May 9th, 1994 marked one of the most significant – and previously unimaginable – milestones in modern African history as…
Top Ten Things You Learn From a Hostage Situation
Sometimes it just ain’t easy working for the State Department. If you go through the lengthy history of the Foreign Service…
Making the World a Safer Place — Nuclear Arsenals and the Fall of the USSR
Imagine what Europe would be like today if Belarusian strongman Aleksandr Lukashenka were able to threaten his neighbors with nuclear…
James A. Baker III — The Velvet Hammer
James A. Baker served as the Secretary of State during the Presidency of George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1992,…
The Rwandan Genocide — The View from Ground Zero
Two decades of ethnic tension and a civil war in 1990 laid the groundwork for one of the most savage…
The Downing of KAL Flight 007
On August 30, 1983, a Boeing 747, Korean Airlines 007 took off for Seoul from New York’s John F. Kennedy…
A Unified Diplomatic Service for the 21st Century, Part III
The unusually strong response to Stephanie Kinney’s piece on the lack of core values within the Foreign Service — by far…
Ukraine’s Push for Independence
“With Ukraine, Russia is an empire. Without it, Russia is just another country.” The history between these two is long…
Transnistria — Moldovan Land Under Russian Control
The Transnistria region in Moldova is a Cold War relic. Along with Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenian-controlled Azerbaijan and South Ossetia in Georgia, it is…
“Our government has evidenced moral bankruptcy”: The Blood Telegram and the 1971 Bengali Genocide
Pakistan after independence was a strange creation: the capital, Islamabad, and most of the power were located in the west…