The Only Way Forward

This year was in many ways one of great-power politics. The resurgence of Russia on the global stage, from Ukraine to Syria to China. The Saudi-Iranian power struggle in the Middle East. China’s assertion of its status as the Middle Kingdom once again, expecting deference from its neighbors in East and Southeast Asia. North Korea’s determined pursuit of nuclear weapons. Even Great Britain’s rejection of the European Union, fueled in part by Tory dreams of Britannia sovereign once again. It is a world of deals and shifting alliances, particularly as Pax Americana seems to wane—a trend that Donald Trump’s stunning election as president threatens to accelerate—and U.S. foreign policy takes a decidedly realist turn.

It is a world of 21 million refugees and 41 million internally displaced people, driven from their homes by war, famine, and tyranny; a world in which a half-million Syrians have been slaughtered in front of our eyes; a world with a conscience that can no longer be shocked by human suffering, whether