It was the wife of the U.S. Ambassador to Greece, John Peurifoy (seen right), who gave him the sobriquet “Pistol…
Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship: The 1951 Treaty of Peace with Japan
The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed by 48 nations on September 8, 1951, officially ended Japan’s position as an imperial power,…
The ACDA-USIA Merger into State — The End of of an Era
As the Cold War began to go into full swing, the United States soon realized the need for distinct agencies…
Algeria’s Struggle for Independence
The modern-day People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria is now a proud, sovereign state in North Africa that readily influences the…
Kleptocracy and Anti-Communism: When Mobutu Ruled Zaire
Born to a modest family, Joseph-Desiré Mobutu prospered in the Force Publique, the army of the Belgian Congo. Mobutu became…
Virtual Student Foreign Service Interns 2016-2017
Blair Boyd Blair is a senior linguistics major at Macalester College in Minnesota. She hopes to use this internship as…
Resolving the Czechoslovak Gold Dispute
As the Third Reich annexed the Sudetenland and Poland and the German war machine pushed through the Eastern Front towards…
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…
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:…
East Germany Builds the Berlin Wall
The summer of 1961 was fraught with tensions between Moscow and Washington. Berlin, which had been a Cold War flash…