The African continent is often seen as a land of paradoxes. Although it possesses many natural resources and extremely fertile…
Siberia and Samizdat: Moscow’s Underground During Communism
Long regarded as a monolithic entity where any dissension was ruthlessly suppressed by the KGB, Western audiences often ignored the…
A City Torn Apart: Americans in Berlin
A U.S. army tank manned by a defecting soldier crashed straight through a Berlin Wall checkpoint manned by Russian troops.…
Drowning in a Strawberry Ice Cream Soda: Life as a Diplomat in the Philippines
World powers, including the United States, have long considered the Philippines to be of strategic importance. The entire landmass of…
George H.W. Bush, American Diplomat
George H.W. Bush was a diplomat before he became the 41st president of the United States. Bush served as U.S.…
Conflict, Cooperation, and Corruption: USAID in Kenya in the 1990s
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,…