For Cuba-watchers waiting on President Joe Biden to end the embargo and throw open the gates of US trade with Havana, Robert Muse has some advice: Don’t hold your breath.
As many as seven million Venezuelans will have fled their country by the end of this year if borders with neighboring countries reopen and President Nicolás Maduro remains in power.
The emergence of a dynamic young leader galvanized the Venezuelan opposition two years ago. Juan Guaido united disparate opposition parties and won recognition as the country’s legitimate president from Donald Trump’s administration and dozens of other governments.
Washington, D.C., is home to more think tanks—and better ones—than any other city on Earth. In fact, six of the world’s 20 best such organizations are headquartered in the nation’s capital, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Strategies Program.
Democrats are moving full steam ahead with President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package, and while they’ve left the door open for talks with Republicans, they’ve made it clear that they’re plowing forward with or without GOP buy-in.
“Virtual diplomacy” just took on a whole new meaning. On Feb. 1, for the first time in history, two countries — in this case Israel and Kosovo — established official ties remotely, during a 28-minute ceremony broadcast via Zoom from two capital cities nearly 1,100 miles apart.
After decades of stalemate, international negotiators will try, once again, to restart talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriots over the divided eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus. But this time, the goalposts have fundamentally shifted.
With COVID-19 casting a frightening shadow over the world, several experts debated the pluses and, mostly, minuses of our current virtual reality, in which public health concerns have trumped international travel, making it nearly impossible for diplomats to meet face-to-face.
In the midst of political chaos in the nation’s capital—and with coronavirus death tolls across the United States now exceeding 4,000 a day, the Meridian International Center welcomed 15 newly credentialed foreign ambassadors to Washington, D.C.
Say the word “diplomat” and most people automatically think of the roughly 175 ambassadors who represent their countries at physical embassies in the nation’s capital. Yet when foreign nationals find themselves in a pickle, they usually turn to consular officers — not ambassadors — for assistance.
The pandemic upended the balls and galas that organizations usually host as their main source of fundraising, but many have learned that virtual events can not only still raise money, but also be more inclusive, both in terms of performers and attendees.
After 43 days of fighting, thousands dead and wounded, the creation of a new humanitarian crisis and a major geopolitical shift in a longstanding frozen conflict, a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh came into effect at midnight on Nov. 9, although many questions remain about what will happen to this disputed territory.
“The Minsk government’s repeated attempts to intimidate society has been ineffective. We cannot abandon the democratic movement in Belarus in its time of need,” said Polish Ambassador Piotr Wilczek, who joined a recent panel of experts to discuss the brutal crackdown on protesters by the Lukashenko regime.
From tiny Monaco, the world’s second-smallest country in size, to vast Canada, the world’s second-largest, foreign governments have more women representing them here than ever before. And for roughly the last three years, an informal club exists for these sisters-in-diplomacy: the Washington Women’s Power Group.
As she takes up her latest diplomatic posting, Veronika Wand-Danielsson will not only be responsible for Sweden’s relations with North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, she will also continue to implement her country’s pioneering feminist foreign policy.
Ambassadors from Albania, Monaco, Uzbekistan and the Czech Republic describe how COVID-19 has hurt their countries — and upended diplomacy in D.C.
