Best of 2012 - Picks From the Editor of FP

From leadership changes in the United States and China to continuing turmoil in Europe and the Middle East, 2012 has been a crazy year, and our expert contributors have been providing indispensable context and insight each step of the way. Subscribe today for only $19.95 -- a 67 percent savings -- and get a full year of our unparalleled analysis delivered straight to your mailbox, your iPad, or both.

That gives you access to all of our print and online content whenever and however you want -- including the complete Foreign Affairs archives online, from 1922 to today. We’ll be showcasing some of the best online articles and books of the year on our Web site this winter, but you can start with these highlights from the print magazine that you may have missed:

• “The Future of History” (Jan/Feb) by Francis Fukuyama
  One of the world’s preeminent thinkers warns that stagnating wages and growing inequality could threaten the stability of liberal democracies and dethrone democratic ideology—a must read as the United States heads toward the fiscal cliff.
• “Clear and Present Safety” (Mar/Apr) by Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen
  Listening to hype from all the usual suspects, you might think the threats facing the United States are greater now than ever. Not so. From Washington’s perspective, the world today is remarkably secure.
• “How China Sees America” (Sept/Oct 2012) by Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell
  United States worries about China’s rise, but Washington rarely considers how the world looks through Beijing’s eyes—hostile and threatening.
• “Broken BRICs” (Nov/Dec 2012) by Ruchir Sharma
  The emerging markets guru writes that the boom years are over for the BRICs and global economic convergence is not on the horizon.
• “How to Make Almost Anything” (Nov/Dec 2012) by Neil Gershenfeld
  A top physicist explains how digital fabrication will soon let people build custom home furniture, living organs, and drones that can fly out of a printer.

This year, we also published a ton of great stuff on Iran, including “Time to Attack Iran” (Jan/Feb) by Matthew Kroenig and “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb” (Jul/Aug) by Kenneth N. Waltz, two takes from opposite ends of the policy spectrum. In May, we hit the newsstands with “Campaign Tips From Cicero” (May/June) by Quintus Tullius Cicero. It is the best guide to electioneering you’ll ever read -- written two millennia ago and presented with a commentary by legendary political consultant James Carville. Another hit was “Environmental Alarmism, Then and Now” (Jul/Aug) by Bjørn Lomborg. He writes that past predictions that economic growth would quickly deplete the earth’s resources have proved spectacularly wrong. But the environmental alarmism they engendered persists.