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Taking up the central portion of this issue of The Atlantic Monthly is a special section called "State of the World," and it offers snapshots of a variety of developments that should get more attention than they actually do. Wracked by social malaise and deteriorating public health, Russia is rapidly being depopulated.

Its population could well fall from about 145 million today to below 100 million in 2050—an unprecedented decline for a modern country. The well-known ravages of HIV/AIDS in Africa are most acute in a pivotal sector of the population—the military. The infection rate among soldiers in Zimbabwe is 50 percent, in Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo as much as 60 percent. In some South African units the rate is as high as 90 percent. Without much fanfare, two countries that seemingly have little in common—predominantly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Iran—are fashioning an increasingly intimate ...