Co-author: Hailey Woldt

Let’s begin with the positive: the United States is present at the World Expo in Shanghai. The Secretary of State deserves praise for making this possible, by launching an eleventh hour fundraising drive, after the previous administration had done virtually nothing (besides rejecting a proposal that included Frank Gehry as architect). The Chinese cared enough about the U.S. presence to have contributed both public and private funds to guarantee that the U.S. showed up for Expo Shanghai 2010.

US President Barack Obama’s long-awaited visit to Indonesia this coming June 14 has once again been postponed. His trip to the country has now been canceled three times since he came to power. Public disappointment, if any, seems sensible because his trip to Indonesia is not seen simply as a state visit. Rather, it is seen as a “homecoming” to Jakarta, where he spent four years of his childhood.

What’s the relationship between the West and Africa? A respected – but tiny – Toronto theatre company joins global partners to ask a question as big as a continent.

Among the slew of strategy documents from the Obama administration this spring, full of academic analysis and verbal flourishes, Congress has rightly detected a certain lack of substance. Case in point: The question of whether the U.S. government needs a Center for Strategic Communications and Public Diplomacy.

The problem we face today is one of imbalance. The Defense Department has an annual budget in the range of $750 billion. Compare that with all diplomatic, civilian efforts — which ring in at $50 billion... There are three obvious roles for diplomatic efforts: before, during and after conflicts.

Among the precious few beneficiaries of BP’s mother-of-all-oil spills (outside those who shorted the company's stock) may be diplomacy with Cuba. Or more precisely: oil diplomacy.

One of the main underlying tensions at the OAS meeting will be the question of whether to allow Honduras back into the organization, after it was ousted following that usurped then-President Manuel Zelaya.

Over the past year, the Obama administration has been reaching out and listening to Muslim communities around the world, focusing on a “new beginning” based on mutual interest and respect that President Obama called for in his June 4, 2009, speech at Cairo University in Egypt.