In 1972, a group of Palestinian terrorists shocked the world by kidnapping eleven Israeli athletes during the Summer Olympics in…
Rolling Thunder: Behind the Fog of War
The call by South Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Khánh on July 19, 1964 to expand the Vietnam conflict led to…
Wives Gone Wild
Every Foreign Service Officer can have a difficult job of navigating cultural differences, memorizing customs and sticking to protocol while…
The Berlin Blockade and Airlift of 1948
Beginning in April 1948, the USSR blocked Western Allies’ access to Berlin as a means of protesting the introduction of…
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe is one of the more controversial figures in Africa. He rose to prominence in the 1960s as the…
Loy Henderson, Mr. Foreign Service
Loy Henderson (1892-1986) is one of the most storied figures in American diplomatic history. Beginning his career in 1922, he…
Kissinger and Lord in China: A How-To Guide for Secret Negotiations
At the height of the Cold War, with the death toll mounting in Vietnam and the split between the USSR…
Somalia — From Great Hope to Failed State
While today the mention of Somalia may conjure up images of a destitute nation run by warlords, such was not…
Marquita Maytag: The Shrew of Kathmandu
Nepal is a small mountainous country in South Asia, bordered by India and the Tibetan autonomous region of China, which…
Sound and the Fury — The 1954 Geneva Conference on Vietnam and Korea
In April 1954, amidst growing tensions regarding the situation in the Korean Peninsula and Indochina, the international community convened a…