Few Americans have met personally with the leadership of both Mao Zedong’s China and Chiang Kai-shek’s Taiwan. Sheila Platt, and…
Never the Twain Shall Meet? Bureaucratic Cultures at USAID and the State Department
The famously contrasting bureaucratic cultures of the State Department and USAID made a sharp impression on Donald Bliss, USAID’s executive…
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…
The Rough Road to Moscow for Malcolm Toon
Malcolm Toon was a fluent Russian speaker and one of the State Department’s top experts on the Soviet Union during…
Richard Solomon, Ping-Pong Diplomat to China
China scholar Richard Solomon, who was an essential component of the “ping-pong diplomacy” that led to the thaw in relations…
The U.S. Incursion into Cambodia
When President Richard Nixon took office in 1969, he and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger vowed to find a way…
A Man for all Transitions: Thomas Reeve Pickering
Considered by many the most accomplished diplomat of his generation, Thomas Reeve Pickering served as U.S. Ambassador to Jordan, Nigeria,…
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…
Looking at the War in the Falklands/Malvinas from Both Sides Now
In 1982 a long-simmering dispute between the United Kingdom and Argentina over a small group of islands – the Falklands…
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…