Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is famous for approaching her various jobs with discipline, and discipline was the message she repeatedly conveyed at the National Defense University Tuesday morning in her “conversation” with Secretary of Defense (and former chief of staff to her husband) Leon Panetta: The world needs U.S. …
Though the best-known controllers of Internet freedom are China, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, other countries also attempt to limit Internet access for a variety of reasons. The Turkish government is a case in point, banning more websites than any European nation. In late 2009, the Turkish government stopped releasing …
By the end of August, if Tehran’s plans progress as announced, Iranians going online will find themselves restricted to communicating only with each other—under the watchful eye of Iran’s cyber censors. Plans for an all-Iranian intranet to replace access to the Web were announced in early July by Iran’s Communication …
The President isn’t the only one engaging Americans on Twitter. On June 28, the notice went out from the State Department’s spokesman that Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Judith McHale would field her first “Twitter Q & A” the following morning. Under McHale, State has launched a number of new …
Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Judith McHale recently announced that she is moving on, leaving the job after just two years in office. Of her Bush Administration predecessors—Karen Hughes, Patricia Harrison, and James Glassman—only Hughes lasted as long. The United States has faced great global challenges in the aftermath …
The White House finally ended its boycott of Voice of America (VOA), the government’s own international broadcasting service, on Wednesday, hours before the President’s speech on U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Though every President since VOA’s creation in 1942 had appeared on air with VOA, Barack Obama had not; Obama …
Did Russian President Dmitry Medvedev blush when he signed off on the G-8 declaration of the “Renewed Commitment for Freedom and Democracy” at last week’s G-8 Summit in Deauville, France? Probably not, but he should have. Russia today is not exactly an example of political freedom or democracy as we …
It is no secret that when it comes to the use of power, the Obama Administration vastly prefers “soft” power to the military variety. In a recent article in Politico, Michael Clauser, executive vice president of the Society of National Security Professionals, writes that proposed cuts to the Pentagon budget …
President Obama was true to his advance publicity today as he addressed an audience at the U.S. State Department. The almost hour-long speech had been built up, in classic Obama Administration style, through interviews, social media, tweets, and advance releases as post–Osama bin Laden outreach to the peoples of the …
