The United States has settled for a patchwork approach to infrastructure. To stay ahead in the global economy, it needs to build adaptable networks like the 1956 Interstate Highway System.
A veteran American negotiator derives seven rules of the road from his decades of experience in Arab-Israeli peace talks.
Bad schools are not going to sink the American economy. Despite what the headlines say, U.S. students fare well in international comparisons. It’s the schools serving the poor that demand our attention.
In February 2009, American television will go digital, and millions of sets will fade to fuzz. It’s but the latest episode in TV’s colorful history, as the living-room set has evolved from a clunky box to a sleek rectangle on the wall.
The Atlantic and Pacific now dominate the world’s politics and trade, but the Indian Ocean is emerging as a new locus of power that increasingly unites China, India, the Middle East, and Africa.
It’s wishful thinking to believe that tiny loans to people in developing countries can end poverty, but microcredit does improve the lives of millions in small but meaningful ways.
Whether in covered wagons or station wagons, Americans have always hit the road, driven by the belief that a better life lies over the hill and around the bend.
Despite stunning advances in neuroscience and bold claims of revelations from new brain-scan technologies, our knowledge about the brain’s role in human behavior is still primitive.
On December 30, 2006, Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Wilson Center’s Middle East Program, was stopped and robbed on her way to the Tehran airport. Trapped in Iran without a passport, she was interrogated by intelligence agents almost daily for six weeks. Then, on May 8, she was taken to Tehran’s Evin Prison and placed in solitary confinement, accused of the capital offense of attempting to overturn the Iranian government.
A surreal encounter in an Islamabad office reveals in an instant why billions of dollars spent on aid to Pakistan have made so little difference in the lives of the country’s poor.