Imagine a foreign leader, visiting the White House, being overheard and captured on microphone whispering conspiratorially to the U.S. President that he intends to undermine the interests of his own country in order to please the United States. Could one imagine British Prime Minister David Cameron saying that he would …
American exceptionalism is term that sticks in the craw of many foreigners. “Aren’t all countries exceptional?” they say. At the same time, though, most people around the world have a collection of images that they associate with America as well as a deep fascination with all things American. As remarked …
Challenges to U.S. international broadcasting and public diplomacy continue to mount. Iran, joining China and Russia, also nourishes ambitions as a global power and is moving forward with soft-power advances in Latin America. (Not that there is anything “soft” about Iranian soft power.) Part of the explanation is that Iran …
The rioting in Afghanistan resulting from the inadvertent incineration of several copies of the Quran at a U.S. military library has hammered the home the need for cultural understanding in the context of Afghanistan. The forces fanning the flames of popular outrage (i.e., the Taliban) clearly have their own anti-American …
To hide its myriad of other crimes, the Syrian government is determined to prevent news of its atrocities against its own citizens from getting out. Journalists claim that this week they were deliberately targeted by troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and they have released videos pleading for help. …
More than 30 years have passed since Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about the “Soft Voice of America” in an article that first appeared in National Review on April 30, 1982. Incredibly, today we appear again to be headed in the direction bemoaned by Solzhenitsyn all those years ago. While the budget …
The Syrian government’s sickening attacks on its own people continues unabated. Syrian government troops are pushing into the city of Daraa, where resistance is currently concentrated, near the Jordanian border south of Damascus. This follows equally brutal sieges on the rebellious cities of Homs and Hama, which the Assad regime …
