A report emerged over the weekend that the United States may have inadvertently green-lit the 1982 Falklands War by sending overly positive signals to the Argentine junta. These signals (based on US appreciation for Argentine anti-communist efforts) may have led the Argentines to believe that the U.S. would support its invasion, or at least not lend significant assistance to the United Kingdom in the ensuing war.

The United States has expelled three Venezuelan diplomats in response to their government's decision to order three US officials out of Venezuela. The US government gave 48-hour deadline on Tuesday to Venezuelan charge d'affaires Calixto Ortega Rios, Second Secretary Monica Alejandra Sanchez Morales at the Washington embassy and Consul Marisol Gutierrez de Almeida at the Houston consulate, to leave the country.

Jonathan Kay presents an excellent introduction to why most Canadians would reject the Canada/U.S. merger proposed by Diane Francis. Ms. Francis suggests a possible American merger incentive payment to Canada of $17-trillion (coincidentally currently equal to the total U.S. debt), payable over 20 years. But there is a big problem for Canadians with that. As a percentage of GDP, the U.S. government now projects its revenue to remain constant, and its debt interest and entitlement costs to continue rising linearly and match revenue by 2025.

President Nicolas Maduro said Tuesday that Venezuela will not have cordial relations with the United States as long as U.S. diplomats continue what he alleges are attempts to destabilize his country. He said "new points of contact" can be established, but only if Washington ends such activity. Maduro's tough talk came a day after he announced the expulsion of the top U.S. diplomat in Venezuela, Charge d'Affaires Kelly Keiderling, and two other embassy officials, alleging they conspired with "the extreme right" to sabotage the economy and power grid.

On Sept 24, when US President Barack Obama gave his speech in front of the United Nations, he caused a buzz not by what he said, but by what he failed to mention. During his speech, Obama mentioned China once, and the Koreas, Japan, and India zero times, noted most prominently by Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group.

This funereal op-ed is so fundamentally flawed that it is more like a drive-by shooting. Shooting USIA in the back is an unfortunate metaphor for the context of public diplomacy since many of us who engage in public diplomacy think of it in terms of ballots over bullets and swords into ploughshares. Even those who don’t like this tender-hearted approach view it in the tougher-minded context of political campaign strategies.

So it finally happened. Wow. Last week, as the world speculated whether President Obama and President Hassan Rouhani might encounter one another on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly or even exchange a handshake, another, more substantive meeting between Secretary of State Kerry and Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif led to something that hasn't happened since 1979. Iran and America spoke.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will warn President Barack Obama in White House talks on Monday that Iran's diplomatic “sweet talk” cannot be trusted and will urge him to keep up the pressure to prevent Tehran from being able to make a nuclear bomb.