Many young people enter the Peace Corps with the idea, if not the outright goal, that they might eventually become…
The Variety of a Foreign Service Career: Bananas, Beaches, and a Plane
Robert Reis, a longtime State Department official, is a perfect example of how far one can come from the American…
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.…
To Aid, or Not to Aid—Breaking the Feudal System in Developing Nations
Fifty billion dollars. That is the most recent figure for U.S. yearly spending on foreign aid. However, even though this…
“Am I Going to Watch a U.S. Senator Get Shot?”—Observing the Fall of the Marcos Regime in the Philippines
Senator John Kerry bravely pushed aside armed hostile Philippine military personnel and policemen, rushing into the barricaded church in front…
Soft Power in a Cold War: Challenges of Reaching out to the Soviets
The “Iron Curtain” was a term used to denote the efforts of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to block…
Mission Unspeakable: When North Koreans Tried to Kill the President of South Korea
On October 9, 1983, while South Korean President Chun Doo-Hwan was on a visit to Rangoon, Burma to lay a…
Thailand’s Bloodless Coups d’état
When a country undergoes internal conflict and something as dramatic as a coup d’etat, the results can often lead to…
Sputnik, The Ugly American, and the Push to Improve FSI Language Training
In the depths of the Cold War, the USSR in 1957 launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth.…
George Shultz: “Your Country is the United States”
George P. Shultz was Secretary of State for President Reagan from 1982 to 1989, the longest such tenure since Dean…