Remembering VietnamFollowing is the first in a series of personal reminiscences by U.S. Foreign Service personnel who served in Vietnam, primarily during the United States’ heavy involvement in the war. The series, developed by Editorial Advisory Board member Bart Moon, … Read more

American Diplomacy takes pleasure in offering to its readers an article of considerable interpretive importance by the military historian Alex Roland. Prepared for and presented at the Summary Conference on the Study of War held in June 1997 under the … Read more

A century-long era without a major war, as from the Congress of Vienna to the Guns of August, it has not been. We have seen, nonetheless, a blessedly long run of international peace between the major powers in our own … Read more

German Security Policy in the 1990s By Robert H. Dorff Introduction1 he foreign policy of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) has been “exceptional” from the time the country was founded in 1949. This exceptionalism has been well documented and … Read more

Editor’s note: The following commentary, prepared under the auspices of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, Pa., fits well into the category of controversial inquiry offered by Curt Jones in the previous ‘issue’ of American Diplomacy. Jones, a former senior … Read more

“How is the United States to avoid taking matters into its own hands and becoming the world’s policeman if multinational institutions fail to do the job?”   BURUNDI   by J. R. Bullington   L i k e  R w a … Read more

The United States and the in World Affairs: Room Enough for Two? By Jerrold I. Berke P erhaps no other international organization is as well known in the United States as the United Nations. Nevertheless, though its name is instantly … Read more

Cold War Diplomatic Negotiations A Personal Recollection by J. Edgar Williams I n early 1953, I finished my year as a Fulbright scholar in New Zealand and headed home. I teamed up with three other Americans who also had been … Read more

by Keith Moon

We take pleasure in presenting the following commentary drawn from remarks made 11 February 1997 at a meeting of the English Speaking Union at Southern Pines, North Carolina, by a former U.S. ambassador to two Central African nations. His remarks … Read more

The following commentary, written originally for readers of French by a former member of the U.S. Foreign Service now retired in France, addresses an obviously controversial topic. These musings were occasioned by the publication of an article by Mead Jennings … Read more

As our readers will note elsewhere in this issue of American Diplomacy, Roy M. Melbourne led an event-filled life as a U.S. Foreign Service officer from 1936 to 1971. Not least of those experiences, which he recounts in his autobiography, … Read more

by Curtis F. Jones “In an imperfect world, terrorism, like war, is a necessary evil.”  On July 20, 1944, a massive conspiracy against Adolf Hitler culminated in the explosion of a bomb at his headquarters in Rastenburg. Hitler escaped with … Read more

by Richard H. Kohn

Are We Seeing the Twilight of Professional Diplomacy? The Money Crunch A C C O R D I N G   T O   N E W S reports, the U. S. military establishment, 1.2 million people strong, costs some $246 … Read more

Mr. Kennedy, director of the Foreign Affairs Oral History Program based at the Foreign Service Institute outside Washington, DC, and a retired Foreign Service officer, has provided American Diplomacy the following description of the Program and its offerings, along with … Read more

by Ronald D. F. Palmer I. History of Recent TimesTHIS IS WRITTEN IN 1996, one year after the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II was widely celebrated in the United States and Europe. The Asians marked the … Read more

by Matthew M. Oyos

by Robert H. Dorff WITH THE PUBLICATION of A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement in July 1994, the Clinton Administration formally articulated the United States strategic objective of “protecting, consolidating and enlarging the community of free market democracies” … Read more

by Roy M. Melbourne