Over the next two days, Russian President Vladimir Putin is due to meet with an array of European leaders, including his Ukrainian counterpart, in the most intense period of diplomacy between the Kremlin and Western capitals in months. 

Subtle is hardly the word to describe Abbott's pledge on Monday to "shirt-front" Vladimir Putin. But is language of this type effective?

“The Mideast is stunningly complicated,” said Albright, secretary of state from 1997-2001, in an interview. But her candid confirmation of how hard it is to understand the upheaval wasn’t limited to the region. The diplomatic disquiet is global, which Albright said was a condition of a post-Soviet world.

Experts gathered at a conference on “Regional Security and Stability in Central Asia: Key Challenges and Ways Forward” at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy (UWED) in Tashkent, Uzbekistan on 3 October. The event launched a series of NATO-supported events marking the 20th anniversary of the Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme in the Central Asian partner states.  

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif held several diplomatic meetings with his foreign counterparts and UN officials in New York, where world leaders are gathering in to attend the 69th annual session of the United Nations General Assembly.

One of this fall’s newest political TV shows trades in the drama of an Oval Office affair for foreign affairs — and PTA meetings too. Adding to the growing line up of political programs, CBS will premiere “Madam Secretary,” on Sunday, Sept. 21, at 8 p.m. EST. The show, with executive producers Lori McCreary and Morgan Freeman, stars Tea Leoni as Elizabeth McCord — a former CIA analyst who is suddenly asked to leave her life in academia behind to take the reins at the State Department.

No. 1: Will there be a deal on Ukraine? The crisis in Ukraine has been a colossal failure of analysis and of diplomacy, with plenty of blame to share on all aides. The main victims, alas, have been the unfortunate Ukrainian people. As I've written before, I think the United States and the West played a key role in causing the crisis, mostly by failing to anticipate that Russia was going to respond forcefully and vigorously to what its leaders regarded as a gradual attempt to incorporate Ukraine into the West. 

With terrorists running rampant in Iraq and Russian convoys violating Ukrainian borders, the U.S. State Department is fussing over a new unnerving threat: its own diplomats taking the “Ice Bucket challenge.”  The ice bucket challenge is this summer’s social media fad with a philanthropic twist (donations go to the ALS Foundation, which funds research to fight Lou Gehrig’s disease).