Foreign policy realists have long found inspiration in the ideas of Lord Castlereagh, who served as British foreign secretary during and after the Napoleonic Wars.

With its commandments and parables, its kings and its prophets, the Hebrew Bible has served as a reference point for Western politics for centuries. Almost every kind of political movement, it seems, has drawn its own message from the text.

Germany seems like Europe's lone island of fiscal stability, but trouble lurks under its impressive export-fueled growth.

As a referendum on Scotland's independence looms, the question of the region's place in the United Kingdom has become the most pressing issue in British politics.

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.

Intelligent observers of Europe in the 1930s thought its future belonged to communism or fascism and would have ridiculed the notion that decades later the entire continent would be democratic.

China is hardly the first great power to make authoritarian development look attractive. As Jonathan Steinberg's new biography of Bismarck shows, Wilhelmine Germany did it with ease.

Obama's former auto czar explains the key to Germany's export boom -- and how the United States can emulate it.

Germany's recent debate regarding immigration is missing an important reality.

Germany is a bridge between Russia and the West, and how Berlin chooses to deal with Moscow will set the tone for how the United States and the rest of Europe manage their own relationships with Russia.

The population of western Europe is aging steadily, and the region's birthrate is well below the replacement level, but Europe's elderly are exceptionally healthy. That means they could be more productive for longer than their predecessors were. If western European governments learn to tap this potential, healthy aging could become the region's next great economic asset.

This module features teaching notes by Walter Russell Mead, author of God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, along with other resources to supplement the text. In his book, Mr. Mead recounts how the British and their American heirs built an unrivaled global system of politics, power, investment, and trade over the past three hundred years.

Anti-Germany protests in Athens have highlighted the country's complicated role as de facto leader of Europe while raising concerns about the continent's ability to advance difficult solutions to the sovereign debt crisis.

Political and business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos are focused on the ongoing eurozone sovereign debt crisis, with some cautioning that Germany is not doing enough to resolve the crisis and facilitate growth.

New Prime Minister Mario Monti faces the daunting task of reining in Italy's high public debt. Analysts say he will have to tackle fiscal irresponsibility to rebuild market confidence and prevent the eurozone's third largest economy from defaulting.

Despite a pledge by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to resign, Italy faces pressure to address its sovereign debt burden by quickly implementing austerity measures or risk a new magnitude of eurozone contagion.