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.

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.

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 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.

James M. Lindsay discusses the political calculations behind President Obama's State of the Union address.

Selections from the Foreign Affairs archives tracing the ideological battles of the past century and the evolution of the modern order.

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.

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.

Globalization is widening the gap between what voters demand and what their governments can deliver. Unless the leading democracies can restore their political and economic solvency, the very model they represent may lose its allure.

As the United States looks ahead, it faces two central challenges in foreign policy: enlarging the zone of prosperity and democracy in the West while balancing the rise of China and allaying the fears of the United States' Asian allies.

Confidence in the dollar and the euro continues to falter, threatening the international monetary system.

John Lewis Gaddis' magisterial authorized biography of George Kennan tells the story of a brilliant diplomat who helped define postwar U.S. foreign policy. Yet the public triumph was matched with private frustration, and the prickly Kennan never won the influence he craved.

In his new book, the acclaimed psychologist Steven Pinker argues that despite the horrors of the twentieth century, global violence is actually on the decline over the long term.

Three new books look at poverty from the bottom up, painting a vivid portrait of the lives poor people live.

The world cannot let the March disaster at Japan's Fukushima power plant scare it into forgoing the benefits of nuclear energy—a cheap, reliable, and safe source of electricity

Over the past three decades, Washington has consistently favored the rich -- and the more wealth accumulates in a few hands at the top, the more influence and favor the rich acquire, making it easier for them and their political allies to cast off restraint without paying a social price.