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General McChrystal commanded the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and JS forces in Afghanistan from June 2009 to June 2010. In this exclusive interview with Brigitte Ades, he talks about this pivotal period in his career, which enabled him to apply lessons learned from the Iraqi campaign. In Iraq, where he was commander of US Special Forces for five years, from 2003 to 2008, he experimented with unprecedented strategic methods that enabled American troops to significantly boost their effectiveness in the fight against AI Qaeda. General McChrystal, who for several months held the future of Afghanistan in his hands, shares a frank and moving account of everybody he worked with, both civilian and military. Adapted from the source document.

Larry Summers, the eminent economist and former President of Harvard University who played significant roles in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, offers an enlightened analysis of the financial and economic crisis which has ravaged developed countries over the past three years. The root cause of the crisis is that people were too confident, they borrowed too much, lent too much, and spent too much. As a good Keynesian, Larry Summers believes that the only way out is to boost confidence, borrow more, lend more and spend more. This is a paradoxical solution that most people have a hard time understanding. The Obama administration has started to understand. Europeans, on the other hand, are desperately implementing restrictive policies which risk destroying growth and dragging the economy down into an infernal spiral. And yet Europe can only resolve its debt problem and improve the global economic climate if it rediscovers the growth path. This will require both monetary and budgetary stimulus. Adapted from the source document.

The explosion of the Internet and new technologies on the international scene has revolutionized the work of decision-makers and diplomats. But what exactly has been its impact? Has it increased freedom, improved responsiveness, or fundamentally challenged rules, at the risk of things spiraling out of control? No doubt all three. These days, revolutions brew on social networks and bloggers have become the new opinion leaders. But the Internet has created new vulnerabilities which has obliged states to review their defense strategies. Faced with a dramatic increase in cyber-attacks, it is necessary to build immediate and coordinated defenses, capable of tracing the attacks back to their perpetrators and limiting the scope of the attacks. In general, as a means of fighting against the proliferation of malefactors on the Net, some states have called for regulations designed to channel and regulate networks. But how do we regulate them without impeding innovation and the free circulation of ideas? That, indeed, is the question... Adapted from the source document.