Rising powers can neither insulate nor isolate themselves from what happens beyond their borders.

Throughout its history, America has always tried to insulate its markets from foreign competition.

The strong euro has helped insulate Europe from skyrocketing oil and commodity prices, which are priced in dollars on the world markets.

States would be wise to weaken sovereignty in order to protect themselves, because they cannot insulate themselves from what goes on elsewhere.

Throughout its history, America has always tried to insulate its markets from foreign competition. So history has once more triumphed over ideology.

When it comes to agriculture, developed countries, such as the US and European Union members, insulate both consumers and farmers from these risks.

Meanwhile, if Western politicians are concerned with the wider world at all, it seems largely about how to insulate themselves from its effects.

But even if capital controls could still fully insulate a country from the forces of financial globalization, such a goal would not be desirable.

One might think that a country that owns foreign oil can use the profits from sales to insulate its economy from high world oil prices.

Although these factors insulate the US from the inflationary pressures stemming from exchange rate fluctuations, they increase the vulnerability of other countries, especially emerging economies.

The importance of these structures is that they insulate the central bank s monetary policy independence from corruption by the tighter accountability requirements that inevitably come with banking supervision.

The practical challenge comes from agriculture s two advantages that insulate the rural sector from global market forces and turn even the most urbane, liberal politicians into its defenders.

Today's spacesuits are pressurized, have an oxygen supply, protect the astronaut from micrometeoroid bombardment while spacewalking, and insulate the astronaut from the severe temperature changes experienced in space.

In the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990 s, China amassed some 3.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves in order to insulate its system from external shocks.

The strategy was based on the presence of entrenching governance provisions, such as a classified board or a poison pill, which insulate managements from the discipline of the market for corporate control.

For example, protectionist Democrats in the US Congress have been able to insulate themselves from charges of opposing free trade if they scuttle Colombia s FTA, because they will most likely ratify the deals for Panama and Peru.

The fear is no longer that they will be unable to insulate themselves. It is that their economies could be dragged into much deeper crises than those that will be experienced at the epicenter of the sub prime debacle.

Qatar has been chosen as the seat of fresh US Taliban negotiations in order to keep the still skeptical Afghan government at arm s length (despite the pretense of Afghan led talks), and to insulate the Taliban negotiators from Pakistani and Saudi pressure. Meanwhile, even as a civil military showdown in Pakistan compounds Washington s regional challenges, the new US push to contain Iran threatens to fuel greater turbulence in neighboring Afghanistan.