By Steve Clemons

The Washington Post‘s Karen DeYoung has posted a story titled “Obama Envisions No Major Changes in Afghan Strategy.

I just want to give early word that the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program and Middle East Task Force along with the Palestine Note will be hosting Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad for a talk titled “Building Palestine Under Occupation.

Watch live streaming video from worldeconomicforum at livestream.com For those interested in an interesting discussion about America’s bleak course, China’s rise, and global uncertainties — with some modest moments of optimism here and there — please enjoy this video segment from the Summer Davos meeting yesterday in Tianjin, China.

I’ve been a fan of the American Academy in Berlin for a long time — and though I’ve never been there as a fellow (maybe one day), it is a cool retreat for high quality American thinkers to engage European counterparts in salons, policy exercises and the like.

When John Bolton, who now said he is considering a run for the US presidency, was set to testify in July 2006 before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his failed effort to get the Senate to confirm his nomination as US Ambassador to the United Nations, I got an early copy of his…

This is part of the Jinshanling Great Wall that I traversed a substantial segment (in my book) of on Sunday. Mao said “You are not a real man; if you haven’t climbed the Great Wall.

President Obama’s National Economic Adviser Lawrence Summers has just landed in Beijing along with Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Asia Desk NSC senior director Jeff Bader, and National Security Council Spokesman Michael Hammer.

This next week on Wednesday, 8 September at the New America Foundation a group of academics, business leaders, journalists, and other policy practitioners — organized as ‘The Afghanistan Study Group’ will formally release this new report titled “New Way Forward: Rethinking U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan.” The report can be downloaded here.

This is a guest note by Fadi Elsalameen, Managing Director of the Palestine Note, an Internet newspaper about Palestine, Israel and the Middle East. This essay first appeared in Haaretz.

(Jean-David Levitte and France President Nicolas Sarkozy) European High Representative for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy Baroness Catherine Ashton decided to head to China instead of participating in the Middle East stakeholders dinner hosted by President Obama in the Old Family Dining Room this week.