Prepare against her the nations, the kings of the Medes, its governors, and all its deputies, and all the land of their dominion.

Prepare against her the nations with the kings of the Medes, the captains thereof, and all the rulers thereof, and all the land of his dominion.

They elect their governors, legislators, and other provincial officials without the intervention of the Federal Government.

We don't have one for processing politically bankrupt states that, frankly, everybody wants gone.

(Burundi is an aid dependent country, so donors have considerable sway in influencing its rulers' behavior.)

And they might embolden other Arab peoples, as may be happening in Egypt, to force accountability upon their rulers.

But Iran s program must be transparent, and its leaders must assure the international community of its non military nature.

The villages were ruled by their own councils in Vietnam ( Vietnam, Trials and Tribulations of a Nation D. R. SarDesai, ppg 35 37, 1988).

China s central government has the power to rein in its local chieftains, so its failure to do so in Tibet is puzzling.

And yet, in order to begin a transition to more democratic forms of government, it helps to be a client state of the US.

For Saudi Arabia is a country in which both rulers and ruled are equally arch conservative, adhering, for the last two centuries, to the puritanical Wahhabi doctrine of Islam.

The democratic Government of Haiti now faces the difficult tasks of working for national reconciliation and of rebuilding a nation devastated by abuses by its military rulers.

Iran, a multiethnic state whose rulers have struggled to advance national cohesion, is no different.

By enabling the authorities to imprison anyone who makes any critical comment about the country or its rulers, the new decree is at odds with international free speech standards.

If the world used less oil, Iran would become less threatening, because its radical rulers rely on oil revenues to purchase domestic support and pursue their regional goals.

To be sure, such accusations are especially common in autocracies whose rulers, and their apologists, view the idea of universal human rights as a threat to their monopoly on power.

Its leaders will again suggest that a policy of containment is being pursued, and that this Cold War strategic concept is inimical to peaceful development in the Western Pacific.

China believes that it has found its own model to develop and modernize, and its rulers regard the Games in the same way as the Nazis and Leonid Brezhnev did, as a means of selling their model to a global audience.

During the 1980 s, South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan managed to ditch their dictators, partly because they were utterly dependent on US arms and money.

China recognizes that North Korea cannot continue in its present form, and would like to see its leaders transform the economy without undertaking substantial political change.

During the recent visit of a high level North Korean delegation to the US, there were encouraging signals that its rulers would welcome increased economic contacts, including with international financial institutions.

One can almost understand why China s leaders should be baffled by this show of defiance in Hong Kong. After all, the British simply appointed governors when Hong Kong was still a crown colony, and nobody protested then.

This matter makes it incumbent on the international Organization to assume its responsibilities fully and to work to obtain the release of all Iraqi and Arab detainees in Kuwait and to force the rulers of Kuwait to observe the 1949 Geneva Conventions and all the other relevant principles and provisions in this regard.

Yet each of the region s states has important security concerns and vulnerabilities. Iran, a multiethnic state whose rulers have struggled to advance national cohesion, is no different.

But there may be a lesson from a country whose wartime rulers, quarrelling among themselves, inflicted unimaginable harm on their people and to the world with their mendacious, secretive, and paranoid style.

They see that Putin s desire to create a strong and effective modern state cannot be realized, because a modern state is governed not from above, but by an informed citizenry that forces its rulers to acknowledge and correct their mistakes.

In the US, North Korea is seen mostly through the prism of nuclear non proliferation, and the new administration is wary of being tricked into giving its rulers anything without getting fissile material in return.

With more money, ill educated bureaucrats hire more ill educated bureaucrats as a result, the regime fails to rule the country. The country is unruly, and its rulers know it.

People are beginning to realize this. They see that Putin s desire to create a strong and effective modern state cannot be realized, because a modern state is governed not from above, but by an informed citizenry that forces its rulers to acknowledge and correct their mistakes.