COVER: Stopping the Ultimate Attack (Atlantic and Pacific editions). Graham Allison, author and director of the Belfer Center at Harvard University, writes that the only thing that can keep nuclear bombs out of the hands of terrorists is a brand-new science of nuclear forensics. This science is key to creating a new deterrence. It entails working backward from a terrorist event--debris from an exploded bomb, or a seizure of fissile material on the black market--to trace the path of the material to its source. The process is analogous to identifying a criminal by fingerprints. He writes that holding nations accountable for their fissile material offers the best prospect available for creating the conditions for a standoff--like the Cold War standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States, in which fear of retaliation prevented each nation from launching its missiles against the other.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/189260
COVER: The End of the Road (Latin America edition). Special Correspondent Mac Margolis writes that for the last four decades, international migration has been a one-way journey, with millions of people leaving poorer countries for wealthier ones and rural areas for cities. But now, one of the effects of the global economic crisis, many would-be Third World emigrants have scrapped their plans to move to industrial nations and, even more significantly, waves of foreign workers are starting to head back home. The about-face in migration patterns may be the most visible symbol of an end of an era: the free flow of goods, services, money and people that defined globalization and shepherded an extraordinary period of global growth since the late 1970s is shutting down. Banks are sitting on money, trade is slowing and migration is under attack.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/189262
Cities Beyond the Pain. Margolis reports that as government gets bigger, so does a whole new class of public-sector boomtowns. In places like Brasilia, Ottawa, Brussels and Washington, not only are new jobs being created, but home sales are rising, incomes are up, car dealerships are full, and new malls, shops, luxury hotels and gyms can't be built fast enough. Even though commercial-real-estate projects in Belgium are faltering, bureaucrats in Brussels just gave the thumbs-up to a new ยค8 million aqua gym and fitness studio to be used by European Commission members. Similar trends are brewing in North American government towns.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/189256
China's Money Flows West. Beijing Bureau Chief Melinda Liu reports that as exports plummet and coastal factories close, Beijing is looking inland for a new economic model. Chongqing, a major industrial center and logistics base that bills itself as the "Gateway to Western China," and a host of smaller inland cities like it are central to China's economic-recovery hopes. Chongqing is already outperforming not just the depressed coast but the rest of China, too. This unusual record is due largely to billions of dollars in government money. More than 60 percent of China's two-year, $586 billion economic-stimulus package will go to inland regions, and some $34 billion is earmarked for Chongqing.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/189258
The Breadbasket Becomes the Basket Case. Moscow Bureau Chief Owen Matthews reports that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was once considered a hero, but his country has now spiraled into chaos. The last five years have been marked by unstable political conditions and incessant wrangling between Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. On one level, the fall of Ukraine has nothing to do with the failings of the government. More than 40 percent of the economy depends on aluminum and steel exports. With the global recession, both demand and price for metals has dropped, decimating Ukraine's exports. But bad leadership has made things much, much worse.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/189257
Missile Creep. Newsweek International Assistant Managing Editor Fred Guterl reports on four battle cruisers in the Sea of Japan--two American, two Japanese--that carry missiles capable of reaching North Korean nuclear-tipped rockets on their way to Japan. These four cruisers aren't the only ships that act as a de facto antimissile defense. The U.S. Navy has 73 Aegis ships around the world equipped with missiles that can reach space targets. As the Obama administration shows signs of backing away from plans to put missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic, this fleet of "Aegis" cruisers, as they're called, may be called upon to take up the slack.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/189255
POINT OF VIEW: Defining Victory Down. Rajan Menon, a professor of International Relations at Lehigh University and a fellow at the New America Foundation, writes that President Obama's decision to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan will push the United States deeper into a quagmire, since the mission is undefined, the U.S. economy is spiraling downwards and NATO allies won't send more combat forces. Ramping up the war to transform society will only create a backlash; better to focus on containing terrorist groups and Islamic radicals, who in any event have plenty of other unstable or failed states from which to operate.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/189269
WORLD VIEW: Why Washington Worries. Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria writes that despite being consumed by the current economic crisis, President Obama and his administration have managed to make some striking moves in foreign policy within its first 50 days. Unlike the approach during George Bush's presidency, the Obama administration is mixing symbolic gestures of outreach with substantive talks toward countries with troublesome regimes. "The problem with American foreign policy goes well beyond George Bush," Zakaria writes. "It includes a Washington establishment that has gotten comfortable with the exercise of American hegemony and treats compromise as treason and negotiations as appeasement...This is not foreign policy; it's imperial policy. And it isn't likely to work in today's world."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/189240
THE LAST WORD: Sir David King, director of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. King, former chief scientific adviser to Tony Blair, discusses Britain's nonpartisan approach to environmentalism, American leadership and the coming U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen. "[The economic crisis is] an opportunity for two reasons. One is the cultural change; we're all suddenly waking up to the notion of greed and where it's leading us. The second is that we're getting government to decide to spend vast sums of money to stimulate the economy."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/189267
