The Making of an Iran Policy: Inside the Obama administration’s struggle with its biggest diplomatic challenge.
posted by homunculus on Aug 1, 2009 - 21 comments

Rep. Tom Lantos, 80, passed away this morning. Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, he was the only Holocaust survivor to ever serve in the United States Congress.
posted by awesomebrad on Feb 11, 2008 - 30 comments

Yesterday, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wrote a letter to the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush. Here it is. (Courtesy Le Monde, 8 page PDF, English.) The letter has been "dismissed by its recipients as a rambling philosophical treatise." (Times) Further coverage at NYT and Le Monde (French). The letter ends 27 years of diplomatic silence.
posted by blacklite on May 9, 2006 - 95 comments

Washington Secures Long-Sought Hemispheric Outpost, Perhaps at the Expense of Regional Sovereignty This press release from the Center for Hemispheric Relations is just about the only reporting I've found about the establishment on July 1 of a new US military base in Paraguay. There was a short article in Prensa Latina on July 11, only 3 days after it first published a story that Paraguay had denied the establishment of the base.

There are a very few stories here and there online, but nothing in the American press about this development. You have to know the story exists to find out anything about it. Which is more disturbing, that the US military is on the verge of establishing a new foothold in another sovereign nation or that the US media is not reporting it at all? I really can't decide what I think about this.
posted by elgoose on Jul 22, 2005 - 3 comments

What the world thinks of America... are we about to find out for sure? A special live global forum will be broadcast in a dozen countries later this week, hosted in London, and bringing in the opinions of media representatives of Israel, France, Australia, Brazil, Jordan and more. The forum also features the likes of Benazir Bhutto and Joe Klein. Whatever your opinion of the part the United States plays in our world, it's undeniable that it will be a dominating force in the near future.
posted by Jimbob on Jun 16, 2003 - 39 comments

U.S. loses faith in Canada "We would be there for Canada, part of our family. And that is why so many in the United States are disappointed and upset that Canada is not fully supporting us now," says Paul Cellucci, U.S. ambassador to Canada. As pro-US sentiments from prominent Canadian figures are harshly criticized while blatant (and rather tasteless) anti-US remarks go more or less ignored by the government, has the relationship with our longtime friends up north been irreversibly soured?
posted by swank6 on Mar 30, 2003 - 35 comments

The Bartender gives tips for those of you who are worried that the war will hinder your ability to "hook up with foreign hotties."
posted by Juicylicious on Mar 29, 2003 - 10 comments

Decoding Anti-Europeanism In America: Although European anti-Americanism focuses on one country, with one government and one foreign policy (the U.S.), growing American (i.e. U.S.) anti-Europeanism seems to conflate dozens of separate and disparate countries, governments and foreign policies into one abstract entity, "Europe", which doesn't really exist as such. Or exists just as much as "America", North and South, Central and Carribean does. So what the hell is up? What terrible confusion of categories is clogging up Western political communications? [More inside.]
posted by MiguelCardoso on Jan 29, 2003 - 77 comments

Canadian American Relations According to the Guardian: essentially, Canadians regard all Americans as morons, unless proven otherwise.
posted by blue_beetle on Dec 15, 2002 - 87 comments

Brand USA Naomi ('No Logo') Klein on Charlotte Beers' work to manage the US 'brand'. Sitting outside the US, a lot of what Klein says about external perception of the 'brand' (and of Beers' actions) seems quite believable to me, but I'd be interested in hearing an insider view.
Klein's assertion that "...America's problem is not with its brand-- which could scarcely be stronger--but with its product" seems relatively solid, and if it is, it seems that Ms Beers' mission is all-but-impossible, or at the very least misdirected.
That said, the thrust of Klein's argument is the assertion that the US's values are basically incompatible with the whole idea of branding, and I'd suggest that the same could be said of many countries. I suppose the point here is that this specific exercise is rooted in the US's positioning of itself in the world at this point in time.
[Via abraxas]
posted by jonpollard on Mar 18, 2002 - 4 comments