghanistan Have Killed Nation-Building."

Not yet. But they've forced a much-needed rethink. The United States' present-day difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan illustrate a depressing ideological similarity to failed nation-building projects in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The problem in all these cases has been one of philosophy. U.S. military strategists have relied on tactics dating back to the British and French imperial systems -- tactics such as privileging military outcomes over political ones, ignoring local culture, imposing Western norms, and failing to work with local populations. No wonder the United States has seen the same dire results.

Where has this left nation-building? In the 20th century, the United States intervened in Haiti a handfull of times; it still remains one of the poorest countries on Earth. The Bill Clinton administration left the chaos of Somalia in 1994; today, the country is an alarming black hole in the Horn of Africa, host to an expanding al Qaeda presence. If free and fair elections were held in Bosnia now, two of the three ethnic groups (the Serbs and the Croats) would vote to secede from the country. Kosovo, despite its contentious declaration of independence, remains intact thanks only to the international community. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, having triumphed in an obviously rigged election, may be more than just the "Mayor of Kabul," but his sway surely does not extend throughout the country. Meanwhile, the Taliban are regrouping and gaining support.

With each failure, Lawrence rolls over in his grave, again and again and again. Top-down nation-building efforts from outside -- efforts that pay little more than lip service to the idea of making locals the main stakeholders -- are doomed. And unless we start learning from the wisdom of Lawrence's writings of old, he'll keep rolling in his disgust.

"Economic Peace Is Possible."

No. Neither sustainable economic development nor peace is possible without political freedom.

The idea of "economic peace" suggests an economic conflict, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is certainly not that. Although economic issues do figure into Palestinian concerns, they are not nearly as important as addressing the rights of Palestinian refugees, terminating Israel's occupation of Palestinian land, and establishing a viable, independent, and sovereign Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. To suggest that economics are what this is about would be to sideline history and to willfully ignore the reality of Israel's occupation. This conflict is political and it calls for a solution that is political.

Besides, even if economic growth were issue No. 1, the greatest impediment to economic development and opportunity for Palestinians is not the absence of industrial parks as advocated by the Israeli government under its model of "economic peace." Rather, it is the denial of basic freedoms and rights to Palestinians under occupation and the myriad restrictions Israel imposes on the free movement of Palestinian goods and people within, and in and out of, the occupied Palestinian territory. It is the inability of Palestinians to access the 60 percent of the occupied West Bank under Area C (Israeli control), including the 40 percent that Israel claims for its settlement enterprise. And it is the forced isolation of occupied East Jerusalem, long the economic heart of the Palestinian economy, from the rest of the West Bank. All these economic constraints are fundamental to the architecture of Israel's occupation.

In short, "economic peace" is a slogan designed to give the appearance of positive movement while distracting from the real issues and the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians. It does not mean, nor does it promise, an end to Israel's occupation. Rather, it offers economic crumbs in an effort to normalize and better manage the occupation.

"As with Gaza, a West Bank Withdrawal Endangers Israel."

Wrong. Israel argues that its withdrawal from Gaza was rewarded with rocket attacks by Hamas. The attraction of such an argument lies in its simplicity. But just as "economic peace" is designed to divert attention away from the real issues, the argument that a Gaza withdrawal was dangerous for the Israelis is designed to mask the reality that Israel never stopped occupying the Gaza Strip.

Contrary to popular belief, Israel's unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005 did not bring about an end to the occupation. Yes, Israel removed its settlers (who, in many cases, relocated to settlements in the West Bank). And yes, Israel withdrew its troops -- though only as far as the border. From that close distance, Israel has imposed a medieval-style siege on Gaza that continues to this day. Israel remains an occupying power under international law because it retains effective control over Gaza's borders and its land, sea, and airspace, allowing it to suffocate and starve Gaza as it is doing today.

The scale of the humanitarian crisis that Israel has created in Gaza is hard to convey. Even before the election of Hamas in 2006, there were severe restrictions on the amount of food, water, fuel, and other essentials allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. In 2006, then-senior Israeli government advisor Dov Weisglass callously claimed that "the idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger." The result was that by the end of 2007, well over 80 percent of Gaza's population lived below the poverty line. Authorities have also clamped down on Gaza's imports and exports, suffocating the Palestinian economy. By November 2007, the U.N. World Food Program was already warning that less than half of Gaza's food import needs were being met. Following the election of Hamas, Israel tightened these economic restrictions further to enforce a complete closure, further compounding the humanitarian crisis. It is within this context that Israel's disengagement from Gaza must be judged.

Of course, rocket attacks from Gaza are not a proper response to Israel's harsh policies. Palestine is a just cause fought for in the name of rights, universal principles, and international law; its actions must be faithful to that. The lesson that should be drawn from Gaza is that the only guarantee of security for Israel is a full end to its occupation and domination -- not just an end in name. The only form of withdrawal carrying the promise of peace is a full withdrawal -- from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with Gaza -- that allows for the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.

"Arab Intransigence Blocks Peace."

Four words: the Arab Peace Initiative. First proposed by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and subsequently endorsed by 57 Arab and Islamic states, the Arab Peace Initiative offers full normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for Israel's full withdrawal from all territory occupied in 1967, as well as a just and agreed upon solution for Palestinian refugees in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194. That resolution, in essence, says to Israel: Do what is required of you under international law and U.N. resolutions, and the Arab and Islamic world will normalize relations in return. Israel's response so far has been to ignore the Arab Peace Initiative, squandering what is a historic opportunity.

As for the Palestinians, President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad are the most accommodating Palestinian leaders ever to hold office. Yet Israel is frittering away their time at the helm; Israeli leaders evidently feel no urgency to negotiate. Eventually, this window of opportunity will close. As settlers flock to the territories, Palestinians will determine that a Palestinian state is no longer viable. When the debated solution turns from two states to one state with equal rights for all, Israel may well regret it did not seize multiple opportunities to return all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as part of a peace deal.

"Settlements Are Not the Issue."

They are crucial. Israeli settlement activity is precisely the undertaking that is foreclosing the possibility of a Palestinian state. Recent U.S. efforts to restart meaningful negotiations have faltered around Israel's refusal to implement a comprehensive settlement freeze in keeping with obligations under both international law and the "road map." Israel's refusal to comply has undermined the credibility of the peace process and eroded Palestinian public confidence in the ability of negotiations to bring tangible results.

Rather than favoring Palestinians or Israelis, a credible peace process holds both accountable to commitments made in the name of peace. The true test of meaningful negotiations, as distinct from negotiations for their own sake, is what happens on the ground. The faux freeze Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now proposing -- build units already in the pipeline and then implement a brief six-month freeze, all the while continuing pell-mell with construction in East Jerusalem -- is powerful on-the-ground evidence that Netanyahu and his coalition intend to build greater Israel at the expense of Palestinians.

Israeli settlements pose the greatest threat to the two-state solution. Settlements and their related infrastructure, like settler bypass roads, account for more than 40 percent of the West Bank, fragmenting the territory, monopolizing freshwater resources, and confining Palestinians to a series of disconnected cantons where unemployment, poverty, and hopelessness have reached endemic levels. Settlements run counter to the very principle of "land for peace" on which the Middle East peace process is built, and they make a viable and sovereign Palestinian state a physical impossibility. Without a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, there is no two-state solution.

"Israel's Occupation Is Not Apartheid."

It is. In fact, it would be most accurate to call it occupation, colonialism, and apartheid all rolled into one. This is the conclusion reached in a recent report commissioned by the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, titled "Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?", that brought together a team of international scholars and legal experts to assess Israel's occupation vis-à-vis international law.

On apartheid, the report identifies a series of discriminatory laws, standards, and practices that Israel applies exclusively to Palestinians living under occupation -- laws, standards, and practices which do not apply to Israeli settlers living in the occupied West Bank and that are intended to "maintain [Israel's] domination over Palestinians in the OPT [occupied Palestinian territories] and to suppress opposition of any form."

In particular, the report identifies three pillars of apartheid as it existed in South Africa, noting that they also exist in the occupied Palestinian territory today. The first pillar consists of laws and policies that "establish Jewish identity for purposes of law and afford a preferential legal status and material benefits to Jews over non-Jews." The ramifications of this include the massive disparity in terms of the rights and privileges enjoyed by Israeli settlers compared with Palestinians, such as the denial of the right of return for Palestinian refugees compared with the 1950 Law of Return allowing all Jews to immigrate to Israel or, since 1967, the occupied Palestinian territory.

The second pillar concerns Israeli policies intended to segregate the population along racial lines. These policies center on the confinement of Palestinians to areas that resemble "Bantustans" (the largest being Israel's complete closure on Gaza), policed by Israel using a network of walls, roadblocks, checkpoints, and a special permit regime. Meanwhile, the Israelis construct settlements and a separate road system to service them, all built on confiscated Palestinian land that Palestinians can no longer access.

The final pillar focuses on repressive measures initiated under the rubric of "security." For example, Palestinians are subject to arbitrary arrest, administrative detention, extrajudicial killings, torture, and an oppressive code of military laws and military courts that fall short of international standards for a fair trial. These measures are reinforced by restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly, association, movement, and so on, which are ultimately designed to suppress Palestinian dissent while reinforcing Israeli control.

In short, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who grew up in the Jim Crow South, has it right when he uses the term apartheid to describe Israel's policies in the occupied Palestinian territory. And the facts are increasingly on the table. Whether the Barack Obama administration, already saddled with a brutal fight over health care, has the courage to challenge Israel's "economic peace," siege of Gaza, intransigence, settlements, and apartheid remains to be seen.

"The Security Council Is All Talk and No Action."

Not true. The 15-member U.N. Security Council (UNSC) that has responsibility for maintaining international peace and security has actually been very busy lately. In the last 20 years, its five permanent and 10 rotating members have authorized more than a dozen peacekeeping missions, imposed sanctions or arms embargoes on 10 states, and created several war crimes tribunals to prosecute those responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity, including sittings heads of state. That makes the UNSC particularly important in desperate corners of the world -- think Darfur and the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- where blue helmets, U.N. mediators, and humanitarian aid convoys help shape realities on the ground. And while some recent council decisions, including the deployment of peacekeepers to Sudan and the imposition of sanctions on North Korea, took months of debate to sort out, the UNSC moves at a much quicker clip today than it did during most of the Cold War, when animosity between the superpowers often crippled any hope of compromise. In comparison, the Security Council has been a beehive of activity since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

True, plenty of the council's frenetic efforts have required tortuous negotiation, but as it turns out, talk is an important aspect of what the council does. Achieving consensus among the council's five veto-wielding permanent members -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia, and China -- is rarely easy. Each power has a unique set of interests and relationships that it seeks to protect. Even when the permanent five (P5) members can agree, they have to convince at least four of the elected council members in order to take formal action. Frustrating though it can be, that process -- of the major powers talking to each other day after day -- is one of the council's principal contributions to international stability. Through sheer repetition, the Security Council has instilled a culture of great-power consultation and compromise that may be as important to international peace as any peacekeeping mission, sanctions regime, or war crimes investigation.

"Obama Will Rely More on the Council Than Bush Did."

Perhaps. Certainly the tone in New York has been quite different under the Obama administration compared with the last eight years. Gone is the feeling that the United States has contempt for the organization -- the prevailing perception when John Bolton represented Washington in Turtle Bay. Obama's new ambassador, Susan Rice, insists that the United States has learned that "stiff-arming" the organization is counterproductive and can have serious consequences for America's international image. Now, a repentant (if still resolute) Washington has taken several steps toward reengagement, including joining the U.N. Human Rights Council and signaling support for the U.N.-affiliated International Criminal Court.

That doesn't mean, however, that Washington is finding it easier to get what it wants from the other members of the P5. Moscow and Beijing are still resisting the type of pressure that Washington thinks may persuade North Korea or Iran to abandon their nuclear ambitions. On humanitarian questions as well, the Obama team may soon become frustrated by East River diplomacy. China has repeatedly provided diplomatic cover to Sudan's government and resists the expansive doctrine of humanitarian intervention that many of Obama's advisers support. For all the talk of abandoning unilateralism, it would not be shocking to see the Obama administration -- which prides itself on pragmatism--working around, not through, the Security Council in the next few years.

"Military Action Without Security Council Approval Is Illegal."

Who cares? The U.N. Charter requires that any use of force that is not self-defense be cleared by the Security Council. It was for that reason that so many voices around the world -- including then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- declared the U.S. invasion of Iraq unlawful. The critics may be right as a matter of law, but since the organization began operating in 1946, the charter's mandate has rarely been followed. Major powers (and plenty of minor ones) have taken military action again and again without the council's approval. Plenty of these actions have been misguided, but others have been necessary. The United States itself used force without council approval under the Bill Clinton administration when it launched airstrikes in 1999 to force Serbia to relinquish the disputed province of Kosovo. Earlier this month, President Obama sent commandos into Somalia to hunt down suspected terrorists without stopping to ask for a council debate and resolution on the subject. Certain purists may insist that all these actions were illegal and illegitimate, but the actual practice of international relations matters more than legal doctrine. The Security Council is an important avenue to international legitimacy, but certainly not the only one. Regional organizations like NATO, the European Union, and the African Union will often be alternatives. The Kosovo operation, for example, was endorsed by NATO rather than by the Security Council.

"The Council Would Work Better Without the Veto."

That's irrelevant. There would be no Security Council without the veto power, which is granted only to the P5. The three powers that wrote the first draft of the U.N. Charter -- the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States -- all wanted a veto (though they differed on its scope) and would not have joined the organization without it. At various moments during the Cold War, the veto was a critical safety valve that probably saved the organization from disintegration. Even in today's somewhat gentler political climate, it is very hard to imagine the permanent members shedding the voting power that the charter grants them.

Yet while the veto is here to stay, the formal use of it has actually decreased significantly in recent years. In contrast with earlier periods of the council's history, when loud, confrontational debates were common, most current debates occur in private. When the council's ambassadors are behind closed doors, they can test the limits of each other's policy positions and try out formulations without ever coming to a formal vote.  This reliance on closed-door consultation means that the five permanent members are much less likely than in the past to cast vetoes and more inclined to let the unspoken threat of the veto do the work for them. It's progress of a sort.

"Expanding the Council Would Increase Its Legitimacy."

Don't be so sure. It has become a constant refrain at U.N. headquarters that the Security Council is anachronistic. And in many ways, it is. Japan, the organization's second- largest financial contributor, deserves a permanent council seat, as do rising economic stars India and Brazil. In the near future, the British and French seats should be combined into a seat for the European Union, a change that would give a regular voice to Germany and boost the EU's aspiration for a common foreign policy.

These reforms would help the council more accurately reflect the world's power distribution. But reorganization alone would not greatly increase respect for the body worldwide. Many of the crises and conflicts that the UNSC confronts spring from either rogue regimes or uncooperative non-state actors for whom the council's composition is all but irrelevant. Tyrants in Burma, militias in eastern Congo, and Al Qaeda disciples won't be impressed by a revamped council. And in some cases, an expanded council would even introduce new legitimacy problems. Imagine, for example, a council with India as a permanent member that passed resolutions condemning Pakistan. From Islamabad, the new council would certainly look less legitimate than it does today.

Moreover, expansion of the UNSC requires the support of two-thirds of the General Assembly. Since small and mid-sized states often pool their votes, any reform package would have to compensate those blocs of power somehow. Most viable proposals for council reform envision adding five to 10 additional elected seats to compensate the broader U.N. membership for new permanent seats. All told, council membership might balloon to 25 states or more. Such a dramatic expansion could easily undermine the council's value as an important talking shop for major powers. A 25-member UNSC would often prove too large for the kinds of quiet, behind-the-scenes exchanges that have been one of the body's principal values -- and contributions to security.