Author: James Chamberlin

The Foreign Service Journal reran an article by former Secretary of State George Shultz. He said: Our relations with much of the rest of the world also have become characterized by distrust bordering on hostility, even in the way Washington deals with close allies in Europe and Asia. We are…

I served in the Foreign Service with George Moose, who according to NBC News, is under fire by DOGE for his role as the head of the US Institute of Peace. The article says: The lawsuit — which was brought by the Institute of Peace and members of the board and…

Trump’s refusal to support our traditional military allies, as well as Ukraine, has created unease about their reliance on the US nuclear umbrella, explained in this op-ed in the New York Times. More countries are considering developing their own nuclear weapons, unsetting decades of efforts to prevent their proliferation. America’s European…

While there appear to be some good Russian writers uner Putin’s rule, according to Izba Arts, there don’t appear to be any great writers like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, or Pasternak. Putin has been more successful in snuffing out the life of the mind in Russia than previous Tsarist or Communist…

 believe that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is in danger, and not just from the random missiles and drones that fall on Kyiv each night. If Putin succeeds in taking over Ukraine years after he first attempted to, he will wnt to get rid of Zelenskyy, who is a potential rallying point…

Richard Haass’ Home and Away publication noted the passing of Foreign Service Officer Frank Wisner, and the related diminution of the Foreign Service as an institution. Haass wrote: Frank’s death is not just a personal loss for me, the passing of a friend and colleague I both liked and respected.…

In the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) files, Steve Dachi’s Foreign Service oral history relates the story of his identifying the escaped Nazi Josef Mengele’s corpse in Sao Paulo, Brazil. At that time I was the science officer at the American Embassy in Brasilia, and later visited the…

Shortly after becoming President Trump surrendered to Putin on the terms of the Ukraine war. CNN reported, “Trump offers key concessions to Putin ahead of Ukraine peace talks in Saudi Arabia.” In talks today at the White House, Trump acting as Putin’s representative, tried to get Ze,enskyy to surrender to…

In an interview with Bloomberg, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers called the current Ukraine negotiations beyond Versailles, the oppressive agreement ending World War I that led to World War II. “For the policy of the United States to be blaming the victim for the aggression and then taking the destroyed, highly indebted…

On a routine UN resolution marking the third anniversary of the start of the Ukraine war, the US opposed a reolution condemning Russia for attacking Ukraine that it had supported in previous years, according to the Washington Post. The US was joined in its opposition to the G-7 sponsored resolution…