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Since 9/11, much of al-Qaeda's operational capacity has been dismantled but experts say the group's strength now lies in its ability to inspire others to carry out terrorist attacks.

Foreign policy is dominating U.S. political discourse for the first time in years. This backgrounder looks at the leading schools of foreign-policy thought on both sides of the political aisle.

A league of democracies would not secure cooperation among democracies and would expose the limits of the West's power and legitimacy. The next president should not embrace this disastrous idea.

The next administration must learn from Bush's mistakes, but should not shy away from using U.S. power to promote American values.

The secretary of state offers her defining take on Iraq, Iran, democracy promotion, and American foreign policy in general.

The United States' unipolar moment is over. International relations in the twenty-first century will be defined by nonpolarity.

Despite some eerie parallels between the position of the United States today and that of the British Empire a century ago, there are key differences. Britain's decline was driven by bad economics. The United States, in contrast, has the strength and dynamism to continue shaping the world -- but only if it can overcome its political dysfunction and reorient U.S. policy for a world defined by the rise of other powers.

It can, but only if U.S. officials start to think clearly about what success in the war on terror would actually look like. Victory will come only when Washington succeeds in discrediting the terrorists' ideology and undermining their support. These achievements, in turn, will require accepting that the terrorist threat can never be eradicated completely and that acting as though it can will only make it worse.

Despite the failure of U.S. democracy-promotion efforts, democracy is spreading across the globe, bolstered by the free market. Although the Arab world, China, and Russia present challenges, pressure for democratic governance will only grow as economies liberalize in the years to come.

Given the tarnished record of George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda,” the idea of promoting democracy throughout the world is losing traction with both Democrats and Republicans, write James Goldgeier and Derek Chollet.

There are many reasons to be optimistic about the United States’ progress on the Iraq front in the war on terror, writes Max Boot.

In this paper commissioned by the Better World Campaign, Lorne Craner of the International Republican Institute and Kenneth Wollack of the National Democratic Institute make policy recommendations for the next U.S. president on democracy promotion.

This piece argues that democracy promotion remains worthwhile as a moral and strategic choice for the United States but that "democracy promotion should be placed in a broader context of promoting economic development, reducing poverty, and furthering good governance."

This article discusses forseen and unforseen challenges facing the next US president.

The temptation of founding economic pessimism on cultural resistance is matched by the evident enchantment, even more common today, of basing political pessimism, particularly about democracy, on alleged cultural impossibilities.

This Carnegie paper reports on meetings held in November 2005 with representatives of mainstream Islamists groups from Arab countries and the conclusions drawn about attitudes regarding democracy and human rights.

The Washington Quarterly's Jeffrey Kopstein argues that, given the shifting rationales for the war in Iraq emanating from the White House, it would be understandable if European leaders and the broader European public remained highly suspicious of democracy promotion.

The authors of a new book says it was the fall of the Berlin Wall, not the 9/11 attacks, that ushered in the biggest changes confronting U.S. foreign policymakers.

Two experts discuss how the United States should confront shifts in global political power in the 21st century.

Summer 1993

The Clash of Civilizations?

Author: Samuel P. Huntington, Harvard University

Summer 1989

The End of History?

Author: Francis Fukuyama, The Johns Hopkins University

Report

Fact Sheet

Report

National Strategy

CRS Report for Congress Updated March 14, 2007, reviewing the cost to the US of the War on Terror.

Speech

In an address at RAND, Carl Bildt evaluates what has been learned about state-building in the past 5 years.

Related Readings:

How to Leave a Stable Iraq
The Price of the Surge

This session was part of a three-day symposium during the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, cosponsored with the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

This session was part of a three-day symposium during the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, cosponsored with the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

This session was part of a symposium, cosponsored with the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of International Studies and the City and County of Denver's 2008 Rocky Mountain Roundtable.