The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2009

One of my favorite end-of-the-year lists is Foreign Policy’s The Top Ten Stories You Missed; here’s this year’s installment. A Hotline for China and India caught my eye.

“Hotlines” between world leaders, like the legendary Moscow-Washington “red telephone” devised after the Cuban missile crisis, are designed to prevent misunderstandings or miscommunications between nuclear powers from escalating into a nuclear conflict. China and the United States have one. So do India and Pakistan. This year, the leaders of India and China agreed to set one up between New Delhi and Beijing, highlighting concerns that a worsening border dispute could quickly become the first major conflict of the multipolar era.

• best of
• best of 2009
• lists