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).

Recently, there has been a great deal of debate, and no small amount of axe grinding, regarding the mission and the effectiveness of U.S. international broadcasting under the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

The charity stunt has lured athletes, celebrities, politicians and rock stars and gone viral on the Internet, but don’t look for US diplomats to get in on the fun.

Dear Iranian Negotiators: Some of you may remember me from the time I served on the American delegation to the nuclear talks.  Although I left the U.S. Government over a year ago, I try to follow the negotiations closely, and I have been impressed by the determination and professionalism that you – as well as the Americans and indeed all the parties – have brought to the table.

MH17 has left Dutch society in a state of mid-summer anaesthesia. Exactly 25 years after the end of the Cold War, and 20 years after the Srebrenica genocide that left more than 8,000 dead in a UN ‘safe area’ under Dutch command, the shooting down of KLM double tagged Malaysian Airlines MH17 is another defining moment for the Netherlands’ external relations.