Georgia declared independence from the Soviet Union in April 1991, and problems and instability arose almost immediately. The first President…
Warriors without Weapons – Recruiting FSOs to Rebuild Iraq
In the lead-up to the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, State Department officials realized they would need to deploy scores…
Pierre Trudeau: One Long Curve, Full of Turning Points
With the October 2015 election of Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada, we take a look back at his father, Pierre…
Admiral William Leahy, Ambassador to Vichy
When Admiral William Leahy retired as Chief of Naval Operations in August 1939, President Roosevelt personally awarded him the…
Kopeks and Big Macs – Russia’s Move to a Market Economy
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the winter of 1991, the newly-formed Russian Federation took on the challenge…
Diplomatic Amateurism and Its Consequences
The following are remarks given by Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.), Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies,…
The U-2 Spy Plane Incident
On May 1, 1960, an America U-2 spy plane was shot down in Soviet airspace, causing great embarrassment to the…
Sue McCourt Cobb: Ambassador and Summiteer of Mt. Everest
Climbing Mount Everest has long been the epitome of physical and mental endurance. Since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became…
A Russo-American Diplomat: Back in the USSR
Vladimir Toumanoff, a Foreign Service officer for 25 years, had the extraordinary experience of returning as an American diplomat to…
Ambassador to a Small World
Back to Memoirs and Occasional Papers Ambassador to a Small World is a highly personal portrait of Chad from the…