Council on Foreign Relations

The U.S. education system is not as internationally competitive as it used to be; in fact, the United States has slipped ten spots in both high school and college graduation rates over the past three decades, according to a new report and scorecard from the Council on Foreign Relations' Renewing America initiative, which examines the domestic foundations of U.S. power. U.S. national security is directly linked to issues such as education because shortcomings among American workers threaten the country's ability to compete with other countries and set a compelling example internationally.

"Everything we once knew about American energy seems to be changing," writes Michael A. Levi, CFR senior fellow and director of the program on energy security and climate change, in The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future. "The United States can strengthen its economy, improve national security, and confront climate change if it intelligently embraces the historic gains unfolding all across the energy landscape."

"Soon everyone on Earth will be connected," write Jared Cohen, CFR adjunct senior fellow and director of Google Ideas, and Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, in The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. In a book the New York Times calls "prescient and provocative," the authors argue that citizens will have more power than at any other time in history and weigh the costs of this access, particularly to privacy and security.

The biggest threat to the United States comes not from abroad but from within. This is the unexpected message of Council on Foreign Relations President Richard N. Haass in Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order.

The international community and the United States fare poorly on most of six major global challenges, according to the new Global Governance Report Card by CFR's International Institutions and Global Governance program.

With a new platform for interested citizens to pose questions to scholars and live streams of its on-the-record meetings, the Council on Foreign Relations has broadened the ways in which the public can interact with the organization.

Over seventy thousand people have been killed in narco-related crimes in Mexico in the past six years. Tales of grisly murders conveyed by American media shape the widespread perception of Mexico as a dangerous place, overrun by brutal drug lords. But there is far more to Mexico's story than this narrative would suggest, writes CFR Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies Shannon K. O'Neil, in Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead.

The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order tells the story of the intertwining lives and events surrounding that historic conference. In a book the Financial Times calls "a triumph of economic and diplomatic history," author Benn Steil, CFR senior fellow and director of international economics, challenges the misconception that the conference was an amiable collaboration.

Timothy F. Geithner, the 75^th Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, will join the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as a distinguished fellow. Geithner, who was previously a senior fellow at CFR in 2001, will be based at the organization's headquarters in New York.

U.S. drone strike policies undermine the nation's foreign policy objectives and have resulted in the loss of hundreds of innocent civilian lives, according to a report by CFR Douglas Dillon Fellow Micah Zenko. Zenko calls for greater oversight of U.S. drone strikes from the Obama administration, Congress, and the international community.

CFR's Africa program has launched the Nigeria Security Tracker, an online tool that uses interactive maps and graphs to depict the magnitude and geographic distribution of violence in the oil-rich West African nation beginning in May 2011.

The Council on Foreign Relations' fifth annual Preventive Priorities Survey ranks conflict prevention priorities based on their potential impact on U.S. interests and their likelihood of occurring in the coming year.

North Korea's recent, successful rocket launch comes at a time when it is undergoing profound transformation laden with uncertainty. Editors Kyung-Ae Park from the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, and Scott Snyder, CFR senior fellow for Korea studies, bring together the world's leading experts to analyze the challenges the country is facing and its prospects for the future.

Over the past few years, South Korea has become an active contributor to international stability through its "increased participation in peacekeeping, antipiracy, postconflict stabilization, counterproliferation, and other activities," writes Senior Fellow Scott A. Snyder in a new CFR ebook Global Korea: South Korea's Contributions to International Security.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Studies Program welcomed several new scholars to its roster.

CFR's "Crisis Guide: Iran" won an Emmy Award in the category of "New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming: Current News Coverage." This is the third Emmy Award for the series.

The Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy initiative (CSM&D) of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is launching an online portal to examine opportunity and exclusion in the global economy targeted to a broad audience of policymakers, academics, business leaders, civil society actors, and citizens in the United States and abroad.

A new multimedia resource from CFR's International Institutions and Global Governance program reveals gaps in multilateral efforts to combat transnational organized crime.