Due to rising concern about radioactive fallout from increasingly big nuclear tests underwater, in space, in the atmosphere and underground,…
Chipping Away at Czechoslovak Communism: The Helsinki Final Act and Charter 77
The Solidarity Movement. Perestroika and Glasnost. The fall of the Berlin Wall. All of these movements, policies, or events had…
Peloponnesian Pilgrimage: An Idyll with the King and Queen of Greece
It was the wife of the U.S. Ambassador to Greece, John Peurifoy (seen right), who gave him the sobriquet “Pistol…
Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship: The 1951 Treaty of Peace with Japan
The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed by 48 nations on September 8, 1951, officially ended Japan’s position as an imperial power,…
The ACDA-USIA Merger into State — The End of of an Era
As the Cold War began to go into full swing, the United States soon realized the need for distinct agencies…
Algeria’s Struggle for Independence
The modern-day People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria is now a proud, sovereign state in North Africa that readily influences the…
Kleptocracy and Anti-Communism: When Mobutu Ruled Zaire
Born to a modest family, Joseph-Desiré Mobutu prospered in the Force Publique, the army of the Belgian Congo. Mobutu became…
Virtual Student Foreign Service Interns 2016-2017
Blair Boyd Blair is a senior linguistics major at Macalester College in Minnesota. She hopes to use this internship as…
Resolving the Czechoslovak Gold Dispute
As the Third Reich annexed the Sudetenland and Poland and the German war machine pushed through the Eastern Front towards…
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea — The CIA Mission to Raise a Soviet Sub
In March 1968, a K-129 Soviet nuclear submarine cruising in the Pacific Ocean mysteriously disappeared from Russian radar. Following an…