Insight and Analysis from Foreign Affairs Practitioners and Scholars
Established 1996 • Raymond F. Smith, Editor
by Robert Baker Vienna was snowed in when I first visited there in 1972. Twenty years later I was back in Vienna to relax and to direct the Regional Program Office’ excellent staff. Then Moscow melted and the Office had … Read more
by Peter Bridges Back in the late 1950s, when Stalin was not long gone and the Soviet state remained our militarily powerful and dangerous adversary, the State Department’s basic office for dealing with the Russians was a Soviet desk composed … Read more
by William Sommers Budapest During the 2009 holidays I sent a greeting card—along with a short poem—to an old friend—Andras Baltazar—in Budapest with whom I worked on local environmental projects in Hungary in the early 90s. I wasn’t sure that … Read more
by Mirco Reimer “In the 1990s, we thought we had the magic formula for everything. We were rich and invincible, and even Germany was expected to do what we wanted” – Stephen M. Walt, professor at Harvard University, on the … Read more
by Bob BakerVienna was snowed in when I first visited there in 1974. Twenty years later I was back in Vienna to relax and to direct the Regional Program Office’ excellent staff. Then Moscow melted and the Office had huge … Read more
By Erik Brattberg, resident fellow, the Atlantic Council http://nationalinterest.org/feature/could-the-ukraine-crisis-reboot-nato-10279 Reviewed by James L. Abrahamson, contributing editor Writing for the National Interest, Brattberg sees the crisis brought on by Russia’s seizure of Crimea as “both a tremendous challenge and a tremendous … Read more
By Ambassador (Ret) Thomas Pickering Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05E2_Vkt5KI&list=UUPssYbwV8FFSw_ZbhBV5X3Q Review by Michael W. Cotter The Richard N. Krasno Distinguished Professorship in History & International Affairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, now held by Professor Klaus Larres, hosts a … Read more
By David Cameron, Prime Minister of Great Britain Text: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/eu-meeting-on-ukraine-david-camerons-speech Review by David T. Jones In a concise speech on March 6th to the European Union (EU), British Prime Minister David Cameron addressed all of the pertinent realities regarding Ukraine. … Read more
The Premises of the Breakdown of the Communist System by Dr. Morris M. Mottale In 1965, the Polish philosopher and academician Adam Schaff, at that time a high ranking member of the Communist intelligentsia, published a book entitled Marxism and … Read more
by Walter R. Roberts In 1960, the United States Information Agency (USIA) where I was then responsible for American information and cultural programs in Central and Eastern Europe assigned me as Public Affairs Officer to the American Embassy in Belgrade, … Read more
by Yale Richmond The participating States… Make it their aim to facilitate freer movement and contacts, individually and collectively, whether privately or officially, among persons, institutions and organizations of the participating States, and to contribute to the solution of the … Read more
Review by Csaba T. Chikes
Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum, Anchor Reprint, 2013, ISBN-13: 978-1400095933, 640 pp.
by William Sommers
American Writers Who Were Diplomats by William Sommers The Writer as Diplomat – his dispatches read like a continued short story March 4, 1841 was the coldest – and totally unheated – inauguration day in U.S. history. Among its victims … Read more
by Steve Dobransky