Esquire – Thomas P.M. Barnett asks: In the lives of men and nations, either you are growing or you’re dying. In our time, the Soviet Union imploded, China is adding back lost colonies, and Europe is now the European Union. So why did the United States stop growing? And what will our next five states be?
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New Scientist – A futuristic scheme to collect solar energy on satellites and beam it to Earth has gained a large supporter in the US military. A report released yesterday by the National Security Space Office recommends that the US government sponsor projects to demonstrate solar-power-generating satellites and provide financial incentives for further private development of the technology.

National Security Space Office – Space-Based Solar Power As an Opportunity for Strategic Security
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Foreign Affairs – Did the Bush administration disregard military expertise before the Iraq war? Should military leaders have done more to protest in response?
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Foreign Affairs – Since the Democrats regained control of Congress, the Hill has been alive with the sound of hearings. Congress’ earlier slumber and recent awakening should come as no surprise: for the last six decades, the partisan composition of Congress has defined the politics of war. Now facing a Democratic majority, President George W. Bush will find it far more difficult to stay in Iraq.
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Foreign Affairs – Paul Collier offers strong recommendations for helping “the bottom billion” — those living in poor countries caught in growth traps. But he cannot overcome a basic problem: how to create growth where no functioning economy exists.
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New Yorker – Garry Kasparov takes aim at the power of Vladimir Putin.
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Foreign Affairs – China’s environmental woes are mounting, and the country is fast becoming one of the leading polluters in the world. The situation continues to deteriorate because even when Beijing sets ambitious targets to protect the environment, local officials generally ignore them, preferring to concentrate on further advancing economic growth. Really improving the environment in China will require revolutionary bottom-up political and economic reforms.
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Foreign Affairs – Deep divisions at home about the nature of the United States’ engagement with the world threaten to produce failed leadership abroad — and possibly isolationism. To steady U.S. global leadership and restore consensus to U.S. foreign policy, U.S. commitments overseas must be scaled back to a more politically sustainable level.
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Foreign Affairs – Washington has abandoned diplomacy in favor of military power. In Statecraft, Dennis Ross urges U.S. officials to resurrect the United States’ peacemaking tradition and restore its international reputation.
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The Economist – Political power in Russia now lies with the FSB, the KGB’s successor
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New Yorker – Niall Ferguson reviews how much did the Marshall Plan really matter?
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Foreign Affairs – Two new books discuss how Washington should fight the wars of tomorrow — and pay for them. But to balance the conflicting demands of strategy and finance, the next president ought to take a page from Eisenhower’s playbook.
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New York Times Magazine – After centuries of strife, the West has learned to separate religion and politics – to establish the legitimacy of its leaders without referring to divine command. There is little reason to expect that the rest of the world – the Islamic world in particular – will follow.
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Foreign Affairs – Robert Service’s Comrades! tells the story of world communism — but leaves the reader still hungry for explanations of why the movement lasted so long and what, if anything, it accomplished.
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Foreign Affairs – Robert and Isabelle Tombs’ superb chronicle of 300 years of Anglo-French rivalry reveals how the love-hate relationship between France and the United Kingdom has left an indelible mark on today’s world.
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Foreign Affairs – Americans are increasingly frustrated with Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts, but the United States should resist the urge to threaten President Pervez Musharraf or demand a quick democratic transition. Getting Islamabad to play a more effective role in the war on terrorism will require that Washington strike a careful balance: pushing for political reform but without jeopardizing the military’s core interests.
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Esquire – A few years ago, with little fanfare, the United States opened a base in the horn of Africa to kill or capture Al Qaeda fighters. By 2012, the Pentagon will have two dozen such forts. The story of Africa Command, the American military’s new frontier outpost, by Thomas P.M. Barnett.
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American Enterprise Institute – Yegor Gaidar, Russian economist and market reformer, former acting Prime Minister of Russia, former Russian economic minister, and possible Putin poisoning victim, has written a book about the collapse of the Soviet economy in the 1980’s that has been extracted into this astonishing paper.
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Washington Post – Ahmed Rashid analyses the current situation in Pakistan.
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Foreign Affairs – Depending on whom you ask, Tariq Ramadan is either a brave Muslim moderate or an apologist for terrorism. Either way, his new book, which rethinks the Prophet Muhammad’s life for the modern world, is a step in the right direction.
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Foreign Affairs – Little-known heroes of the Holocaust were the rare diplomats who defied their superiors’ orders and issued visas to save lives. With Iraqis now scrambling to leave their own country, those examples are as relevant today as ever.
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Foreign Affairs – 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.
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Washington Post – The creation of the Defense Department Africa Command, with responsibilities to promote security and government stability in the region, has heightened concerns among African countries and in the U.S. government over the militarization of U.S. foreign policy.

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Los Angeles Times – Niall Ferguson documents how the Soviet Union is being recreated.
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Foreign Affairs – Global financial instability has sparked a surge in “monetary nationalism” — the idea that countries must make and control their own currencies. But globalization and monetary nationalism are a dangerous combination, a cause of financial crises and geopolitical tension. The world needs to abandon unwanted currencies, replacing them with dollars, euros, and multinational currencies as yet unborn.
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