In The Power of Impossible Ideas, her book about helping to end the Cold War and to build a better Russia, Sharon Tennison tells one of the great hidden stories of our age.
On a rainy morning in Moscow this May, I sat at a table listening to Russia's best students articulate, in perfect English, their concerns with the United States' anti-ballistic missile system and explain their hope for the future of Russia.
The relationship between America and Iraq (and America and the world) depends not only on our nation's actions, but also on the actions of our nation's communities.
Can we continue to focus on one crisis at a time (oil in the gulf, trouble in Afghanistan, reform of the financial industry) while assuming that a fragile and complex nuclear system will continue to protect us?
What is the lesson of McNamara holding his fingers barely apart and saying, "we came that close" to nuclear war? Will good "crisis management" and "luck" be enough in the long run?
If citizen diplomacy could work between the peoples of empires that routinely threatened one another with nuclear destruction, could it not work between mutually contemptuous sides within the U.S.?
After the Cold War, whether impressed by affluence, by liberty, or by the warmth of their welcome, the Soviets saw a U.S. very different from the government propaganda they'd grown up with.
An exchange between young Iranians and Americans can accomplish a great deal by helping build a foundation of understanding and respect, which is essential to sustain future agreements.
We just launched our "Let's Talk" campaign with a citizen-diplomacy trip to Iran, where we held meetings to make human connections that we feel play a crucial part in preventing the next war.