We talk a lot about individual rights, but in fact Americans are very willing to give up our individual rights if it means our property values will be protected, and so on.

What does the earth look like in the places where people commit atrocities? Is there a bad smell, a genius loci, something about the landscape that might incriminate?

An idea is only an idea if it causes unease, debate and reflection. By that standard, Thomas Homer-Dixon's concept of an 'ingenuity gap' is truly a new idea. I can think of no other new concept that so fully condenses all of the challenges we face as a human civilization than the 'ingenuity gap'. Homer-Dixon has found a way to unite all of our concerns about economics, war, population growth, complexity, etc. under a single heading. He is one of an elite group of academics who can write for a mass audience.

The closer one gets to either the eastern or the southern fringe of the German-speaking world-the closer one gets, in other words, to the threatening and more numerous Slavs-the more insecure and dangerous nationalism becomes.

Wherever you have weakening states and turmoil, you will have a fertile petri dish for terrorism.

The United States is not overdeployed or overextended with deployments in 150 countries on any given year. On any given week we have about 65 deployments.

It is time to understand the environment for what it is: the national security issue of the early twenty-first century.