Instead of continuing their endless battling, the United States and Pakistan should acknowledge that their interests simply do not converge enough to make them strong partners. Giving up the fiction of an alliance would free up Washington to explore new ways of achieving its goals in South Asia. And it would allow Islamabad to finally pursue its regional ambitions -- which would either succeed once and for all or, more likely, teach Pakistani officials the limitations of their country's power.

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.

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.

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

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars taught the United States painful lessons about the need to limit harm to civilians and compensate victims for their suffering.

Every aspiring beauty-pageant queen knows what to say when asked what she wants most: "World peace." World peace is at least nominally what we all want most. But evidently, we are not very good at making it.

After World War II, Europe began a process of peaceful political unification unprecedented there and unmatched anywhere else.

For decades, U.S. China policy has been driven by a combination of engagement and balancing.

U.S. and Israeli officials have declared that a nuclear-armed Iran is a uniquely terrifying prospect, even an existential threat. In fact, by creating a more durable balance of military power in the Middle East, a nuclear Iran would yield more stability, not less.

Given the threats it faces, from nuclear-armed autocracies to terrorists, the United States cannot afford to scale back its military, argues Paul Miller. Micah Zenko and Michael Cohen reply that the danger of these challenges is vastly exaggerated and that an overly militarized foreign policy has not made the country safer.

On January 19, 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao issued a joint statement at the end of Hu's visit to Washington.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, articulates the idea that it is wrong to exclude any member of the human species from the circle of moral concern.

Globalization is widening the gap between what voters demand and what their governments can deliver. Unless the leading democracies can restore their political and economic solvency, the very model they represent may lose its allure.

A pair of recent articles in this magazine highlighted two sides of Israel's current dilemma: the country does need to end the occupation, but Israelis also remain deeply skeptical of Palestinian intentions, and with good reason. Only one thing will break the paralysis of the Israeli center: if the Palestinians accept Israel's basic legitimacy.

Intervening militarily to save lives abroad often sounds good on paper, but the record has not been promising.

Before complaining about China's refusal to buy into the liberal world order, argues Amitai Etzioni, the West should stop moving the goalposts by developing new norms of intervention, such as "the responsibility to protect."

Two trends represent Korea today: South Korea's extraordinary economic boom and North Korea's stagnation and provocation.

In 2001, fearing ethnic strife, the international community pushed for a strong central government in Kabul.

Two recent books on the Israeli settlements explore their corrosive effect on Zionism and Israeli society.

Iran may hope to capitalize on the Arab Spring, write Dalia Dassa Kaye and Frederic Wehrey, but Tehran will find the region hard to manipulate.