A tribunal is likely to rule on China’s hazy claims to South China Sea sovereignty. How Beijing and others react isn’t set in stone.

The quants are riding high after Team Data crushed Team Gut in the U.S. election forecasts. But predicting the Electoral College vote is child’s play next to some of these hard targets.

Don’t blame the experts who didn’t see the Arab Spring coming.

Nate Silver was just the beginning. Some of the same statistical techniques used by America’s forecaster-in-chief are about to revolutionize world politics.

Asian markets and Dow futures are sharply down as the chances of a Trump presidency increase.

How the intelligence community can better see into the future.

The former head of the U.S. National Intelligence Council explains why governments try — and fail — to see over the horizon.

Consultants predict how much investors could lose to political turmoil around the world.

Our nothing-to-do-with-soccer World Cup predictor was, ahem, quite profitable.

Big data show that history does indeed repeat itself. What does that mean for foreign policymaking — and tackling crises from Ukraine to Syria?

Hint: Ils ne parlent pas le français.

Perhaps, plus or minus 50 million babies.

Yes, rows of numbers can help predict revolutions. You just have to know where to look.

Surprise — there are limits to how well politics and economics can predict World Cup matches.

The poorest continent is rising. Really.

High-tech guesswork.

Keynesian economics made a brilliant comeback in 2009. It’s little wonder why.

Trump laid out a fanciful and nearly impossible economic plan.

He may not be perfect, but there’s never been a better time to be in the prophet of doom business.

Technology is changing the way we fight war. But it’s also changing the way we make peace.

How can the U.S. still field a global military force in an age of austerity?

Kenya and Turkey struggle to control the chaos next door.

What the four-stars are reading — a weekly column from Small Wars Journal.

The American Bar Association insists the move was market-driven, but an employee email says otherwise.

A few problems back here on Earth in need of some serious capital.

As Syria implodes, the United States and its allies need to help Jordan help itself.

Why didn’t anyone predict the Arab revolutions?

Number three in Best Defense’s countdown of 2014’s most popular articles.

Entrance is free, but the software will set you back $490.

Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy appear headed for victory.

China’s government once denied its pollution problem. Now it’s forecasting air quality to help keep Beijing residents safer.

India Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Mufti Muhammad Sayeed dies at 79 The chief minister of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, Mufti…

Here’s hoping past performance isn’t an indicator of future success.

By idealizing the past, Americans have made themselves unsafe in the present.

Why Washington and Silicon Valley must work together to truly understand the world.

How a foot of snow explains everything that’s wrong with Washington, D.C. … and the world.

From an emboldened Iran to unsafe beef, the eight most hysterical warnings about how automatic spending reductions could harm U.S. national security.

It wouldn’t actually be that hard to restore Mexico’s economic fortunes — if the new president is willing to show some backbone.

To navigate the complicated new politics of oil and gas, FP asked the author of The Quest and leading U.S. energy historian to help shape our latest survey — and guide us through the results.

Good news! Gas prices could go down to $2 a gallon by autumn — and that’s bad news for Vladimir Putin.

Africa growth skeptics have got it wrong. The continent’s rise is very real.

How the Communist Party is fiddling while Vietnam burns.

Why we can’t figure out what North Korea will do next.

How we’ve been surprised by our growing ability to predict things.

The Navy can’t ‘contain’ Iran — even if we wanted it to.

When the big picture misses the point.

Are we obsessing about its rise when we should be worried about its fall?

The future of the aerospace defense industry is not nearly as bad as the industry would have you believe.

Forget Tesla. Forget the Hyperloop. Elon Musk is all about space.

A chilling attack on a controversial science journalist in Beijing bodes poorly for scientific progress.

With a growing economy and a freshly-signed peace agreement, Mozambique’s future looks bright. But it needs to act now to avoid the perils of the resource curse.

Welcome to this year’s Baseline Profitability Index.

Ending conflict demands more than knowing why countries go to pieces — it calls for knowing why they don’t.

What the four-stars are reading — a weekly column from Small Wars Journal.

As China’s stock market continues to worry investors, Japan’s economy may again be suffering from a crisis of confidence.

Data made available by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum hopes to prevent genocide and other atrocities before they even begin.

Robert Shiller is renowned for his prescience during the 1990s stock market bubble. In a time of renewed financial turmoil, FP turned to this distinguished Yale economist, housing-prices expert, and “market psychologist” for insights on today’s schizophrenic global economy.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz talks to FP about Wall Street bailouts, America’s mountain of debt, and what U.S. taxpayers will end up paying for Iraq.

For years, prediction markets have forecast elections with eerie accuracy. Now, they’re coming soon to a policy near you.

The kingdom’s economy isn’t teetering on collapse; in fact, it’s healthier than it has been in decades.

China now dominates supercomputing. That matters for U.S. national security.

It is far too early to assess the aftermath, but here’s what to watch for in the weeks ahead.

There is a deep current of skepticism among our strategic leadership that exceptional physical fitness is a guarantor of success in modern combat operations.

Despite inequality, debt, and a tariff war, the U.S. economy is still the strongest.

Experts agree leaving the European Union will damage the British economy, but past performance should make them wary of offering outlandish assertions about an unknowable future.

Will voters give Narendra Modi another chance?

Why the U.S. military can’t predict the next war.

Did the United States just set a March deadline for war with Iran?

Why senators shouldn’t head the Pentagon or Foggy Bottom.

OK, it’s probably not going to happen. But if it did, who would win?

Shale is the new peak oil, and that’s why Saudi Arabia still rules global energy markets.

Why America’s natural gas boom is good news for U.S. manufacturing and bad news for China.

Spain’s economy should be taking a turn for the better. So what’s wrong?

American evangelicals were always big believers in democracy — until it reached the Arab world.

If the founding members of the eurozone don’t get their acts together, the euro will collapse.

If the Middle East is your yardstick, the countries of Central Asia ought to be on the verge of revolution. But don’t hold your breath.

As the new secretary of defense, Ash Carter has a few battles ahead of him. And the toughest challenges won’t be ISIS or Putin.

As oil prices drop, nuclear power is becoming less attractive in the region. So why is Iran still hanging on to its program?

Some of the most pressing international issues the next president will face were barely discussed during the 2008 campaign. How will McCain or Obama handle them? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Russia is neither the global menace, nor dying superpower, of America’s increasingly hysterical fantasies.

And the Trump administration needs a strategy to deal with it.

The island is searching for new economic partners, but Beijing’s hemming it in on every side it can.

During her time in Russian prison, Nadiya Savchenko became a symbol for Kiev’s fight against Moscow. But can she make the jump from martyr to politician?

The Eurasian Union that came into effect on Jan. 1 isn’t a sign of Moscow’s growing regional influence. It’s a sign of its decline.

Trade war is hurting everyone, but it has a geopolitical solution.

The world thought it had fought the HIV virus to a stalemate — but its strategy was flawed in ways that are only now becoming clear.

The latest disaster in Indonesia shows the need for the global system put in place in the wake of 2004’s devastating waves.

China’s vision of world order is a more radical departure—and more realistic alternative—than the West understands.

From psychology to biography, economics to tech, see what some of the world’s top minds are reading.

In 2013, Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution survived the death of Hugo Chávez. Now his successor, President Nicolás Maduro, confronts his toughest challenge yet: an economy on the brink. The latest in our series of Lab Reports on Venezuela.

Social media can tell us a lot about voting patterns — but only up to a point.

The Arab world’s revolutions have exposed the moral bankruptcy of France’s foreign policy.

Rubio and Cruz give the GOP the first mainstream Hispanic presidential candidates in U.S. history. But it’s Donald “Build a Wall“ Trump that’s setting the tone toward Latinos — and winning their vote.

The war is not yet over and its outcome is not yet certain.

Americans and Europeans see eye to eye on more issues than one would expect from reading the New York Times or Le Monde. But while elites on both sides of the Atlantic bemoan a largely illusory gap over the use of military force, biotechnology, and global warming, a survey of U.S. and European public opinion highlights sharp differences over global leadership, defense spending, and the Middle East that threaten the future of the last century’s most successful alliance.

Yes, they have been walloped, but don’t discount how crucial they are when it comes to trade, climate change, peace and everything in between.

In his January/February cover story, “A World Without Islam,” Graham Fuller takes issue with those who blame religion for the rift between East and West. He imagines what the world have looked like without Islam—and argues that it would look much the same. Now, he answers your questions about the role of religion, the future of the Middle East, and whether America invites terrorism upon itself.

In his January/February cover story, “A World Without Islam,” Graham Fuller takes issue with those who blame religion for the rift between East and West. He imagines what the world have looked like without Islam—and argues that it would look much the same. Now, he answers your questions about the role of religion, the future of the Middle East, and whether America invites terrorism upon itself.

The president-elect’s unpredictable rise is forcing historians and social scientists to rethink their most basic assumptions about how the world works.

A conversation between Ian Bremmer and David Rothkopf.

Ten events and trends that were overlooked this year, but may be leading the headlines in 2011.

Interpol’s Raymond Kendall explains why today’s world has him worried.

The Pentagon’s radical plan to crowdsource intelligence from Afghan civilians turned out to be brilliant – too brilliant.

The chancellor’s response to the refugee crisis was going to be her downfall. Then Germany’s welfare state kicked in.

Statement by the G-20 leaders in Pittsburgh.

From the brains behind Iran’s Green Revolution to the economic Cassandra who actually did have a crystal ball, they had the big ideas that shaped our world in 2009. Read on to see the 100 minds that mattered most in the year that was. $(document).ready(function() { $(«#thinkers-nav»).insertBefore(«#tool-bar»); $(«#thinkers-nav»).show(); });

Foreign Policy presents a unique portrait of 2011’s global marketplace of ideas and the thinkers who make them.