Science & Technology

NPR's Ari Shapiro speak with political scientist Erica Chenoweth, who studies civil resistance movements, about the protests China and Iran.

As the United States emerges from the era of so-called forever wars, it should abandon the regime change business for good. Then, Washington must understand why it failed, writes Stephen Walt.

Stephen Walt writes that political institutions are not permanent phenomena: they are artificial human creations and only as enduring, adaptive, and effective as people make them. He hopes for a serious and sustained process of democratic change, one that respects the nobler features of the U.S. constitutional order yet addresses all the ways in which The United States has failed to live up to its own professed ideals. The alternative, he fears, will be something much more dangerous. 

Henry Kissinger warns that many existing domestic and international institutions that have helped govern the past decades will not survive the Covid-19 crisis. He is surely correct.

Unipolarity is over, and with it the illusion that other nations would simply take their assigned place in a U.S.-led international order. For the United States, that will require accepting the reality that there are spheres of influence in the world today—and that not all of them are American spheres.

Joseph Nye writes that some decoupling of interdependence is likely, particularly in areas related to technology that directly affect national security. But will Washington and Beijing go too far?

Nathaniel Moir writes that Revolutionary Warfare is not insurgency or guerrilla warfare: It is driven by ideology and commitment, not technology. Revolutionary Warfare's foundation is the perceived legitimacy of its political rationale among the population in which it is propagated. No matter how expertly or technologically advanced contemporary conflict is fought, it will not compensate for lack of political rationale.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson offered his take on global leaders and hotspots, from Iran and Saudi Arabia to North Korea and Syria. He was joined by Professor Nicholas Burns, Professor James Sebenius and Professor Robert Mnookin.