Despite its attempt to soften criticism of the war, there is no evidence the Bush administration is capable of self-correction.

That came home to me the other day while listening to a senior administration official deliver an off-the-record tour d'horizon of American foreign policy. He is among the best minds in this administration, counted among the ranks of the realists, rather than the neoconservatives.

The United States stands alone as the most powerful nation in the world, the official began. In no previous moment of human history has a single state enjoyed such a dominant position.

When it comes to managing its relations with other would-be powers -- Europe, China, Japan and India -- the United States has done "extraordinarily well,'' he said.

The tensions generated by the war in Iraq have eased, the senior foreign policy official confidently asserted. The Europeans are content to gaze intently inward, he observed, while America strides the globe.

Japan is embracing the United States in a very close relationship that shows no sign of unraveling. Meanwhile the Bush administration has forged a growing partnership with India.

When it comes to China, the administration has chosen the path of accommodation and integration rather than containment of the rising power. He expressed confidence that American power and the prospect of democracy in China will secure the peace.

The only remaining challenge for the United States is to combat the threat of a radical Islamist movement that seeks to acquire weapons of mass destruction. For that, there is the promotion of democracy and American values around the world. After all, the official said with not even a nod to humility, "the U.S. is the most successful country that has ever existed.''

A year or two ago, the American people embraced this vision of a confident colossus, a Gulliver among the Lilliputians. That was before they watched the giant tied down in its attempt to export those American values by force of arms in Iraq.

The arrogance of this administration would be barely tolerable if it were not paired with a stunning incompetence, on display from Kabul to Katrina. That deadly combination has weakened American strength in the world. It has emboldened far more serious challengers in Iran and North Korea, who see the United States as too bogged down in Iraq to credibly threaten them with the use of force.

The war rated barely a mention in the sweeping view offered by the senior administration official, except indirectly. He offered a realist defense of the administration's democracy crusade.

World War II was fought with democratic goals, the official pointed out. And the Cold War -- the model for the current struggle against Islamic extremism -- was not just about balancing the power of the Soviet Union. The wars in Korea and Vietnam were really about determining which system those countries chose, he argued.

Those are curious examples to cite as a defense of the decision to go to war in Iraq. The United States shored up authoritarian regimes in Korea and Vietnam to counter the communist threat. Vietnam was a strategic mistake that took decades to overcome. And democracy came to Korea more than 35 years later, after a long period of economic development.

President Bush cited the democratic transformation of Korea -- along with Taiwan and Japan -- in a recent speech during his trip to Asia. But these are examples of the "conventional story in which you become rich and then you become democrats,'' as the senior official put it so well.

The administration proposes however to skip this long, but necessary, path to democratic capitalism when it comes to the Middle East. The policies of security and stability have failed there and a quicker route to democratic change is called for. But there is no historical evidence to suggest that this is any more than another manifestation of a blind belief in American power.

Democratic values have always been essential to American foreign policy. In practice, however, American administrations have often made painful choices between stability and the promotion of democracy. We saw that too often during the Cold War -- in Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968 or Tibet in 1959.

The administration might do well to recall the words of candidate Bush, uttered Oct. 11, 2000.

"It really depends on how our nation conducts itself in foreign policy. If we're an arrogant nation they'll resent us,'' Bush said. "But if we are a humble nation, they'll respect us.''

In the old popular song about the rout by Americans at New Orleans during the War of 1812, the British "ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch 'em." Even allowing for patriotic hyperbole, it can hardly be argued that the British extricated themselves with a great deal of dignity, particularly given that another battle in the same war inspired the American national anthem.

The impact of that defeat on the British national psyche is now obscure, but nearly two centuries later, as the Americans and their British allies seek to extricate themselves from Iraq, the story of how a superpower looks for a dignified way out of a messy and often unpopular foreign conflict has become a historical genre of sorts. As the pressure to leave Iraq increases, that genre is receiving new and urgent attention.

And in the shadow of the bleak and often horrific news emerging from Iraq nearly every day, historians and political experts are finding at least a wan hope in those imperfect historical analogies. Even in the absence of a sudden and dramatic shift on the battlefield toward a definitive victory, there may still be a slight opening, as narrow as the eye of a needle, for the United States to slip through and leave Iraq in the near future in a way that will not be remembered as a national embarrassment.

Most of the recent parallels do not seem to offer much encouragement for a confounded superpower that wants to save face as it cuts its losses and returns home. Among them are the wrenching French pullout from Algeria, the ill-fated French and American adventures in Vietnam, the Soviet humiliation in Afghanistan and the disastrous American interventions in Beirut and Somalia.

Still, there are a few stories of inconclusive wars that left the United States in a more dignified position, including the continuing American presence in South Korea and the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia. But even those stand in stark contrast to the happier legacy of total victory during World War II.

The highly qualified optimism of these experts about what may still happen in Iraq - let's call it something just this side of hopelessness - has been born of many factors, including greatly reduced expectations of what might constitute not-defeat there. The United States already appears willing to settle - as if it were in a relationship that had gone sour but cannot quite be resolved by a walk out the door, punctuated with a satisfying slam.

Alongside the dampening of hopes, there has also been a fair amount of historical revisionism regarding the darker tales of conflicts past: a considered sense that if the superpowers had made different decisions, things could have turned out more palatably, and that they still might in Iraq.

Maybe not surprisingly, Vietnam is the focus of some of the most interesting revisionism, including some of it immediately relevant to Iraq, where the intensive effort to train Iraqi security forces to defend their own country closely mirrors the "Vietnamization" program in South Vietnam. If Congress had not voted to kill the financing for South Vietnam and its armed forces in 1975, argues Melvin R. Laird in a heavily read article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Saigon might never have fallen.

"Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by cutting off funding for our ally in 1975," wrote Mr. Laird, who was President Nixon's defense secretary from 1969 to 1973, when the United States pulled its hundreds of thousands of troops out of Vietnam.

In an interview, Mr. Laird conceded that the American departure from Vietnam was not a pretty sight. "Hell, the pictures of them getting in those helicopters were not good pictures," he said, referring to the chaotic evacuation of the American embassy two years after Vietnamization was complete, and a year after Nixon resigned. But on the basis of his what-if about Vietnam, Mr. Laird does not believe that all is lost in Iraq.

"There is a dignified way out, and I think that's the Iraqization of the forces over there," Mr. Laird said, "and I think we're on the right track on that."

Many analysts have disputed the core of that contention, saying that large swaths of the Iraqi security forces are so inept they may never be capable of defending their country against the insurgents without the American military backing them up. But Mr. Laird is not alone in his revisionist take and its potential application to Iraq.

William Stueck, a history professor at the University of Georgia who has written several books on Korea, calls himself a liberal but says he buys Mr. Laird's basic analysis of what went wrong with Vietnamization.

Korea reveals how easy it is to dismiss the effectiveness of local security forces prematurely, Mr. Stueck said. In 1951, Gen. Matthew Ridgeway felt deep frustration when Chinese offensives broke through parts of the line defended by poorly led South Korean troops.

But by the summer of 1952, with intensive training, the South Koreans were fighting more effectively, Mr. Stueck said. "Now, they needed backup" by Americans, he said. By 1972, he said, South Korean troops were responsible for 70 percent of the front line.

Of course, there are enormous differences between Iraq and Korea. Korean society was not riven by troublesome factions, as Iraq's is, and the United States was defending an existing government rather than trying to create one from scratch.

Another intriguing if imperfect lesson can be found in Algeria, said Matthew Connelly, a Columbia University historian. There, by March 1962, the French had pulled out after 130 years of occupation.

That long colonial occupation, and the million European settlers who lived there before the bloody exodus, are major differences with Iraq, Mr. Connelly noted. But there were also striking parallels: the insurgency, which styled its cause as an international jihad, broke down in civil war once the French pulled out; the French, for their part, said theirs was a fight to protect Western civilization against radical Islam.

Like President Bush in Iraq, President Charles de Gaulle probably thought he could settle Algeria in his favor by military means, Dr. Connelly said. In the short run, that turned out to be a grave miscalculation, as the occupation crumbled under the insurgency's viciousness.

Over the long run, though, history treated de Gaulle kindly for reversing course and agreeing to withdraw, Mr. Connelly said. "De Gaulle loses the war but he wins in the realm of history: he gave Algeria its independence," he said. "How you frame defeat, that can sometimes give you a victory."

The Americans in Beirut and the Soviets in Afghanistan are seen, even in the long view, as cases of superpowers paying the price of blundering into a political and social morass they did not understand.

For the Soviets, that mistake was compounded when America outfitted Afghan rebels with Stinger missiles capable of taking down helicopters, nullifying a key Soviet military superiority. "I don't think they had a fig leaf of any kind," said Henry Rowen, a fellow at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford who was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1989 to 1991. "They just left."

In Beirut, the Americans entered to protect what they considered a legitimate Christian-led government and ended up, much as in Iraq, in the middle of a multipronged civil conflict. In October 1983, a suicide attack killed 241 American servicemen at a Marines barracks, and four months after that, with Muslim militias advancing, President Ronald Reagan ordered the remaining marines withdrawn to ships off the coast, simply saying their mission had changed. The episode has been cited by Vice President Dick Cheney as an example of a withdrawal that encouraged Arab militants to think the United States is weak.

Today, even as expectations for Iraq keep slipping, some measure of victory can still be declared even in a less-than-perfect outcome, said Richard Betts, director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia. For example, he said, an Iraqi government that is authoritarian but not totalitarian might have to do.

The key point, he said, is that under those circumstances, the outcome "doesn't look like a disaster even if it doesn't look good."

What is the state of China-Taiwan relations?

President George Bush fanned the flames of the longstanding conflict between China and Taiwan during his November 16 speech in Kyoto, at the start of a week-long state visit to Asia. In urging China to expand openness and allow its people more freedoms, the president used Taiwan as a model, saying Taiwan had brought prosperity to its people by embracing freedom and creating a democratic Chinese society. China rejected Bush's comments. "Taiwan is an inseparable part ofChina, and China does not brook any interference in its internal affairs," Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told reporters at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea. Bush meets Chinese President Hu Jintao and other Asian leaders at the summit November 19.

What is the history of the conflict?

Taiwan, an island of 23 million off China's southern coast, was occupied by Japan for fifty years, from 1895 to 1945. In 1949, after Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party lost its power struggle with the Communist Party in China, Chiang and his followers fled to Taiwan. Their Kuomintang (KMT) government-in-exile in Taipei defined itself as the alternative to Communist rule and hoped one day to return to power in Beijing. The KMT governed Taiwan from 1949 to 2000; its often harsh rule included discriminatory laws against ethnic Taiwanese and nearly forty years of martial law, which was finally lifted in 1987. The KMT has historically seen Taiwan as a part of "one China" that would eventually be reunited under Nationalist rule.

Taiwan's current ruling party, the predominantly ethnic Taiwanese Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was founded in 1986 to counter the KMT, and only became legal in 1989 after a longtime ban on opposition parties was dropped. Taiwanese President Chen Shui-Bian is a member of the DPP, which envisions Taiwan as an independent nation, separate from China. In 2000, Chen was the first DPP candidate to be elected president. Taiwanese sovereignty is the first and most prominent issue on the party's platform. This position has put the DPP severely at odds with China's leadership, which views Taiwan as a renegade province that will one day be reunited with Communist China--by force, if necessary.

What is the U.S. position?

The United States officially recognizes only one China -- including Taiwan -- and urges a peaceful resolution to the Taiwan question. However, Washington is also bound by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to aid in Taiwan 's defense, including selling the island the weapons it needs to defend itself against China. Experts say the United States is walking a fine line between China 's growing influence and the historical U.S. relationship with Taiwan. "Bush had to stand up for freedom and democracy and all the other values he constantly talks about, without picking a fight with China that nobody really wants," says David Kang, an Asia expert and visiting professor at Stanford University's Shorenstein APARC. Bush stressed in his speech that "there should be no unilateral attempts to change the status quo by either side."

What is the impetus behind independence for Taiwan?

After the long KMT reign, many Taiwanese are now pushing for self-determination. Independence advocates say Taiwan is a free and democratic nation with multiparty elections and a very successful economy, with a gross national product (GNP) of $328 billion in 2004, of which $174 billion was due to exports including electronics, computer parts, textiles, metals, plastic, and rubber. They say the Taiwan people should have the right to decide for themselves if they want to join China or become an independent nation. Since Chen was elected to his first term in 2000, he has steadily pushed the idea of Taiwanese independence. He provoked Beijing August 3 by supporting the idea of a referendum to ask Taiwanese citizens if the island should declare formal independence from China. China is very hostile to such talk: On August 7, the official China Daily newspaper quoted a Chinese military official saying, "Taiwan choosing independence is tantamount to choosing war."

What has China been doing?

Making both incendiary statements and conciliatory moves. In July, General Zhu Chenghu, the dean of China's National Defense University, warned that China would attack the United States with nuclear weapons if it intervened in a military dispute over Taiwan. Although he later claimed the comments were his own and did not reflect the views of the state, Zhu's words generated international concern. However, China's actions toward some Taiwanese officials have been friendlier. James Soong, head of the Taiwanese opposition party People First, has visited China several times in the last year at the invitation of Beijing. Experts say Beijing is reaching out to opposition leaders in Taiwan in an attempt to sidestep the DPP and build new bases of support on the island. Soong is taking advantage of the opening to play for domestic political support and attempt to show up the DPP, they say. His actions infuriate the ruling party in Taiwan because, despite his unofficial status, Soong is building friendly relations with China in direct contrast to DPP policy.

What are the next steps?

Bush alluded to peace talks in his November 16 speech, but experts say such talks between China and Taiwan are unlikely in the near future. "There are elements moving towards peace talks, and other elements, especially in Taiwan, that are pushing toward independence and want to stick China in the eye," David Kang says. But "it's hard to say what Taiwan wants," he adds, noting the Taiwan electorate is almost evenly split between those who favor independence and those who want to improve relations with Beijing for historical, cultural, and especially economic reasons. David Kang says that, in the last several years, as many as one million Taiwanese have moved to China to do business.

What are Taiwan's security concerns?

China, located just 100 miles away across the Taiwan Strait, has hundreds of ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan, and is targeting much of its recent militarization campaign specifically at the island, including building amphibious tanks that can be used to storm Taiwan's shores. China's military buildup has put Taiwan at a strategic disadvantage: Taiwan's military spending has dropped 25 percent over the last five years, to only 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The United States has been pressuring the island to buy a specially designed $18 billion package of U.S. arms to improve its military capabilities. But some Taiwanese politicians are reluctant to devote resources to military buildup given the presumed U.S. protection, and opposition leaders have blocked the sale over what experts call domestic political squabbling. But, David Kang points out, a military invasion of Taiwan by China is highly improbable. "That's the least likely scenario," he says. "You can have a military dispute that's far short of all-out war."

The Department of History at Stanford University, in conjunction with the Division of International Comparative and Areas Studies, seeks an outstanding junior scholar for a tenure-track assistant professorship in modern Korean history. The appointment begins September 1, 2007. Candidates in all sub-fields are encouraged to apply, as are those in disciplines other than history (for example, political science) provided that their research is strongly grounded in historical sources and methods. The appointment will be based fully in the History Department. Please send a letter of application, CV, dossier of recommendation letters, and a writing sample (two dissertation chapters or the equivalent) to:

Korean History Search Committee
Department of History
Stanford University
Stanford CA 94305-2024

Deadline: November 30, 2005

Stanford is an AA/EOE.

Q. What is the history of the Journal of Korean Studies?

A. The Journal of Korean Studies was begun, I believe, in 1979 at the University of Washington by Professor James Palais, a preeminent Korean historian. The Journal of Japanese Studies appeared at the same time and both journals made tremendous contributions to their respective fields. The Journal of Korean Studies was unquestionably the top journal in the field of Korean studies. In fact, one of my first publications appeared in the Journal of Korean Studies. However, unlike the Journal of Japanese Studies, which has been published without interruption since its founding, publication of the Journal of Korean Studies was suspended in 1992 due to financial and administrative problems. So now we're reviving it at long last.

Q. Why did you feel it was important to revive the journal of korean studies and bring it to APARC?

A. First of all, there isn't really any top journal in the field at present, and Korean studies has grown enormously in the last ten years. As a result, there has been considerable demand for a good journal, especially among young scholars who want to publish their work. For Korean studies to continue to grow in the United States, it's vital for scholars to have a place to publish their research outcomes.

With respect to APARC serving as the home for the Journal of Korean Studies, we are still building up Korean studies at the Center, and at Stanford as a whole. I believe that having a premier journal in the program will more quickly place the program itself on the national map. It's also a great service to Korean studies in general. Many people-including very senior leaders in the field-really appreciate that we have put in the effort to bring back this important publication after such a long hiatus. And I'm so grateful to APARC for its financial, editorial, and administrative support in making the issue a reality. Chiho Sawada, postdoctoral research fellow in Korean studies at APARC, assisted me as associate editor and Victoria Tomkinson has done a wonderful job of editing the articles. We will celebrate the revival of the Journal of Korean Studies at the upcoming national meetings of the Association for Asian Studies.

Q. Where does the journal of korean studies fit into stanford's korean studies program?

A. Stanford's program began relatively late. This isn't to say that we haven't grown hugely, because the program has really taken off in the past three years. Yet there are other programs that have been up and running much longer, and therefore are more established. When I left the University of California, Los Angeles, which has the most well-established program in the nation, I wanted to create a unique Korean studies program at Stanford.

My vision for the Stanford Korean Studies Program can be summarized in two terms: social science and research. The research mission includes student training through research projects. Many students-both undergraduate and graduate-are involved in various research projects within the Korean Studies Program. Most other institutional programs focus on humanities and I don't intend to repeat what others elsewhere in the country and the world have already done. As I want to focus on social science, and research and publication, the Journal of Korean Studies will be a key component of that mission.

Q. Does the journal of korean studies have a particular focus within the field of korean studies?

A. Until now, the Journal of Korean Studies has predominantly published articles on history, literature, and culture, reflecting a general trend in the current field of Korean studies. Going forward, I'd like to publish more papers on social science. The revival issue doesn't reflect that goal and given the current concentration on humanities in the field, it won't be easy. Yet it's my hope that we'll tip the balance toward social sciences in subsequent issues and this is another way of making a contribution to the field as a whole.

Q. Publishing a major academic journal is a big job. What's the editorial procedure? What, for you as the co-editor [with john duncan, at the University of California, Los Angeles], is the most challenging part of putting the journal of korean studies together each year?

A. The number one challenge is getting good manuscripts. Last year, we received over twenty articles, but we accepted only one (and asked a few authors to revise and resubmit). Now that the journal is out, we expect more submissions in the months to come. My top priority is to control the quality of what we publish.

The second big challenge is finding good reviewers. The Journal of Korean Studies is, of course, a refereed journal. Usually we send each submitted manuscript to two people to read and evaluate, but the field of Korean studies is pretty small, and we can't go back to the same people all the time. Finding good readers will continue to be a vital but time-consuming part of the editorial process.

Q. What topics do you plan to cover in future issues?

A. My plan is to publish one general issue per year that covers a broad spectrum of topics in Korean studies, much like our revival issue. And, beginning this summer, I'm going to hold an annual one-week summer workshop, a small gathering here at Stanford. I'll pick a specific topic or theme and then through open competition select five or six scholars who have a draft paper on the topic. I will bring them to Stanford for one week and work with a senior scholar to lead the workshop. I plan to publish the papers that come out of that workshop as a special issue of the Journal of Korean Studies. The workshop we are organizing for summer 2005 will address the globalization of Korea. Professor Michael Robinson of Indiana University (who previously collaborated with me on Colonial Modernity in Korea) will lead the workshop. Thus, starting in 2006, the Journal of Korean Studies will publish one general and one special issue each year.

Q. Any highlights from this inaugural issue?

A. All of the articles in this inaugural issue have been carefully selected and are very strong in their quality. I'm particularly pleased that the articles range across so many subjects, from Michael Kim's piece on vernacular fiction and popular reading, to Robert Buswell's study of the significance of Sugi's collation notes on the Korean Buddhist canon, to Jin-Kyung Lee's article about feminist literature in 1950s South Korea. In addition to these, there are two other research articles, and a number of reviews of recent books in the field.

Q. How can people get copies of the journal of korean studies?

A. Subscriptions to the Journal of Korean Studies are being handled by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, located in Maryland. They, too, have been wonderfully supportive and involved in getting the Journal of Korean Studies off the ground. Those wishing to subscribe to the Journal can find more information on the .