"During the past ten years, few issues have mattered more to America's vital interests or to the shape of the twenty-first century than Russia's fate. To cheer the fall of a bankrupt totalitarian regime is one thing; to build on its ruins a stable democratic state is quite another. The challenge of helping to steer post-Soviet Russia - with its thousands of nuclear weapons and seething ethnic tensions - between the Scylla of a communist restoration...

September 11 marked the beginning of a new era--an age of terror in which counter-terrorism will be one of the highest priorities of national governments and international institutions. How we proceed in this new war depends in large measure on the answer to a prior question: what exactly happened here and why? In this book, eight leading historians and policymakers address this question and examine the considerations and objectives of policy decisions...