An essential part of being an ambassador is knowing how to push the envelope when it comes to dealing with…
Wordsmithing in the Fires of Olympus — Writing Speeches for Henry Kissinger
Words are the tools of diplomacy. When done well, high-flung rhetoric can help define an era, such as John F.…
Haiti, The Bearer of Scars
Haiti is a land of great beauty and of great suffering. The Haitian proverb, bay kou bliye, pote mak sonje…
Freeing American Hostages in the First Gulf War
Shortly after Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard forces took hundreds of Americans…
Nixon vs. Khrushchev — The 1959 Kitchen Debate
It was undoubtedly one of the most unorthodox – and therefore memorable – settings for a major political debate. On…
Douglas MacArthur, America’s Emperor of Japan
He was a general’s general, tough, unrelenting, a man who embraced the role history thrust on him. He was also…
A First-Class Spy Flap: CIA Agents Compromised in Ghana
Relations between the United States and Ghana were strained in the early 1980s. Its leader, the enigmatic former Flight Lieutenant…
No Nukes for New Zealand — Breakdown of the ANZUS Treaty
In the mid 1980’s, U.S. bilateral relations with New Zealand, a long-time ally in a relatively peaceful corner of the…
“Ich bin ein Berliner”
On June 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy stood in front of some half a million people in West Berlin…
The 1980 Kwangju Massacre and the Surge in Anti-Americanism in South Korea
In 1980, a democratization movement spread throughout South Korea following the assassination of Park Chung-hee, which ended his 18-year authoritarian…