Being US Secretary of State requires difficult choices and careful words. There is a balance to be struck between maintaining relations but also principle. Great harm can be done with a few words. One recent episode illustrates the risks.

In my work on the Western Sahara (my non-profit group...

There are few acts of diplomacy more striking than a former American president swooping in to the world's most forbidding nation to rescue two women from years of imprisonment and hard labor. If Hollywood produced it, it would almost seem trite. Even Bill Clinton's harshest critic should celebrate this rescue...

Changes are afoot in the way power works in the world. Oft-predicted (by Parag Khanna, among others), new axes of power are emerging.

At the UN Security Council, where power is (sometimes) made visible, a statement is this week under preparation to react to the trial of Aung Sung Suu...

Three recent official and sort-of-official comments on this issue (well, two comments and one non-comment):

A remarkable interview in the Financial Times with David Kilcullen, the Australian former adviser on counter-insurgency to General David Petraeus. Kilcullen's comments on the civilian casualties caused by US drone strikes in western Pakistan:

There are immense and tectonic shifts underway on the Arab/Israel dispute. Nothing is confirmed, but the signs are growing of a new US policy that is remarkable in its scale and ambition: nothing less than a comprehensive solution to all "tracks" (as they have hitherto been known) of the peace...

I have been pondering Arlen Specter's defection to the Democrats. The only plausible explanation of his behavior is that he is, in fact, an anarchist. Only someone dedicated to the destruction of democracy would act in such a manner. Consider the facts. He serves the Republican party for 40 years,...