It is difficult to stay up on all the current events in world affairs, as there is always some conflict going on or some negotiation between nations. And then there are the rogue nations, and the United Nations, and groups trying to get together to figure out a solution which is fair for all concerned, that won't lead to problems of unintended consequences. This is easier than it sounds, and it's easy to get lost in the political international rhetoric.
Yes the United States is involved in that rhetoric just as much as any other nation and each nation tries to serve its own self interests, or the interests of their leaders. One way to stay up on all the current events and happenings is to take a professional journal which discusses these topics, where the editors pour through articles which appear in all sorts of other publications, and they pick the best ones out for you to read. There is such a journal which I'd like to recommend to you. It's one that I often read through, as there are quite a few good articles. The name of the Journal is;
"Current - Required Reading Recommended by Leading Opinion Makers," published by Routledge - Taylor and Francis publishing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ISSN: 0011 - 3131.
Let me give you some for instances, in the October 2010 issue; number 526 there were several great articles. One was "Too Bad Not to Fail," by William J Quirk, which questions the CDO markets and the derivative markets. And the rest of the journal focused on China, which has been in the news quite a bit lately one article took us looking pretty far ahead to the year 2020 with an article titled "The Gathering Storm - America in China in 2020" by Ian Bremmer.
The next article was "China Turns on the Charm" by Helle C Dale. Both of these articles also appeared in world affairs magazine in the July August issue of 2010. You see, it's not easy to go and read all the various magazines, and writings from all the top universities on such topics, but it is even better to see that someone else has gone through all the articles and picked out the best ones for us to read. There is a lot of value in that, especially for someone who runs a think tank like I do. Thus, I would like to recommend this particular journal to you, if these topics are of interest. Please consider all this.