The election of the hawkish Shinzo Abe as Japan's prime minister has the world worrying that Tokyo is about to part with its pacifist strategy of the last 70 years. But Japan's new leaders are pragmatic, and so long as the United States does not waver in its commitment to the country's defense, they are unlikely chart a new course.

Should a functioning government fail to emerge in Italy, the eurozone could soon find itself engulfed in another round of expensive and controversial bailouts, says CFR's Charles Kupchan.

For half a century, deterrence was the backbone of U.S. national security strategy. But now, Washington doesn't seem to know how and when to use it properly. The United States has needlessly applied deterrence to Russia, failed to apply it when it should have against Iraq and Iran, and been dangerously confused about whether to apply it to China. U.S. policymakers need to relearn the basics of deterrence in order to apply it successfully in the appropriate circumstances.

The exploitation of Congo's vast resources by competing elites and militaries for personal enrichment promotes insecurity and stymies development. Only very strong Western and African public outcry and a change in China's nonintervention approach might open the possibilities for change.

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Secretary John Kerry and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius held this press conference after their meeting on February 27, 2013. They discussed the Syrian crisis, negotiations with Iran, and terrorism in North Africa.

Experts discuss the state of the global economy and predictions for the future.

Experts discuss the state of the global economy and predictions for the future.

Pundits tend to treat terrorism and guerrilla tactics as something new, but nothing could be further from the truth. Although the agendas have changed over the years -- from tribalism, to liberalism and nationalism, to socialism, to jihadist extremism -- guerrilla and terrorist warfare has been ubiquitous throughout history and consistently deadly.

FDR Treasury official Harry Dexter White was the leading architect of the Bretton Woods international monetary and financial system. But he was also a vital agent for Soviet intelligence in the 1930s and '40s. This article brings to bear startling new archival evidence to illuminate his motives.

After their loss last year, Republicans are grappling over what to do next -- and when it comes to foreign policy, small-government conservatives worried about debt are squaring off against big-military conservatives fearful of defense cuts. Fortunately, the GOP does not need a total makeover; what it needs is a renegotiated modus vivendi between the two competing camps, each of which has valuable things to teach the other.

Since 1988, Brazilians have cleared more than 153,000 square miles of Amazonian rain forest, devastating the environment and driving global climate change forward ever faster. Recently, however, Brazil has changed its course, reducing the rate of deforestation by 83 percent since 2004. At the same time, it has become a test case for a controversial international climate-change prevention strategy that places a monetary value on the carbon stored in forests.

Since their inception in 2000, The Millennium Development Goals have revolutionized the global aid business, using specific targets to help mobilize and guide development efforts. They have encouraged world leaders to tackle multiple dimensions of poverty simultaneously and provided a standard for judging performance. As their 2015 expiration looms, the time has come to bank those successes and focus on what comes next.

Two new books lament the outsized role of the military in Israeli national security decisionmaking, blaming the generals for favoring force over diplomacy.

Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke presented these prepared remarks to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on February 26, 2013. The committee provides a webcast of the whole hearing.

Jonathan Caverly and Ethan Kapstein maintained that the United States' domination of the global arms market is disappearing and that as a consequence, Washington is squandering an array of economic and political benefits. Critics dispute the point; Caverley and Kapstein respond.

President Obama gave these remarks on the impact of the sequester on February 26, 2013, at Newport News Shipbuilding.

In this Policy Innovation Memorandum, Daniel Markey argues that U.S. officials should resist temptations to lend support to Pakistani leaders with "pro-American" leanings.

Secretary John Kerry and German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle held this press conference after their meeting on February 26, 2013. They discussed troops in Afghanistan, the Syria crisis, German-U.S. economic relations, and Iran.

Micah Zenko argues, "The tolerance for threat inflation in the absence of plausible threats should be questioned and challenged by anyone interested in, or holding a stake in, the future of U.S. foreign policy."

Experts discuss the state of the global economy and predictions for the future.