Massimo Calabresi

Late last year a Norwegian paper apparently got hold of the trove of U.S. diplomatic cables leaked to WikiLeaks and now is focusing attention on Israeli-Palestinian affairs. The Norwegian paper Aftenposten published two U.S. diplomatic cables Wednesday one of which alleged Israeli border forces were bribing American companies supplying …

China will allow its currency to appreciate 5% against the dollar in 2011, the semi-official Chinese Security Journal said in a front-page editorial Wednesday. Who cares? Currency valuation seems like the furthest issue from people’s minds in Washington as the new Congress turns to looming battles over health care and the budget. But …

Starting with Horizon Bank in Bellingham, Washington, on Jan. 8, 2010 and ending with Community National Bank of Lino Lakes, Minnesota, on Dec. 17, 2010, a total of 157 banks insured by the FDIC failed last year. Their combined assets amounted to $92.1 billion and in taking them over, closing them or selling them to new owners, the FDIC …

Well, not exactly. But it will become evident in the post-mortem reporting that the repeal of the ban on gays serving in the military, which cleared its last real hurdle with a 63-33 cloture vote in the Senate this morning, could not have happened without the senior Senator from Connecticut. It was Lieberman who rallied the Republicans …

From the protected confines of an English manor belonging to Vaughn Smith, founder of the Frontline Club, Julian Assange said today that he fears extradition to the U.S. It’s not clear why. Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private who allegedly gave to WikiLeaks the bulk of the materials that have caused such outrage in the U.S., is …

The junior Senator from Arizona, Jon Kyl, is taking an hour to attack the New Start treaty as the battle between him and Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana gets underway today. In his opening, Kyl made 10 substantive points. Some track what he has been saying, but others call into question whether he has been negotiating in good …

Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana has taken the Senate floor to deliver a 45-minute speech urging his colleagues to pass the New Start treaty. Close followers of Congress know that he rarely takes the floor for anything, leaving it largely to his more theatrical colleagues. In this case he is defending a treaty he took months …

My obit, in which I argue Holbrooke is fondly remembered not for his unique record as a diplomat–others have been equally involved in key moments of American history over the last 50 years–but because he personified the strengths and limitations of U.S. diplomacy in the post-Cold War era.

Amb. Richard Holbrooke died this evening at George Washington University Hospital in DC of an aortic tear he suffered last Friday at the State Department. There will be a lot written about him in coming hours and days, and you will be able to learn a lot about American diplomacy over the last 50 years by reading it. For now, here are the …

Late last week, after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton informed the White House of the likely fall-out from the WikiLeaks cable dump, the White House came back with a question: “What’s our corrective action?”

Clinton’s undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy, had a simple suggestion: pull the plug on SIPRNet, the …

Most of the information in the more than 250,000 diplomatic cables dumped by the website WikiLeaks Sunday will prove to be quotidian and inconsequential. The fact that an American diplomat believes Russian president Dmitry Medvedev plays “Robin to [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin’s Batman” is not going to shake the …

Some observers viewed the single guilty verdict against the Tanzania Embassy bomber Ahmed Ghailani last week as the death knell for civilian trials for terrorism suspects. Opponents of trying 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and his co-conspirators in Article III courts declared civilian trials too dangerous after the jury …