The 1950s can be described as a decade filled with some uncertainties, but many prosperities. The Cold War had just…
CORDS Alumnus Gives Perspective on U.S. Role in Vietnam
Should the United States ever have gone to war in Vietnam? Nearly fifty years after the last American troops were…
Development in South Asia and Latin America: USAID in the ‘90s
There’s never a dull moment in the life of a USAID social anthropologist! The foreign service can indeed present a…
Making the Most of Adversity: Managing the Consular Section in Guangzhou, China
Adversity can often bring out the best in those who are willing to rise to the challenges it throws at…
A Look Back—First Director of the Population, Refugees, and Migrations Bureau
The Biden administration nominated Ambassador Julieta Valls Noyes to serve as assistant secretary of state for the department’s Bureau of…
Operation Sapphire: Nuclear Diplomacy in Kazakhstan
Working with nuclear materials is, by its very nature, volatile. Carrying out diplomacy over nuclear materials is even more so.…
The Foreign Service at War (Part 2): Rice, Roads, and Winning Hearts and Minds
“Winning hearts and minds” is at the very core of diplomacy. Sometimes that takes place in an embassy or a…
A Diplomat’s Wife in Showa Japan
1930s Japan—a time of emperors, tension in the Pacific, and mysterious unspoken social rules of the Showa Era. When Dorothy…
From the Ground Up: USAID in Post-Soviet Russia
Six months after the fall of the Soviet Union, James (Jim) Norris became the USAID mission director in Russia. Not…
A Not-So-Quiet Arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Foreign Service Officers (FSOs) must constantly be on alert for security threats, which can sneak up during the most unexpected…