The news that the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization has broken down in Geneva has made many Americans pessimistic about the future of multilateral trade agreements. In this Center for Geoeconomic Studies Working Paper, Douglas A. Irwin makes the case for optimism and argues that the key to advancing the free-trade cause is political leadership of the sort demonstrated by a heroic but near-forgotten figure, the late secretary of state Cordell Hull of Tennessee. Irwin traces Hull's path through the decades and shows how his legacy lights the way for leaders of both political parties.

Max Boot says a strategy that focuses on defeating the Taliban and reducing the corruption that allows them to thrive can produce victory in Afghanistan.

In this New York Sun op-ed, Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya make the case for optimism on the Doha Round. A compromise is possible if the U.S. agrees to cap trade-distorting subsidies at a minimum of the current payouts and India agrees to a downscaling of the Special Safeguard Mechanism.

Husain Haqqani, former Pakistan ambassador to the United States, discusses the historic elections in Pakistan and their impact on U.S. foreign policy with Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose.

Richard N. Haass discusses his new book, Foreign Policy Begins at Home, in which he puts forward a new foreign policy doctrine of Restoration, where the United States limits its engagement in wars of choice and humanitarian interventions abroad, and focuses on restoring the foundations of its power at home.

There are many remarkable findings in the polling cited by Andrew Kohut and Michael Dimock in their new working paper for Renewing America, entitled "Resilient American Values: Optimism in an Era...

Despite an extended period of economic difficulty, Pew pollsters Andrew Kohut and Michael Dimock show that Americans' core values and beliefs about economic opportunity remain largely optimistic and unchanged.

Experts discuss the state of the global economy and predictions for the future.

Frances Z. Brown authors a report that focuses on both the U.S. military's localized governance, reconstruction, and development projects and U.S. civilian stabilization programming in Afghanistan from 2009 through 2012. Based on interviews with nearly sixty Afghan and international respondents in Kabul, Kandahar, Nangarhar, and Washington, this report finds that the surge has not met its transformative objectives due to three U.S. assumptions that proved unrealistic. It also examines lessons from the U.S. surge's impacts on local governance that can be applied toward Afghanistan's upcoming transition.

Peter Piot and Michel Sidibe discuss Piot's new book, No Time to Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, and the state of the AIDS epidemic in the world today.