President Putin once welcomed USAID’s assistance (at least for a time). Carol Peasley served as USAID’s mission director in Moscow…
Russian Interference and the Marshall Plan
Russian Disinformation is Not New, Say Diplomats Who Implemented the Marshall Plan The obstacles the United States faced in implementing…
Sound, Fury, Brilliance & Booze: Faulkner in Post-War Japan
William Faulkner, among the most decorated writers in American literature with the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize…
Edward Elson: Entrepreneurial Ambassador to Denmark
The fall of the Soviet Union upset long-established power dynamics, leaving East and Central Europe, in particular, in uncharted waters.…
The Afghan Revolution of 1978: Invitation to Invasion
Afghanistan has had a long history of living under foreign rule. Once a protectorate of the British Empire, Afghanistan became fully independent…
To be Young, Rich and Ambassador to Paris in the ’50s
C. Douglas Dillon was a politician and diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to France in the critical post World…
CNN, Tanks, and Glass Walls: The August 1991 Coup
In August of 1991, hard-liners opposed to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev initiated a coup attempt to overthrow him. The rebellion…
The Rough Road to Moscow for Malcolm Toon
Malcolm Toon was a fluent Russian speaker and one of the State Department’s top experts on the Soviet Union during…
Richard Solomon, Ping-Pong Diplomat to China
China scholar Richard Solomon, who was an essential component of the “ping-pong diplomacy” that led to the thaw in relations…
Warming to the New Administration at the State Department, 1980-1981
Administration transitions, during which power over the federal executive branch is transferred from the sitting president to the president-elect, can…