If there's one indisputable fact about this most polarizing of figures, it's that he is hard to get rid of -- and every retreat, even his most recent withdrawal from political life, lays the groundwork for an eventual counterattack.

Now, more than ever, the United States might be tempted to pull back from the world.

In this IIGG Working Paper, the authors argue that the United States should initiate a new phase of democratic internationalism based on the "pull of success rather than the push of power."

The post-war U.S. approach to strategy is rapidly becoming insolvent and unsustainable. If Washington continues to cling to its existing role on the premise that the international order depends upon it, the result will be increasing resistance, economic ruin, and strategic failure with consequences harming U.S. credibility, diplomacy, and military operations.

Walter Russell Mead explains that American "decline" is a misnomer; international relations are still rebalancing following the end of the Cold War as regional powers take on international importance.

"Between 1500 and 1800, the West sprinted ahead of other centers of power in Asia and the Middle East. Europe and the United States have dominated the world since," writes Charles A. Kupchan in a new CFR book, No One's World: The West, The Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn. But this era is coming to a close, he argues, as power shifts from the West to the rising rest.

A mapping of the twenty-first-century world that provides a detailed strategy for reconciling the West with the "rise of the rest."

Charles A. Kupchan says American politicians need to stop pretending the United States runs the world.

Nikolas Gvosdev and Ray Takeyh argue that the justifying of America's Libya campaign solely on humanitarian grounds marked a fundamental break with past U.S. policy prescriptions for such military interventions.

Richard N. Haass argues that the United States should adopt a doctrine of Restoration as its guiding foreign policy framework, focusing on "restoring this country's strength and replenishing its economic, human, and physical resources."

Charles Kupchan states, "Tectonic shifts in international affairs and in political and economic conditions within the United States call for reconsideration of the first principles of American grand strategy—the fundamental tenets guiding the nation's statecraft."

It's tempting to see the 9/11 attacks as having fundamentally changed U.S. foreign policy. It's also wrong.

Richard N. Haass says a doctrine of restoration can strengthen the U.S. position abroad by focusing on nation building -- at home.

In uncertain times, grand strategies are important because they help others interpret a country's behavior.

Henry Kissinger's new book argues that the United States should yield gracefully to China's rise; Aaron Friedberg's gives the opposite advice.

With China's clout growing, the international community needs to better understand China's strategic thinking.

A number of prominent figures -- political scientists, public intellectuals, politicians, historians, journalists, policymakers -- recommend books that shed light on some aspect of the world ahead.

The Obama Administration released its first National Security Strategy on May 27, 2010.