In the not-so-distant past China was a country that struggled to feed its own people. An estimated 20 to 45 million Chinese died of starvation between 1958 and 1962. China’s population today is over 1.3 billion, more than four times the population of the United States. The challenges China faces in moving from a developing to a developed nation are unique and daunting, made even more difficult under the scrutiny of a globally connected modern world.

How has American nation-building changed the world? What can we learn from this history? How has this history been used and misused by American policy makers? And what makes nation-building work – what has undermined it?

These are just a few of the questions that Jermi Suri asks and answers in Liberty’s Surest Guardian.

Vice President Joe Biden visited Iraq over the July 4th holiday weekend, but his efforts to spur movement on the stalemated talks to form a new government in Iraq produced no results. Iraqis went to the polls on March 7 of this year and yet no government has been formed, nearly four months later. Thankfully, despite this abject failure at nation building, withdrawal of US troops remains on schedule.

In the wake of General McChrystal’s firing, supporters of his counterinsurgency strategy have shifted to the blame game. Their target? US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. But is Eikenberry really at fault, or has he been right all along?