My salesmen knew that I had a long abiding interest, unusual for most Americans, in foreign policy and international relations.
The paradox is that it used to be on foreign policy, particularly relations with Russia, that Georgia risked embarrassing its allies.
The recent softening of Mr Ahmadinejad's tone regarding Iran's biggest foreign-policy challenge, relations with America, may be an opening gambit in the looming election campaign as much as it is a simple response to early overtures from President Barack Obama.
Before he came to office, Condoleezza Rice, who became the national security adviser, argued that the main focus of American foreign policy should be on relations with long-standing allies.
One of them was Walter Russell Mead, a prominent member of the foreign-policy establishment as a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and also one of its best writers.
She has adjusted Germany's bilateral relations, but the substance of foreign policy has changed little.
ECONOMIST: German-American relations: Ready for a Bush hug? | The
Blackwill is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Ali Wyne is an associate of the Belfer Center and a contributing analyst at Wikistrat.
FORBES: Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew Talks America's Strengths And Weaknesses
But the uncomfortable fact is that Mr Helms, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has a voice in foreign policy almost as loud as that of the president himself, and sometimes louder.
Influential foreign policy experts at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) think the US should move closer to Brazil.
FORBES: Council on Foreign Relations to US: Move Closer to Brazil
Yet it is hard to imagine that China can have a higher foreign-policy goal in South Asia than keeping relations with India on a fairly even keel.
ECONOMIST: The giant neighbours are more rivals than partners
Besides winning Indonesia a seat on the United Nations' new human-rights body, Mr Yudhoyono's main foreign-policy achievement so far has been improved relations with the United States.
Germany has other foreign-policy priorities besides France, such as improved relations with Poland and other central European countries.
Mr Eizenstat was giving testimony to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing investigating the Caspian Sea area and US policy towards it.
It was in 1971 that Kerry, then 27, appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to speak out against U.S. policy in Vietnam.
At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry said if the policy is to promote moderates in the region, it's failing in the Palestinian territories, in Lebanon and in Iraq.
To this end, the Center for Security Policy recommends that joint hearings of the Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees be held at the earliest possible moment to take testimony from Ms. Albright and other Administration officials.
If so, far from being a success for Europe's common foreign policy, Iran could become a big irritant in relations between America and Europe.
ECONOMIST: The Europeans' soft approach to Iran seems to have failed
In the early 1970s, when Henry Kissinger (academic foreign-policy expert par excellence) led Nixon to open relations with China, he was cutting against the grain of popular opinion.
He is a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, the West Coast Affiliate of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Her appointment would also marginalise Mr Obama's vice-president, Joe Biden, who, as the outgoing head of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, had been expected to play a big role in foreign policy.
As the Obama administration establishes its foreign policy, it must grapple with a strategy for U.S. relations with Iran, which has continued a controversial nuclear program and launched a satellite into orbit this week.
Ask any Mexican politician what his country's foreign-policy priority must be, and the response is the same: maintain good relations with the United States and improve the lot of migrants headed north.
However, intelligence and international relations experts had for the past few years been stating that the US must change its foreign policy or face the wrath of extremists.
BBC: World Trade Centre: Could the attacks have been prevented?
Sound foreign policy predicates on peace, but not pacifism, strength, but not aggression, and expanded commercial relations.
FORBES: A Common Sense Approach to Foreign Policy That Both Candidates Miss
Israeli-Turkish relations have suffered in part because of Mr Erdogan's determination to reduce his generals' influence on foreign policy.
On the Russian side, better relations with America rest partly on Mr Putin's calculation that he needs a period of stability in foreign policy while he seeks to build up the Russian economy, and partly on his skill at extracting a quid for quos he had to concede anyway.
应用推荐