The People's Republic of China once limited its involvement in African affairs to building an occasional railroad or port, supporting African liberation movements, and loudly proclaiming socialist solidarity with the downtrodden of the continent.
When it comes to international diplomacy, success tends to be in the eye of the beholder. That’s certainly been the case in the latest bout of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
Caucasus Emirate sets its sights on Sochi;
Putin takes a more distant approach to the U.S.
Nearly 40 years ago, a Congress disgusted with the value-less foreign policy realism of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford began to require the State Department to report each year on the human rights records of other countries.
Calls to ease sanctions on Iran to spur global negotiations over its nuclear program will backfire, making a deal far less likely and greatly raising the risk of an Israeli military strike to cripple the program.
To its proponents, sanctions-easing is a necessary confidence-boosting measure to assure Iran that the United States and the other "P5+1" negotiators - Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China - want a deal.