Over the weekend, Marc Lynch explored how Jay-Z and Kanye West's rap alliance on their album Watch the Throne represents a blueprint for U.S. hegemony in a changing world. But left unexamined was the line from their recent album that most directly relates to foreign policy: On the track Murder to Excellence, Kanye raps, "It's a war going on outside we ain't safe from / I feel the pain in my city wherever I go / 314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago."

Kanye's numbers, which are from 2008, are broadly accurate. The Chicago Police Department reported that there were 510 homicides in the city, while the casualty count website iCasualties confirmed that 314 U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq that year (why Kanye discounts the eight fatalities from other U.S. coalition partners is a conversation for another day). But to paraphrase a popular saying: There are lies, damned lies, and Kanye West's statistics.

The real problem with Kanye's math is that he ignores the deaths of Iraqis, who would presumably still be alive if the United States hadn't decided to invade the country. The Brookings Institution's Iraq Index estimates that 6,400 Iraqi civilians lost their lives in war-related violence in 2008.

That figure still underestimates the violence in Iraq, because it only counts civilian deaths related to the Iraqi insurgency. "Earlier in the war, we did tend to count individual acts of criminal murder, as they reflected a deterioration of law and order which had implications for the insurgency," said Brookings Institution fellow Michael O'Hanlon, the author of the Iraq Index. However, by 2008, the main sources of information regarding Iraq discounted non-insurgency related homicides.

But Kanye wasn't entirely wrong to compare the violence in Iraq and Chicago. If one compares war-related deaths in Iraq and Chicago homicides in 2008, there is a remarkable similarity between the rates of violence. According to the U.S. census, Chicago's population was 2.7 million in 2010 -- down from 2.9 million in 2000, as residents continued to relocate to the suburbs. With 510 homicides in the city, that means one Chicagoan was killed for every 5,294 people living in the city.

Now, let's compare that to the civilian casualties in Iraq. The World Bank reports that Iraq had a population of approximately 31 million in 2008. With 6,400 Iraqi civilians killed in war-related violence, that means one Iraqi was killed for every 4,844 citizens of the country - a more dangerous environment than Chicago, but not by much.

It should come as no surprise that it was dramatically more dangerous to be a U.S. soldier in Iraq than a Chicago resident or an Iraqi civilian in 2008. According to the Iraq Index, U.S. troop strength in the country averaged approximately 150,000 for the year. If the United States suffered 314 casualties in 2008, that means one soldier was killed for every 478 soldiers in Iraq.

Kanye, of course, is arguing on Murder to Excellence that Americans should be less concerned with political developments in Mesopotamia and more concerned with the deterioration of their own cities -- a fairly conventional point in today's political environment. But if he can fit the statistics above into verse, he'll truly deserve the rap throne that he's so keen on claiming.

Lebanon's current political upheaval resembles a mirror image of the strife that overwhelmed the country from 2006 to 2008, when Hezbollah and its allies embarked on a two-year effort to topple the government. But this time, the tables have turned: It's Hezbollah that has mustered the votes to form a government, which will reportedly be headed by former Prime Minister Najib Miqati. Meanwhile, Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri and his allies are on the outside looking in, left to express their displeasure through street protests and acts of violence.

Lebanon's political ground rules hold that the president must hail from the Maronite Christian community, the prime minister must be a Sunni, and the speaker of parliament must be a Shiite. A parliamentary majority, therefore, is theoretically able to elevate political figures that have little support within their own community.

But the recent reversal of fortunes has shown that the reality on the ground is somewhat different, and that the only real law in Lebanon is sectarian solidarity. Back in 2008, Hezbollah was appalled and outraged that the ruling coalition would consider replacing its resigned ministers with Shiite figures that had little support in their own community - now they're preparing to bring to power a Sunni prime minister that can count on only token Sunni support. Meanwhile, Hariri, who had defended the democratic legitimacy of the government when he had a solid parliamentary majority, now denounces the election of a new opposition-friendly government as "virtually a coup d'état."

All signs currently point toward chaos: The new Miqati government, once it is established, will vote to discontinue government support for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is expected to implicate Hezbollah members in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. But as Elias Muhanna pointed out in FP last week, it's hard to see what the opposition gains from this maneuver. As the recent protests have shown, Miqati doesn't have the credibility to convince his community that the tribunal's indictments are flawed. And after he moves to disrupt the investigation of a murdered Sunni leader, his already meager support among his own community will likely fall further.

Hariri and his allies may be tempted take some solace in this dynamic. They will point to this fact as evidence that Hezbollah still needs them, and will therefore be forced to compromise. The situation, however, is not nearly so sanguine: Lebanese politics has a tendency to return to equilibrium only after no small degree of bloodshed and lost economic opportunity. Once again, it is the Lebanese people who will bear the cost of their fundamentally tribal and dishonest political system.

Last week, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel titled "The World Economy in the Next Ten Years," sponsored by the Chazen Institute at Columbia Business School. The discussion, a whirlwind tour of the world economic system, was great fun -- and provided useful economic evidence to back up Foreign Policy's own Nov. 30 event, which focused on the political "rise of the rest." The Chazen Institute has posted the videos of each speaker online, but let me give a quick rundown of what caught my attention as the most important and attention-grabbing points of the discussion.

FP contributor Arvind Panagariya reminded the audience that -- despite the debate over whether India or China will be Asia's preeminent economic giant - India is still an extremely poor country. It currently ranks in 165th place in the GDP per capita among countries worldwide, just above Mongolia and below countries such as Iraq and the Republic of Congo. But that's about to change rapidly: India could grow at a 10 percent clip over the next 15 years.  This rapid growth means that, by 2025, the combined size of the Chinese and Indian economies could equal the U.S. economy.

Shang-Jin Wei, the director of the Chazen Institute, argued that China's unique demography might hold the key to the country maintaining its torrid growth rates for the next decade. He pointed out that there are now 115 men in China for every 100 women, meaning that approximately one out of every nine Chinese men is unable to find a spouse (excluding the possibility of gay marriage or polygamy, presumably). He proposed that this competition for China's scarce supply of brides encouraged men to accumulating the wealth necessary to attract a mate. That's not just pop sociology: Wei cited data that showed workers in regions with skewed sex ratios were more likely to take dangerous or unpleasant jobs, and more likely to launch privately owned businesses.

But while the future is rosy in South and East Asia, it looks less bright in Europe. Charles Calomiris, a professor of financial institutions at Columbia University, predicted that the current economic crisis would cause "the end of the Eurozone as we know it." He painted a scenario where Europe's weak economies, starting with Greece, were unable to repair their dismal fiscal situation without abandoning the euro.

John Coatsworth, the dean of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), discussed Latin America, which he suggested was essentially poised to split in two. The South American countries, which have successfully diversified their trading partners by establishing new relationships in Europe and Asia, would witness "the retreat of American leverage and capacity" to the levels that existed in the late 1800s. These countries, he argued, will enjoy rapid growth and exhibit growing independence from the United States on the international stage. Meanwhile, the countries of Central America and the Caribbean would be unable to break from their dependency on the United States -- and consequently experience slower growth rates as the U.S. economy limps along.