Foreign Affairs

The case against pessimism and the path to a new allied order.

A quarter century before 9/11, an upsurge in global terrorism prompted the historian David Fromkin to examine its purpose and method. Terrorism was a strategy of the weak, Fromkin wrote in these pages, but modern technology had enabled it “to enter the political arena on a new scale.” And its surprising success seemed to be due, in large part, “to a miscomprehension of the strategy by its opponents.”

The real history of Beijing’s rare-earth dominance.

How to make government work again.

Preparing for a world of synthetic pathogens.

Why Washington still risks losing the tech race.

Iran and the last gasp of a failed order.

Learning to live in a post-American world.

What the youngest continent stands to gain from growing old.

How Washington’s fear of Chinese investment hurts American competitiveness.

How to support the movement resisting the Taliban’s extremism.

Hormuz and the new geography of energy power.

Decades of hard-won mediation experience point the way.

How overcapacity ends.

Why high productivity could still lead to a crash.

The perverse incentives for presidents to use military force.

How fragile states can fortify themselves.

How Beijing turned its food insecurity into geopolitical leverage.

Beijing’s plans to manage an assertive Pyongyang.

Beijing’s quest to challenge America’s legal hegemony.