by Anthony C. E. Quainton TFED Chapel Hill, North Carolina November 30, 2017 These days Generals are thick on the ground in Washington. Not only is the Secretary of Defense a general, but so too are the current and former … Read more

by Ambassador (ret.) Barbara K. Bodine At Minneapolis Council on Foreign Relations Minneapolis, MN November 21, 2017 The News You Have Not Heard On my way here I heard a news report that the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman … Read more

by Patrick Duddy Venezuela remains in crisis. Popular support for the so-called Bolivarian revolution and its socio-economic model known as twenty-first century socialism has eroded dramatically.  Polling suggests there is a near consensus among Venezuelans that conditions are bad and … Read more

by Louis S. Segesvary, Ph.D. To entice tourists and quell the fears of the naïve, Africa is often presented in travel books as a magical destination, where sweeping savannahs and imposing mountain ranges serve as a backdrop to an exotic … Read more

by Lóránd Ujházi1 Because of the current migration crisis the central organizations of the Catholic Church were forced to reflect upon more directly about the humanitarian, pastoral and policy aspects of the refugee issue. However, neither the annual speeches delivered … Read more

by Rachel Ansley Reprinted with permission from The Atlantic Council. http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/publications/reports/state-department-reform-report A new Atlantic Council report (www.atlanticcouncil.org/ publications/reports/ state-department-reform-report) seeks to enhance the US State Department’s effectiveness recommends, among other things, a more results-oriented budget and streamlined foreign aid. A key recommendation is … Read more

by Jon P. Dorschner

The secretary of State’s plan to eliminate or merge several high-profile positions has many supporters. by Krishnadev Calamur Reprinted with permission from The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/tillerson-special-envoys/538377/ When news reports surfaced this week that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson intended to eliminate … Read more

by Elizabeth Knight My professional path has been a winding one, with turns that have taken me places I never imagined. Looking back on over a decade in international development, there is much I have learned and even more that … Read more

by Robert Cox

by Ambassador (ret.) Robert Pearson The Character of Democracy “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This famous opening line from Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is important also for democracies. While Turkey and … Read more

by Marc Grossman Reprinted with permission from the author and YaleGlobal Online. http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/increasingly-authoritarian-world-can-people-embrace-enlightenment-20WASHINGTON: Many US Presidents since John F. Kennedy have cited the Enlightenment as the foundation for America’s constitutional system and the values which the United States and the … Read more

by Erika Weinthal

by Amb. Chas W. Freeman, Jr., (USFS, Ret.) Senior Fellow, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University 6 April 2017, Providence, Rhode Island “With appreciation for the assistance of the American Academy of Diplomacy <academy@academyofdiplomacy.org> we offer … Read more

AFSA President’s Views by Barbara Stephenson Reprinted with permission from American Foreign Service Association. http://www.afsa.org/building-enduring-support-foreign-service As I begin my second term as AFSA president, having been elected on a platform of continuing the work begun two years ago by the … Read more

This article is adapted from a draft of a forthcoming book U.S Counterterrorism efforts, from Nixon to Bush. (CPC Press/Taylor&Francis Group). Ambassador (rtd) Edward Marks and Michael B Kraft are also co-authors of U.S. Counterterrorism: A Guide to Who Does … Read more

Review by Benjamin East
Global Adventures on Less-Traveled Roads—A Foreign Service Memoir by James R. Bullington. Published 2017. Create Space Independent Publishing. 334 pp ISBN: 10:1540790398

Stranger Things Have Happened
by Joe Renouard, Ph.D.

Reflections personal and historical
by Professor Michael H. Hunt

Did He Violate the President’s Instructions?
Chapter 2 of Foreign Vistas: Stories from a Life in the Foreign Service
by William Sommers