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Dear Olympics, I think we might need to break up. You know that torch I used to carry for you? Well, the flame just doesn’t burn as bright as it once did. I’m just not that into you anymore. To be completely honest, the love started to fade awhile back. It’s not your fault. Okay, maybe it is, a little. But really, it’s not you, and it’s not me. The real culprit is globalization.

The sale of operations at six U.S. ports to a state-owned company in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has drawn criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. James Jay Carafano, a homeland security expert at the Heritage Foundation, tells FP that the passionate criticism of the deal misses the mark.

In 1990, Foreign Policy was the first journal to publish the concept “soft power” in an article I wrote. Since then, the idea has circled the globe, as a quick Google search will show. A British rock band, Ladytron, even uses it as the title of a song in its new album. But as it has moved into common usage, the term has been stretched and twisted, sometimes beyond recognition. What exactly is soft power and how useful is it in dealing with today’s challenges?

Washington’s worst fear was that the International Criminal Court would have a fierce, activist, anti-American prosecutor who would miss no opportunity to slam the United States. But ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is nothing of the sort. Now’s the time for the Bush administration to step up and help the ICC investigate the real criminals hiding in Sudan.

The reactions to the negative depictions of the prophet Muhammad in the European press have fanned the flames of dangerous stereotyping. The European right and Islamist fundamentalists use the controversy to promote cartoonish depictions of each other that fuel their political agendas. Instead of deepening the divide, Europe’s leaders should reach out to moderate Muslims for practical ways to heal the wounds.

Ariel Sharon has left the political scene, and Hamas won big in Palestinian elections. So what happens to the peace process?

Few people have had more influence on the legal war on terror than John Yoo. While an attorney with the U.S. Justice Department after September 11, his legal memos helped lay the groundwork for what some see as the Bush administration’s constitutional power grabs—from the treatment of enemy prisoners to domestic wiretapping. FP recently asked Yoo, now a law professor at Berkeley, about amending FISA, ending the war on terror, and whether torture works.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won’t be receiving many Valentines this year. Russia and China don’t attract the secret admirers they once did. And Afghanistan has a crush on America. In a special Valentine’s Day Web exclusive, FP takes a look at who loves whom in the world community, with the help of a 33-country poll conducted for the BBC World Service by GlobeScan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

It won’t make the hawks happy, but helping Iran build its civilian nuclear program may just be the best way to keep it from building bombs.

If President Bush and the European Union demand too much, too soon from Hamas, the effort could backfire and make things worse for the Palestinians, Israelis, and Western diplomacy.