As John Kerry begins his tenure as Secretary of State this week, there is arguably more opportunity to recraft American diplomacy than at any time since the epochal changes of the George H.W. Bush Administration. U.S. military forces have left Iraq and are preparing to leave Afghanistan, Secretary Hillary Clinton’s globe-trotting public diplomacy has set a new tone for the United States abroad, and America has now taken its first steps to focus more on Asia. Historians may well mark these steps as the end of the post-September 11 era.

As John Kerry began his term as the new Secretary of State, the US said people-to-people and public diplomacy relations with India are extremely important going forward. Kerry had yet to make any calls to his Indian or Pakistani counterparts, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland reporters Monday.

In his first day at the office as secretary of state on Monday, John Kerry sought to send the message that he had an affinity for the nation’s diplomats and would look after their security. “Exhilarating to walk into @StateDept today,” Mr. Kerry, who is the son of a diplomat, posted on Twitter. “Dad on mind! JK.”

The State Department and USAID haven't had an inspector general for over five years, and a growing chorus of lawmakers in both parties want new Secretary of State John Kerry to do something about it. "As you begin your tenure, we would like to raise an issue essential to the proper functioning of the Department of State. For more than five years, since January 16, 2008, the Department has lacked a presidentially-nominated, Senate-confirmed Inspector General."

As the chief diplomat during Obama's second term and the representative for the diplomatic image of the United States in the international arena in the future, what an "American face" will the new Secretary of State put on?

Phone calls to the political leaders of Israel and Palestine were among John Kerry's first diplomatic duties as he bedded in to his new job as secretary of state this weekend. Kerry told Mahmoud Abbas that he was "very interested in the peace process and aware of the economic hardships of the Palestinian people", according to Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabel Abu Rdeneh.

With rumors that John Kerry may be tapped to take Clinton's place when she departs the agency this month comes rising speculation over how the current chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee might handle State's technological mandate.

On December 18, the US State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB) released an unclassified version of its investigation into the September 11 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attack, so the report was widely anticipated by the public and by government officials alike.