James Cox knew that Soviet officers would stonewall a foreigner like him, but there was a chance that regular soldiers…
Long Before He Headed the CIA, James Woolsey Challenged Paul Nitze Over the Vietnam War
For a young lieutenant to challenge the number two man in the Department of Defense over Vietnam policy in 1969…
Getting Mexico to the NAFTA Negotiating Table
U.S. diplomats who helped lay the groundwork for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) first had to overcome entrenched…
Sound, Fury, Brilliance & Booze: Faulkner in Post-War Japan
William Faulkner, among the most decorated writers in American literature with the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize…
Raymond Hare: Our Man in Cairo during WWII
Egypt and the Suez Canal became a point of global strategic interest during WWII because of the quick access the…
Edward Elson: Entrepreneurial Ambassador to Denmark
The fall of the Soviet Union upset long-established power dynamics, leaving East and Central Europe, in particular, in uncharted waters.…
The Lion King of Swaziland
King Sobhuza II was proclaimed King of Swaziland at the age of four months and would rule for 83 years,…
Harold Saunders: The Original “Peace Processor”
Born in Philadelphia, Harold “Hal” Saunders graduated from Princeton and Yale before serving in the U.S. Air Force. After working…
Revolutionizing Public Diplomacy: U.S. Embassy Tokyo in the 1970s
The goal of public diplomacy (PD) is defined as supporting the achievement of U.S. foreign policy goals and objectives, advancing…
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…