Unions are declining, and the working and middle classes are paying the price. Reviving labor won't be easy -- but doing so is critical to preserving America's economic and social health.

Mafia states enjoy the unhealthy advantages of their hybrid status: they're as nimble as gangs and as well protected as governments, and thus more dangerous than either.

Reining in pollution would thus accomplish two goals, while finally getting countries such as China and India into the climate-change business.

Recent advances have made wind and solar power more competitive than ever. Still, governments must redesign their policies and help renewables slash costs.

The main health threat in developing states today is not plagues or parasites but illnesses such as cancer and diabetes, noncommunicable diseases long associated with the rich world.

A pair of books by Charles Mann describe life in the Americas before and after Columbus linked the hemispheres and kicked off the first era of globalization. It turns out that the New World was far more technologically advanced than subsequent generations have realized, with plenty to teach the Old -- especially about how to simultaneously exploit and preserve key natural resources.

Executing policy through tax breaks and other indirect measures encourages Americans to think that they do not rely on the government for help, even when they do. The result is a distorted public discourse and an erosion of democratic legitimacy.

Two recent books reveal the ugly underbelly of India's success story. A vast gulf has opened up between the rich and the poor, corruption suffuses every aspect of life, and the country's political leaders lack the vision needed to turn this would-be world power into an actual one.

The United States has tried cracking down on Pakistan before. It did not work then, and it will not work now, writes Alexander Evans. The difference, counters Stephen Krasner, is that this time the United States has real leverage.

Blake Clayton says Wall Street is not to blame for high gas prices.

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

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.

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.

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.

From the day the Pilgrims stepped off the Mayflower, religion has played a prominent role in American public life.

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.

After Lyndon Johnson's victory over Barry Goldwater in the 1964 U.S. presidential election, the once-mighty Republican Party was reduced to a regional rump.

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.

Francis Fukuyama shot to fame with a 1989 essay called "The End of History?" which he expanded into a 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. His thesis was a reworking of the "end of ideology" argument propounded in the 1950s by Daniel Bell and others, with an even more emphatic twist.

Throughout 2011, a rhythmic chant echoed across the Arab lands: "The people want to topple the regime."