Council on Foreign Relations

Summary: Despite some eerie parallels between the position of the United States today and that of the British Empire a century ago, there are key differences. Britain's decline was driven by bad economics. The United States, in contrast, has the strength and dynamism to continue shaping the world -- but only if it can overcome its political dysfunction and reorient U.S. policy for a world defined by the rise of other powers.

The African Union (AU), formed in 2002 from the vestiges of the Organization for African Unity (OAU), aims to protect the security of the continent, rather than the sovereignty of individual states.

“Much like the time leading up to World War I, coalitions and regional blocs could form to contest American supremacy. If one of these entities could consolidate its power quickly enough, a new bipolar world could emerge. Potentially, China, a pan-Arab coalition, or a unified European Union (EU) could become this new superpower.”--Robert DeYeso. Newer World Order The Return to a Multipolar Era 2006

The United States' unipolar moment is over. International relations in the twenty-first century will be defined by nonpolarity. Power will be diffuse rather than concentrated, and the influence of nation-states will decline as that of nonstate actors increases. But this is not all bad news for the United States; Washington can still manage the transition and make the world a safer place.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)–comprised of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan–began in 2001 as a confidence-building mechanism to resolve border disputes. In recent years, it has risen in stature and scope, making headlines in 2005 when it issued a timeline for U.S. forces to pull out of Uzbekistan.

The United States Army released this February 2008 revised version of its Manual for Operations.

General Meeting: The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation

Speakers: Richard Berner, Managing Director, Morgan Stanley Mickey Levy, Chief Economist, Bank of America Securities Laurence Meyer, Vice Chairman, Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC; Distinguished Scholar, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Former Member, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Presider: Daniel K. Tarullo, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center

Global stock markets plunged on January 21 and 22, many of them taking their worst losses since 9/11 amid fears of a U.S. recession.

What if the international currency of the future isn’t the dollar, but isn’t the euro either? James D. Grant, the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer and an expert on financial markets, discusses the “historical anomaly” of currencies like the dollar and the euro as uncollateralized international reserve currencies—that is, ones that aren’t backed by a guarantee that they can be exchanged for something else, such as gold or silver.