Flashpoints: Promise and Peril in a New World

At the dawn of a new political era, the world is witnessing both violent upheaval and new opportunity on a scale unknown since the discovery of the New World. Reporting from all six inhabited continents, with new material on the Soviet Union’s collapse, award-winning journalists Robin Wright and Doyle McManus draw a vivid map of emerging trends that will shape the twenty-first century. It is a world in which:

• Democracy is facing the same challenges socialism did; many new democracies will fail.
• Economic strength is more important than military might; the superpowers are being replaced by “major powers” like Japan and Germany.
• Ethnic and nationalist conflicts are redrawing the world map; dozens of new nations will be born in this decade.
• Weapons of mass destruction are proliferating despite the Cold War’s end; smaller countries now pose the same threat as the bigger powers.
• Migration, at a record high, has become a dangerous political issue dividing the wealthy North from the poorer South.
• The power of the individual is spawning a new generation of unconventional leaders, rising from the masses, not the elite.

Praise for Flashpoints

“Alarming . . . intriguing . . . a cogent and thoughtful work . . . [by] two of America’s more accomplished journalists.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“A timely and stimulating book.”—Senator Richard G. Lugar, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

“A brilliant primer . . . fascinating.”—Walter F. Mondale