It is not just that the diplomatic business model has failed to respond adequately to the challenges of globalization or that foreign ministries are underfunded, hierarchic and risk-averse. These features compound the problem, but it is the particular difficulties in the field that define it.

The Obama administration's new outline of its top national security goals will say the United States should maintain its military advantage over the rest of the world while prizing other kinds of power, according to a summary obtained by The Associated Press.

Famed Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez will appear in Florida during his first U.S. tour since 1979 -- although not in Miami...Renowned throughout Latin America for his songcraft and artistry, Rodriguez is controversial among many Cuban exiles, who identify him with the policies and ideals of the Cuban revolution.

Beijing China and the US agreed to expand their students exchange programme to facilitate one lakh American students to study in this country and increase the number of Chinese doing research in the US over the next four years.

...RealClearWorld has teamed with Gallup to find out how the president has done abroad. Using Gallup's global survey data on ratings of U.S. leadership, we discovered that one region appears to be more supportive of American leadership abroad than all the others, and that region is Sub-Saharan Africa.

President Obama took some time Monday out of his busy schedule to shoot some hoops with 22 Russian kids who are in town to fulfill the cultural part of his "reset" in U.S.-Russia relations. The Russian youth spending 11 days in Washington as part of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission's Education, Culture, Sports, and Media Working Group, one of the many such working groups set up by the two sides last year.

A poll by the International Republican Institute (U.S.) found 74 percent of Pakistanis have a negative image of the United States - while some European polling firms put the number above 90 percent. This public hostility toward the U.S. is troubling...

The most wide-ranging dialogue in the history of modern U.S.-China relations ended with some accord on contentious issues of currency and trade, but underlined a fundamental shift in the relationship between Washington and a newly assertive Beijing.