1982 call, in Britain's House of Commons, for "a crusade for freedom that will engage the faith and fortitude of the next generation". But as Iraq shows, democratic culture is less exportable than consumer goods. Waging peace is unlike waging war. Pursuing peace through healthy societies is analogous to a hygiene policy focused primarily not on curing or preventing

illness but on realizing wellness potential. Such a hygiene policy incidentally discourages illness. A similar foreign policy discourages

violent conflict. But chiefly each aims to unlock energies of optimal development. President Bush's second inaugural address ostensibly recognizes

this. Bullington concurs: "As an American credo, it is as significant as President Kennedy's 1961 call to 'bear any burden' and Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream' speech". Indeed, carefuly study of the president's address shows that it articulates a new foreign policy paradigm. But paradigms must be applied to be translated into leadership that affects history. For this one to be felt, the Peace Corps must be expanded.

There are several routes by which such an expansion could be meaningfully

initiated:

* A formal presidential policy statement recognizing the Corps as a key example and instrument of the second inaugural's message, and as an under-used engine of peace promotion that should be reinvigorated and expanded.

* The appointment of a new and imaginatively selected Corps director to implement this vision, drawn from the ranks of individuals with sufficient public stature to signify a fresh beginning (someone with the profile of former Secretary of State Colin Powell or Governor Jeb Bush, whose son served as a Corps volunteer).

* Budget support necessary for growth at the rate of at least 1000 Volunteers per year over the next decade (this is probably the most the organization could currently digest without system overload).

* Diversion of USAID funds to the Corps, in the amount of, at the very least, $100 000 to $500 000 per year for each post (depending on volunteer numbers), to be used as a flexible and easily accessible source of funding for smaller Corps projects (something similar existed in the past but was terminated).

* Creative experiments with new approaches to Corps service, such as a one-year term designed to re-enlist Corps veterans from the 1960s and 1970s who are now facing retirement and have added a lifetime of experience to their youthful idealism.

To these modifications of existing Corps structures a new technological dimension should be added, not only to empower the agency in a fitting way for its 21st-century mission but to enable it to serve as a prototype for other federal agencies in need of similar technological transformation. Indeed, this may be among the most fertile benefits of an aggressive

technological transformation of the Corps.

THE PEACE CORPS AS A MODEL FOR REINVENTING GOVERNMENT AGENCIES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY.

Critics may paint the Corps as a federal tributary too remote from mainstream national priorities to warrant greater funding. This

characterization is strongly counterable. The Corps is at least as crucial as many other agencies. Geopolitical relations cannot progress effectively until other nations better appreciate US purposes, a desideratum the Corps can uniquely promote. Additionally, strong domestic reasons support the Corps' development as a prototypical 21st-century government structure indicated by efficiency, global competitiveness and technological opportunity: the federal telecommunity. This benefit will surprise those who see the Corps as isolated from mundane federal machineries, as well as federal managers who remain aloof from the fact that unless agency

telecommunications sophistication is revolutionized, the US risks major strategic vulnerabilities. These include information management failures of the kind that prompted the crisis establishment of DHS; government inability

to mesh productively with private entities to develop national infrastructures competitive with other advanced nations; archaic federal human resource deployment; exposure to terrorist disruption.

Federal obliviousness to telework opportunities is serious. Under 3% of eligible DHS staff telework, reports Chuck Wilsker, president of the

Telework Coalition, a Washington, DC-based research group. Figures published in February showed that almost two thirds of federal employees are not allowed to telecommute, despite Congressional penalties for agencies not

allowing telework options. A CDW Government Inc. survey found 87% of employees would telecommute if permitted to. Government Reform Committee

Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA), has told the House's oversight hearing on federal telework: "The war on terror makes the ability to work at off-site locations more than an attractive option for employees and employers; it's now an imperative." In 1996 House Democratic Whip Rep. Steny Hoyer (MD) briefed then Vice President Gore on the research of technology trend analyst Jay John Hellman, who forecasts an era of technologically induced "virtual adjacency" government. Hoyer recommended Hellman's "economically and environmentally efficient ways to reinvent government".

Hellman believes traditional government structures are obsolete and that national interest requires switching to federal telecommunities: teams of dispersed workers linked around the clock by secure, state-of-the-art fiberoptic telecommunications, including videoconferencing and information managed for maximum immunity to disruption. DHS is currently considering Hellman's ideas for its National Capital Region headquarters. This confluence of strategic, commercial infrastructure and technological transitions recalls President Eisenhower's 1956 initiation of the US interstate highway network (the "National Defense Highway System") to facilitate commercial traffic, nuclear-attack evacuations and rapid military transport. William M. Mularie, a former national defense intelligence administrator now heading the Virginia-based Telework Consortium, a government-funded research entity, comments: "In

teletechnology the US is a third-world country, around 13th or lower globally. New technology must be integrated into all government agencies.

All processes of government must change to use that technology properly. Not just military and intelligence processes."

Owens, Hellman and Mularie agree that the Peace Corps' strategic significance, soft-power global dispersal and high potential for public visibility offer an excellent federal telecommunity model. Hellman adds: "It's hard to think of a better choice to demonstrate how a federal team distributed over the widest possible geographical area can use the most advanced telecommunications technology as a benign social tool -- sharing American strengths and knowledge with other peoples, building peace, showing the world America's best face. The face of efficiency. Of technology and government at their most humane. Of freedom."