Robert H. Stern’s life as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) took him in many different directions all across the globe.…
Keeping the Skies Open: Defending the Open Skies Treaty
The checkered history between Russia and the United States was arguably the most transformational relationship for world events in the…
A City Torn Apart: Americans in Berlin
A U.S. army tank manned by a defecting soldier crashed straight through a Berlin Wall checkpoint manned by Russian troops.…
“Dining is the Soul of Diplomacy”
Lord Palmerston, a former British prime minister and three time foreign minister, once famously noted, “Dining is the soul of…
An Unconventional Leader—Pope Francis Transforms the Vatican
White smoke billowed from the Vatican, indicating that the College of Cardinals had cast their ballots. Jorge Mario Bergolgio, a…
The Felix Bloch Affair: An Unsolved Case of Cold War Espionage
In 1989, French counterintelligence agents watched Felix Bloch as he dined in Paris with known Soviet spy “Pierre Bart.” Bloch…
The Aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis in Indonesia
During the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, confidence in the Indonesian government plummeted. Foreign investment fled the country as the value…
Stephen Thuransky’s 1947 Escape from Hungarian Political Police
Stephen T. Thuransky was arrested for calling the president of Hungary an obscene name. Communist Hungary in 1947 was a…
“She’s Not a Woman, She’s a Diplomat”—Navigating Saudi Arabia in the 1980s
A car full of armed guards trailed after Janice Bay as she defiantly walked down the gate-lined road away from…
The Struggle for Equal Rights: LGBTQ Advocacy in the Foreign Service
While working at the U.S. embassy in Seychelles in 1985, David Buss fell in love with a Peace Corps volunteer,…