Welcome to The Envoy

Welcome to the Envoy, Yahoo News' foreign affairs blog.

As the recent popular protests in the Arab world have reminded us, sudden and unpredictable shifts can alter the course of global politics and history, making conventional wisdom and well-worn stereotypes obsolete overnight. And as we've seen in the recent furor over the diplomatic documents released by WikiLeaks, it's become increasingly difficult for the traditional power players on the global stage to control the flow of information--let alone force the world's key players and power dynamics into a single, seamless narrative.

Here at the Envoy, we aim not only to tell the story of international affairs, but also to throw new light on the power players and storytellers--the political leaders who are seeking to forge new alliances and advance new narratives; the war-planners and intelligence operatives who are supplying the behind-the-scene information and artillery to project U.S. power abroad; the armies of private contractors who now outnumber the number of military troops the U.S. has deployed in major theaters of war, together with the battalions of lobbyists and influence-peddlers who procure the government contracts; and of course the U.S. political actors--from the president, who provides the overarching ideological arguments and policy doctrines to the working level bureaucrats, who carry out U.S. policy day to day.

I have been reporting on foreign affairs, national security and intelligence issues for more than a dozen years, most recently as the chief foreign policy reporter for Politico, and previously for Foreign Policy magazine, where I launched "The Cable" blog. Based out of Washington, D.C., I have also reported from the Balkans, Russia, Turkey and Israel, and wrote the afterword to the memoir of former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson, Fair Game. You can find some recent pre-Envoy posts here. Many thanks to Andrew Golis, Chris Lehmann, Alex Romanelli, Jamie Mottram and Phoebe Connelly for their vision and help getting the site launched.

Thank you for reading; I look forward to hearing your feedback--as well as your tips.

(An Egyptian volunteer paints the colors of the national flag on the face of a boy at Tahrir Square in Cairo Egypt, Saturday, Feb. 12, 2011.: Amr Nabil/AP)