From Washington to Cairo and Tripoli, old institutions are breaking down. This special issue of TNI explores the profound global transitions taking place, examines the collapse of the Old Order and looks toward the future.
Those nations falling between the developed West and the world’s poorest countries are jockeying for position in their own regions and playing powers against each other. They will make life increasingly difficult for the reigning great powers.
An intense security competition is under way in East Asia. Beijing and Washington must take care to ensure that this competition does not give way to entrenched bloody-mindedness or even outright violence.
Pax Americana and the age of Western dominance are fading. Washington can manage this decline, but first it must acknowledge its reality. History moves forward with a crushing force and does not wait for the unprepared.
The world we know is changing. The result is an uneasy mixture of the traditional Westphalian state system and the forces of globalization. Until we find a balance between them, this is a recipe for drift, transition and increasing chaos.
Europe’s problems go far beyond deflating currency and rising debt. It suffers from a lack of will, a crisis of confidence—and a serious identity problem. The once-great superpower has already fallen. Centuries of predominance slip away.
Two lost wars. Eroding infrastructure. A crippled economy. The time when the United States could create and lead a political, economic and security order in virtually every part of the world is over. The cure? A new American strategy.
Experts opine on how democracy would change China's foreign-policy priorities.
At its core, ideology fuels the epic struggle between Washington and Beijing. Deeply insecure about its own legitimacy, the Communist Party seeks the subordination of its regional neighbors to appease the nationalist wing of its body politic.
Like his two most recent predecessors, President Obama is embarking on a disastrous foreign policy bent on global domination.
