Set to become the world's fourth most populous nation, Pakistan is all of several things:

a client state of the United States yet deeply resentful of it;

a breeding ground for jihad and al Qaeda as well as a key US ally in the fight against international terrorism;

an economy and society run for the benefit of Pakistan's warrior class, yet with a relatively free and feisty press;

a country where education and science refuse to flourish but which is nevertheless a declared nuclear power;

and an inward-looking society that is manifestly intolerant of minorities but that has never seen anything like the state-organized pogroms of India, Afghanistan, Iran, or China.

For 50 years, the United States has maintained its economic edge by being better and faster than any other country at inventing and exploiting new technologies.

Today, however, its dominance is starting to slip, as Asian countries pour resources into R&D and challenge America's traditional role in the global economy.

The United States will never be able to prevent rivals from developing new technologies; it can remain dominant only by continuing to innovate faster than everyone else.

The issue of failed states has risen to the forefront of international relations in the last few years, with Pakistan widely considered as a potential case.

Pakistan today is clearly both part of the problem and the solution to the threat of terrorism facing the United States.

Pakistan's support of terrorist groups is troublesome because even Islamabad cannot be certain that its control over the extremist forces it has unleashed will be robust in perpetuity.

Although listed among the U.S. allies in the war on terrorism, Pakistan cannot easily be characterized as either friend or foe.

For the foreseeable future, Islam will remain a significant factor in Pakistan’s politics.

Pakistan’s future direction is crucial to the US-led war on terrorism, not least because of Pakistan’s declared nuclear weapons capability.

Would the acquisition of nuclear capabilities prompt the Iranians to disregard the threat of American intervention and pursue a more aggressive, destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy?

Ken Pollack cautions that there are two ticking clocks: the first is internal regime change in Iran and the second is how long it will take Iran to go nuclear.

Increasingly, a new division has become apparent, defined not by competing political ideologies but by competing economic and political interests and contradictory ideas about what democracy represents.

I am no Sharon fan, but I am impressed. Mr. Sharon's willingness to look his own ideology and his own political base in the eye, conclude that pandering to both of them is no longer in his country's national interest, and then risk his life and political career to change course is an example of leadership you just don't see much of any more in democracies.

This collection of declassified National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) is the first such release of analytical products exclusively on China.