Diplomacy & Crisis News

On April 8, sitting beside each other in Prague Castle, U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). Just two days earlier, the Obama administration had issued its Nuclear Posture Review, only the third such comprehensive assessment of the United States' nuclear strategy. And in May, as a gesture of openness at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York, the U.S. government took the remarkable step of making public the size of its nuclear stockpile, which as of September 2009 totaled 5,113 warheads.

For proponents of eliminating nuclear weapons, these events elicited both a nod and a sigh. On the one hand, they represented renewed engagement by Washington and Moscow on arms control, a step toward, as the treaty put it, "the historic goal of freeing humanity from the nuclear threat." On the other hand, they stopped short of fundamentally changing the Cold War face of deterrence.

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Since 2001, the West has tried to build a strong centralized government in Afghanistan. But such an approach fits poorly with the country's history and political culture. The most realistic and acceptable alternative models of governance are decentralized democracy and a system of internal mixed sovereignty.

Current efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are based on a misunderstanding of the country's culture and social structure. As three new books show, defeating the Taliban will require local, bottom-up efforts—beginning with a deep understanding of tribal and subtribal politics.

By exposing them to the truth about their impoverishment and about the prosperity of their South Korean cousins, the United States can encourage North Koreans to change the regime in Pyongyang.

The Copenhagen conference won't solve the problem of climate change once and for all. Rather than aiming for a broad international treaty, negotiators should strengthen existing national policies and seek targeted emissions cuts in both rich nations and the developing world.

Driven by a near obsession with economic growth, Beijing has extended the state’s reach into the economy. Instead of urging the Chinese government to resume extensive market reforms, Washington should encourage it to focus on a narrow range of feasible measures.

The August war over South Ossetia has rekindled a superpower rivalry and showed the West that Moscow no longer heeds multilateral institutions.

Beijing is shirking its responsibilities to the global economy. To encourage better behavior, Washington should offer to share global economic leadership.

The prosperity of the United States and China depends on helping China further integrate into the global economic system.

It can, but only if U.S. officials start to think clearly about what success in the war on terror would actually look like. Victory will come only when Washington succeeds in discrediting the terrorists' ideology and undermining their support. These achievements, in turn, will require accepting that the terrorist threat can never be eradicated completely and that acting as though it can will only make it worse.

By rushing into Iraq instead of finishing off the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Washington has unwittingly helped its enemies: al Qaeda has more bases, more partners, and more followers today than it did on the eve of 9/11. Now the group is working to set up networks in the Middle East and Africa -- and may even try to lure the United States into a war with Iran. Washington must focus on attacking al Qaeda's leaders and ideas and altering the local conditions in which they thrive. This article appears in the Foreign Affairs eBook, "The U.S. vs. al Qaeda: A History of the War on Terror." Now available for purchase.

With the Taliban resurgent, reconstruction faltering, and opium poppy cultivation at an all-time high, Afghanistan is at risk of collapsing into chaos. If Washington wants to save the international effort there, it must increase its commitment to the area and rethink its strategy—especially its approach to Pakistan, which continues to give sanctuary to insurgents on its tribal frontier.

Despite all the ominous warnings of wily terrorists and imminent attacks, there has been neither a successful strike nor a close call in the United States since 9/11. The reasonable—but rarely heard—explanation is that there are no terrorists within the United States, and few have the means or the inclination to strike from abroad.

Two new books attempt to explain U.S. power and policy in imperial terms. Unfortunately for their authors, the United States neither has nor is an empire.

In China's Trapped Transition, Minxin Pei attempts to solve the puzzle of China's present -- and figure out its future.

In Defense of Hugo Chávez Bernardo Alvarez Herrera

For nearly a decade, U.S. policy toward Latin America has been narrowly focused on a handful of issues, such as China's growing influence in the region and the power of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Latin Americans want economic ties with the United States but feel slighted by Washington and uneasy about the U.S. role in the world. The costs of the estrangement will be high for both sides.

If an influenza pandemic struck today, borders would close, the global economy would shut down, international vaccine supplies and health-care systems would be overwhelmed, and panic would reign. To limit the fallout, the industrialized world must create a detailed response strategy involving the public and private sectors.

The Bush administration has literalized its "war" on terrorism, dissolving the legal boundaries between what a government can do in peacetime and what's allowed in war. This move may have made it easier for Washington to detain or kill suspects, but it has also threatened basic due process rights, thereby endangering us all. This article appears in the Foreign Affairs eBook, "The U.S. vs. al Qaeda: A History of the War on Terror." Now available for purchase.

China has begun to embrace regional and global institutions it once shunned and take on the responsibilities that come with great-power status.