Eurasia Group Foundation

Today’s geopolitical environment is increasingly dangerous and unstable; moreover, it is poorly understood. Old U.S.-driven structures are under intense stress. The NATO alliance’s perennial post-Cold War weakness is reaching crisis levels as European allies continue to underfund their budget commitments, while Russia probes Western weakness in Ukraine and Syria. The dollar-denominated global monetary system, once unimpeachable, is no longer looking like a permanent feature of the global order as China moves slowly but deliberately to internationalize its currency and the U.S. Congress damages the credibility of the dollar. Similarly, the freely interconnected internet is no longer a given: U.S. spying scandals have undermined its technology giants’ ability to do business abroad, and authoritarian states are seeking to wall off or filter out the broader internet. The ensuing changes from phenomena like these will significantly affect the reasonably stable post-World War II global order that Americans have enjoyed for decades.

These issues are well-known to the broad membership of the U.S. foreign policy community, but levels of public concern are low. For example, a recent YouGov survey found only 29 percent of Americans would support defending Turkey against an attack by Russia, a possibility that became suddenly real in 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian aircraft on the Turkey-Syria border. Decisions about how the U.S. should respond to incidents like this have major consequences both for near-term peace and stability in the Middle East but also for what the U.S. security commitment to its treaty allies means in an era when Americans are weary of foreign intervention.

There is no right answer to these questions; the challenge of this project is to help ensure that individuals are equipped to assess questions about America’s role in the world. The Eurasia Group Foundation, with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, aims to use political science tools to help individuals understand the global political forces that affect their lives in large and small ways.

America will remain the world’s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. But what type of superpower? What role should America play in the world? What role do you want America to play?

* EGF is supported by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York