History did not end in 1989, but for too many of the people who bought into Francis Fukuyama's influential "End of History?" article, what ended then was thinking. A failure to understand that successful countries of the West maintain a balance of power across the public, private, and plural sectors of society has been throwing the U.S. and many other countries out of balance ever since.

According to "End of History" author Francis Fukuyama, China today is much like Bismarck's Germany. It was not a messianic, universalistic or revisionist state, but was very big and powerful, and it had a lot of national interests. China is very much like that today.

For two long centuries, the Arab Middle East has struggled to meet the challenge of modernity, a task exacerbated by the lingering, and increasing, dissonance between the glorious past and the shameful present.

Richard Holbrooke has died. At a time when many are grieving the loss of a temperamental but dedicated diplomat, one episode of his work in the Balkans -- that explosive and often forgotten corner of Europe -- is worth bringing to light.

China and India's public diplomacy activities have grown extensively in our new century, even as the United States is seemingly abandoning the foreign policy tool.