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By Root 643 0

and drives similar to one’s own to one’s opposite numbers as well. This was evident during the cold war. Analysts and policy makers would often discuss Soviet “hawks and doves”—that is, hardliners and those with whom one could deal. After all, the United States has hawks and doves, so the Soviet Union must as well. There was little concrete intelligence upon which this was based and it is difficult to describe any Soviet leader other than Gorbachev as someone who was willing truly to accommodate Western concerns. Mirror imaging tends to recur, however. For example, discussions about the internal politics of Iran focus on radicals and moderates. This may be a valid distinction, but even if it is, does an “Iranian moderate” mean a “moderate” in our sense of the word or just someone who is less radical but still not moderate as we would understand it? Analytically these types of global descriptions can be misleading and not particularly useful.

INTERNAL. STABILITY. Given our recent experience with the Soviet Union and its satellite empire, it is worth assessing the internal stability of China and Russia. How likely are their publics to support more aggressive policies? One of the advantages of authoritarian states is the absence of any need to renew one’s legitimacy through a genuine competition at the ballot box. But it is also a disadvantage as there is then no accurate gauge of public sentiment beyond the internal security forces, whose main job is to stamp out dissent and who are most likely either to overestimate it as a means of safeguarding their role or underestimate it as a means of showing their prowess, But, as was noted with the Soviet Union, if the internal security forces cannot accurately gauge public sentiment, how does an intelligence service do this from outside?

North Korea, which is among those states about which the United States is currently most concerned and is also among the most difficult to judge from the outside, is one of the few states where so much rests on the thoughts and goals of only one individual, Kim Jong II. Russia and China, on the other hand, are authoritarian states (of different degrees) that might be described as translucent. They have government apparatuses, legislatures (with varying degrees of fairly minimal power), and internal factions that lead to a type of competitive political system. But it is entirely a struggle within accepted elites, much of which happens behind closed doors, after which a result is announced. Iran is a very interesting case. Iran is not a liberal democracy in that there are restrictions on the media and on who can run for office, but within those bounds there is competition, regular elections, and the ability to throw out the incumbent government, albeit to be replaced by another candidate also approved by the theocratic rulers. It could be argued that Iran resembles, to some respects, the Soviet Politburo. Any individual who can rise to that rank and then aspire to power is unlikely to be willing to overhaul or liberalize the system radically. One of the most striking aspects of China’s transformation is that three successive generations of leaders, who either helped create or build or were raised in a communist state, have managed deftly to transform, if not wholly jettison, their ideology while maintaining political control.

FAILED STATES. The issue of failed states is complex and difficult to assess or even to categorize. It is clearly about states but in a more generic way, so that it almost resembles a transnational issue. There is an oxymoronic aspect to including failed states in a chapter on nation states. as failed states have largely ceased to function as states.

A failed state is one in which there has been a breakdown of the legitimacy of the government and the ability of the government to maintain a minimal level of control over its own territory. There is a fairly broad list of attributes of a failed state:• The state is no longer deemed legitimate by its own people

• Faltering economy and collapse of public services