A country of white sand beaches and palm trees, the Seychelles is an exotic tourist destination. It also happens to…
Responding to the Threat of Mass Atrocities
Drawing on his experiences as U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan and South Sudan, Ambassador Princeton Lyman highlights the decision making trade-offs he…
Get Your Cameras Ready: Celebrities in the Embassies
While the work at embassies can often put Foreign Service officers in harm’s way, on occasion they have the chance…
The Nazi Invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece
Axis military efforts in the Balkans, compared with the rest of Europe, had not gone well. Italy had invaded Greece…
Books, Defectors, and Song — The Cuban Missile Crisis, as Seen from Moscow
The Soviet Union, in Churchill’s famous words, was a “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”; as such it made…
Brazil’s Long Detour on the Road to Democracy
Brazil’s path to democracy was far from perfect and often tortuous. In 1961, a “possibly half insane” Janio Quadros was…
From ‘Wife of’ to Assistant Secretary of State: Phyllis Oakley Rises Through the State Department
While it was never written into the formal policies of the U.S. Department of State, it had been common practice…
Returning the Crown of Saint Stephen to post-Cold War Hungary
For centuries, it was the national symbol of a nation. For decades, it was kept in Fort Knox for safekeeping.…
The Afghan Invasion as Seen from U.S. Embassy Moscow
The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was, among other things, a horrible political miscalculation, lasting nine bloody years and resulting in the…
The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan — December 1979
It was to last nearly a decade and would plant the seeds for the rise of the Taliban and Islamic…