This blog is dedicated to relating how the US Presidential candidates view the world and are viewed by it. Washington Post Editorial Page Editor and columnist Fried Hiatt penned compared the worlviews of Senators McCain and Obama by pulling back the curtains on the recent row over Obama's policy of taking with US enemies. In […]
Ron Nessen, a journalist in residence at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, reported on what he calls a “rare event” in Washington. His article, titled “A Defense Secretary Says Something Nice About a Secretary of State,” relates the remaks Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made at a recent Brookings Board of Trustees meeting. “Verbal battles, turf fights, and policy […]
(Secretary Rice and Secretary Milliband in Silicon Valley) Britain's Foreign Secretary David Milliband continued his US tour last week by conducting an interview with Public Radio International's “The World” program. You can listen to the interview here. On the controversial issue about whether Iran–and every country on earth–has the right to develop nuclear power for […]
Senator Obama's policy of negotiating with our enemies has come under fire recently from both Senator McCain as well as from Senator Clinton. Philip Fernando the former editor of a Sri Lankan paper, the Sunday Observer, weighs in on the issue in a piece published yesterday by the Asian Tribune. Here's an excerpt: “Obama has seized […]
Steven Barnes, Assistant Dean of Public Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School authored an op-ed for the International Herald Tribune yesterday. It discusses what is yet known of the three presidential candidates’ public diplomacy strategies. Here's a summary from Barnes’ piece. Senator Obama: In an interview with the San Fransisco Chronicle in February (listen to it […]
British Foreign Secretary David Milliband spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies yesterday. He is quite an exceptional foreign leader: he is 41 years old and has been in politics for only 10 years, and at very high levels at that. CSIS invited Milliband as part of their “Smart Power” program, which studies new public […]
Here's one last resource related to President Bush's recent trip to the Middle East. Brookings Institution scholar Martin Indyk, a former Ambassador to Israel, speaks with ABC's Martha Raddatz about Bush's attempts at achieving peace in the Middle East. He also addresses, more broadly, the policy options at the next US President's disposal for dealing with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. […]
I thought I’d add to last week's post about President Bush's trip to the Middle East, by pointing out two new analyses. First, the Washington Post's White House correspondent Michael Abramowitz wrote in great detail about the various steps of Bush's mideast trip. Second, the Center for American Progress in their daily “Progress Report” published a thorough […]
Earlier this month the American Foreign Service Association held its annual ceremony honoring the Foreign Servicemen and women who lost their lives in the line of duty. Their names are eched into memorial plaques on the wall near the entrance to the State Depatment. This year sadly saw two more names etched onto the memorial wall: Steven Thomas […]
The forthcoming issue of The Atlantic contains a report on Senator Obama's foreign policy by Matthew Yglesias, the magazine's Associate Editor. The article begins: “Barack Obama has always been an independent thinker. He of course opposed the war in Iraq, and he's built a team of national-security advisers who disproportionately took the same, then-unpopular antiwar […]
Guardian columnist and veteran reporter Jonathan Steele pennedan opinion piece on Wednesday about how Barack Obama, unlike the other Presidential candidates understand the American image problem. Although it was published one day before President Bush's veiled jab at Obama's open approach to conducting diplomacy with enemies, the commentary unintentionally comes to the Senator's defense: “…The Republican nominee John McCain accuses Obama of […]
(AP) President Bush has travelled to Israel to celebrate the nation's 60th anniversary. He met with both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (above, the full text of their remarks can be read here) and the President Shimon Peres. He addressed the Knesset(the Israeli Parliament) and a large conference with celebrity guests Henry Kissinger and Elie Wiesel. Every […]
Zogby International and the University of Maryland's Shibley Telhami conducted a poll last month of 6 Arab publics: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Not surprisingly, the poll reveals negative attitudes toward the US. The pollsters also took this opportunity to gauge these publics’ opinion on the US Presidential election. Reuters reports […]
A consistent theme running throughout this blog has been the Defense Department's slow and steady encroachment on activities traditionally performed by our diplomatic bureau, the State Department. A recent article from the USA Today reveals a new aspect of this phenomenon: “The Pentagon is setting up a global network of foreign-language news websites, including an Arabic […]
The Washington Post's job section ran a story this Sunday on tips for getting a job with the US Foreign Service. The author dispelled a few common myths about the FS. Here is an excerpt: “Myth: The Foreign Service — the nation's diplomatic corps — is made up exclusively of State Department staff. Fact: The biggest branch of […]