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In 1994 Avis Bohlen, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, was made Hillary Clinton’s Control Officer when she and President Bill Clinton visited France for the 50 year anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy. As with many such high-level visits, it was a diplomatic success but a strenuous challenge […]
An effective diplomat, dazzling socialite, and the mother of Winston Churchill’s grandson, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman won the respect of fellow diplomats and adroitly handled complex problems related to the war in the Balkans, export subsidies, and intellectual property rights during her tenure as U.S. Ambassador to France from 1993-1997. Richard Holbrooke said of […]
Frances Willis was the first female to rise to the rank of Ambassador as a career Foreign Service Officer. After she was graduated from Stanford with a PhD in Political Science in 1923, she taught political science at Gardner College and Vassar College until she decided to switch careers, saying “I didn’t want to just […]
On June 21, 1966, France made the somewhat shocking move to withdraw its troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This decision led by French president Charles de Gaulle complicated relations between the U.S. and Europe amidst clashing American and Communist spheres of influence. Though France remained politically in NATO, its actions cast doubt […]
Shortly after Nazi Germany invaded France in May 1940, the French government surrendered and signed the Second Armistice. Under its terms, the north of France was occupied and directly administered by the Nazis, while the south remained nominally independent under a government seated in Vichy, but which was still under suzerainty of the Nazis; it […]
E Pluribus Unum. The average American will unwittingly encounter these very words on a daily basis and hardly give them a second thought. But this is not some meaningless Latin phrase that we simply plaster all over our currency for no reason. In fact, it provides an exemplary representation of the American democratic ideal: an […]
At the end of World War II, Argentina was entrenched in debt and on the verge of defaulting to its creditors in Europe. However, in voicing its concerns to France, Argentina was able to secure a three-day meeting in Paris that would allow its debt to be restructured along a more reasonable timeline; this was […]
Prior to mid-August 1960, the United States had limited diplomatic activity in the French African colonies. However, within a 48-hour time span, Alan Wood Lukens, the U.S. Consul in Brazzaville, suddenly had plenty to do when the French announced a rapid withdrawal from their African colonies. This action suddenly promoted him de facto as the […]
Robert H. Stern’s life as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) took him in many different directions all across the globe. He served in the Philippines at the end of the 1960s, when tensions in the region between Americans and native Asians were escalating due to the war in Vietnam. As an FSO responsible for issuing […]
Ever since the Kennedy administration, the United States has increasingly felt a sense of responsibility for people in Africa. As a result, the United States has had numerous Peace Corps missions and USAID projects spread throughout the continent. In Guinea, however, by 1975 the Peace Corps had been in and out of the small country […]
