Visa Complications

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No big surprise, but it turns out that many countries really don’t like having to jump through so many hoops in order to apply for a U.S. visa. In 2003, a consular officer in Moscow told me that when the Russian duo t.A.T.u.

May We Never Confuse Honest Dissent with Disloyal Subversion

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(portrait of President Dwight Eisenhower by Mike Hagel; hanging in Senator Chuck Hagel’s private Senate office) Joe Lieberman may lament what he considers to be the shift of the Democratic Party, but he may also want to reflect on how neoconservatives have so dramatically changed and warped the Republican Party in foreign policy.

Youth at the UN

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As it has done for the past eight years, SustainUS is sending all-star group of young leaders to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. Their group blog is here, and it’s well worth a read. I’ve seen enough young people go through this process to be able to predict how this will read.

Changes On My End

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Last week I left Citizens for Global Solutions after a few years as an advocate there. I’m doing some personal travel through Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and China starting in about a week and probably won’t be up on this blog during that time, but I’ll share pictures when I get back.

Medvedev Pushes for Rule of Law

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Don’t believe anyone who says s/he knows exactly how much power Dmitriy Medvedev will wield as Russian President. My answer, for now at least, is: more than none, less than a whole lot.

LIVE at TWN: David Milliband in DC & George Soros in London

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Free Videos by Ustream.TV My favorite foreign minister/blogger, David Miliband — who serves as Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom — will be having a conversation today at the New America Foundation with a unique group of Transatlantic Young Leaders who are part of the British Council’s new TN2020 project.

“The National Interest” Appoints Justine Rosenthal as New Czar

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(National Interest editor Justine Rosenthal talks with News Hour with Jim Lehrer Senior Foreign Policy Producer Michael Mosettig at New America) I read many journals, including Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The American Interest, and others — but I am particularly into The National Interest, the journal that realist Owen Harries ran for years within the…

Looking for the Next “Mr. X”

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Some Occidental College students in a “grand strategy course” have just gone through an interesting exercise contemplating and considering solutions to America’s spate of strategic problems, and they have just issued a report on their findings called Rebranding America.