“Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller Much has been made about how the late technology giant Steve Job “changed our lives”. The Discovery Channel, not to be outdone by all the media hoopla surrounding his death, will air a one-hour documentary on Sunday 30 October […]
Operation Unified Protector, NATO’s mission in Libya, is winding down. Claiming victory, the Obama administration is chiding those who opposed U.S. involvement. While NATO has succeeded in preventing Muammar Qadhafi from further targeting civilians, the mission has exposed a significant alliance weakness: the unfair sharing of the burden for common defense among NATO members. In […]
I had just returned to the States from a relatively innocuous tour in The Bahamas as a diplomat with the U.S. Department of State. The most personally significant event during my time in Nassau was meeting and marrying my Romanian-born wife. My onward assignment was to Moscow, Russia with a year of intensive Russian-language training […]
It is often said that peacekeeping is a growth industry. However, this should never preclude the United Nations from finding a better way to do business. Since 1948, the UN has established 64 peacekeeping operations with undoubtedly more planned for the future, as nation-states such as Sudan convulse in and out of civil war. Currently, […]
While the world’s focus was turned on America’s debt fiasco, over the past few weeks the sun has begun to shine from behind the clouds that have hovered over the Korean peninsula for the last year. On July 29, Special Representative for North Korean Policy, Stephen W. Bosworth, briefed the press on the conclusion of […]
Coca-Cola Commercial – Lyrics: We have sworn to erase the impossible/ It should be hope, or no other alternative/ No matter how long they say the night is/ There is no sleep, when it is time for seriousness/ Make tomorrow better, with your hands, you will defy the clouds/ Make tomorrow better, the sun rises […]
Robin Wright of the US Institute of Peace has a new book on the role of culture in both reflecting and inspiring this year’s uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa. Rock the Casbah, released earlier this month by Simon & Schuster, “chronicles the new order being shaped by youth inspired revolts toppling leaders, clerics repudiating […]
The Economist recently ran an article that highlights the tension between spending on foreign assistance and domestic political support for it. Prime Minister David Cameron, who ran on a platform supporting more aid and has insulated it from the cuts he has levied on almost every other part of government, is the latest to find […]
The New York Times recently ran an article on the band Native Deen, which took a State Department sponsored tour of several countries and recently released their latest album. When they were first asked to participate in the first tour they had qualms: “We had a debate in the community,” said Abdul-Malik Ahmad, one […]
Two weeks ago the European Union announced that it intends to provide $14.5 million in emergency food aid to North Korea. According to the statement released by the EU, after visiting North Korea in June, monitors judged the situation to be: “Increasingly desperate and extreme measures are being taken by the hard-hit North Koreans, including […]
Sarwar Kashmeri, a senior fellow in the International Security Program of the Atlantic Council and a fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, has two recent offerings that give excellent insights into how the Libya operation might affect NATO’s future: 1. A posting on European Geostrategy, CSDP – the Atlantic Alliance’s Saviour? (CSDP is the European […]
In honor of today’s royal wedding, I draw to your attention a very interesting article that appeared in one of Canada’s leading newspapers, the Globe and Mail – Britain’s Crisis of Succession: Charles and the Story Behind the Royal Wedding. The article gives us a glimpse into the politics inside the royal family and how […]
Public Diplomacy as a Linguistic Phenomenon, by John Brown in the Huffington Post The War on Soft Power, by Joseph Nye in Foreign Policy The West Likes Democracy for Some Arabs, But Not Others, by Dilip Hiro in YaleGlobal Online U.S. Public Diplomacy and the Arab Uprisings, by Marc Lynch in Foreign Policy Cricket Diplomacy […]
Last month BBC New Magazine ran a curious story (here) about the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP), calling it “a little-known scheme run by the US State Department [that] has demonstrated an uncanny capacity to pinpoint these leaders-in-waiting.” Despite the BBC’s assertion, the IVLP is quite well-known and highly regarded. The State […]
Earlier this month the president of Cornell University, David Skorton, published an excellent essay in the Huffington Post on the role that higher education can – and should – play in public diplomacy (full essay is here). I have written about how higher education is often overlooked in current analyses of public diplomacy (the focus […]