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In Iraq, the U.S. is engaged in a war it already may have lost while losing sight of a struggle in which it still may have time to prevail.

The declaration, in Kenya, of a Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in October 2004 was heralded as a breakthrough in Somalia’s protracted crisis of statelessness and civil strife. But the peace process has gone largely downhill since then.

A major challenge facing Indonesia's new president, Soesilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is reform of the internal security sector.

A strong majority of South Koreans agree on the need to engage North Korea but there is no consensus on the most effective means.

The interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone are failing to produce states that will be stable and capable of exercising the full range of sovereign responsibilities on behalf of their long-suffering populations.

Zimbabwe's crisis - political as well as economic - remains as deep as ever, with widespread abuse of human rights and ever harder lives for the average citizen.

A precarious peace is back in place between Georgia and South Ossetia after the long-frozen conflict nearly became a hot war again and drew in Russia when dozens were killed in August 2004 fighting. President Saakashvili tried to break a twelve-year deadlock and take another step to restore Georgia's territorial integrity by undermining the regime in Tskhinvali, but seriously miscalculated.

The October 2004 presidential election went well, and Afghanistan now has its first ever popularly elected president. But the parliamentary, provincial and district elections now scheduled for April 2005 will be considerably more complicated, and preparations are going too slowly.

Nine months after an armed uprising and international pressure forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to resign, the security situation in Haiti is worsening.

North Korea could now have as many as ten nuclear weapons. While six-party talks have continued without results in Beijing, North Korea has probably reprocessed its fuel rods and may have turned the plutonium into weapons.