World attention today is keenly focused on nuclear proliferation in Iran, the future force presence in Afghanistan, and percolating problems between China and Japan involving islands in the East China Sea. And while officials in Washington deliberate how U.S. influence can affect these potentially destabilizing flash points, they're overlooking a country that could be a key contributor toward steadying the ship: India.

Tags: china, united states, india, pakistan, afghanistan, japan, asia pacific, foreign policy, democracy, economy

Despite impressive changes over the past three years, Myanmar (or Burma) now faces growing insecurity and rising disappointment among citizens that reform has not brought higher standards of living. Interethnic and interreligious unrest now threaten to halt reforms altogether, depress much-needed investment, and could even lead to broader regional tensions.

Tags: united states, non-state actors, aid diplomacy, myanmar, reform, foreign investment, transnational advocacy networks

Concerned by the attempts of Al Qaeda and its global affiliates to attract more Americans and other Westerners, the State Department is stepping up its online efforts to combat violent extremists’ recruiting of English speakers. The campaign is starting at a time when intelligence officials say dozens of Americans have traveled or tried to travel to Syria since 2011 to fight with the rebels against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Tags: united states, social media, language, terrorism, al qaeda, counterterrorism, center for strategic counterterrorism communications

For three months, six women and one man have been sitting outside the US embassy in London and starving themselves in the cold. The group—who are all middle-aged British residents—are subsisting on nothing but water and sugar lumps to protest against the killing of 52 residents and the alleged kidnapping of seven others at Camp Ashraf, Iraq on September 1.

Tags: united states, iran, united kingdom, iraq, protests, london, hunger strikes, u.s. embassy, camp ashraf

On November 8, 2013, Super Typhoon Haiyan ravished the Philippine archipelago. With 195 MPH winds and gusts of up to 230 MPH, the typhoon killed an estimated 4,000 people and displaced another 670,000. Across the southern part of the Philippines and especially in Tacloban, the city most affected by the typhoon, the scene is apocalyptic.

Tags: china, aid diplomacy, philippines, typhoon haiyan, disaster assistance

After the recent deal on Iran's nuclear program was concluded, Catherine Ashton, who is in charge of EU's foreign policy, was commended for her constructive role as coordinator and moderator of the tough negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. According to many observers, Ashton's performance had kept Brussels in the game and that is quite an achievement for someone who has to conduct policy on behalf of 28 EU member states with often fundamentally different objectives.

Tags: soft power, iran, europe, united nations, european union, germany, catherine ashton, p5+1

U.S. political leaders have long spoken of America’s democracy as pivotal to its role in the world, whether it was Woodrow Wilson declaring in 1917 that the U.S. must enter World War I to make the world “safe for democracy,” or George W. Bush saying, on his re-election in 2004, that “It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture.”

Tags: united states, soft power, public diplomacy, public opinion, foreign policy, democracy

An announcement Tuesday by the obscure-sounding Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, better known as SWIFT, may not get much ink. China's currency, it reported, was used in 8.66 percent of global trade finance transactions in October, the group said. It's now the No. 2 most widely used currency for trade finance, supplanting the euro.

Tags: china, united states, economy, markets, currency, bank