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32. USIA Films that failed in Africa
- Author:
- Bob Baker
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- While many films made by the US Information Agency (USIA) were very useful in Africa to tell about American society and policies, two were not. These two, one about President Kennedy and the other about American agriculture, had the opposite result from that intended. Local African culture distorted the films’ messages.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, Film, Soft Power, and Memoir
- Political Geography:
- Uganda, Africa, North America, and United States of America
33. Tell Me, Miss…
- Author:
- Elizabeth Krijgsman
- Publication Date:
- 04-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- Full disclosure: the Foreign Service was not my first choice of career. I was in college back in the Dark Ages when unmarried women’s business cards said “Miss,” women were called “girls,” and pantyhose hadn’t yet been invented. When it dawned on me that I might not be getting married right after graduation, I began to think seriously about what kind of career I wanted. I decided that it would ideally involve a lot of free time. It would of course pay well. And I thought it would be very nice if it involved travel to exotic places. Being fond of indoor plumbing and not fond of physical labor, I immediately eliminated the Peace Corps as a possibility. During the summer after my junior year in college, I realized—I should become a Diplomatic Courier! Lots of down time on airplanes. Constant travel to those exotic locales. Staying in luxury hotels. Decent pay. And almost no actual work!
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Women, and Memoir
- Political Geography:
- North America and United States of America
34. James and the Moscow Goons
- Author:
- Peter Bridges
- Publication Date:
- 04-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- Putin’s recent expulsion of hundreds of our colleagues serving at our embassy and consulates in Russia reminded me of my own service in Moscow in the 1960s. You may call this ancient history, though it doesn’t seem so ancient to me. Stalin had been in his grave for a decade, and dear Nikita Khrushchev was now in charge. Under Stalin, two and a half million people had been prisoners in the deadly Gulag camps. Thousands of poor haggard people had been released, and some of the system’s more notable deceased victims were even “posthumously rehabilitated.” The Gulag had officially been closed down in 1960—but an estimated three-quarters of a million inhabitants of the USSR were still in the horrid camps. And nothing had been done to lessen the role of the KGB, at least so far as we could see.
- Topic:
- Cold War, Diplomacy, Economy, and Memoir
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Soviet Union, North America, and United States of America
35. Getting to Know Jane Goodall
- Author:
- Ralph Bresler
- Publication Date:
- 09-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- My wife Barbara and I, and our children, were fortunate to work closely with Dr. Jane Goodall during our 1987-1991 tour in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In 1989 Goodall called on Secretary of State James Baker in order to enlist him in her new cause of trying to save chimpanzees in the wild. After discussing her many years of groundbreaking chimpanzee research in Gombe, Tanzania, Goodall explained that, in addition to destruction of habitat, a major problem was the bushmeat trade. She noted that ten adult chimps were killed in the wild protecting every infant captured, and only one out of ten infant chimps survived the journey to the marketplace after being taken from their mothers. Secretary Baker offered the Department’s assistance to her effort. As the largest chimpanzee population was in the DRC, Kinshasa was her first stop in this new endeavor.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, Environment, and Memoir
- Political Geography:
- Africa, North America, United States of America, and Democratic Republic of Congo
36. “We Found Ourselves Living in the Midst of a Battlefield”: The Experiences of the U.S. Consulate General in Warsaw on the Outbreak of World War II September 1939
- Author:
- David A. Langbart
- Publication Date:
- 04-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- As a result of the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the U.S. consulate general in Warsaw and its staff faced extraordinary circumstances. The Department of State included a brief overview of those experiences in a background report on wartime hazards faced by the Foreign Service during the period before the United States entered World War II. The extreme nature of what the consulate general’s staff faced are such, however, that it is worth presenting the full report of Consul General John K. Davis. Written from Oslo, Norway, after evacuation to that city, Davis’s despatch provides a detailed and evocative description of the events and occurrences that befell the staff in Warsaw. The ordeal was great. As the Consul General noted, “for all practical purposes we found ourselves living in the midst of a battlefield.”
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, History, World War II, and Memoir
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Poland, North America, and United States of America
37. Abraham Lincoln, Hillary Clinton, and Liu Xiaobo
- Author:
- Beatrice Camp
- Publication Date:
- 11-2018
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- Celebrating the bicentennial birthday of our 16th president seemed like a fairly safe event for our Shanghai consulate to undertake, considering that Abraham Lincoln was popular in China and former President Jiang Zemin was well known for quoting from the Gettysburg Address. And, of course, Lincoln provided us an opening to talk about “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Sometime after we decided on the program, the State Department announced that Hillary Clinton would travel to Beijing on her first trip as Secretary of State to highlight the importance of the U.S.-China relationship for the new administration. Shanghai wasn’t on her itinerary and yet, somehow, our consulate preparations to hold a 200th birthday party for Abraham Lincoln in February 2009 almost threw a wrench into this important SecState visit.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Diplomacy, Government, and Memoir
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, North America, and United States of America
38. Uncle Sam, Matchmaker
- Author:
- Ben East
- Publication Date:
- 12-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- I pictured myself in a Peace Corps-issue hammock on an island somewhere, or crossing high glaciers in the glaring Himalayan sun. Then the recruiter called and offered Malawi. Pointless to remind her what I’d written where the application asked my preference: ‘Anywhere but Africa.’ Before that call, a recruiter—maybe the same recruiter—offered another would-be Volunteer a choice. Would she prefer Nepal, or Malawi? A logical thinker with a Math degree and an Indian heritage, she chose Malawi. ‘I can travel to Nepal on my own any time. When will I travel to Africa outside the Peace Corps?’ So when the recruiter called me, fate was already decided.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, Memoir, and Peace Corps
- Political Geography:
- Africa and Malawi
39. Runs, Hikes, & Cops in Bohemia
- Author:
- Peter Bridges
- Publication Date:
- 01-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- After five good years in our Rome embassy, my family and I were transferred in late 1971 to the American embassy in Prague. This was three years after the Soviet army had crushed Alexander Dubček’s “socialism with a human face.” It had not crushed the Czechs and Slovaks. We made a number of friends; we had never known a people with such a liking for Americans; but the StB, the Státní bezpečnost or state security police, were an oppressive presence. People understandably had their heads under their wings. It was only later, in 1976, that future President Václav Havel and others organized the Charter 77 dissident movement.
- Topic:
- Diplomacy, Sports, Surveillance, and Memoir
- Political Geography:
- Soviet Union, Czech Republic, and United States of America
40. Reminiscences of life under communism: Soviet Show trials
- Author:
- Norma Brown
- Publication Date:
- 01-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- American Diplomacy
- Institution:
- American Diplomacy
- Abstract:
- It was early-1980s Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was known under communism, practically on the doorstep of the collapse of the Soviet Union, but so deep in the slough of communism that nobody would have considered it possible that a monumental change was in the offing. Bustling Moscow, where my then-future husband was serving at the same time, had a reasonable KGB to foreigner ratio. In the backwater of the one-time capital of the Russian Empire, the ratio was out of sight, more than 10-1. Still, it didn’t matter if you had five KGB thugs in black leather jackets dogging your footsteps or fifty. They always got what they wanted in the Soviet Union.
- Topic:
- Communism, Diplomacy, Courts, Surveillance, and Memoir
- Political Geography:
- Russia and Soviet Union