There’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good patriotic cry. Russians and like-minded Ukrainians are lining up these days to see a movie, “Taras Bulba,” that allows them this public pleasure while undercutting Ukraine’s separate national identity. A real “twofer” for the movie’s sponsors, the Russian government. The NYT report on the film’s opening in […]
A new U.S. policy toward Cuba, announced today, will offer a greater opportunity for Cuban Americans to personally share the benefits and demonstrate the appeal of freedom, democracy, and prosperity to the people of Cuba. As The New York Times summarizes: The White House announced that it is abandoning longstanding restrictions on family travel, remittances […]
I’m reading another review of President Obama’s trip to Europe, this one by Michael Shear and Kevin Sullivan writing in The Washington Post. I would recommend it for the casual reader, it’s balanced (noting comments from the both sides of the political spectrum) and it summarizes the highlights of the trip, allowing the reader to […]
President Obama’s trip to Europe has wrapped up and the reviews and starting to come in. I expect I’ll be digesting those over the next few days but let’s start with this piece from The Washington Post in which they ask the following question: In his overseas trip, President Obama was determined to show that […]
Can the U.S. use Web 2.0 social networks like Facebook to solve crises and promote world peace? That is the obvious question to pose after reading this article in The Washington Post: Alec Ross arrives today at the State Department, armed with a new set of diplomatic tools including Facebook, text messaging and YouTube. Ross […]
President Obama is attending the NATO 60th anniversary summit this weekend and will be renewing ties while urging our skeptical European partners to support an increased role in fighting al-Qaeda in in Afghanistan. The BBC News reports: President Barack Obama has urged better use of NATO resources in Afghanistan, saying al-Qaeda is a greater threat […]
The London G20 Summit is now history and by many accounts, it was a success for the U.S., with new initiatives made with Russia, China, and a new collaborative style of U.S. diplomacy on display by President Obama and his team of advisors. The summit’s concluding statement has been archived on the G20 website here […]
The Washington Post is reporting that President Obama’s pre-summit meetings with the leaders of Russia and China have produced concrete results. With Russia, Obama has agreed to start new arms-reduction talks designed to lead to a treaty reducing offensive nuclear weapons; and, with China, Obama has agreed to start new strategic and economic dialogues aimed […]
The State Department’s blog Dipnote is one of my favorite blogs and this week they highlighted U.S. efforts to combat Somali piracy. The U.S. helped organize and now actively participates in an international armada of ships that patrol the pirate infested waters off the coast of Somalia. This effort has been a model of multinational […]
This report in The New York Times demonstrates why President Obama’s trip this week to the G20 Summit in London, the NATO Summit in Strasbourg, and the EU Summit in Prague will be fraught with difficulties and not at all like his campaign trip to Europe when he was the center of adulation and praise. […]
This may turn out to be a footnote in the annals of public diplomacy, but it is an instructive one nonetheless. The Amerika Haus in Berlin, a symbol of U.S.-government public diplomacy throughout the Cold War, has been quietly resurrected by a German-American not-for-profit to serve as a venue for America-related events in the German […]
President Obama announced his war strategy today, and the White House website has a nice recap as well as a direct link to a PDF file on the new policy. As expected, his strategy calls for more troops in Afghanistan and a coordinated attack on al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I was most interested […]
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