With North Korea reeling from economic and succession crises, American and South Korean officials early this year secretly began gaming out what would happen if the North, led by one of the world’s most brutal family dynasties, collapsed.

Less than a month after President Obama testily assured reporters in 2009 that Pakistan’s nuclear materials “will remain out of militant hands,” his ambassador here sent a secret message to Washington suggesting that she remained deeply worried.

Those looking for skullduggery won't find very much, although of course as they will remind us, that is because all the skullduggery is hidden behind much higher layers of secrecy. As Timothy Garton Ash writes, "from what I have seen, the professional members of the US foreign service have very little to be ashamed of."

Governments around the world have tended to downplay the United States' embarrassing problem over the ongoing release of hundreds of thousands of its confidential diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks.

It's a rare day when Ecuador can out-Chávez Hugo Chávez. The Venezuelan president seems to seize every chance to criticize the United States, and he didn't miss a beat by praising the "bravery" of controversial website WikiLeaks – which is releasing a cache of 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables – and calling for the resignation of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In my book Guerrilla Diplomacy, I argue that if development is the new security in the age of globalization, then diplomacy must displace defence at the centre of international policy. More recently, in a short article on science diplomacy, I observe that when it comes to assessing the role of science and technology (S&T) in international relations, one is confronted by a significant paradox.

It is arguably the biggest global story of the month, and quite possibly the year. Yet the biggest leak of confidential government cables in history has not been enough to elicit a proportionate reaction from the Jordanian media, even when Jordan plays an actual role in this bit of news.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was wicked mad over WikiLeaks. "This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests," she declared Monday. "It is an attack on the international community."...But look on the bright side: The leaks have shown the world that somewhere within the U.S. diplomatic corps lurks literary genius.