When President Richard Nixon took office in 1969, he and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger vowed to find a way…
North Yemen: Ambassador to a Divided Land
Yemen has experienced violence and poverty in recent decades, but for centuries was a pivotal crossroads for trade and travel.…
A Man for all Transitions: Thomas Reeve Pickering
Considered by many the most accomplished diplomat of his generation, Thomas Reeve Pickering served as U.S. Ambassador to Jordan, Nigeria,…
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Declared Persona Non Grata by Saddam
Iraq expelled an American diplomat stationed in Baghdad on November 17, 1988 for having contacts with Iraq’s Kurdish minority. Haywood…
Soft Power in a Cold War: Challenges of Reaching out to the Soviets
The “Iron Curtain” was a term used to denote the efforts of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to block…
A Sketch in Time: Cape Verde from an Ambassador’s View
The nation of Cape Verde, now known as Cabo Verde, is a group of islands located off the western coast…
The 1991 Coup Against Mikhail Gorbachev
In August 1991, hard-line members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) who opposed President Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms…
Rooted in the Good Earth: White, Protestant “China Brats” in the Foreign Service
A confluence of two rising movements in the early 1800s, Western outreach to China and reinvigorated Christian evangelism, led to…
Basketball: the Fifth Basket of the Helsinki Final Act
The Helsinki Final Act, an agreement signed by 35 nations at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)…
Negotiating the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT)
Due to rising concern about radioactive fallout from increasingly big nuclear tests underwater, in space, in the atmosphere and underground,…