November/December 2010

The U.S. government is incurring debt at an unprecedented rate. If U.S. leaders do not act to curb their debt addiction, then the global capital markets will do so for them, forcing a sharp and punitive adjustment in fiscal policy. The result will be an age of American austerity.

A major strategic challenge for the United States in the coming decades will be integrating emerging powers into international institutions. To hold the postwar order together, the United States will have to become a more consistent exemplar of multilateral cooperation.

U.S. students now compete throughout their careers with their peers in other countries. But thinking of the future as a contest among countries vying to get larger pieces of a finite economic pie is a recipe for protectionism and global strife. Instead, Americans must realize that expanding educational attainment everywhere is the best way to grow the pie for all.

A favorite view of the Internet holds that the democratization of communications will bring about the democratization of the world. In fact, the relationship between cyberspace and political liberalization is far more complex.

With one billion people already going hungry and the world's population rising, global food production must urgently be increased. The countries that managed such surges in the past -- Brazil, China, India, the United States -- cannot do so again. But Africa can -- if it finally uses the seeds, fertilizers, and irrigation methods common everywhere else.

Governments across the Middle East and South Asia are increasingly losing power to substate actors that are inserting themselves at a mezzanine level of rule between the government and the people. Western policymakers must address the problem systematically, at both a political and a legal level, rather than continue to pursue reactive and disjointed measures on a case-by-case basis.

As China's economic might expands, Beijing not only wants a greater stake in international organizations but also to remake the rules of the game.

Turkey's ruling party is sometimes criticized for being Islamist or ideological, but its policies remain essentially nationalist and commercially opportunistic.