In-Depth Archive

The opening acts of the 21st century have fundamentally challenged long-held notions of military power. The past decade has unveiled not only the disruptive power of terrorist groups with global reach, but also the ability of low-budget insurgent groups to directly confront the best military forces of the West — with surprising success. Moreover, recent revolutionary events across the Arab world have demonstrated the limits of military power when facing mass popular uprisings. Disorder, chaos and violent extremism seem on course to replace state-on-state violence as the most common forms of conflict in the new century. Given this new security […]

The diffusion of power in the 21st century from states to nonstate actors has left more and more things outside the control of even the most powerful states. To accomplish their goals, states must do better at leveraging their smart power, which combines the hard power of coercion and payment with the soft power of persuasion and attraction. Doing so will often require wielding power with others rather than over them. What will it mean to wield power in the global information age of the 21st century? What resources will produce power? In the 16th century, control of colonies and […]

For many years, the United States has been the world’s most powerful nation. It remains the undisputed global leader in military power and still possesses vast economic and cultural influence. And while Washington’s ability to combine both hard and soft power to influence world events — what Joseph Nye calls “smart power” — has diminished somewhat, it is still in a far superior position relative to any other country. U.S. primacy, however, comes with opportunity costs. An alternate path might have delivered a comparable level of security at far less expense and risk. Even many who unabashedly celebrate our 20-year […]

One of the most revealing features of today’s international system is that only two nations, America and China, possess sufficient power to truly disrupt it — either directly, through the application of military force, or indirectly, by unleashing an uncontainable economic crisis. In fact, to truly derail globalization in its current trajectory, the two would need to act in concert, either by fighting each other directly or experiencing simultaneous economic collapses. Short of those two scenarios, modern globalization remains highly resilient to shocks of all sorts. That resilience is the only power that really matters in this world. It defines […]

There is no popular or expert consensus about which actors possess economic power in the 21st century. Public uncertainty is reflected in the April 2010 Pew Global Attitudes survey, which reveals interesting cross-country discontinuities in the perception of power. When asked to identify “the world’s leading economic power,” a majority of respondents in a diverse array of developing countries — including Brazil and India — name the United States. On the other hand, in the developed world, the results look dramatically different, with strong pluralities in five of the original G-7 economies — including the United States, Japan and Germany […]

Argentina is a medium-sized country of 41 million inhabitants and moderate global strategic and economic importance. The country’s foreign policy, defense policy and strategic priorities are driven primarily by the domestic political concerns of the country’s political leaders. In addition, the behavior of Argentine politicians is fundamentally guided by a pragmatic approach toward politics, within which political elites are far more concerned about the accumulation of power and the control of politically valuable financial and material resources than with ideology and specific policy goals. What’s more, the time-horizon of Argentine politicians is very limited, with a short-term perspective most commonly […]

When this article was commissioned back in December, its aim was to provide readers with an understanding of the players and scenarios for a leadership succession in Egypt. Just who would rule the country when President Hosni Mubarak eventually relinquished power had been a central question in Egyptian politics for the better part of the last decade. The most oft-mentioned contenders were Mubarak’s second son, Gamal, and his close adviser, Lt. Gen. Omar Suleiman, then the chief of the General Intelligence Service. Rumors of Gamal Mubarak’s ascendance began in earnest around 1999 when, after a stint at Bank of America […]

Who’s in charge in North Korea? Contrary to what some news coverage has suggested in recent months, the answer is obvious: Kim Jong Il. Ever since the North Korean leader suffered a stroke in the summer of 2008, media reports have been rife with speculation that he would soon give way to a successor, or else that a struggle for power was raging in Pyongyang. Much of that speculation was idle, little of it informed, and some of it motivated. North Korea may be opaque, but this much is clear to close observers of its hermetic ruling circles: In January […]

In November 2010, the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz, traveled to the United States for medical treatment, touching off rounds of fevered speculation about the prospects for succession in Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz’s own frail health and recent convalescence in Morocco gave the speculation further life. Of course, due to the royal family’s opaque approach to the issue, discussions of the internal rivalries that are reputed to divide the royal family are often based on mere conjecture. With little concrete information upon which to ground analysis, each decision of the royal family is then […]