Editor's note: Christopher Sabatini is the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and senior director of policy at Americas Society/Council of the Americas. The views in this article are solely those of Christopher Sabatini.

By Christopher Sabatini - Special to CNN

Social inclusion. Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has theorized about it. Peruvian President Ollanta Humala campaigned on it. Multilateral banks now regularly profess their commitment to it. And U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has stated that U.S. foreign policy should promote it.

But what is it? The concept of social inclusion revolves around the idea that a citizen has the right and ability to participate in the basic economic, political and social functioning of his or her society. It’s more than economic enrichment, centered on access to basic public and private goods such as health care, formal employment, education, adequate housing, political and civil rights, and economic opportunity without discrimination.

It involves more than just reducing poverty and economic inequality. And if the U.S. is going to promote it, then there must be meaningful — even measurable — differences between countries that would provide foreign policymakers with priorities or targets of opportunity.

Unfortunately, in an index of social inclusion in Latin America recently developed by the journal I publish, Americas Quarterly, the countries south of the U.S. border face a number of differences and challenges. They indicate that despite all the feel-good rhetoric about social inclusion, this is going to be difficult to tackle meaningfully as a U.S. foreign policy issue.

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Everyone is worried that Greece will default on its national debt. That's really not news. By one estimate, since it gained its independence from the Ottomans in 1832, Greece has been in default or restructuring for half this period. The news is that this time, Germany is willing to bail it out.

Throughout the euro-zone crisis, it has become conventional wisdom to regard the Germans as narrow-minded, ungenerous and dogmatically wedded to prescriptions of austerity to treat Europe's problems. Those criticisms are vastly overstated. Consider that Germany is being asked to take its taxpayers' money–in a democracy–and use it to bail out a country like Greece, which is guilty of mismanagement, poor competitiveness and financial fraud. And it has said yes! In return for this, Germans are being called Nazis in Greek newspapers.

Read more about the German reaction and the debate over whether the U.S. needs austerity measures right now, over at my TIME column.

More TIME columns

Ahead of a New York state bill that would recognize marijuana for medical purposes, a state supreme judge with cancer writes in its favor in a recent New York Times op-ed.

Gustin L. Reichbach, a justice of the New York State Supreme Court, has spent the last three and a half years battling pancreatic cancer and says inhaled marijuana is his only relief.

In his op-ed advocating legitimate clinical use of marijuana, he writes:

This is not a law-and-order issue; it is a medical and a human rights issue. Being treated at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, I am receiving the absolute gold standard of medical care. But doctors cannot be expected to do what the law prohibits, even when they know it is in the best interests of their patients. When palliative care is understood as a fundamental human and medical right, marijuana for medical use should be beyond controversy.

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What's going on in the world? What topic would you like to hear Fareed's take on?

From the U.S. presidential race to unrest in Syria, from China's rise to the latest on Iran — and all points in between — submit your questions to Fareed Zakaria in the comments below. He'll share his thoughts in later posts.

You can also connect with us on Facebook and Twitter @FareedZakaria.

Hungry for some more? Check out past posts of Fareed's Take and more of Fareed's answers to reader questions.

Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden, from 9/11 to Abbottabad."

It's the diplomatic equivalent of hosting both the World Cup and the World Series in the same country on the same weekend.

On Saturday President Obama welcomes the leaders of the world's most powerful countries to the G8 conference at his country retreat at Camp David in Maryland. And the next day he hosts some two dozen NATO heads of state in Chicago.

The challenges of this Diplopaloozaa include some complicated logistics: How do you get eight world leaders and their delegations comfortably situated in the rustic wood chalets that make up Camp David, and which has never hosted this many heads of state before?

Read more from Peter Bergen about the challenges, the Syria question and the last-minute guest at the NATO summit: Pakistan.

Editor's note: Michael O’Hanlon is co-author, with Martin Indyk and Kenneth Lieberthal, of the new book Bending History: Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy. You can read more from him on the Global Public Square. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Michael O'Hanlon.

By Michael O'Hanlon – Special to CNN

The Afghanistan war is a slog at best. There is little doubt about that.

Even those of us supporting the mission must acknowledge that it has been slower and harder than expected. The reasons are generally well known, including a resilient and highly motivated insurgency with sanctuaries in Pakistan; a corruption-ridden Afghan government that, by its poor governance, gives sustenance to the Taliban; and mistakes on the part of NATO, which for years pumped too much poorly regulated cash into a country unable to handle it, fueling corruption in the process.

As NATO leaders gather in Chicago this week for a major summit where Afghanistan will be issue No. 1, it is understandable why their citizens are tired of this effort. And with Osama bin Laden dead and other al Qaeda leaders out of the picture or out of the region, the motivation behind the effort seems less compelling to others as well.

Nothing I saw on a recent trip to Afghanistan dispelled the above realities. But I also saw plenty of good that should give us encouragement.

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Can a president who's elected on a promise to be normal deal with Europe in the throes of a crisis of abnormality?

With France's Francois Hollande taking office, an all-star panel debates "Mr. Normal" and how the politics will reverberate across Europe in this excerpt from the past week's "Fareed Zakaria GPS." Watch the video above.

And is Germany taking too much of the anger? Here's what Josef Joffe, Die Zeit editor, had to say:

ZAKARIA: Josef Joffe, you know that much of the rhetoric and the anger is directed at Germany. The idea is the Germans are forcing all this austerity on Europe, European governments having forced to cut their budgets. It's causing misery, unemployment. It's even causing bigger budget deficits.

But you've sort of defended the German position, isn't it fair to say?

JOSEF JOFFE, EDITOR, DIE ZEIT: Well, I mean, Angela Merkel makes for a nice whipping boy for problems which are deeply rooted in the societies that we've just heard about [France, Greece, Spain]. ... FULL POST

You might think Chinese social networks would be all a-Twitter (yes, pun intended) with mentions of the Bo and Chen scandals, but the censors continue to make heroic efforts to tamp that talk down.

So what has been trending there? Talk of "American French Fry Brother" — otherwise known as Jason Loose. FULL POST

Editor's note: Barak Barfi is a research fellow at the New America Foundation. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Barak Barfi.

By Barak Barfi, Special to CNN

With Middle East heavyweights such as Egypt rocked by instability, Qatar has helped fill the leadership vacuum in the region.

The tiny Persian Gulf emirate has been hyperactive on the diplomatic front, leading the campaign to topple the regime in Libya and now working to do the same in Syria.

Its moment in the sun, however, is likely to be a transient one. The convergence of factors that have fueled its rise are sure to unravel as fallen Arab powers regain their stature. And Qatar lacks the intrinsic qualities that have made perennial regional titans such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

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Editor's Note: The following text is from GlobalPost, which provides views — important, moving or just odd — from around the world.

By Paul Ames, GlobalPost

It was the scenario never to be named — a prospect so terrible that the mere mention of it would conjure up doom and destruction for the eurozone.

In the last few days, however, the risk that Greece could be forced out of the currency bloc has become too real to be ignored. The once-taboo subject has become an unavoidable topic of conversation among Europe’s financial leadership.

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