With no end to the War on Terror in sight, how do we plan for the future? Many recent books address facets of the "world crisis" of today—international relations, energy, poverty, and, of course, the Iraq War and Middle Eastern reconstruction—but they do not engage with the entire post-Iraq situation faced by the West, nor do they give suggestions for moving forward. The World Crisis, with essays by statesmen and thinkers from Jimmy Carter to Henry Kissinger, is a broad treatment of a massive set of problems. Nineteen "wise men" of immense experience in global politics (Nunn and Lugar, Freeman and Brzezinski, Heseltine and Carlucci, and more) tell us what to do next after the debacles of Western intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan have tested our faith in government. The essays in this book address the war, nuclear non-proliferation, Western dependence on Middle Eastern oil, global warming and the environment, humanitarian crises, inequality of wealth, Israel and Palestine, and emergent powers. The World Crisis is non-partisan; what unites these writers is that their eyes are open. In an election year, when the crucial issue dividing (or is it uniting?) the electorate is Iraq, clear vision is more important than ever.
