Foreign Affairs

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NATO's Victory in Libya

Authors: Ivo H. Daalder and James G. Stavridis

NATO's operation in Libya has rightly been hailed as a model intervention.

See more in Libya, NATO

Rethinking Latin America

Author: Christopher Sabatini

Running down the list of the U.S. State Department's Latin America policy objectives in El País in September 2010, the economist Moisés Naím noted that they focused almost exclusively on domestic concerns.

See more in South America, Infrastructure

Chinese Computer Games

Author: Adam Segal

In March 2011, the U.S. computer security company RSA announced that hackers had gained access to security tokens it produces that let millions of government and private-sector employees, including those of defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, connect remotely to their office computers.

See more in China, Cybersecurity, Information and Communication

The Case for Space

Author: Neil deGrasse Tyson

In 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama articulated his vision for the future of American space exploration, which included an eventual manned mission to Mars. Such an endeavor would surely cost hundreds of billions of dollars -- maybe even $1 trillion.

See more in United States, Space

Poker Lessons From Richelieu

Author: David Bell

Armand-Jean du Plessis, better known to history as Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), spent most of his career contending for and then exercising control over a deeply divided, indebted, and dysfunctional superpower.

See more in Europe/Russia, France

The Iraq We Left Behind

Author: Ned Parker

Nine years after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein and just a few months after the last U.S. soldier left Iraq, the country has become something close to a failed state.

See more in Iraq, Wars and Warfare

War Downsized

Authors: Carter Malkasian and John Weston

The United States, facing deepening economic and fiscal woes at home, is preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan.

See more in Afghanistan, Wars and Warfare

Both Sides of the COIN

Abandoning counterinsurgency doctrine after Afghanistan would doom the U.S. military to irrelevance and impotence, writes Christopher Sims and Fernando Luján. Not so, says Bing West; like it or not, the United States will be much less ambitious in future wars.

See more in Afghanistan, National Security and Defense

Making Modernity Work

Author: Gideon Rose

Today's troubles are real, but not ideological: they relate more to policies than to principles. The postwar order of mutually supporting liberal democracies with mixed economies solved the central challenge of modernity, reconciling democracy and capitalism. The task now is getting the system back into shape.

See more in North America, U.S. Strategy and Politics

The Future of History

Author: Francis Fukuyama

Stagnating wages and growing inequality will soon threaten the stability of contemporary liberal democracies and dethrone democratic ideology as it is now understood. What is needed is a new populist ideology that offers a realistic path to healthy middle-class societies and robust democracies.

See more in North America, U.S. Strategy and Politics

Time to Attack Iran

Author: Matthew Kroenig

Opponents of military action against Iran assume a U.S. military strike would be far more dangerous than simply letting Tehran build a bomb. Not so, argues this former Pentagon defense planner. With a carefully designed strike, Washington could mitigate the costs—or at least bring them down to a bearable level—and spare the region and the world from an unacceptable threat.

See more in Iran, Defense/Homeland Security

Talking Tough to Pakistan

Author: Stephen D. Krasner

The United States gives Pakistan billions of dollars in aid each year. Pakistan returns the favor by harboring terrorists, spreading anti-Americanism, and selling nuclear technology abroad. Washington must tell Islamabad to start cooperating or lose its aid and face outright isolation.

See more in Pakistan, Defense/Homeland Security