Last Thursday, Public Radio International broadcast (or click here) a very interesting discussion of the overseas reaction to the Super Tuesday primaries. National Public Radio's Tom Reagan also gathered some reporting on the US election in foreign countries on NPR's blog. Here are a few others to build on it. A London Times analysis calls super Tuesday's results […]
The Voice of America reported yesterday on the Department of Defense's plans for its U.S. Africa command, or AFRICOM. While NPR reports that the idea to create the new command was “has kicked around the halls of the Pentagon for more than a decade,” the command was recently created so that US-Africa military liaisons be […]
Super Tuesday brought a wave a foreign commentary, most of it positive, on the U.S. campaign and candidates. One of the most interesting was Timothy Garton Ash's piece in The Guardian. For Garton Ash, the remarkable degree of world-wide attention to the U.S. electoral showdown pointed out a lack of such attention to U.N. and […]
During the run-up to a U.S. Presidential election, millions of Americans become deeply involved in the political process, and millions more follow the campaign in the U.S. mass media. So complete is the U.S. focus on its election that it is easy to overlook the impact that this major event has on world opinion. In […]
This week, Defense Secretary Gates and Secretary of State Rice combined efforts on improving the dampening European support for NATO troops in Afghanistan. Gates warned the Senate Armed Services Committee, "I worry a great deal about the alliance evolving into a two-tiered alliance, in which you have some allies willing to fight and die […]
When the Rafah border was broken open by Hamas, food and goods were certainly not the only items brought back into the Gaza Strip. It's more than likely that weapons, normally snuck into the territory through underground tunnels, were also brought over. This is particularly troubling after Hamas claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing in […]
After the gloomy report this blog gave last January that the State Department would be forced to cut its diplomatic posts by 10%, good news comes through the wire: “Bush Aims To Hire More Diplomats” February 4, 2008–President Bush wants to hire nearly 1,100 new diplomats to address severe staffing shortages and put the State […]
On Wednesday of last week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heard the testimony of three of President Bush's nominees seeking confirmation to hold State Department positions in the bureau of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. The first to testify was James K. Glassman, whose nomination for Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy was previously discussed […]
We all remember these famous words from President Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address: "States like these [Iran, North Korea and Iraq], and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world." But here are excerpts from two other State of the Union addresses given by President […]
Monday's State of the Union Address was heavy on the economy and ideological posturing. However, foreign policy issues were addressed, and this blog would like to touch upon what was said. Stepping back and taking a macro-viewpoint of the speech, Bush did not provide new policy initiatives, which we had wondered about on this blog […]
Over at the Election 2008 blog, Mark Dillen discusses Madeleine Albright's book "Memo to the Next President Elect: How We Can Restore America's Reputation and Leadership." His post also contains a good soundbite from Albright in which she clarifies a common misunderstanding about diplomatic efforts: "Diplomacy is not appeasement. You can deliver tough messages as […]
A 2006 assessment of the State Department's Public Diplomacy (PD) program conducted by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB, a Cabinet-level office run out the White House) ranks the program's overall performance "adequate," (as opposed to "effective, moderately effective, or ineffective"). The more abbreviated "assessment summary" can be found here. The State Department describes […]
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