Examination of Chinese national security issues is incomplete without a frame of reference that includes Chinese dynastic history, culture, and thought. Additionally, such examination requires viewing through lenses created by modern China's economics and politics. When viewed in this holistic fashion, Chinese defense strategies and concerns, especially with respect to two extremely important and timely issues, modernization of the PLA and Taiwan, can be discerned in a clearer light, resulting in an better, if more complex, understanding of the potential for military action on behalf of China tempered by the realities and difficulties China faces in improving a military force under their worldview and, also, their political and economic restraints. Accordingly, as a part of a coordinated effort, the US Air Force can provide both significant deterrence for military action in the Pacific in the form of appropriate force deployment and employment, as well as dissuasion from a potentially perceived Chinese requirement for military action through taking a "longer view" in understanding the value of activities such as military-to-military engagement.

Socialism or free-market capitalism: Which is better for achieving human prosperity? The debate is long-standing—but some of the results are in. Historians, economists, political scientists, and other leading scholars review the evidence from multiple perspectives, examining what it takes for a society to flourish and how well each economic and political system supports its promises.

In the spring and summer of 1956 the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to reassert control of the country. "The First Domino is the first full analysis in English drawing on new archival collections from East-bloc countries to reinterpret decision making during this Cold War crisis. Johanna Granville selects four key patterns of misperception as laid out by political scientist Robert Jervis and shows how these patterns prevailed in the military crackdown and in other countries' reactions to it. Granville examines the statements and actions of Soviet Presidium members, the Hungarian leadership, U.S. policy makers, and even Yugoslav and Polish leaders. She concludes that the United States bears some responsibility for the events of 1956, as ill-advised U.S. convert actions may have convinced Soviet leaders that America was attempting to weaken Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe. Granville's multi-archival research tends to confirm the post-revisionists' theory about the cold war: it was everyone's fault and no one's fault. It resulted from the emerging bipolar structure of the international system, the power vacuum in Europe's center, and spiraling misconceptions.