The news of Richard Holbrooke's passing brought me back to when I interviewed him 13 years ago for my senior essay at Yale University. The essay argued that the approach and outcome of the 1995 Dayton Accords reflected a combination of the twin poles of US foreign policy history: the...
Posted December 2, 2010 | 12/02/10 03:52 PM ET
The Wikileaks release of US documents has unexpectedly evolved into a showdown between Founder Julian Assange and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Were this a stage production of Assange's youth, the marquee for this drama might read "The Elusive Digital Anarchist vs. The Godmother of 21st Century Statecraft."
There is...
Posted October 19, 2010 | 10/19/10 04:28 PM ET
Posted September 20, 2010 | 09/20/10 04:01 PM ET
Imam Feisal's talk at the Council on Foreign Relations reveals the Imam's surprising portrayal of a monolothic Media which has lost control of his message, and has allowed itself to be "hijacked by extremists." He demands, "You, the media, can fuel the radicals or you can limit their...
Posted August 17, 2010 | 08/17/10 11:46 AM ET
This month, the Obama Administration's much-evangelized '21st century statecraft' approach has returned to the headlines -- Secretary Clinton has restarted its "text SWAT to 50555" campaign to help the flood victims in northwest Pakistan, and Jared Cohen has left the State Department's Policy Planning Staff to join Google after
Posted February 28, 2010 | 02/28/10 02:29 PM ET
The Google v. China controversy has missed the point. It should be about The Cloud, and how China's attack on The Cloud brought us closer to the future presaged in George Orwell's 1984.
"The Cloud" is where Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other web service companies host, store, and analyze the...
Posted July 23, 2009 | 07/23/09 07:59 PM ET
Twitter and the birth of the "real-time" web mark a new chapter in the rapidly evolving new era of public diplomacy.
Four months ago, President Obama's Nawroz message to the Iranian people was posted to YouTube, and just over one month ago, the White House posted the video of...
Posted June 17, 2009 | 06/17/09 06:56 PM ET
In Iran, a religious revolution in decline is confronting a technological revolution in ascendancy.
It is no secret that the Islamic Revolution of 1979 has progressively lost its direction since Iran's retreat from the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. Journalistic portraits of Iran often reflect a populace with a collective...

Posted December 15, 2010 | 12/15/10 11:06 AM ET