The sudden onset of the Arab spring and winter has reminded us yet again that America doesn't run the world. And the country must be wary, in the elegant phrasing of the late Reinhold Niebuhr, of its own dreams of managing history.

There continues to be an ongoing debate about how to regulate the Internet. This conundrum arises from two questions. Is the Internet a platform for old ideas to be transformed in a new medium, or rather a medium for all-together new paradigms of thought?

Chief State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley quit on Sunday after causing a stir by describing the military's treatment of the suspected WikiLeaks leaker as "ridiculous" and "stupid," pointed words that forced President Barack Obama to defend the detention as appropriate.

The State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, resigned on Sunday, three days after publicly criticizing the Pentagon as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid” in its treatment of Pfc. Bradley E. Manning, the soldier imprisoned on charges of leaking classified government documents to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's spokesman P.J. Crowley resigned Sunday, just days after publicly criticizing the detention conditions of Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of leaking reams of classified information to WikiLeaks. Crowley's departure was first reported by CNN.

Philip J. Crowley is a funny man. The Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, informally known as “PJ,” visited Boston University’s College of Communication yesterday, speaking at length about the role of social media and WikiLeaks in diplomacy.

A congressional debate over how best to promote Internet freedom abroad is about to run into budget politics. A little-known provision in both Senate and House stopgap plans would strip the State Department of some of its funding for technology that breaks through Internet censors.

News flash: “We are in an information war, and we’re losing that war.” This source for this conclusion was not one of the at least 15 reports on U.S. public diplomacy that have appeared over the last decade...