What Jimmy Carter began, Barack Obama is ending. Washington is bringing down the curtain on its 30-plus-year military effort to pull the Islamic world into conformity with American interests and expectations. It’s about time. Back in 1980, when his promulgation of the Carter Doctrine launched that effort, Carter acted with only a vague understanding of what might follow.

In an Expert’s Brief I published yesterday, I reflected on Nelson Mandela’s achievements as the father of the democratic, non-racial South Africa that replaced the odious and repressive apartheid state. A lawyer himself–one of the first Blacks called to the South African bar–Mandela was devoted to the rule of law. Once in office, his governance was characterized by racial reconciliation, which he shrewdly promoted through the use of symbols. Like President Obama, he sought “teachable moments.”

Public diplomacy (PD), if defined as the act of a government engaging directly with a foreign public, then many governments are currently conducting PD towards the Filipino public in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan's devastation. Most public diplomacy scholars and practitioners refer to the foreign aid assistance in the wake of a disaster as "aid diplomacy."

“We’ve spent decades making their toys, their shoes, and even their flags,” a deep voice intones in Mandarin as US military tanks trundle across a desert. ”All the while, enduring their condescension and biding our time…finally the moment has come; now they will know our greatness.” A group of American soldiers looks up at the sky that suddenly fills with screaming jets, missiles, explosions, fire and fumes.

World attention today is keenly focused on nuclear proliferation in Iran, the future force presence in Afghanistan, and percolating problems between China and Japan involving islands in the East China Sea. And while officials in Washington deliberate how U.S. influence can affect these potentially destabilizing flash points, they're overlooking a country that could be a key contributor toward steadying the ship: India.

Despite impressive changes over the past three years, Myanmar (or Burma) now faces growing insecurity and rising disappointment among citizens that reform has not brought higher standards of living. Interethnic and interreligious unrest now threaten to halt reforms altogether, depress much-needed investment, and could even lead to broader regional tensions.

Concerned by the attempts of Al Qaeda and its global affiliates to attract more Americans and other Westerners, the State Department is stepping up its online efforts to combat violent extremists’ recruiting of English speakers. The campaign is starting at a time when intelligence officials say dozens of Americans have traveled or tried to travel to Syria since 2011 to fight with the rebels against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

For three months, six women and one man have been sitting outside the US embassy in London and starving themselves in the cold. The group—who are all middle-aged British residents—are subsisting on nothing but water and sugar lumps to protest against the killing of 52 residents and the alleged kidnapping of seven others at Camp Ashraf, Iraq on September 1.