How I Invented the Peace Corps (Sort Of)
by Gerald Kamens One morning in March 1959, a top secret policy paper appeared on my boss’s desk at Dwight Eisenhower’s Bureau of the Budget—later reborn as the Office of Management and Budget. Its subject: How to counter the Soviet … Read more
First Ambassador with Peace Corps Experience: Parker Borg
by John Coyne
U.S. Ambassadors who Served in the Peace Corps
Editor’s note: This is an unofficial list compiled by John Coyne. Please send any additions or corrections to editor@americandiplomacy.org.
Pioneering an International Urban Development Program
A Frontline Snapshot of USAID History
by Eric Chetwynd, Jr.
How the Peace Corps Transformed the Foreign Service
by John Coyne
The Marshall Plan: Seventy Years Since the Start of a Great Diplomatic Effort
by Thomas E. McNamara
The Surprising Allure of Russian Soft Power
by Nicolai N. Petro
Foreign Service Accounts from the Oral History Archives (ADST.ORG)
Foreign Service Accounts from the Oral History Archives (ADST.ORG) In this issue, we offer two more ADST segments focusing on U.S. international development stories, one on the Marshall Plan and another from USAID officer Carol Peasley. -The Economic Cooperation Act, … Read more
India: Policy Implications for the United States
by Jon P. Dorschner
A Retrospective in Humility Lessons for Young Development Professionals
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
Nuggets of Wisdom
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
Global Adventures on Less-Traveled Roads—A Foreign Service Memoir
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
How the Diplomatic Community Can Help Solve the Health Workforce Crisis
by Pape Gaye, President and CEO of IntraHealth International A few months back, I was in the Dominican Republic, standing before a crowd of government officials, local IntraHealth International staff members, and many others, as we talked about “ghost” workers. … Read more
World War Two Provides the Indo/British Breaking Point
Essay by Jon Dorschner “India at War” (The Subcontinent and the Second World War) by Yasmin Khan, Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom, 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-975349-9, 416 pp., $29.95 (Hardcover). India’s War (World War II and the Making of Modern … Read more
Why the Peace Corps?
by John Coyne On this last day of 2016, I thought I might try and chart the impulses in America that brought about the creation of the Peace Corps–something positive to think about as we wait for 2017–and before all … Read more
Making Peace in Syria: Economic Diplomacy
by Abdallah Al Dardari Aleppo is a landmark in the Syrian conflict and has become the strongest signal of the failure of the western approach to diplomacy and other means of influence to end the conflict. This failure calls for … Read more
The Myth of the Indian Middle Class
by Jon P. Dorschner India is at an economic turning point. The resounding victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 parliamentary elections has largely been viewed by observers as a ringing endorsement of economic … Read more
Making Aid Work by Building Strong Institutions
Observations on aid after over four decades of practicing development in Africa by Mark Wentling Abstract All agree that strong institutions are necessary for the achievement of lasting progress. It is widely recognized that strong institutions are essential for nation-building … Read more
Preserving the Rebalance to the Asia-Pacific Region
By Thomas Donilon, Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Text: http://www.cfr.org/china/keynote-address-obama-china-preserving-rebalance/p33778 Review by Francis P. Sempa, Contributing Editor Thomas Donilon of the Council on Foreign Relations spoke recently at the Brookings Institution about the Obama Administration’s rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region. … Read more
The Return of Antarctica and the Origins and Future of Potential Conflict
by Steve Dobransky
