State Failure

After widespread civil unrest, Thailand remains deeply polarized, its economy is contracting, and its king is getting older. Whatever the outcome of the present crisis, the future of Thai democracy does not look good.

In today's interconnected world, weak and failed states pose an acute risk to U.S. and global security. Anticipating, averting, and responding to conflict requires more planning and better organization -- precisely the missions of the State Department's new Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization.

Jared Diamond's Collapse is a catalog of past environmental ruin. But despite the abundance of bad news, its message is one of cautious optimism: if modern society can learn from the failures of its predecessors, it can avoid their fate.

Is Pakistan-nuclear proliferator, terrorist incubator, key U.S. ally-on the verge of collapse? In a new book, Stephen Philip Cohen rejects the most alarmist scenarios but warns that, without major reforms, Pakistan's prospects are indeed grim.