Methodologically rigorous and comprehensive, 'Pivotal Countries, Alternate Futures' will be essential reading for policymakers and policy students trying to determine the best path forward in any given crisis.

Introduction : 1. The Problem : fateful decisions in uncertainty : A. Global most likely scenario : Russia: Working authoritarianism -- China: Strong state -- Making decisions in this most likely future -- Can we do better? ; 2. Historical Cases -- The disintegration of Yugoslavia -- The failure of the Doha round of trade negotiations -- The terrorist attacks of 9/11 -- The US invasion of Iraq : Iraq scenario 1: National unity dictatorship ; Iraq scenario 2: Contained mess ; Iraq scenario 3: Contagion -- The Arab spring -- Obama's grand strategy -- The Syrian Civil War : Syria scenario 1: Regionalized conflict ; Syria scenario 2: Contained Civil War ; Syria scenario 3: Negotiated settlemtn -- Conclusion : American policy choices : Across alternate scenarios ; 3. Value of Scenarios -- What about prediction? -- Timing is almost everything -- Beyond timing: the importance of process -- What's a good set of scenarios? ; 4. The Scenario Construction Process -- Design of scenario process -- Selecting participants for scenario workshops -- Preworkshop research on drivers of change -- Drivers paper : China 2020 -- Ukraine 2020 -- The scenarios process : Syria : Syria 2018: potential scenarios -- The Scenario-Building Workshop -- How to facilitate -- Composing the scenario narrative : Turkey scenario 3: Political Pluralism -- Some lessons learned -- Traps ; 5. Future Applications and Policy Process.