After the collapse of the USSR, Kyrgyzstan, despite its isolation and lack of development, was considered to be one of…
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…
China’s Fight for Tiny Islands — The Taiwan Straits Crises, 1954-58
Recent disagreements over Beijing’s claim to the South China Seas (in which a tribunal constituted under the UN Convention on the…
Bad Blood: The Sino-Soviet Split and the U.S. Normalization with China
In the 1960s, in the depths of the Cold War, the world was viewed in terms of a zero-sum game:…
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…
Hong Kong Returns to China, Part II
As the formal handover of Hong Kong to China approached, many grew concerned about Beijing’s intentions. Tens of thousands of…
Getting on the Seoul Train — The 1988 Summer Olympic Games
The Olympic Games represent the height of sporting diplomacy, with thousands of athletes transcending politics for two weeks as they…
Politics, Pinatubo and the Pentagon: The Closure of Subic Bay
The closure of Naval Base Subic Bay, the U.S. Navy’s massive ship-repair, supply, and rest and recreation facility in the…
The Battle to Create the Foreign Service Institute
The art of diplomatic relations and negotiations is as old as civilization itself. However, the State Department did not have…
Beijing Spring and the Lead-up to Tiananmen Square
The iconic image of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and brutal government crackdown on the peaceful demonstrators is that of the…