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In times of great uncertainty, it’s difficult to formulate strategies. Leaders can’t draw on experience to address developments no one has ever seen before. Yet the decisions they make now could have ramifications for decades. The practice of strategic foresight offers a solution. Its aim is not to predict the future but to help organizations envision multiple futures in ways that enable them to sense and adapt to change. Its most recognizable tool is scenario planning. To use it well, organizations must imagine a variety of futures, identify strategies that are needed across them, and begin implementing those strategies now. But one-off exercises are not enough: Leaders must institutionalize that process, building a dynamic link between thinking about the future and taking action in the present. INSET: The Future: A Glossary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hans Blix has been appointed executive chairman of UNMOVIC, the organization established to replace the UN Special Commission. UNMOVIC will continue the job of verifying Resolution 687 disarmament obligations of Iraq.

Swedish ambassador to the US Rolf Ekeus discusses the differences between the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq and UNMOVIC. He analyzes Iraqi disarmament verification issues.

Sweden's Ambassador to the US and Former Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq Rolf Ekeus discusses the future of sanctions against Iraq and the work of the new United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.

Jayantha Dhanapala was appointed United Nations undersecretary-general for disarmament affairs in 1998. He has outlined the scope of current UN arms control activities, but shares the concern of the international community that the Conference on Disarmament has not adopted a program of work. He has spoken of the initiatives that have been developed to control exports and imports of conventional weapons.

When Robert S. McNamara, the former secretary of defense and so-called architect of the Vietnam War, died this summer at the age of 93, he left behind a fraught legacy. [...]

The article offers a list of the U.S. establishment figures that will take power with U.S. President Barack Obama. The list includes political strategist David Axelrod, U.S. Congressman Rahm Emanuel, and economist Larry Summers. INSET: The Buddy List.

Focuses on the potential for a nuclear terrorist attack and how U.S. foreign policy could effect that potential. Observation that despite U.S. President George W. Bush's rhetoric, freedom and the spread of democracy alone cannot stop terrorism, for terrorists can be bread in democracies as demonstrated by the British instigators of the July 7 bombings in London; Growing strength of the jihadist movement in Indonesia, even though it has seen its third transfer of democratic power; Various predictions on the likelihood of a nuclear terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the next 10 years; Description of how a nuclear attack on U.S. soil could cripple U.S. infrastructure and economy.

Presents the case for the presidential candidacy of Democrat Gen. Wesley Clark. Argument that Clark's 34 years of experience as an Army officer would make him not only electable, but also a good president; Details of the military campaigns Clark led in Bosnia and Kosovo; Analysis of Clark's position that the Iraq War was not necessary because Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the region or the world; Assertion that Clark's critique of the Bush administration's claim that the central front for the war on terror should be in Iraq is more logical than the positions of the Democratic hawks; Claim that Clark's experience in Bosnia and Kosovo gave him an understanding of how to wage a multilateral war; Details of Clark's proposals on how the U.S. should handle the military occupation of Iraq; Observation that Clark's experience would allow him to work more effectively with the Pentagon than his predecessors.