Donald Trump
China's President Xi Jinping, on the way to his eagerly awaited first encounter with Donald Trump, met his Finnish counterpart in Helsinki Wednesday, extending Beijing's famed "panda diplomacy" to Finland. The two sides agreed to carry out "cooperative panda research" and "make the pandas messengers of friendship between our two countries," Xi said at a joint press conference in Helsinki.
"The largely untold story of Southern California’s unique place in American diplomatic history is now being told," says Ben Leffel.
Contrary to public perceptions, foreign aid represents a tiny fraction of the $4 trillion federal budget. According to the Congressional Research Service, in the past three decades, foreign aid has never accounted for more than 1.4 cents of every dollar spent by Washington. [...] "When you deploy hard power, you actually need more diplomats," says Charles Ries, a vice president at the RAND Corporation who served in diplomatic posts in Iraq and Greece.
An interview with Anne Applebaum about disinformation, soft power, and Russia.
The Trump administration’s real ASEAN test is whether it can preserve the U.S. role as a capable and willing Pacific power seeking to advance greater security, prosperity, and democracy in the Asia-Pacific while working with Southeast Asian states on common challenges in a way that advances U.S. interests but still preserves their autonomy and freedom of action.
The brief exchange between the president and his national security adviser highlights one of the early conundrums of Trump’s presidency and his foreign policy. In his first budget blueprint, released Thursday, and in speeches, Trump has preached “America First,” an approach that involves bolstering U.S. military might, strengthening the country’s borders and slashing foreign aid.
Members of the Saudi government are visiting the US and China. In both countries, they are striving for good relations - and their traveling diplomacy shows that the kingdom is exploring new paths. [...] the crown prince bent over backwards to offer pleasantries, calling Trump a "true friend" of the Arabs and declaring that he did not believe Trump's attempted travel banwas aimed at Muslims. Rather, the crown prince stated, the US simply wanted to protect itself from terrorism.
As the Tweeting-Diplomat-in-Chief, U.S. President Donald Trump is transforming digital diplomacy — the leveraging of online communication technologies to pursue foreign policy. What used to be thought of as an opportunity to move diplomacy out of inter-governmental back rooms to a more robust and transparent basis of digitally enabled engagement of stakeholders seems to be getting dragged into the locker room of narcissistic posturing.