Why, then, did the tsar’s forces weaken their own diplomatic case by taking away hundreds of Russian monastics? The best guess is that the entire monastic peninsula was on the verge of veering out of control because of the theological dispute which had been gathering pace for several years...

Today, Edward R. Murrow’s name is synonymous with integrity in journalism. He reported from the frontlines during World War II and took on Joe McCarthy’s communist witchhunt in the 1950s. But what’s less well known to Americans today is his role as the country’s leading propagandist in the early 1960s. A new book by Gregory M. Tomlin called "Murrow’s Cold War: Public Diplomacy for the Kennedy Administration" seeks to remedy that.

Joseph Nye has been the preeminent thought leader on the issue of power dynamics and relationships connecting global actors. [...] What is the future of this American century? My guess is that among the range of possible futures, ones in which a new challenger such as Europe, Russia, India, Brazil or China surpasses the United States and precipitates the end of the American centrality to the global balance of power are not impossible, but not very likely.

Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, has expressed deep skepticism about the value of U.S. alliances. His is a very 19th-century view of the world. [...] The real problem for the United States is not that it will be overtaken by China or another contender, but that a rise in the power resources of many others – both states and non-state actors – will pose new obstacles to global governance. 

In an extraordinary act of culture and courage, a Russian orchestra performed in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra recently liberated from the Islamic State, but Western media mocked the event, notes Gilbert Doctorow.[...] The orchestrated performed a concert of Bach, Shchedrin and Prokofiev in the Roman Amphitheater to celebrate the return of culture to a UNESCO site desecrated by its Islamic State occupiers.

In April 1966, legendary jazz musician Duke Ellington travelled to Dakar, Senegal, with his orchestra to play at the first World Festival of Negro Arts. Organised against the backdrop of African decolonisation and the push for civil rights in the US, the festival was hailed as the inaugural cultural gathering of the black world.

Forty-five years ago, Cold War tensions between the United States and communist China were lessened thanks to an unlikely diplomatic tool: ping-pong. On April 10, 1971, the U.S. table tennis team arrived in China for a 10-day visit, becoming the first group of Americans in over 20 years to get a peek behind the “Bamboo Curtain.”