Diplomacy

The unhappy track record of happy talk.

The mysterious assault on our diplomatic personnel in Cuba and China.

Kim Jong-un cut a cosmopolitan figure as a youth—Swiss finishing schools, trips abroad with his dictator dad—but he's turned reclusive as he's ruled North Korea. Indeed, he hasn't departed his country once since assuming the throne.

This story is developing and will be updated as necessary.

It is possible that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is suddenly “committed to denuclearization,” as South Korean National Security Adviser Chung Eui-yong claimed in comments to the press at the White House Thursday evening.

Republican lawmakers greeted with cautious openness the announcement that President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will meet, reminding the president of years of failed talks with Pyongyang and urging him not to ease economic pressure just yet.

Roberta Jacobson, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico announced Thursday that she will resign from her position sometime in May, according to the New York Times.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, senior writer Michael Warren talks about the long-awaited Infrastructure Week, and associate editor Ethan Epstein joins to discuss the Olympics, North Korea's 'Smile Diplomacy' and its coverage by the American press.

Diplomatic “talks” are often little more than that—gabfests—but Tuesday’s meeting in Vancouver signals a hard-headed determination to deal with the problem of North Korea. The talks, hosted by the U.S. and Canada, brought together 20 nations, primarily those that aided South Korea in the Korean War…

U.S. diplomat John Feeley announced Thursday he would resign from his post as ambassador to Panama, the same day President Donald Trump provoked controversy by reportedly demeaning immigrants from central America and “shithole countries” in Africa.

'My neighbors probably think I’m nuts,” says Cory Gardner. The fresh-faced senator is from tiny Yuma in northeastern Colorado, a 3,500-person town with “horrible cell service” to the point where he doesn’t get reception inside his house. So when the secretary of state calls, Gardner does what the…

On the morning of December 12, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took the stage at the Dean Acheson Auditorium to conduct a year-end town-hall meeting with his anxious and largely skeptical State Department staff. The event was keenly anticipated and the venue packed. No one in attendance—not even…

On December 21, Ambassador Nikki Haley delivered the remarks below to the United Nations General Assembly. The resolution then before the U.N. chastised the United States for its decision on December 6 to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and demanded the rescission of that policy. After…

President Donald Trump on Wednesday gave a speech that was long on self-congratulation, but thin on concrete diplomatic victories from his 12-day Asia trip—and silent on everyone’s most pressing question, whether Trump still supports Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.

Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, deputy managing editor Kelly Jane Torrance talks with host Eric Felten about Defense Secretary Jim Mattis's testimony on the Iran nuclear deal and whether the president will decertify the deal.

The United States has expelled 15 Cuban diplomats from the country's embassy, less than a week after pulling its own embassy workers from Cuba in response to a series of apparent sonic attacks on American personnel.

The State Department announced Friday that it would pull more than half its embassy staff out of Cuba after a series of apparent sonic attacks that left diplomats with a host of strange medical issues, from hearing loss to balance problems.

The United States will close three Russian diplomatic facilities in retaliation for the Kremlin’s expulsion of American diplomats, the State Department announced Thursday.

Last week, several Arab states, including Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, put Qatar on notice. They removed their diplomats from Doha, closed airspace and ports to Qatari vessels, expelled Qatari nationals, and prohibited their own nationals from visiting the country.…

Last week, several Arab states, including Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, put Qatar on notice. They removed their diplomats from Doha, closed airspace and ports to Qatari vessels, expelled Qatari nationals, and prohibited their own nationals from visiting the country.…

So there is a reason for countries to host North Korean embassies after all. Sure, rather than the spade work of actual diplomacy, North Korea's "diplomats" use their embassies to export counterfeit cash, go on illegal shopping sprees for their leader, and issue terrifying threats against…

Secret diplomacy has a special place in the annals of American history. Henry Kissinger’s furtive trip to China has been acclaimed as the quintessence of diplomacy. The Obama administration, steeped in its own brand of realism, is another devotee of secret talks, meeting with Iranian officials in…

President Obama met with Cuban strongman Raul Castro today in New York City. The two discussed improving U.S.-Cuba relations, according to the White House.

In defending the Iran nuclear deal to Congress, President Obama and his staff argued repeatedly that rejection would leave America in dire isolation at the United Nations. Obama can now relax. Having used slash-and-burn executive tactics to roll right over a dissenting majority in Congress and a…

The question is not whether Iran can be trusted to uphold the nuclear deal now being negotiated in Vienna (it can’t), but whether the Obama administration and its P5+1 partners can be trusted to punish Iran when it violates the agreement? 

Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif has released a YouTube message aimed apparently at his American negotiators. In the video, Zarif even suggests his nation and the United States are int he fight together against terrorism: "Our common threat today is the growing menace of violent extremism and…

Vienna

Here's a news bulletin from the Iran talks in Vienna:

Vienna

On Syria:

Despite issuing statements commemorating the National Days or Independence Days of nearly 170 countries in the past twelve months, Secretary of State John Kerry allowed the 67th anniversary of the establishment of the nation of Israel to pass without comment. This is the third year in a row Kerry…

In an interesting story in Bloomberg entitled "Iran's Charmer in Chief Wins Again," Eli Lake discusses the "charm" of Iran's top nuclear negotiator and foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif.

Countries that choose to host North Korean embassies (the United States is, quite rightly, not among them) take a real risk. Not only is the regime that they serve a horror show, but many of the country’s “diplomats” are literally criminals. When not conducting “diplomacy,” they engage in money…

The AP is reporting that:

The recent vicious attack on U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert (he was stabbed in the face in Seoul) is, in fact, not the first attack on an American ambassador in that country. The earlier attackers on Ambassador Donald Gregg’s residence in 1989, however, were radical students with…

Amid reports that a nuclear deal with Iran may freeze that country's ability to produce nuclear fuel for only ten years in exchange for sanctions relief, President Obama appeared to soften his words on the Iran negotiations if not his position. Following a meeting with the Amir of Qatar earlier…

Despite raised tensions between the U.S. and North Korea recently, there are secret "talks about talks" taking place behind the scenes between the two countries, according to a new report.

President Obama is being knocked by local press for chewing gum today at the Republic Day parade in India.

House speaker John Boehner has invited Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on February 11. The invitation is meant to be a repudiation of President Obama's Iran policy, according to a draft Boehner's prepared remarks this morning to the House Republican…

Senator Rand Paul has an op-ed in Time magazine making the case for normalizing diplomatic relations with Cuba as Barack Obama has proposed. It’s a reasonable objective for U.S. policy and there’s a good case to be made that the embargo on Cuba is anachronistic.

Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom joined former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York Monday for a Data2X event to "promote gender-sensitive data." Data2X is a United Nations Foundation sponsored…

President Obama appeared to criticize Australian prime minister Tony Abbott for closing borders to Austrlia due to concern over Ebola.

The Wall Street Journal’s Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee published an important scoop yesterday. President Obama “secretly wrote to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the middle of last month and described a shared interest in fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.” The…

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is joining five of his predecessors on Wednesday at a groundbreaking ceremony for the United States Diplomacy Center, a new 40,000 square foot facility dedicated to "bringing the story of American diplomacy to life." The "state-of-the-art museum and education…

Yesterday, in response to the news that jihadi savages had killed an American journalist on YouTube, the Obama administration revealed that there had been a special forces operation that attempted and failed to rescue James Foley. For the life of me, I can't figure out why this was necessary…

Yesterday, in response to the news to the news that jihadi savages had killed an American journalist on YouTube, the Obama administration revealed that there had been a special forces operation that attempted and failed to rescue James Foley. For the life of me, I can't figure out why this was…

Besides centrifuges, uranium enrichment, and sanctions, this month the State Department turned to sets, digs, and spikes in diplomatic efforts with Iran. Samuel Werberg, a press and public diplomacy officer in the U.S. State Department, invoked the spirit of Jesse Owens to tout the Obama…

Last night Martin Indyk, now the chief assistant to Secretary of State Kerry in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, spoke at length to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. One account of his speech appears here at the Times of Israel's web site.

Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, has just published a very timely book— especially for anyone interested in the likely success of the Obama administration’s diplomatic engagement with Iran. Dancing with the…

The ascension of Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani supposedly represented a “period of hope.” That may be true for Western negotiators hoping to spend more time in Geneva, but not for the Sufis and other religious minorities of Iran, whom the regime in Tehran continues to repress.

Now that the hoopla has begun to die down over Kim Jong-un’s execution of his uncle—reportedly Mafia-style with machine guns—the Young General is anticipating his athletes shooting a few hoops under the expert tutoring of Dennis Rodman. Kim Jong-un’s best American buddy has just arrived back in…

Over a century ago George Santayana wrote that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

On Friday, the State Department announced that 21 diplomatic facilities (now updated to 22), from North Africa through the Middle East and into South Asia, are to be closed this weekend in response to an al Qaeda threat. The State Department’s travel alert warned of “terrorist attacks…possibly…

Secretary of State John Kerry will host "an Iftar dinner for Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni," according to a copy of his schedule released by the State Department. The dinner will also be attended by "Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat."

The State Department today announced the dedication of a new "environmentally-sustainable" embassy in Bujumbura, Burundi. The cost of the building project is $133 million.

In academia, scholars trying to get ahead look for the Next Big Thing. In the field of American foreign relations, that just may be something called “public diplomacy,” a term that conjures a vision of diplomatic efforts aimed not simply at other diplomats but at large populations. Justin Hart,…

From CNN:

President Barack Obama called Burma 'Myanmar' after a bilateral meeting with Thein Sein, the president of that country. From the pool report:

At the end of an interesting op-ed, Israeli writer Yossi Klein Halevy relates an interesting and revealing anecdote about Senator John Kerry, who is believed to be in the running for the secretary of state position should Barack Obama be reelected.

Israeli vice prime minister Shaul Mofaz, of the centrist party Kadima, told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington, D.C., that talks with the Iranians have failed and that the U.S. should escalate its activity to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

As Josh Rogin reports, almost half the members of the United States Senate joined together to write a letter to Barack Obama, urging the president to give up on Iranian talks if they fail yet again. The letter comes as American diplomats are getting set to meet with the Iranians in Moscow.

As the U.S. and its allies prepare to return to the negotiating table with Iranian representatives, hoping to reach a deal on their nuclear ambitions, the Islamic Republic has significantly ratcheted up its efforts to repress religious minorities in the country. 

The New York Sun editorializes:

As the United States and other members of the P5+1 commence negotiations with Iran, it is worth recalling the classic analysis of Iran’s negotiating style sent in from the U.S. embassy in Tehran on August 13, 1979. The author of the cable, political counselor Victor Tomseth, and the man who…

The Obama administration set forth its demands of Iran in advance of this past weekend’s negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program. The New York Times reported on April 7 (emphasis added):

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Steve Hayes notes what will be missing in this weekend’s attempted negotiations with Iran: a serious discussion of Iran’s broad sponsorship of terrorism, particularly against American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Steve Hayes, writing in the Wall Street Journal: 

The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, has been under fire for saying that Israel is responsible for Muslim anti-Semitism, comments he made last week at a European conference on anti-Semitism.

Secretary Clinton had nothing but glowing remarks for Malaysia’s leadership when she stopped there in November of last year.  “We already have a strong partnership based on common values like respect for cultural diversity, pluralism, religious tolerance… We know that Malaysia is a leader in this…

In today's New York Times, there's an article, "In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out," that discusses the mounting pressure to recognize Palestine as a state:

Once upon a time I was a member of the policy planning staff at the Department of State, and had a security clearance. It was so long ago that I cannot now recall the level of security my clearance allowed, but it was suitably low. Like most people under such circumstances, I was curious about what…

The editors at Der Spiegel can’t contain themselves. Even before publication of the WikiLeaks documents, they’ve taken to their website to announce jubilantly that the leaking of these documents “is nothing short of a political meltdown for US foreign policy.”

The world is once again anticipating a massive leak of classified documents by WikiLeaks. The U.S. State Department is so concerned that it has published a letter addressed to the head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, and his attorney, arguing that publication of the documents will “risk the lives of…

Last Friday, the American embassy in Rome held a panel discussion on the subject “Is the Internet Changing People’s Engagement in Democracy?” Fair enough. But the curious part is the identity of the featured speaker: one Sam Graham-Felsen, identified on the embassy website as “the Chief Blogger of…