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Bush promised to treat China like a "strategic competitor." However, despite the Department of Defense's continuing concerns about China's military buildup, the White House has backpedaled, leaving its China policy exactly the opposite of what Bush had promised. Nowhere is his retreat more obvious than on human rights, an issue Bush claims is the centerpiece of his presidency.
Washington's strategic confusion on the logic of NATO expansion to Georgia and Ukraine split the alliance, undermined democratic reforms abroad, and helped bring out the worst in Moscow's relations with the West. Washington should convince skeptics of its sincerity on the importance of democratic reforms by setting stringent political standards for potential members.
These days, Europeans are taking advantage of the cheap U.S. dollar to buy more than consumer electronics or real estate in the United States. They are also gobbling up all kinds of U.S. corporations -- a trend that will be far more permanent, consequential and politically charged than Europeans' widely noticed shopping sprees for gadgets or apartments.
Last summer, as Americans focused on the surge in Iraq, most ignored a military exercise with a potentially more far-reaching impact. In a remote location in the Ural Mountains, Russia, China, and several Central Asian nations gathered for a massive war game, ironically dubbed "Peace Mission 2007."
A global competition is underway between democratic governments and autocratic governments. The great powers are increasingly choosing sides and identifying themselves with one camp or the other. This competition will become a dominant feature of the twenty-first-century world, with broad implications for the international system.
On my way out of Moscow on the day when George Bush and Vladimir Putin met for the last time in Sochi, Russian blogs were alight with complaints about how Putin had lost big at the NATO summit meeting in Bucharest the day before. As I flew across the ocean a few hours later, I sat next to a well-placed Washington operative on his way back from Bucharest. "Bush lost big at the summit," he said."
To win in November, a Democratic presidential candidate has to carry most of the industrial heartland states that stretch from Pennsylvania to Missouri. That becomes even more imperative if a Democrat can't carry Florida--and because of his relative weakness in South Florida, Obama is unlikely to do so against McCain. Ruy Teixeira and I have calculated that in the heartland states, a Democratic presidential candidate has to win from 45 to 48 percent of the white working class vote. In some states, like West Virginia and Kentucky, the percentage is well over a majority.
The aftermath of recent financial crises, such as the U.S. housing slump and near-collapse of Bear Sterns, underscores the concentration of power among a select, insular group of global elites, unchecked by any international mechanism. An often unregulated “superclass” of 6,000 individuals governs not only business and finance, but politics, the arts, the non-profit world, and other sectors.
Polls show that most Americans are concerned about climate change. Effectively stemming climate change means persuading individuals to take responsibility for cutting their emissions.
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