The Foreign Service Journal, January 2009

J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 11 political appointees. This guide for students of the Obama administration’s likely foreign policy was released on Nov. 13 by the Center for U.S. Global Engagement ( www.usglobalengagement.org ), along with a report, “First Step Rec- ommendations for the President-Elect to Elevate and Strengthen Develop- ment andDiplomacy” ( www.usglobal engagement.org/tabid/3316/De fault.aspx ). Modernize foreign assistance. “New Day, NewWay” comes from the Mod- ernizing Foreign Assistance Network, a reform coalition composed of inter- national development and foreign pol- icy practitioners, policy advocates and experts, concerned citizens and pri- vate-sector organizations ( www.mod ernizingforeignassistance.net/doc uments/newdaynewway.pdf ). MFAN also issued transition rec- ommendations for the president-elect to set the modernization process in motion, including ensuring that the Secretary of State nominee agrees that modernizing foreign assistance policies and operations is a top priority; em- powering a single individual with broadened responsibility for USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corpora- tion and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; and naming a deputy national security and economic adviser for development, with joint National Economic Council/National Security Council responsibility for in- teragency and White House coordina- tion of development policy ( www.mo dernizingforeignassistance.net/pre ssroom.html ). Re-establishing American leader- ship. In late 2006, Georgetown Uni- versity’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy assembled a working group to evaluate the geopolitical challenges facing the country. The group’s final report, “America’s Role in the World,” is a thorough and thought-provoking survey of today’s foreign policymaking context and the choices and responses available to the new administration ( http://isd.georgetown.edu/Ameri cas_Role_in_the_World.pdf ). Dur- ing more than a year of deliberation, the high-powered group, led by Thomas Pickering, Chester Crocker and Casimir A. Yost, produced a series of related studies and working reports that are also available online ( http:// isd.georgetown.edu/americas_role _description.cfm ). NATO’s future. A keystone of post- war U.S. foreign policy, NATO’s role in the 21st century has been called into question and its enlargement process is at a crossroads. The Obama admin- istration now has three choices, ex- plains FSO (and FSJ Editorial Board member) James P. DeHart in a new re- port issued by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy of Georgetown University: 1) accelerate NATO’s east- ward expansion to bring in Georgia and Ukraine; 2) sustain expansion, but slow it down for Georgia and Ukraine; and 3) suspend eastward expansion to achieve other foreign policy goals. In “The Burden of Strategy: Transatlantic Relations and the Future of NATO Enlargement,” DeHart presents the history of the enlargement issue and the rationale for each choice ( http:// isd.georgetown.edu/burden_of_str ategy.pdf ). Nuclear security. The seventh an- nual study from Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and Inter- national Affairs, “Securing the Bomb 2008,” urges the incoming administra- tion to carry out “a global campaign to lock down every nuclear weapon and every significant stock of potential nu- clear bomb material worldwide as rapidly as that can possibly be done” ( www.nti.org/e_research/cnwm/ overview/cnwm_home.asp ). Commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative ( www.nti.org ) , a non- proliferation organization co-chaired by former senator SamNunn of Geor- gia, the report states that although Russia still possesses the world’s largest stockpiles of such material, the effort should be broadened to include other countries. There are 130 research re- actors around the world that still use highly enriched uranium as fuel, many C Y B E R N O T E S Site of the Month: Technorati.com Founded in 2002 by David Sifry, Technorati.com is the original Web log search engine and arguably the most comprehensive online source of information on the blogosphere. Whether you are an accomplished blogger or a curious neophyte, you are sure to find this site interesting and helpful. Chosen by Time magazine as one of the “25 Web sites we can’t live without,” Technorati.com indexes millions of blog posts in real time, tracking not only their authority and influence, but who and what is most popular in the blogosphere. The site’s mission, in its own words, is to help bloggers succeed by collecting, high- lighting and distributing the online global conversation. The blogs are sorted by subject area: business, entertainment, politics, sports, lifestyle and technology, and then further defined by subcategories such as, under business, advertising, finance and small business. The site’s “Blogger Central” fea- ture zeroes in on the practice of blogging, featuring tricks and tools for practition- ers to refine their art. Of particular interest at the start of the New Year is Technorati ’s annual report, “State of the Blogosphere 2008,” an extensive and detailed survey that is loaded with insights and information on the state of this ever-burgeoning realm ( www.techno rati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere / ).