United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan created the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change in September 2003 with SIIS and CISAC senior fellow Stephen J. Stedman as its research director to identify the major global threats and generate new ideas about policies and institutions to enable the U.N. to be effective in the 21st century.

The panel issued a four-part report, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, in December 2004.

PART ONE: The panel identifies six types of threats of greatest global concern: war between states; violence within states; poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation; nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological weapons; terrorism; and transnational crime. A collective security system must take all member states' threats seriously and deal with them equitably.

PART TWO: In prescribing policies to prevent threats from spreading or worsening, the report emphasizes development as the first line of defense. Combating poverty and infectious disease, the panel argues, will save millions of lives and strengthen states' capacity to deter terrorism, crime, and proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons. The report also urges the U.N. to improve its capacity for preventive diplomacy and mediation and to forge a counterterrorism strategy.

PART THREE: The report reiterates the U.N.'s recognition of states' right to self-defense, but also suggests that the Security Council should consider stepping in more often to exercise its preventive authority. Peacekeeping, peace enforcement, and peace building are vital to global security, and developed nations should do more to transform their armies into units suitable for peace operations. Post-conflict peace building should be a core function of the U.N.

PART FOUR: The report prescribes revitalization of the Security Council and the General Assembly, and creation of a new Peacebuilding Commission. On the Security Council, the report provides two options for achieving reforms: one would appoint new permanent members, and the other would establish new long-term, renewable seats. Neither option creates any new vetoes.

Our DNA contains the most intimate details of who we are -- including secrets even we don't know about ourselves. Should the government have control over our genetic information, when we have not been found guilty of any crime?

Proposition 69 would do just this. Privacy advocates from across the political spectrum have begun to raise red flags about this potential expansion of government power.

Six years ago, California's DNA and Forensic Identification Data Base and Data Bank Act gave the state the authority to collect the genetic material of felons convicted of violent crimes, such as murder, rape and other sexual offenses. The idea was to establish a database like the fingerprint and criminal record information bank that already exists.

California was not alone in incorporating DNA provisions into its penal code -- every state introduced DNA databases for the most serious crimes. But California's version lacked protections guaranteed elsewhere. Many states retained only the DNA "fingerprint" or profile and destroyed the original sample. California not only kept the full genetic information, but it also has steadily expanded the number of qualifying offenses.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a ballot argument in support of Proposition 69 in July. If approved by voters on Nov. 2, it would unleash the government to gather this information to a degree and among unprecedented numbers of people. Proposition 69 extends collection to every felonious offense and, within five years, requires every adult and juvenile in California arrested for -- but not convicted of -- a felony to provide the government with cells containing his or her complete genetic structure.

Proposition 69 does not stop there. It would apply retroactively, empowering the government to seek out individuals previously arrested for a felony but found not guilty, and require them to turn over their DNA.

The extension to all felony arrests means a radical expansion in the number of citizens deprived of control over their genetic material. Felonies range from computer hacking and shoplifting, to writing bad checks and fraudulently procuring services.

The numbers are significant. In his advance release of Crime in California 2003, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer reported in July that there were just over half a million felony arrests -- not convictions -- in the state. Under Proposition 69, all 507,081 would be required to relinquish their genetic material -- even though statistics show that approximately one third of those arrested would have the charges dismissed or be found not guilty in a court of law.

The idea that you could easily retract your DNA from this felony database is fiction. Once an individual is found to be innocent, he or she could apply to have material removed, but the state would not be required to do so. Following the initial hearing, no appeal would be allowed.

Perhaps of greatest concern is the very real possibility of error. A recent Stanford University study showed that even sophisticated laboratories exhibit up to a 3 percent error rate in the handling and coding of genetic material. Of the half a million citizens from whom DNA would be collected annually, 15,000 might have their name associated with the wrong sample. Even if the error rate was significantly less -- 3/10 of a percent -- there would still be 1,500 people associated with the wrong DNA sample. And it would be extremely difficult for citizens to find out about, much less rectify, such mistakes.

Proposition 69 shrouds the system in secrecy. It prevents citizens or the courts from obtaining information about the structure of the data bank or database, or the software program in operation. Simultaneously, it makes information available to private laboratories, third parties assisting with statistical analysis, auditing boards, attorney general offices, local law enforcement and federal DNA databases.

The safeguards against misuse are inadequate. The initiative limits the ceiling of liability and exempts government employees or third parties from further civil or criminal penalties. It fails to protect against the threat of felony arrests as a tool for interrogation or the use of felony charges as a way to collect DNA from particular populations.

Behind the immediate and obvious privacy concerns lie deeper issues: We don't yet know how genetic information can -- or will -- be used. So we don't know the full extent of the rights we will relinquish.

We know that genes provide information about parentage and familial relationships, propensity for particular diseases, and biological vulnerabilities. We don't yet know the link between genes and personality, how to clone individuals, or how genetic structures can be altered once their content is known. When these and other discoveries are made, and efforts are made to take advantage of them, it will be too late.

Even seemingly innocuous information appears different depending on context: Within two days of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Census Bureau provided the military with a list of the number of Japanese Americans in specific neighborhoods. In less than 90 days, the Army "evacuated" 110,442 citizens from the West Coast. DNA contains far more information than simple ancestry.

Even as science wrestles with the implications of the Human Genome Project, there will be repeated efforts to create a universal database that catalogs our biological inheritance. But every attempt to expand this awesome power should be met with skepticism and careful discussion about the implications of giving up control over the very essence of our being. We need to think hard about where we draw the line. A system that captures innocent citizens' DNA, lacks transparency, and fails to adequately protect the gathered information against future misuse goes too far.

This paper assesses Pan Wei's proposal for a 'consultative rule of law system' for China, finding it a potentially important step along the path of political reform. China urgently needs political reform to deal with the rapidly mounting problems of corruption, abuse of power, financial scandals, rising crime and inequality, and declining legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. A rule of law, with an independent judiciary and other autonomous institutions of horizontal accountability, is vital if China is to rein in these problems and deliver better, fairer, more transparent and effective governance. However, Pan Wei's proposed system goes only part of the way toward addressing the deficiencies of governance in China, and is therefore best viewed as a transitional framework. To work, horizontal accountability must be supplemented with and reinforced by vertical account ability, through competitive elections, which give local officials an incentive to serve the public good and enable bad officials to be removed by the people. Ultimately, I argue, China can only achieve adequate and enduring political accountability by moving toward democracy. Among the other issues addressed in the paper are the architecture and appointment of a system of horizontal accountability for China; the role of the Communist Party (or its successor hegemon) in a 'rule of law' system; and the timing and phasing of the transition to a rule of law.

Reprinted in Suisheng Zhao, ed., Debating Political Reform in China: Rule of Law vs. Democratization, 2006.

As the American military extends its stay in postwar Iraq, the risks of political and social friction will rise. Inevitably, there will be clashes; protests erupted in May, for example, when soldiers searching for troublemakers in one town intruded on unveiled women. To keep the occupation of Iraq from ending in bitterness, American officials will have to reach out to residents both economically and politically.

To that end, they might want to consider the long-term occupation of another place where Americans haven't been universally welcomed: Okinawa. This island witnessed the bloodiest battle of World War II, losing a third of its population. The American military administered the island until 1972, when it reverted to Japanese rule. Today, 24,000 American troops are stationed there, and the military occupies one-fifth of the land.

There is a tradition of antimilitarism on the island, fed in part by the horrors of the Battle of Okinawa, and there is an active movement to evict the American troops. Yet most islanders get along well with the service members, and anti-American violence is rare. Three important lessons can be drawn from Okinawa for the American presence in postwar Iraq.

First and most obvious, commanders must do everything possible to stop criminal or just plain disorderly conduct by American personnel. Military officials on Okinawa realized the importance of this when protests arose in 1995 after three servicemen raped a 12-year-old Okinawan girl. The officials responded by establishing intensive educational campaigns that instilled the importance of good community relations in service members and their families. Personnel are now checked for drunkenness as they enter and leave the bases, and unarmed patrols in areas where G.I.'s socialize discourage bad behavior.

These measures appear to be helping: the military says American personnel and their families commit 1 percent of the crimes on the island, even though they are 4 percent of the population. And while protests against the bases continue, tensions have eased considerably since 1995.

While it's vital to discourage crime, it's also important to be seen as an actively beneficial presence. The second lesson of Okinawa is that the United States should try to contribute to the local economy, and to spread its largess.

American bases in Okinawa provide thousands of jobs to locals. The Americans are consumers too, keeping small businesses afloat. The islanders who lease the land for the bases collect above-market rents, and local governments get public works money from Tokyo as a side payment for bearing the "basing burden." That means a critical mass of Okinawans is reluctant to see the American bases disappear. To build goodwill in Iraq, officials should ensure that many different local interests profit from the American presence.

The third lesson is that American officials should establish strong lines of communication with the local authorities, not just with national officials - especially if, as on Okinawa, they represent a distinct ethnic group. To give islanders more of a voice, there is a tripartite committee for Okinawan, American and Japanese officials to discuss base-related matters. In Iraq, community representatives must likewise be included in base negotiations, especially in the Kurdish north and Shiite south.

As part of these efforts, a vigorous volunteer program like the one on Okinawa - involving everything from teaching in local schools to assisting the disabled - can help convince residents that American troops are on their side. Rebuilding security will be the greatest long-term challenge in postwar Iraq. Learning from the United States experience on Okinawa can help ensure the success of the Iraqi occupation, enabling the troops to come home all the more quickly.

This article analyzes the supply and demand sides in nuclear smuggling, as well as intermediaries between them, based on the 700 illicit trafficking incidents collected by the Stanford Database on Nuclear Smuggling, Theft, and Orphan Radiation Sources (DSTO) for the period 1991 to 2002. The supply side consists of people with access to nuclear and other radioactive material. It can be subdivided into civilian employees at source facilities, ranging from technicians to top managers; military personnel; and security guards. Intermediaries--traffickers and middlemen--can be categorized as amateurs, opportunist businessmen and firms, and organized crime groups. The demand side is represented by proliferating nation states, terrorist organizations, religious sects, separatist movements, and criminal groups or individuals interested in using nuclear and other radioactive material for malevolent purposes, such as murder, deliberate exposure, blackmail, and extortion.

This book compares sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Union, two regions beset by the breakdown of states suffering from extreme official corruption, organized crime extending into warlordism, and the disintegration of economic institutions and public institutions for human services. The contributors not only study state breakdown but also compare the consequences of post-communism with those of post-colonialism.

This chapter looks at the processes of state formation in postcolonial Africa and the former Soviet Union and asks whether those processes make African and Eurasian states especially vulnerable to civil war. In particular, we ask whether the experience of Africa's postcolonial states suggests a similar historical trajectory for the new states that emerged in Eurasia at the beginning of the 1990s. We argue that, despite important differences between the two historical experiences, conditions surrounding state formation in Africa and post-Soviet Eurasia have inhibited the formation of stable and legitimate states and have made war more likely.

The chapter beings by outlining three broad explanatory factors that scholars have used in trying to explain civil wars since 1945: ethnicity, nationalism, and globalization. We argue that these explanations neglect what Klaus Gantzel referred to as "the historicity of war," by which he means "the structural dynamics which condition the emergence and behaviour of actors" in any given period (Gantzel 1997, 139). We then suggest that a focus on state formation is helpful in providing the historical context for understanding civil wars. After surveying the experience of state-building in postcolonial Africa and in Eurasia, we conclude with comparisons and contrasts between the regions.