In this newly published book and Stearns’ final one – not finished when he died in 2016, but completed by his wife Toni who had accompanied him throughout his Foreign Service career - he (and she) provide a first hand recounting of their relationship with the Papandreou family from their first meeting as neighbors during Stearns initial assignment to Greece to his final meeting with Andreas Papandreou not long before he died. Continue reading

This is just to let you know that we are in the process of moving from the Google Feedburner email subscription service to Feedblitz's. Please be sure to add Feedblitz [email protected] to your list of safe senders to continue receiving our posts. Continue reading

The global rise of women in politics offers new avenues to broaden understanding and strengthen ties between the United States and Africa. New communications technologies can foster peer-to-peer alliances among female political leaders from both sides though ongoing virtual meetings. Women from the local to the highest political levels could meet virtually with counterparts to problem solve and form relationships. A biannual Women Political Leaders Forum designed to bring together all participants – both virtually and in-person - would review best practices and challenges overcome as well as expand long term people to people ties among peers across the two continents. Continue reading

This is not a time for those with a superiority complex to wallow in an electoral victory whose tender underside is the fear that Trump’s followers can’t be weaned from their hero. It’s time to take a page from the Biden playbook. Concentrate on policies that will help working class America . Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. And respect. Real jobs in the real world for fellow Americans—and policies that actually produce them. Good solid work well publicized. And quelling the covid monster. Continue reading

What did Trump know and when did he know it? Why was Trump reportedly passively watching on television the events unfold on Capitol Hill yet refusing to order the DC, Maryland and Virginia National Guards to help the overrun Capitol and DC police forces stop the violence as his angry and deluded mob attacked Congress? Why didn’t he accompany the people on their march to the Hill as he had promised? And why is Trump so desperate to remain in office when he makes it so obvious that he doesn’t like the job, that he is in way over his head and his performance has been an abject failure? Continue reading

The advent of the AfCFTA completely transforms trade between Africa and rest of the world. The United States must now forge an innovative and robust business relationship with Africa, with the goal of an eventual FTA. The new AfCFTA offers immeasurable development opportunities for Africa -- an upsurge of American companies will mean increased capital flows, technology transfer, employment opportunities and access to the US market, and much more for Africans. And, it will open markets for American companies across the continent that were previously too difficult to access. In so doing, it will create US jobs, augment US overseas markets and boost revenue flowing back to the United States. Continue reading

The Department of State’s organizational structure has not kept pace with a rapidly changing world. Issues, inventions and circumstances in the 21st century – globalization, terrorism, disease, information technology and cyber threats, climate change, energy security and more – require an institution that can respond rapidly to unanticipated challenges through innovative, pragmatic policies. These new policies must be firmly rooted and integrated in a well-organized and nimble administrative bureaucracy if they are to succeed. Providing the underpinnings for the conduct of an effective 21st century foreign policy can only be achieved with the full-scale reform of the State Department’s management structure. Such reform is imperative – not only to comply with modern organizational practices and controls – but for the success of America’s foreign relations worldwide. Continue reading

The Peace Corps should transform into a two-track organization. Peace Corps missions overseas would administer both the in-country and virtual programs. Peace Corps headquarters in Washington would recruit for, and support, both programs. In this way, a venerable institution could continue on its successful and traditional path, while simultaneously moving into the 21st century. Continue reading

We call on America - and Americans - to stand with countries less able than ours, even as we continue to fight the pandemic here at home. The Trump Administration should request and Congress should provide immediate and robust humanitarian funding to USAID for the best chance of curbing the virus and preventing hunger and economic devastation. Individual Americans who are able to give should support organizations with global logistical reach as well as small, locally-connected non-profits with the relationships and structure to reach remote communities directly. As Boube reminds us, people everywhere are striving to stay healthy and maintain their livelihoods; it is in the interest of those fortunate enough to have more to bolster those with less so we all survive. Continue reading

So my question is not just how can the state of State be righted but also how can the disheveled state of the union be restored once mad King Lear is out of the White House by whatever way it occurs. Continue reading

A little-noticed decision by the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, handed down May 10, 2019, has implications for Foreign Service Selection Boards’ record keeping practices, going into the 2019 promotion cycle. The decision in Figueroa v. Pompeo, case no. 18-5064 (D.C. Cir. May 10, 2019), will require future promotion boards to document on an individual basis the reason(s) why a candidate has been denied promotion. Continue reading

Just days before the Trumps descent upon the Royals, he was taken off balance by a nine minute very public made-for-television recap of the Mueller report by its chief author. Mueller’s words did not clear Trump of obstruction of justice and did not state that he and/or his nearest and dearest advisors had not conspired with Moscow to rig the 2016 elections. What it said was that there were numerous accounts of likely obstruction but that because of a Department of Justice ruling, Mueller could or would not indict him. That was Congress’ job. Continue reading

Every time I see a poll asserting that 85% or some high percentage of GOP voters support Trump or a Trump administration policy, I say to myself – that’s not surprising but shouldn’t 85% of a declining number of supporters be the real story? Yet the stories often ignore a decline that has been underway over the last decade perhaps because the current figures are not as readily available as they should be. Yet, since 2009 or thereabouts, we know that Independents have comprised the largest group of American voters. Democrats are second. Republicans are third. Continue reading

The overall picture Unger portrays is one of the US president tethered to the Russian mafia which is tethered to Vladimir Putin and his Russian security services. The late Karen Dawisha described the Putin-oligarch-mafia connections accurately in her 2014 book Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia as a mafia state. . . .More importantly what makes this book worth reading is his careful assembling of the many pieces of this still unraveling story into a well written, searing and coherent fashion. Continue reading

On Monday, July 16, Donald Trump is scheduled to meet one-on-one with Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin. I could suggest that Trump is salivating for this meeting on the Baltic although why he wants it so much, remains unclear. Is it the prestige of meeting face to face in an hour long meeting a deux with another male autocrat for whom he has a special affinity? It doesn’t take that long for a photo op after all. Normally, as former Ambassador Nicholas Burns observed in a PBS Newshour interview Friday evening, the principals are well prepared and the topics of such meetings are clearly defined and set out in advance. Continue reading

Trump’s own brand of transactional diplomacy, however, is different. For him, it’s a narrow and personally based world view couched in bluster and incendiary Tweets sent at weird hours of the night but what’s different is that it’s not designed to further or even support US national goals and objectives – those don’t matter. Rather it’s designed to enrich Trump and/or his company and children personally. Much diplomacy – especially bilateral - has its roots in transaction: the goal is to see that both countries maximize their objectives. Essentially, it’s ‘I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine.’ But it’s government to government not government to the bank account of an individual official. That, however, is not how Trump operates. Continue reading

Much has been written about American Soviet experts George Kennan and Charles Bohlen but knowledge of their contemporary, the more reserved Llewellyn E. Thompson had all but disappeared from view until his daughters, Jenny and Sherry Thompson published his biography earlier this year – a work 15 years in the making. It is painstakingly researched and draws upon multiple, often primary, sources from now unclassified documents, diplomatic oral histories from the American Diplomatic Studies and Training collection, interviews with contemporaries as well as letters and photographs from their own personal archives – all coherently presented in a single 477 page volume plus copious end notes and a substantial bibliography that documents the meticulous work presented throughout the book. Continue reading

By Patricia H Kushlis Let me get this straight. President Trump is planning to renege on the Iran nuclear deal but is pressing all steam ahead on a perhaps nuclear deal with North Korea. Is that correct? Something doesn’t compute.... Continue reading

In short, a policy singularly reliant upon the 21st century’s equivalent of gun boat diplomacy is unlikely to succeed in the long run. If that, in fact, is what American foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific has come to be. I’d like to know. Continue reading

"Sometimes you need a rat to catch a rat” is the concluding shot fired in Drew Magary’s GQ article on January 5, 2017 in which he argues that if Trump refuses to abide by the standard (and now useless) “norms” of the presidency. . . why should anyone in the press adhere to needless norms of their own.” Magary also argues that Michael Wolff was one of very few people to grasp that reality. Well yes. Wolff was also one of the few people to realize that the Trump and his White House staff failed to recognize a basic rule of journalism that when talking to a journalist be sure the ground rules are set beforehand. Even if the rules are clear, be careful what you say. And for heaven’s sake, vet the journalist’s reputation beforehand. Continue reading

Yes, the State Department does need reform. A part of that should include a re-examination of the Foreign Service Act of 1980 - now nearly 40 years old - but it needs to be done by people who know what they’re doing and who have the support of a capable Secretary with the backing of a capable White House. None of which exist today. Continue reading

At long last the US – albeit thanks to a few NGOs – has begun to make public the unabated Russian disinformation campaign which engulfed last year’s American elections and continues today. The Kremlin’s helpers primarily boosted and continue to bolster the pro-Trump message aimed at the largely under-educated American political far right. But more insidiously the Russian campaign has been designed to challenge democratic governance in the eyes of the world including and not unimportantly among Russia’s own domestic audience in the run up to the Russian Federation's own presidential election on March 18, 2018. The Kremlin’s American campaign is a mix of propaganda and disinformation and it is part and parcel of Russia’s cyber warfare against the West – its goal is to upend Europe and the US and thereby eliminate the economic sanctions against Moscow which were enacted after Russia illegally invaded Crimea and then Eastern Ukraine in 2014. Continue reading

Helen Rappaport’s Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd, Russia, 1917 – A World On Edge provides a different vantage point of the Communist Revolution that engulfed this huge country and changed the course of the world after October 1917 from other accounts that I’ve previously read. Continue reading