Global Trends

January 2011
Welcome to the Post-Western World
by Stephen F. Szabo
“A more pluralistic, less structured security system [will incorporate] a decline in America’s power [and] a rapid increase in China’s relative power, but without an accompanying willingness or ability to take on global responsibilities. . . .”

January 2011
Global Rebalancing: The Dangerous Obsession
by Uri Dadush
“The focus of the G-20 and the IMF, and of the finance ministries that set their agendas, should shift away from global rebalancing, which sounds and plays like a zero-sum game.”

January 2011
Global Aging and the Crisis of the 2020s
by Neil Howe and Richard Jackson
“The risk of social and political upheaval could grow throughout the developing world—even as the developed world’s capacity to deal with such threats declines.”

January 2011
The Asian Century? Not Quite Yet
by Joshua Kurlantzick
“For all its economic might, Asia remains, overall, so much poorer than the United States that the region will take decades to catch up—if it catches up at all.”

January 2011
International Justice on Trial
by Omar G. Encarnación
“In many instances human rights violations are better confronted as a political problem rather than as an ethical or legal challenge.”

January 2011
Books: Set Your Alarm Clocks for 2103
by William W. Finan Jr.
A new book suggests the East will surpass the West in social development, but not until the next century, and in any case the whole world will likely rise or fall together.

January 2011
The Month in Review
by the editors of Current History
An international chronology of events in November 2010, country by country, day by day.

January 2011
A Statistical Snapshot of the World
by the editors of Current History
Charts and graphs representing global trends

January 2010
Global Progress Report, 2010
by The editors of Current History
The start of a new year finds the world economy still shaken but (slowly) growing again. International cooperation on Iran, climate change, and other issues has improved slightly, though with little yet to show for it. Meanwhile, globalization, along with the values that it spreads, survives.”

January 2010
Peace in the Twenty-First Century?
by Bruce Russett
“Democracy, trade, and international organizations and norms . . . have been powerful factors in greatly reducing war across much of the world.”

January 2010
Fortifying the Financial Architecture: Unanswered Questions
by Barry Eichengreen
“Discussions over the past year have yielded agreement on the outlines of what needs to be done to strengthen the global financial architecture. But the task of filling in the details remains.”

January 2010
The New Schizophrenia: Asia Between Integration and Isolation
by Joshua Kurlantzick
“Many cultural, economic, and political trends suggest that Asian nations are becoming more integrated and even developing a regional consciousness. . . . Concurrently, however, other trends have led to rising nationalist sentiment in the region.”

January 2010
The World’s Water Challenge
by Erik R. Peterson and Rachel A. Posner
“If oil is the key geopolitical resource of today, water will be as important—if not more so—in the not-so-distant future.”

January 2010
Taking the Measure of Global Aid
by Jean-Michel Severino and Olivier Ray
“International development assistance has in effect been assigned a new grand purpose: managing interdependencies in a globalized world.”

January 2010
The Month in Review
by The editors of Current History
An international chronology of events in November 2009, country by country, day by day.

January 2009
The Global Progress Report, 2009
by Alan Sorensen and Lucien Crowder
The state of the world at the start of a new year is precarious. For many, the financial crisis has discredited US-style capitalism. Can Barack Obama restore his nation's standing?

January 2009
Bad Credit History
by Barry Eichengreen
“Why, given that this is a global credit crisis and recession, have policy makers in other countries failed to move as aggressively? And why have US policy measures . . . not halted the downward spiral?”

January 2009
The Late, Great Globalization
by Harold James
“We are likely to see more and more parallels with the political dynamics of the world of the Great Depression.”

January 2009
Navigating the Energy Transition
by Michael T. Klare
“The transition from our current energy system to one based largely on renewables will be fraught with danger and crisis. . . .”

January 2009
The New Disarmament Discussion
by Sharon Squassoni
“The vision of a world without nuclear weapons has taken shape outside of governments, but is increasingly creeping inside governments.”