With the Cold War won and the economy booming, the United States relaxed during the 1990s, letting go of the tension it had sustained for decades. All that changed on September 11, 2001. The nation awoke to find itself at war. But it was a strange kind of war, one without front lines, fought in the shadows against an elusive enemy, by a country lacking a clear sense of where it would lead or how it would end.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, three ideas dominate the world: peace as the preferred basis for relations between countries, democracy as the optimal way to organize political life, and free markets as the indispensable vehicle for the creation of wealth. While not practiced everywhere, these ideas have—for the first time in history—no serious rivals as methods for organizing the world's politics, economics, and international relations.

Council Senior Fellow Julia Sweig shatters the mythology surrounding the Cuban Revolution in a compelling revisionist history that reconsiders the roles of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and restores, to a central position, the leadership of the Cuban urban underground, the Llano.

If Russia veers toward instability or a more severe dictatorship under President Vladimir Putin, the threat to its neighbors could be severe. Such a scenario would also present serious challenges for European integration and derail the process of Russian rapprochement with the United States.

Refugee policy has not kept pace with new realities in international and humanitarian affairs. Recent policy failures have resulted in instability, terrible hardships, and massive losses of life. In this seminal book, Senior Fellow Arthur Helton systematically analyzes refugee policy responses over the past decade and calls for specific reforms to make policy more proactive and comprehensive.

A seminal volume bringing together the research and critical thinking of many of the world's top macro- and micro-economists to provide a unique, multifaceted perspective on the causes of technological innovation and its relationship to economic performance. Through the use of detailed, up-to-date country and industry studies, Technological Innovation and Economic Performance provides the most authoritative and detailed analysis of this topic ever assembled.

The United States has had a more successful foreign policy than any other great power in history. Council Senior Fellow Walter Russell Mead argues that the United States is successful because its strategy is rooted in Americans' concrete interests, which value trade and commerce as much as military security.

Examining competing notions of justice in Bosnia and Rwanda, award-winning Boston Globe correspondent Elizabeth Neuffer convinces readers that crimes against humanity cannot be resolved by talk of forgiveness, or through the more common recourse to forgetfulness.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, one question has been on the mind of every American: “How did this happen?” PublicAffairs and Foreign Affairs came together to publish a book that seeks to answer this question in all its critical aspects: the motives and actions of the terrorists, the status of the U.S. military, the context of the Middle East, airport security, and diplomatic pressures.

Idealism and the pursuit of power are more closely linked than the liberal or realist traditions would have us believe. Foreign policy should be built on the principles of decency, mutual respect for rights and interests, responsible dispute settlement, and institution-building. But there is no room for idealism for its own sake: it must be tempered by legitimate responses to lawlessness and the necessities of power. For these ideas, Richard Ullman is best remembered.

Institutional Investors is the first and only comprehensive analysis of the global economic impact of the institutionalization of savings associated with the growth of pension funds, life insurance companies, and mutual funds. It charts the development and performance of the asset management industry and analyzes the implications of rising institutionalized saving for the development of the securities trading industry, the financial sector as a whole, and the wider economy.

President George W. Bush made clear early in his first term his intention to deploy a national missile defense as soon as possible to counter the growing threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Jan Lodal argues that much more sweeping changes must be made in U.S. policy to deal effectively with WMD.