Dr. Khaled al-Asaad, a Syrian archaeologist and the head of antiquities for the ancient city of Palmyra was publicly beheaded by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2015. This 2002 picture shows al-Asaad in front of a first century sarcophagus from Palmyra. Photograph: Marc Deville/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images.

Moved by the international outcry over ISIS destruction in Iraq and Syria, and with the Syrian state in disarray, the Congress in 2016 enacted emergency legislation to block the importation of illegally acquired Syrian antiquities to the United States. The State Department also began to take a serious interest in the relationship between terrorism and the destruction and trafficking of antiquities.

by Larry Schwartz
Adapted from Newberry Series Lecture at Dacor-Bacon House
Washington, D.C., July 13, 2018

by Eric V. Guichard

by Bob Baker

by Beatrice Camp

by John Coyne

The United Nations designates April 30 as International Jazz Day in order to highlight jazz and its diplomatic role of uniting people in all corners of the globe. The U.S. has used jazz in diplomacy since the 1950s, when the U.S. Information Agency created the Jazz Ambassadors program to send leading American Jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, and Duke Ellington to perform overseas. An exhibit commemorating this program, created by Meridian International Center, is now on view at the U.S. Diplomacy Center in Washington, DC.

by Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) Remarks to the University Continuing Education Association March 28, 2008, New Orleans, Louisiana I want to speak to you this afternoon about diplomacy as an element of statecraft. By now most Americans … Read more

by Yoav J. Tenembaum Let us go back to the year 1969. The then United States President, Richard Nixon, held a meeting with the then Japanese Prime Minister, Eisaku Sato. One of the problems besetting US-Japanese relations at that time … Read more

In connection with the death of noted pianist, Van Cliburn, James Wilson in the State Department’s Historical Division came up with the following 1960 Embassy Moscow dispatch drafted by our colleague Hans Tuch that may be of interest to our readers.

by Yale Richmond

by Robert Baker

The King’s Speech, the film about King George VI, reminds me about the late Queen Mother — his wife and mother of the current Queen Elizabeth — and President Truman. President Nixon in 1972 gave Queen Elizabeth as a state … Read more

by Chas Freeman

by Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr.

Reviewed by Henry E. Mattox

by Henry Mattox

by Henry E. Mattox

Book Review Editor’s Note This special “Intel Issue” reflects the explosion in intelligence historiography and the cornucopia of declassified Soviet and American documents covering the Second World War and the Cold War that began following the end of the Cold … Read more

What about the French, their diplomacy, their diplomats, their Government’s attitudes toward the United States? American Diplomacy is pleased to publish this ground breaking study of French diplomacy based on interviews* with American diplomats going back fifty years. — Assoc. … Read more