Sometimes you check things off because you've done them. If you aren't checking stuff off your bucket list, you aren't living very well.

Authoritarian governments are now trying to ensure that the increasingly free flow of ideas and information through cyberspace fuels their economies without threatening their political power.

There is always the risk that a conflagration in the Middle East becomes larger and more dangerous. In this scenario, we discover that the Arab Spring was merely the prelude to a deeper and much farther-reaching upheaval in the region that has greater impact on countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.

In China, the state controls the corporations, whereas in the United States, the corporations control the state.

The United States is not longer going to be the world's policemen and our days of determining you're in or you're out around the world no matter what the level of direct American interest or connection are going to be very limited. Increasingly, Africa will be doing that.

The two world wars boosted American power and devastated potential rivals to an extent that could not have lasted more than a few decades.

International institutions like the Security Council, the General Assembly, the G20, the BRICs, the IMF, etc., continue to be little more than an extension of the (increasingly conflicting) values and interests of member states.