The Arab struggles may be new, but American goals are not. Three recent presidents laid the groundwork. By Peter Berkowitz.

The Hoover Institution hosted its annual Spring Retreat beginning on Sunday, April 21, 2013, with before-dinner remarks by Kevin Warsh, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His speech, titled “The Economy over the Horizon: Unknown Knowns,” emphasized the importance of the state of the economy, which currently has a 2 percent growth rate, and understanding the concept of “unknown knowns,” a reference to former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Putting numbers to the news, Hoover fellow Bruce Bueno de Mesquita lays his bets on issues such as climate change and Middle East peace.

To succeed in the war on terror, Philip Bobbitt insists, the West needs an entirely new conceptual framework.

By Peter Robinson.

On December 17, 2011, Michael McFaul, the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of political science at Stanford University, was confirmed as the next United States ambassador to Russia. McFaul is currently on leave from his position at Hoover to serve as special assistant to President Obama for national security affairs and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council. McFaul has become known in Washington as a passionate defender of Mr. Obama’s policy, arguing that the United States can speak out on democracy and Georgia while still seeking cooperation with Moscow in other areas.

Read more about McFaul’s appointment in Businessweek.

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Analyzing the future of democracy with former prime ministers and presidents. Featuring Nick Clegg, Felipe Calderón, Toomas Henrik Ilves, and Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

The Nobel economist says the health-care bill will cause serious damage, but that the American people can be trusted to vote for limited government in November. . . .

Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin will hold a summit at the end of September that will focus on economic and other ties between the United States and Russia. The two presidents have long recognized the central position of energy in our bilateral relations, and in that sphere, nothing is as critical as oil. Today Russia may again be the largest oil exporter in the world, but very little yet comes to the United States. Russia’s oil industry is dominated by rich and aggressive young private companies. Generally, they are eager to deal with foreigners, but despite significant state reforms they often are still inhibited by a dilapidated, state-controlled delivery system and a residue of traditional thinking and institutions. Many of Russia’s as-yet-unresolved post-Soviet prob-lems exploded in mid-2003 when the prosecutor general’s office attacked Yukos, the country’s most modernized, productive and pro-American private oil company. Thus even as Washington and American oil industry leaders actively sought alternatives to unstable sources in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, basic questions re-emerged in Russia about the privatizations of the 1990s, the security of private property, the mixing of law and politics, and the exercise of power in the Kremlin. Today Russians, with the support of American and European allies, must create conditions that will welcome the foreign funds, technology, and expertise needed to develop the critical oil industry but also to lay foundations of law and infrastructure that will help make Russia a stable member of the world community. Americans must decide how much involvement Russia can constructively absorb to promote not only short-term oil supplies but also long-term Russian development and broader U.S. foreign policy goals. Finally, the critical long-term lesson of 9/11 and other recent experiences for Americans is that even as we cultivate Russia as an ally and major source of oil, we must actively develop alternative sources of energy. In an unstable world, the United States must not forever be held hostage by other nations with their often very different cultures, institutions and interests.