Born to a modest family, Joseph-Desiré Mobutu prospered in the Force Publique, the army of the Belgian Congo. Mobutu became…
Regarding Henry, Protecting Nancy – On Security Detail with the Kissingers
Traditionally, Secretaries of State receive a personal protection detail from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). However, Henry Kissinger…
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea — The CIA Mission to Raise a Soviet Sub
In March 1968, a K-129 Soviet nuclear submarine cruising in the Pacific Ocean mysteriously disappeared from Russian radar. Following an…
Agent Orange and the Vietnam War
In 1961, United States forces in Vietnam began to use chemical herbicides and defoliants on South Vietnamese crops, bushes, and…
Bad Blood: The Sino-Soviet Split and the U.S. Normalization with China
In the 1960s, in the depths of the Cold War, the world was viewed in terms of a zero-sum game:…
Thailand’s Bloodless Coups d’état
When a country undergoes internal conflict and something as dramatic as a coup d’etat, the results can often lead to…
Operation Storm — The Battle for Croatia, 1995
After the fall of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s, the Balkans descended into a bloody ethnic and sectarian conflict. Although…
Redesigning the Foreign Service Exam
The Foreign Service Exam is one of the most selective of its kind in the United States. Of the thousands…
The Marooned Law of the Sea Treaty
The Law of the Sea Treaty (formally known as the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,…
The Panama Riots of 1964: The Beginning of the End for the Canal
When President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty with Panama in 1903, the United States gained sovereignty over the portion…