If history does not regard 2006 as a turning point in the Iraq war, it will almost certainly mark it as the year that President Bush realized he must change course. The growing chorus of calls for change reached critical mass in November, when Democrats took control of both houses of Congress in an election where foreign policy played an unusually important role. The fallout cost former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld his job.

In Iraq, 2006 witnessed the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which many experts cite as the start of that country’s civil war. Of course, the White House still refuses to use the term “civil war,” in large part because of what that kind of conflict means for American forces.

Then there were nuclear rumblings from the other two members of what President Bush once dubbed the “Axis of Evil.” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran had barely taken office at the outset of the year, but by the time he came to New York in September, most Americans recognized his face, though many still struggle to pronounce his name. North Korea’s induction into the nuclear club established a dangerous precedent for dealing with rogue states and cast serious doubts on nonproliferation efforts. Despite the surplus of worrisome news stories, Foreign Affairs Managing Editor Gideon Rose points out in a new http://CFR.org Podcast that the world survived another year without the threat of a great power conflict, which is “a major accomplishment by any historical standard.”

The dog days of summer turned dire this year when Israel invaded Lebanon in pursuit of Hezbollah militants who abducted a pair of Israeli soldiers. The aftermath left both sides licking their wounds. Meanwhile, Israel faced a threat on another front: Hamas won elections in January, making the U.S.-designated terrorist group the ruling party in the Palestinian territories. Hamas’ refusal to denounce violence or recognize Israel put a freeze on any attempts to resurrect the Mideast peace process.

Washington’s longtime tormentor Fidel Castro fell from the political scene with surprisingly little fanfare. Writing in Foreign Affairs, CFR Senior Fellow Julia E. Sweig explains the smooth transfer of power to Fidel’s brother, Raul, exposed the “willful ignorance and wishful thinking of U.S. policy toward Cuba.” As Castro’s star fell, that of his protégé, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, rose. A leftward trend (Foreign Affairs) swept across the Latin American political landscape, with Chavez-backed leaders in Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador all taking or winning office in 2006, and Chavez himself winning reelection in December. Latin Americans living north of the Rio Grande grabbed headlines as well, speaking out on U.S. immigration policy and helping drive the American population past the three-hundred-million milestone.

Though driven from power in Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban reemerged as a powerful force in 2006. Though Taliban fighters still battle with American troops, those soldiers now fall under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s command after the alliance took charge of Afghan security over the summer.

China continued its rise in 2006, as it will in years to come. But China’s ascension became increasingly exotic as the People’s Republic expanded its influence throughout Africa and parts of Latin America. A rare summit of African leaders in Beijing served to strengthen business ties across much of the continent.

TIME broke with convention in deciding its 2006 ‘Person of the Year,’ bestowing the honor upon all the Internet users who generate content on sites like YouTube, Wikipedia, or their own blogs. The U.S. intelligence community caught on to the user-generated-content trend, launching its own so-called wiki, “Intellipedia.” But the decentralized nature of the Internet means it’s not just for the good guys; terrorists relied on the Internet as one of the primary means of spreading propaganda.