There is little prospect Tibet will achieve full statehood in the foreseeable future. Apart from preservation of its own power, China's Communist Party's highest imperative is the territorial integrity of the country. It is determined to keep Tibet a part of China and thus far the world community has acquiesced in China's claim.

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Europe's debt crisis and recession have been felt around the world, and the United States has not been spared.

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There is almost never a time when people do not worry about war between major powers. The history here is not a happy one. But there are good reasons to expect a better outcome in the 21st century—as long as both sides are alert and careful.

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A government's legitimacy and sovereignty are not sacrosanct if it abuses its own citizens. Norms and values are even more important than international law to justify intervention to protect human rights.

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While much has been made of the uncertainty amid Egypt's political turmoil, one thing is clear: the participation of women is critical to Egypt's future.

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Since the 1953 death of Saudi Arabia's eponymous founder, King Abdul-Aziz bin Saud, the country has been ruled by his sons. There will eventually be a shift in power to the next generation, but despite—or perhaps because of—the turmoil spreading across the region, that shift does not appear imminent.

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If "democracy" is achieved when governments rule by consent through free and fair elections, then some of the world's largest Muslim nations are democratic: Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Turkey. In the Arab world, experiments to achieve democratic governance are underway in Iraq, Lebanon, and Tunisia, and are beginning in earnest in Egypt. Arguably, Pakistan has just witnessed its first democratic transition of power.

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is, with the European Commission and the European Central Bank, part of the so-called troika responsible for setting the conditions that the Greek government must meet to secure continued official financial support. Greece is the eurozone's largest IMF program beneficiary, with about €28 billion in outstanding loans from the IMF.

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While the United States is on course to remain a leader in human space flight and robotic space exploration, there will be many more opportunities to work collaboratively with other nations in the future.

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Spanning from the Singapore and Malacca straits to the Strait of Taiwan, the South China Sea is one of the world's most hotly disputed bodies of water. China lays claim to nearly the entire sea, overlapping with the maritime claims of Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines. With sovereign territory, natural resources, and national pride at stake, this dispute threatens to destabilize the region and even draw the United States into a conflict.

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There is a strong economic case for investing in women. Encouraging female workforce participation and entrepreneurship helps lift women and their families out of poverty, generates innovation, and grows economies.

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A military attack on Iran, especially one by Israel, would rally all Iranians to the government. It would completely stifle the voices of dissent in the name of national security, and provide precisely the glue the Ayatollah needs to keep his country together under his control.

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Both tyranny and anarchy are bad political options for a country. The political theorist Thomas Hobbes, looking at the ravages of anarchy during England's civil war in the 17th century, famously concluded that life without government was terrible because "there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; … no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, [is] solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."

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Hugo Chávez ruled Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013. It is tempting to assume that ties between the United States and Latin America broke during the Chávez era, and that they must now be repaired. The reality, however, is more complex: despite the heated rhetoric coming from Washington and Caracas during Chávez's presidency, bilateral trade quadrupled from $16 billion in 1998 to $64 billion in 2008.

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The specific challenge in the post-2014 context, as NATO troops draw down from Afghanistan, is to avoid a situation in which violence and instability spike, leading U.S.-Pakistan relations to fray to the point of rupture.

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As a matter of international law, humanitarian intervention—such as the use of military force to protect foreign populations from mass atrocities or gross human rights abuses—is permissible if authorized by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Although many Western governments have taken the position that such intervention may in some cases be morally justified even if not authorized by the Security Council, most states and international legal experts do not regard that as lawful.

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Although there is no formal institutional connection between India and NATO, India and the NATO allies, most importantly the United States, informally share an interest in maintaining maritime security in the Indian Ocean and have spent significant resources to combat piracy in this vast area.

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Continued concerns about increased border security and dwindling resources at all U.S. ports of entry are likely to contribute to more lengthy administrative processes at border crossing sites, but there are no longer any specific regulations or legislation that inhibit or prohibit the transit of Mexican trucks bearing legal imports across the U.S. border.

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The way in which contiguous borders became less important is not new, but came with the advent of air power, which enabled countries to attack targets in an enemy's interior without conquering the enemy's defending army.

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