U.S. policy toward Kenya during the long presidency of Daniel arap Moi (1978-2002) fluctuated between a close Cold War embrace,…
Freezing in the Dark: the First Years of the USAID Mission in Ukraine
Using candles for light, huddling into the warmest room, tapping into government telephone lines to make calls—these were the conditions…
Frank Carlucci and the Last Days of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo
Long before he was President Reagan’s Secretary of Defense, Frank Carlucci was a young State Department political officer in Kinshasa,…
Helping Reunite Germany with Tennis
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in a fraught time in the lives of East and West…
Combating the flow of Foreign Fighters affiliated with the Islamic State
The rapid ascent of ISIS in 2013-16 was fueled by a flow of “foreign fighters” from across the Middle East,…
The Suez Canal Company: Catalyst for an Egyptian Crisis
The Suez Crisis of 1956 had far-reaching implications not only for Egypt and the Middle East, but throughout the world.…
To be Young, Rich and Ambassador to Paris in the ’50s
C. Douglas Dillon was a politician and diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to France in the critical post World…
The Rough Road to Moscow for Malcolm Toon
Malcolm Toon was a fluent Russian speaker and one of the State Department’s top experts on the Soviet Union during…
Richard Solomon, Ping-Pong Diplomat to China
China scholar Richard Solomon, who was an essential component of the “ping-pong diplomacy” that led to the thaw in relations…
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.…