Rend Platings interviews Samir Sumaida’ie, Iraq’s former ambassador to the US, on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Platings who has traveled
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St. Kitts & Nevis—barely twice the size of the District of Columbia—is the smallest independent sovereign nation in the Western Hemisphere. Representing this tiny twin-island Caribbean federation in Washington is Ambassador Thelma Phillip-Browne, a doctor by profession who’s also an evangelist preacher and one of her country’s all-time champions in netball.
The new local capacity development policy of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) will very likely set the tone for how its partners and other development institutions begin to re-imagine local capacity building. At both national and subnational levels, one actor will be crucial to the success of these efforts: the government.
As much as Turkey would like to stay out of the current Russian bloodbath engulfing Ukraine, it can no longer remain neutral—a geopolitical reality acknowledged by Ankara’s ambassador in Washington, Hasan Murat Mercan.
Even if his invasion succeeds in toppling Ukraine’s government, Russian President Vladimir Putin has already lost.
When Nureldin Mohamed Hamed Satti arrived in Washington back in July 2020, he was welcomed as Khartoum’s first ambassador to the United States in 23 years. Yet Satti’s mission proved to be short-lived. On Jan. 31, the 75-year-old former UN official was forced to resign after a military coup back home plunged Sudan into a political and humanitarian crisis.
The current state of US-China relations is the worst since Nixon’s landmark trip to Beijing 50 years ago, says a prominent China scholar.
The United States has stepped up pressure on Bangladesh to join its Indo-Pacific military pact to contain China, but it is using a false pretext that may rile up the Bengali nation that carries the bitter memory of America’s opposition to its birth.
Guatemala, Central America’s largest nation, often makes headlines, though nearly always for the wrong reasons—violent crime, drug trafficking, natural disasters and illegal immigration. When it comes to uncovering ancient civilizations, however, Guatemala is a world leader.
As Russia masses more than 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine and the threat of an invasion dominates world headlines, experts ponder what Vladimir Putin really has up his sleeve.
The Washington Opera Society (WOS) has named Julien Benichou as its new general and artistic director, replacing Michael Reilly, the society’s founder and executive director. Simon Charette, its assistant artistic director, is now general manager of the WOS.
Ambassador Rufus Gifford, the State Department’s new chief of protocol, has been on the job for barely three weeks. But he’s already made history as the first openly gay diplomat ever to hold that title.
It’s time for everyone, the media included, to understand the limits of an American presidency.
The last three months of 2021 saw the departure of nine foreign ambassadors to the United States.
One month ahead of a crucial summit between Europe and Africa set for Feb. 17-18 in Brussels, several key Washington-based diplomats are warning that the security crisis in Africa’s impoverished Sahel region could soon spin out of control without urgent outside intervention.
As the Biden administration approaches its first anniversary in power, it might be useful to explain one way in which Washington operates, even though it has not changed with the transition from Trump to Biden. This feature of American statecraft, which is often misunderstood, is the uniquely American tradition of selling the title of “ambassador.”
