U.S. inter-agency coordination on countering terrorism was limited, for bureaucratic and technical reasons, prior to the mid-1980s. As hijackings and…
Strangers When We Met
Back to Diplomats and Diplomacy Strangers When We Met: A Century of American Community in Kuwait “We are now marking…
Julia Chang Bloch’s Whole-of-Mission Approach in Nepal
In 1990, Nepal’s centuries-long history of monarchical rule and more recent autocratic substitutes were finally brought to an end in…
Negotiating the UNFCCC – Moving to the Endgame
In Part III, Robert Reinstein, the United States’ top negotiator at the United Nations, and Stephanie Kinney, one of the State…
The “Other” Embassy Attack of November 1979 — The Siege of Embassy Islamabad
The attack on the American embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 and the subsequent 444-day imprisonment of American personnel…
Indira Gandhi’s Assassination and the Anti-Sikh Riots, October 1984
Indira Gandhi was one of the most powerful women of the 20th Century, whose initial rise to power in 1966…
The U-2 Spy Plane Incident
On May 1, 1960, an America U-2 spy plane was shot down in Soviet airspace, causing great embarrassment to the…
Drug-Sniffing Mongooses and Other Tales of the Sri Lankan Civil War
In July 1983, tensions increased between Tamil minority separatists and the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka, erupting into civil war.…
A Giant of the Kennedy Era: John Kenneth Galbraith
With his impressive intellect, polarizing personality, close ties to the Kennedy White House and imposing stature, Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith…
Picking Up the Pieces After Black Hawk Down
The State Department dispatched Richard Bogosian to Somalia to repair political and diplomatic damage following an attempt to rescue crews…