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

Review by David T. Jones

Review by Renee M. Earle
To the Secretary: Leaked Cables and America’s Foreign Policy Disconnect. ISBN 978-0-393-24658-2. W.W. Norton & Company. Mary Thompson-Jones

from She Receives the Night
by Robert Earle

  Diplomacy has been under heavy fire this year. The U.S. president’s policies, appealing to a strongly conservative and nationalist base, have unsettled allies and confused (and perhaps encouraged) adverseries. Our own magazine began its third decade this year facing … Read more

Angola – O dia-a-dia de um embaixador Angola – an ambassador’s daily diary by Ambassador Antonio Pinto da France Edicao de Livros e Revistas, Lisbon 2004 Translation by Ed Marks Selections From the preface I was the third Portuguese ambassador … 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 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

Why Diplomacy American Academy of Diplomacy by Ronald E. Neumann http://www.peoriamagazines.com/ibi/2017/jun/why-diplomacy Permission to reprint courtesy of Ms. Kristin McHugh, Executive Director and It’s essential to the successful pursuit of national security, foreign policy and economic goals. Why should Americans pay … Read more

by Amb. (ret.) William A. Rugh There is an unwritten code of conduct among American diplomats that says they should never say anything that is untrue or inaccurate. They are not required to say everything they know because they must … Read more

by Alison Hodgkins Amid all the controversy over North Korea, Russia, NAFTA, and the Paris Accords, one could argue that President Trump’s continued vacillation over the location of the US mission to Israel is the sole conventional aspect of his … Read more

by David T. Jones There seems to be a new truth that whoever starts a column about Afghanistan, adds the descriptive phrase, “Our longest war.” Or words to that effect. One is not exactly sure why the writers seek to … Read more

Review by Jon Dorschner Jihad as Grand Strategy (Islamist Militancy, National Security, and the Pakistani State) by S. Paul Kapur, Oxford University Press: New York, 2017, ISBN 978-0-19-976852-3, 177 pp., $39.95 (Hardcover). Although the United States was a long-term patron … Read more

Review by Brenda Brown Schoonover A Review of Saved for a Purpose: A Journey from Private Virtues to Public Values, By  James A. Joseph. (Duke University Press, 235 pages ) The author, James A. Joseph defines his book,Saved for a Purpose: A Journey from Private Virtues … Read more

John Lothrop Motley The Witty US Minister to Vienna Chapter 1 of Foreign Vistas: Stories from a Life in the Foreign Service by William Sommers If success in the diplomat’s trade were based solely on education, language facility, mastery of … Read more

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

from ADST
http://adst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Bremer-L.-Paul-1.pdf

by Robert Baker The 1962 Cuban missile crisis and 1964’s Belgian paratroop drop from U.S. C-130s in the Congo were the most interesting events in my five year intelligence career. Lowly intelligence analysts like me working for the U.S. Information … Read more

by William Harrop When I arrived as Chief of Mission to the Republic of Guinea in May 1975, Sekou Touré, the father of “African Socialism”, had been president for 17 years. He had founded a repressive Communist dictatorship. Guinea was … Read more