The Helsinki Final Act, an agreement signed by 35 nations at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE)…
Negotiating the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT)
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…
Teaching the Foreign Service to Speak Foreign Languages
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the primary training institution to prepare American diplomats to advance U.S. foreign affairs interests,…
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…
Bombing North Vietnam into Accepting Our Concessions: Christmas Bombings, 1972
President Richard Nixon ordered plans for retaliatory bombings of North Vietnam after talks to end the war in Vietnam broke…
The Overthrow of Haiti’s Aristide
Haiti has long been plagued by coups d’état and regime changes, leading to long-time political instability and weak governance. In…
Lesley Dorman and the Founding of FLO
Lesley Tanburn Dorman devoted her life to her own family and to her wider family – the Foreign Service. Her…
The Siberian Seven: Escaping Religious Persecution in the U.S.S.R.
From its inception, the Soviet Union became the first state in the world to actively attempt to eliminate religion from society.…
“How many people can you fit on a 747?”- Operations Sheba and Solomon
The Ethiopian Aliyah, as it is known in Israel, was the migration during the 1980’s of thousands of Ethiopian Jews…