China is transforming Africa, for good and ill. The United States and other traditional trading and aid partners of Africa need to pay closer attention than they are, and with Africans craft bold new policies that welcome Chinese investment and trade but condemn the taking of African jobs and the destruction of African industries. Click here to read the full text, which discusses China’s emerging controversial role in Africa as investor, trader, buyer, and aid donor.

Nelson Mandela emerged from prison in 1990 to demonstrate the power for good and the best practices of democratic African leadership. His affirmation of inclusionary and participatory values, moreover, matched those that had been affirmed for decades in neighbouring Botswana under presidents Seretse Khama and Ketumile Masire.

By neglecting Nigeria, the Bush administration has missed repeated opportunities to strengthen democracy in Africa's most populous, most fractured and most important country.

The United States and NATO are about to lose the war in Afghanistan to an insurgent, revived Taliban. Deprived of sufficient firepower and soldiers, Allied forces are failing to hunt down and contain the Taliban, especially in the southern part of the country.

For the United States, the road out of Iraq runs through Tehran. The only way to promote sustainable peace, stability, and order in Iraq is to forge an unholy alliance with Iran -- and accept Iran's dominant influence in the Middle East. Only by accepting Iranian hegemonic pretensions, odious as they are, can the United States extricate itself somewhat honorably from Iraq.

To prevent Somalia from reverting to insecurity and warlordism, immediate, concerted action by the powers of Europe and the United Nations is essential.

Good governance is essential if citizens of nation-states or subordinate political jurisdictions seek to maximize their inalienable rights assubjects, taxpayers, or mere residents of the polities to which they owe or are compelled to pay allegiance.

The murderous civil war in Darfuris four years’ old.Washington has called it genocide. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan showed equal concern and passion about daily killing there. More than 200,000 Darfurians have already lost their lives. As many as 2 million people have lost their homes and been forced into refugee or transit camps. Millions have been raped. Yet, effectively, the world continues to do nothing.

WASHINGTON needs to learn to talk, listen, and engage more and condemn less.