Following the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China on the mainland, a “Bamboo Curtain,”…
The Inspector General — Rooting Out Fraud and Abuse in the State Department
With thousands of employees from dozens of countries spread across the globe, the U.S. Department of State sometimes falls victim…
A Crack in the Iron Curtain: Freeing Sharansky
As General Secretary of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev authorized the release of thousands of Soviet Jews who wanted to leave the…
The Immigration Game — Visas and the Mexican Border
Illegal immigration remains a hotly contested issue within the United States, as evidenced by the subject’s repeated appearance in American…
George Kennan — Containment and the Cold War
George Frost Kennan was, and still remains, a very controversial and legendary figure in American diplomatic history. As a historian,…
Combining Forces to Counter Terrorism — The Birth of S/CT
U.S. inter-agency coordination on countering terrorism was limited, for bureaucratic and technical reasons, prior to the mid-1980s. As hijackings and…
Creating Yaounde’s First Consulate
The first official U.S. diplomatic post in Cameroon was founded in 1957 during its waning days as a United Nations…
Brunei: The Richest Little Country You’ve Never Heard Of
Brunei, situated on the northern shore of the island of Borneo in the South China Sea, is one of the…
Officially Unofficial – The Opening of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT)
On the first day of January 1979, the United States de-recognized the Republic of China (also known as Taiwan or…
The “Other” Embassy Attack of November 1979 — The Siege of Embassy Islamabad
The attack on the American embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 and the subsequent 444-day imprisonment of American personnel…