On the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States awoke to find itself at war. If that much was clear, many other things were not—including the identity and nature of the enemy, the location of the battleground, and the strategy and tactics necessary for victory.

Michael Doran, a Council on Foreign Relations adjunct senior fellow in Middle East Studies, and Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, face off over what role— if any— United Nations weapons inspectors should play in postwar Iraq.

What exactly is globalization, and should its effects be cheered or jeered? How have developing countries fared under globalization's new dispensation, and what if anything can be done to help them prosper? How are states and firms reacting to the new pressures placed on them? Should the international economic architecture be reformed in response?

With the Cold War won and the economy booming, the United States relaxed during the 1990s, letting go of the tension it had sustained for decades. All that changed on September 11, 2001. The nation awoke to find itself at war. But it was a strange kind of war, one without front lines, fought in the shadows against an elusive enemy, by a country lacking a clear sense of where it would lead or how it would end.

A record of the best attempts to understand international politics over the last dozen years, bringing together many powerful thinkers, including Samuel P. Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, and Fareed Zakaria, trying to figure out the forces that are driving world events and how Americans should respond.