Issues
Always thought-provoking, often prescient, each issue of The WQ takes a deep and satisfying dive into a single topic or theme that is shaping our world, presenting a compelling range of angles, voices, and visuals.
Confronting Unprecedented Humanitarian Needs
As humanitarian needs grow in size, scope, and intensity, the fall 2024 Wilson Quarterly features a variety of leaders in the humanitarian response sector. Together, they analyze the state of humanitarian assistance, the roles of the public and private sectors, who’s footing the bill, what is working, what isn’t, and what innovations are on the horizon.
As regional demographic trends collide, policymakers worldwide must consider new risks—and opportunities.
Moscow's last years of empire, the rise of democracy, and return to dictatorship. Insights from the Kennan Institute's remarkable first 50 years and for the road ahead.
As global alliances make profound shifts, the winter 2024 Wilson Quarterly examines emerging partnerships alongside traditional multilateral institutions to help reveal the strongest combinations.
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With the world’s youngest workforce, abundant natural resources, rising cultural influence, and on the precipice of having the globe’s largest trade area, Africa is increasingly consequential beyond its borders and ready to be met on its own terms.
Is the world ready for a new trade agenda?
Strengthening America’s Advantage in a Competitive World
As an era of hyper-globalization and complex global supply chains confronts multiple global events—the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and weather related catastrophes—supply chain vulnerabilities have become increasingly clear. The fall 2022 issue of the Wilson Quarterly establishes current supply chain thinking and highlights streams of innovation to help policymakers in this defining moment in history.
The world has shifted dramatically since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. As the world now sits on the hinge of history, the summer 2022 Wilson Quarterly examines the Ripples of War.
In an increasingly complex world, the implementation of American foreign policy requires compromises. The spring 2022 issue of the Wilson Quarterly, “Reconcilable Differences: Portraits of Challenging U.S. Partnerships” examines a handful tricky relationships—from China to Egypt to the DRC and beyond—highlighting complexities of key partnerships and offering policymakers insights on how to approach them.
A warming climate is melting ice and opening literal and figurative waterways of opportunity in the Arctic, bringing unprecedented interest from around the world. In this issue of the Wilson Quarterly we present expertise and insights from leading policymakers, scholars, practitioners, Indigenous leaders, and Arctic advocates. We invite you to explore the new Arctic.
The Fall issue of the Wilson Quarterly examines the immense challenges that human displacement poses to individuals, regions and nations as conflict, climate and other factors compel populations to move. With a mix of essays, first person accounts, testimonies, and an interactive feature, the Wilson Quarterly delivers perspectives from world leaders, U.S. legislators, scholars, journalists, and refugees themselves that illuminate many complexities and solutions to one of the key issues facing global governance and development today.
Do treaties and agreements still work in an era of increasing polarization, hypernationalism and political violence?
Public Health in a Time of Pandemic
What has COVID-19 taught us about our ability to battle global outbreaks? What has the pandemic taught us about ourselves?
Key U.S. policy shifts caused immense global ripples. Can the Biden administration pick up where the Obama White House left off? Or must it plot a new course?
The past is always with us - even when governments try to alter or erase it. How does contested history shape our politics and culture?
Asia changed forever on June 25, 1950. The history and legacy of an unresolved conflict that still stokes tensions in the region and across the globe.
Regulations can protect citizens and harmonize markets and societies. Yet their scope and reach – as well as the fierce battles over who writes them – create unexpected global impacts.
Taking to the streets can change the course of history. But the stakes of protest are high – and the outcomes of mass action are uncertain.
The gap between the political rhetoric and the realities of our borders has never been wider. What is the future of borders – for nations and those who must traverse them?
Water is essential to life. But there’s increasingly too little—or too much—of it. Human beings aren’t helping. We make it dirty, and fight bitterly over it. Can our most precious resource be renewed to create a more healthy and peaceful world?
Fifty Earth years have elapsed since Neil Armstrong became the first person to tread on the lunar surface. Today, space is not the final frontier it used to be, but an evolving landscape where security, technology, commerce, and human ambition cross paths and collide.
The Fate of the International Order
With allegiances and assurances challenged by nationalism, the institutions of the liberal world order are under pressure. Is now the time to rally behind them or rethink them? On the Wilson Center’s 50th anniversary, we explore multilateralism – a cornerstone of President Wilson’s foreign policy legacy – at a moment of truth.
The Grinding Gears of North America
The uncertain fate of NAFTA and President Trump’s trade wars are testing the bonds of the North American continent. From Iowa’s cornfields to Mexico’s factories, and from trust in Canada to strategy in China, these are stories of profits and losses that go beyond the balance sheet.
Living with Artificial Intelligence
Humans created AI. Now humanity must learn how to live with it. With the potential to upend sectors from law enforcement to labor and to reshape relations both international and interpersonal, this is not just technology. It’s the start of the algorithmic age.
Modern media-consumers are the civilians in a messaging warzone, where nefarious aims and “fake news” (actual or claimed) battle with verified reporting and facts. From the newsroom of *The New York Times* to a jail cell in Azerbaijan, these are stories of ramifications and responses in our disinformation age.
No longer blockaded by impenetrable ice, the Arctic of today is a hotspot of environmental, cultural, economic, and geopolitical dynamics. Welcome to the modern, global Arctic – a region experiencing unprecedented change.
Allies and adversaries of the United States, and the countries in between, were fixated on the election of Donald Trump and the early days of his presidency. Consider these voices from six key countries and what their reactions say about the U.S. – and about themselves.
After the Storm in U.S.-Mexico Relations
The relationship between Mexico and the United States is facing its most severe test in decades. Although a new tone and new ideas are needed, the economic, political and security fundamentals matter more than ever.
The Lasting Legacy of the Cold War
As we enter a new cycle of tension between two of the world’s great powers, we look back 25 years later with renewed awareness of the reverberations and impact of the Cold War.
The Decline of the American Middle Class
After more than four decades, the American middle class is no longer the nation’s economic majority. What is the impact on the American identity and how are Americans coping?
Even as new technologies help people come together to cope with current problems, the lessons of a less-connected past can give us vital perspectives on the challenges that remain with us today.
The world has changed, sometime significantly, during Barack Obama’s presidency — if not always by design. As we enter President Obama’s final year in office, how should we think of these changes? What challenges merit our consideration? What is next for the great American experiment?
Change has many forms, whether physical relocation, the reordering of societies, or the intimate transformations of identity. It is a fundamental part of the human experience. Here, we survey the transitions — small, profound, sometimes revelatory — that shape our world and the people in it.
We live in an “age of connection,” which is to say what, exactly? In the last twenty years, globalization and technological advances have improved the quality of life for many and given rise to voices traditionally shut out. It has also contributed to inequality, insecurity, and a creeping sense of instability.
Tocqueville wrote that the "greatness of America lies… in her ability to repair her faults." With a renewed national discussion on the faultlines of race, class, identity, and culture, we look inward. How do we assess the state of life in America?
World Wars I and II came to transform every aspect of life in nearly every corner of the planet. Now, 100 years since the start of WWI and 75 years since the end of WWII, as public memory of the great wars begins to fade, we look at their lasting impact and ponder the future of their memory.
1989 and the Birth of the Modern World
Revolutions — be they political, social, technological, or cultural — swept the world in 1989. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the protests at Tiananmen Square; from the deaths of Ayatollah Khomeini and Emperor Hirohito to the birth of the world wide web and launch of GPS. Twenty-five years later, we look back at the impact of 1989, and the modern era it created.
As the U.S. prepares to withdraw from the longest war in its history, a look at the lives changed, promises made, and ideas shaped by war in Afghanistan.
Four Decades of Classic Essays
As we move to a new format, some of the classic essays we have published.
After years of gridlock, is Mexico heading in the right direction?
A chronically bleak job market is breeding unease in a country where economic gloom is rare.
The American Quest for Redemption
In a nation born with a sense that it had a redemptive mission in the world, the urge to take what is bad and turn it into something good often turns obsessively inward. The results can be surprising.
In the sobering aftermath of the Arab Spring, old questions about the pursuit of political freedom have come into fresh focus. Are the risks too great? Is the time too soon?
India now rivals China as a model for the world’s developing nations. But its recent stumbles have raised doubts about whether it will demonstrate the superiority of the democratic path to development.
Twelve years into a new century, a kind of grimness pervades the United States. Is it just the post-crisis hangover of a stagnant job market, or have the era's upheavals and uncertainties, at home and abroad, changed something fundamental?
Technology is making it as easy to keep in touch with someone on the other side of the world as it is with a next-door neighbor. Social networks bring news and tidbits from far and wide, sometimes with startling results. But is technology really increasing understanding between people? Between nations?
Lessons of the Great Depression
The Great Depression has long been regarded as a one-off economic event, so catastrophic that, with the preventive measures now in place, it could never be repeated. Today, as we grapple with a years-long global economic downturn whose ultimate contours remain unknown, the Depression is increasingly relevant to the present.
America's Schools: 4 Big Questions
Much ink has been spilled in the last several decades over the issue of what to do about America's struggling schools. The nation has made only halting progress in public education, but a handful of key questions have come into focus.
Since this spring’s eruption of demands for change in the Arab world, uncertainty reigns everywhere. In some countries, long-ruling autocrats still fight viciously for power, while in others, leaders scramble to reach a new accommodation with their suddenly rebellious people. Egyptians and Tunisians, meanwhile, struggle to make good on the promise of democracy. Where did this wave of change come from? And where is it going?
The City Bounces Back: Four Portraits
For decades, the news from cities was all bad. But today, cities are on the rebound. They are seen as idea labs, exciting places to live, and a shopping alternative to suburban malls, with challenges that linger but do not overwhelm the future.
Seven million Americans are in prison or on probation or parole. Crime is down, but state prison budgets have ballooned. A new war on crime must focus on reducing repeat offenses by ex-inmates and steering more young people away from crime.
It seems almost inconceivable that Asia’s rising giant could stumble badly, but to many China specialists that appears to be an ever present prospect. Should we cheer if indeed China falters?
Conflict often puts Israel at the world’s center stage, but the country’s inner life tends to go unexamined. In addition to the hostility of its neighbors, it is grappling with political gridlock and a changing population, even as it enjoys a vibrant democracy and overachieving economy.
For 30 years, the United States has ridden a spectacular wave of technology-based entrepreneurship. Now, with economic lethargy at home and rising challenges abroad, can the wave be sustained?
Decades of drift have brought the Arab world to the edge of disaster. Entrenched regimes stifle reform, while oil, Islam, and social discontent mix in explosive combinations. Change is coming. The question is, who will lead it?
As newspapers shutter, publishing houses consolidate, and print declines, what is the future of the book? Digital publishing makes ideas accessible to more readers (and writers) than ever before, but at what cost?
Thrift: The Double-Edged Virtue
Any solution to the global economic crisis will require a thriftier America and, paradoxically, a less thrifty Asia. A dose of economic sobriety may be just what the United States needs, but a difficult global rebalancing lies ahead as spendthrift Americans and the prodigious savers of Asia adjust to new realities.
The epochal collapse on Wall Street has sent a tornado of destruction ripping through America’s economy—and its self-confidence. Is American-style capitalism finished? Will the world ever accept U.S. leadership again? What must America do to recover?
A new way of war is on the horizon. Already, robots and drones are replacing human pilots and foot soldiers in some roles, and in the future they will take over many more. The benefits of removing human soldiers from harm’s way are obvious. But there’s a price to pay when a society can wage war by remote control.
Campaign 2008 has stirred old discontents about politics. What’s wrong with American democracy? Is the problem ill-informed voters who are buffaloed by attack ads and political ephemera, or is it that elections don’t give adequate voice to the popular will? Or does a long view reveal that the American system works pretty well after all?
Saving the World (Some Restrictions Apply)
Never has the humanitarian impulse been stronger. From Darfur to Myanmar, every crisis elicits global compassion and offers of assistance. But while today’s many eager helping hands are accomplishing a great deal, they must move with care, for even the most high-minded aid can sometimes do a lot of harm.
Backbone: Infrastructure for America's Future
Jammed highways, chronic brownouts, and other cracks in the national infrastructure have some people dreaming of an old-fashioned public-works bonanza. But building tomorrow’s infrastructure will pose larger political and technological challenges than ever before—with potential payoffs to match.
The Coming Revolution in Africa
Let’s celebrate for a moment the great victory that’s being won over poverty in the developing world, where the share of the population living on less than $1 a day tumbled from 40% to 18% between 1981 and 2004. That remarkable achievement also serves to remind us how far there is to go from $1 a day, how many have been left behind, and how little billions of dollars in foreign aid from the United States and others have had to do with the progress that has occurred.
Overdrive! Competition in American Life
More than ever, American life is a competitive sport. We jockey intensely for jobs, dates, admission to the college of our dreams, and even little resumé builders for our five-year-olds. Our authors examine the rewards and the costs of always playing to win.