Traces the idea of great power management from its origins in European history to the present day and refutes that the idea that great powers have a special responsibility for maintaining international order, arguing it is out of step with contemporary circumstances. Also considers whether new great powers are likely to emerge, and if so, to what effect.

(WORLD FUTURES * GREAT POWERS * INTERNATIONAL ORDER)

Assesses the impact of the two conflicts on US foreign policy, military planning, and capacities for counterinsurgency and state building and offers guidance for avoiding the pitfalls and increasing the prospects for success in US interventions. Topics include US strategy toward “rogue states,” learning from our mistakes, reassessing priorities, winning the wars we’re in, unanticipated challenges, and the predicament in Afghanistan.

(US FOREIGN POLICY * IRAQ * AFGHANISTAN)

The West’s preeminence is slipping away as China, India, Brazil and other emerging powers rise; its founding ideas, however, will continue to spread. The world is headed for political and ideological diversity; emerging powers will neither defer to the West’s lead nor converge to the Western way. The 21st century will not belong to America, China, Asia, or anyone else. The world will become interdependent, but without a center of gravity or global guardian. A new consensus on issues of legitimacy, sovereignty and governance needs to be reached by the West and the rising rest. (See GFB Book of the Month March 2012)

(WORLD FUTURES)

Commitments to human rights and democracy cannot redress the wounds caused by war, genocide, and dictatorship. Challenges the approach to peace-building that dominates the UN, western governments, and the human rights community. Calls for a holistic restorative approach, and proposes a form of political reconciliation that is rooted in three religious traditions – Christianity, Islam, and Judaism – as well as the restorative justice movement. Elaborates on six practices to be used in fractured communities: 1) building just institutions and relations between states, 2) acknowledgement, 3) reparations, 4) restorative punishment, 5) apology, and 6) most important, forgiveness.

(PEACE-BUILDING * RESTORATIVE JUSTICE * POLITICAL RECONCILIATION)

Sustainable peace is at risk when significant stakeholders in a society’s future are excluded from efforts to heal the wounds of war. Yet women are routinely marginalized, unnoticed, and underutilized in such efforts. Uses comparative case studies and country studies from post-conflit contexts in different parts of the world to better understand women as both victims and peace-makers. Draws on African cases to argue that for women in post-conflict societies, “defying victimhood” means being an activist, peace-builder, and full participant in post-war structures.

(WORLD FUTURES * PEACEBUILDING * SOCIETY * WOMEN AS PEACEBUILDERS)

An idealized version of China’s imperial past now inspires a new generation of Chinese scholars and policymakers and their plans for China’s future. Chinese and western scholars explore how traditional Chinese culture is being remolded into a “Chinese-style” world order for the 21st century.

(WORLD FUTURES * CHINA)

Writing in Life magazine in February 1941, Henry Luce memorably announced the arrival of “The American Century.” Today’s US grapples with protracted wars, economic uncertainty, and pressing questions about its role in the world. The essays by historians look at internationalism and empire, race and religion, consumerism, and globalization to explore 1) what did the American preeminence signify, 2) what caused its premature demise, and 3) what legacy remains in its wake. As Bacevich makes clear, America’s century has ended, due to strategic miscalculation, military misadventures, and economic decline.

(“AMERICAN CENTURY” POSTMORTEM * U.S. DECLINE)

In the 19th and early 20th century, a controversial school of Russian thinkers emerged (including scientists, theologians, and philosophers), convinced that humanity was entering an advanced stage of evolution and must assume a new, managerial role in the cosmos. Their writings explore extension of human life span to establish immortality, restoration of life to the dead, regulation of nature (so that all manifestations of blind natural force were under rational human control), the effect of cosmic rays on human history, and steps to control the flow of time.

(ESOTERIC FUTURISM * NIKOLAI FEDEROV * RUSSIAN COSMISTS * MISCELLANEOUS)

Conventional wisdom holds that intellectual property serves to promote innovative products. Most scholarship on intellectual property rights considers this law from the standpoint of law and economics. Yet intellectual property law does more than incentivize the production of more goods; it governs the abilities of human beings to make and share culture, and to profit from this enterprise in a global knowledge economy.

(INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND GLOBAL JUSTICE)

Explores the nature, configuration and influence of global elites; examines the impact of elites on transnational policy development and strategically on corporations as board members of PLCs and international joint ventures (IJV's), and provides a balanced view of how our present day elites operate. Chapters discuss global capitalism theory and the emergence of transnational elites; panopticism and elites; elites and the post-industrial age; the nature of Chinese elites; elitism, class and the democratic deficit: founding themes of the American republic ; the transnational power elite; board directors as elites in the context of international joint ventures; entrepreneurs as elites; migrant elites; leadership hubris.

(WORLD GOVERNANCE * GLOBAL ELITES * BUSINESS ELITES * GLOBAL CAPITALISM)