In a speech at the US Military Academy at West Point, President Obama outlined his foreign policy for the future. This sentence best captures the spirit of his perspective:
“When issues of global concern do not pose a direct threat to the United States, when such issues are at stake — when crises arise that stir our conscience or push the world in a more dangerous direction but do not directly threaten us — then the threshold for military action must be higher.”
The speech merely codifies what many of us already believe: that President Obama explicitly wants the US to move back from the very ambitious foreign policy of his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Obama’s view is also largely consistent with the views of most Americans as I read the public opinion polls. Harvard Professor, Stephen Walt, one of the foremost realists in the profession today, has a very sharp critique of the speech.
Timothy Garton Ash is one of the most perceptive analysts of European affairs, and he writes for The Guardian. His post after the recent European Parliament elections is quite sobering–his sense is that Europe has lost its sense of direction and faces a long-term secular decline. I am not sure I would go as far as Ash does in his prognosis, but his analysis is definitely worth examining.
Social media has proven to be an overwhelming force. It is interesting, however, to see how different cultures rely on the different forms of social media.
World Politics News 
The comparison of how people in many countries access the news is enlightening. I was relieved that at least the U.S. is near the top in number of minutes accessing news in some form. Of course your chart doesn’t say how much we are open to news that doesn’t conform to our own world view!
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