This is a guest note by British Ambassador to Cuba Dianna Melrose.

As part of the New America Foundation/American Strategy Program‘s new media roundtable series, I am hosting a small roundtable discussion today with British Council CEO Martin Davidson and British Council Board Member and communications expert Raoul Shah. The event will run from 3pm to 4pm EST and will stream live here at The Washington Note….

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Here are some of my early thoughts on President Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan “Way Forward” speech from a clip I did with Keith Olbermann on Countdown tonight. I said 40,000 troops in my opening comments when I meant 30,000 troops.

This is a guest note by former Department of State Chief of Staff Lawrence B. Wilkerson. Wilkerson is the Pamela C. Harriman Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William Mary Damned if You Do and Damned If You Don’t President Obama is in a corner.

Excerpts follow after the fold. . .

From what we know of Joe Biden’s “skunk at the White House picnic” skepticism of increasing troop deployments to Afghanistan during President Obama’s three month strategy review process, it would appear — on the surface — that Biden didn’t come up with the winning hand.

Greetings from Berlin where I’m having a very productive set of meetings organized by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Way busy today — much to post on at a later time, but the big news now is that in a few hours President Barack Obama will be outlining his revised Afghanistan policy at West Point.

Hope everyone had a terrific and relaxing Thanksgiving weekend. I’m off to Berlin this evening and staying for a few days to meet new players in the German government and to think through Barack Obama’s next move on Afghanistan.

. . .you will see that the world has moved close to the financial brink again given the debt default by Dubai World. Some believe that Dubai’s confidence-jarring effort to reschedule its debt servicing may trigger a round of other sovereign debt defaults around the globe.

The United States, during the Bush administration, started a very serious change of course in its strategic relationship with India — a huge democratic nation that has been at best ambivalent about relations with the United States for decades.