In his first official trip as secretary of defense, Jim Mattis traveled to East Asia, with scheduled stops in South Korea and Japan. “It is a priority for President Trump’s administration to pay attention to the northwest Pacific,” Mattis told the New York Times. “I am going to get current by listening to them, finding out where their issues are, and then we are going to work together and strengthen our alliance.”

These professionals need Tillerson just as Tillerson will need these professionals to conduct America’s foreign relations and to repair the damage done to relationships in the past several weeks. America’s newest face to the world will need to present a more reassuring diplomacy than that conducted most recently. In banning visas for all citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, Trump played to the fears of his nativist political base.

Back in November 2014, Michael Weiss and Peter Pomerantsev published an insightful report called “The Menace of Unreality: How the Kremlin Weaponizes Information, Culture and Money.” The main argument was that ‘truth’ no longer matters and the key objective is to deliberately distort the truth and sow confusion. The report earned immediate attention in Brussels—including in NATO circles. 

A little more than seven weeks after the United States officially entered World War II, a live, 15-minute shortwave radio broadcast was transmitted into Germany from a small studio in New York City on February 1, 1942. It was introduced by the American patriotic song "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Then, announcer William Harlan Hale's voice could be heard saying: “We bring you Voices from America. 

Unsurprisingly, people have been quick to voice their outrage while simultaneously expressing their solidarity with those affected by the ban. Many people have been resorting to art to make their feelings clear, and Hank Green has gone one step further. "For every reply to this tweet with a hand-drawn message of support for immigrants, Muslims, and/or refugees, I will donate $5 to the ACLU," he wrote on Twitter. 

On Friday, January 27, 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order which bans entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days, and which suspends entry for refugees, immigrants, dual nationals, and US permanent residents from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, or longer. [...] As such, the ISA strongly condemns any action by any government which prevents the free movement of scholars engaged in research on international affairs, or any other scholarly discipline.

It started out in Washington. Then it went to Jakarta. Then across Africa. One version even showed up on Facebook. Within hours, a State Department dissent cable, asserting that President Trump’s executive order to temporarily bar citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries would not make the nation safer, traveled like a chain letter — or a viral video.