"Emperor Dead" and Other Historic American Diplomatic Dispatches

Author: Peter D. Eicher

Publisher: CQ-Roll Call Group Books

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 502

ISBN-13:

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"Emperor Dead" and Other Historic American Diplomatic Dispatches is a collection of more than 250 U.S. dispatches, many previously unpublished. These documents, set in context through the narrative of Peter D. Eicher, were selected for their historical value and offer a unique perspective on U.S. foreign relations and world history. From the Republic's first "despatches" in 1776 to recently declassified Vietnam-era cables, the book features broad historical and geographic coverage by such notable U.S. envoys as Thomas Jefferson on the storming of the Bastille, Frederick Douglass on conditions in Haiti, Joseph P. Kennedy on Britain "on the verge of defeat," and W. Averell Harriman on Vietnam, and such literary envoys as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving. Topics include wars, revolutions, historic discoveries, technical achievements, social issues, and natural disasters.

The American Consul
The American Consul

Author: Charles Stuart Kennedy

Publisher: New Acdemia+ORM

Published: 2015-12-01

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 098643535X

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This definitive study of the U.S. Consular Service examines its history from the Revolutionary War until its integration with the Foreign Service in 1924. As a British colony, Americans relied on the British consular system to take care of their sailors and merchants. But after the Revolution they scrambled to create an American service. While the American diplomatic establishment was confined to the world’s major capitals, U.S. consular posts proliferated to most of the major ports where the expanding American merchant marine called. Mostly untrained political appointees, each consul was a lonely individual relying on his native wits to provide help to distressed Americans. Appointments were often given to accomplished authors, with notable members including Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fennimore Cooper, William Dean Howells, Bret Harte, and the cartoonist Thomas Nast. Briefly traces the history of consuls from their creation in Ancient Egypt, this volume sheds light on the significant roles American consuls played throughout history, including in the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War. This second edition continues the narrative to cover World War I, the Greek disaster in Turkey, and the early years of the Weimar Republic.

The Craft of Political Analysis for Diplomats
The Craft of Political Analysis for Diplomats

Author: Raymond F. Smith

Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1597977306

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Until the recent unauthorized release of thousands of classified State Department cables, public attention was rarely drawn to the frequently outstanding political analysis done by American diplomats abroad. The existing literature on diplomacy has heretofore been limited to memoirs of former diplomats and analyses of international affairs by diplomats, academics, and think tanks. The Craft of Political Analysis offers a fresh approach, one that provides a context for interpreting this embassy reporting and a guide to understanding the work that went on behind the scenes to produce it. Author Raymond F. Smith combines a practitioner's personal view of what is required to do good diplomatic political analysis with his understanding of the social conflict and change that informed his work for the State Department. Smith clearly explains everything the Foreign Service candidate or professional, as well as the interested layman, needs to know about crafting political analysis, including how to write for the analyst's intended audience, how to make best use of the intellectual and analytical tools of the trade, what happens when the analyst's views differ from government policy, and why political analysis risks becoming irrelevant, even though it is still urgently needed. In addition, The Craft of Political Analysis for Diplomats features two case studies using legally declassified cables not included in the Wikileaks release. The first is built around four highly restricted Embassy Moscow cables on the collapse of the Soviet Union; the second includes two cables on the Arab-Israeli conflict that received the State Department's highest award for political analysis. Selected for the Diplomats and Diplomacy Series of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST) and DACOR, an organization of foreign affairs professionals.

The Man in the Arena
The Man in the Arena

Author: Rodger Eugene McDaniel

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2018-09-01

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 1640120882

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There was a time when Wyoming and other Rocky Mountain and midwestern states were as likely to elect a liberal Democrat to Congress as they were a conservative Republican. Gale McGee (1915-92) was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1958, at the height of American liberalism. He typified what Teddy Roosevelt called "the man in the arena" and was a major player in the development of America's post-World War II foreign policy and almost every legislative milestone in U.S. history from the 1950s to 1980. McGee's careers as an academic, a senator, and an ambassador spanned World War II, the Red Scare, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the activist Congress of the 1960s. This elegantly conceived biography of a liberal from the conservative rural state of Wyoming offers readers a glimpse into formative political shifts of the twentieth century. The national liberal consensus of the 1960s, in which McGee played a major role, gave the nation Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage, and the right to collective bargaining, as well as landmark civil rights and environmental reforms. That consensus had ended by the mid-1970s as McGee's liberalism would no longer be welcome to represent the Equality State. Moving beyond biography, Rodger McDaniel addresses the significant shift in government and details how the attribution "liberal" became a candidate's epitaph, as widespread distrust of government cast a shadow on the many benefits acquired through the old liberal consensus. McDaniel's insights into the past as well as McGee's experiences in the arena shed unexpected light on the present state of U.S. politics and government.

Prelude to Genocide
Prelude to Genocide

Author: David Rawson

Publisher: Ohio University Press

Published: 2018-10-15

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0821446509

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As the initial US observer, David Rawson participated in the 1993 Rwandan peace talks at Arusha, Tanzania. Later, he served as US ambassador to Rwanda during the last months of the doomed effort to make them hold. Despite the intervention of concerned states in establishing a peace process and the presence of an international mission, UNAMIR, the promise of the Arusha Peace Accords could not be realized. Instead, the downing of Rwandan president Habyarimana’s plane in April 1994 rekindled the civil war and opened the door to genocide. In Prelude to Genocide, Rawson draws on declassified documents and his own experiences to seek out what went wrong. How did the course of political negotiations in Arusha and party wrangling in Kigali, Rwanda, bring to naught a concentrated international effort to establish peace? And what lessons are there for other international humanitarian interventions? The result is a commanding blend of diplomatic history and analysis that is a milestone read on the Rwandan crisis and on what happens when conflict resolution and diplomacy fall short. Published in partnership with the ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series.

Under the Wire
Under the Wire

Author: David Paull NICKLES

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0674041550

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How did the telegraph, a new and revolutionary form of communication, affect diplomats, who tended to resist change? In a study based on impressive multinational research, David Paull Nickles examines the critical impact of the telegraph on the diplomacy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Case studies in crisis diplomacy--the War of 1812, the Trent affair during the U.S. Civil War, and the famous 1917 Zimmermann telegram--introduce wide-ranging thematic discussions on the autonomy of diplomats; the effects of increased speed on decision making and public opinion; the neglected role of clerks in diplomacy; and the issues of expense, garbled text, espionage, and technophobia that initially made foreign ministries wary of telegraphy. Ultimately, the introduction of the telegraph contributed to the centralization of foreign ministries and the rising importance of signals intelligence. The faster pace of diplomatic disputes invited more emotional decisions by statesmen, while public opinion often exercised a belligerent influence on crises developing over a shorter time period. Under the Wire offers a fascinating new perspective on the culture of diplomacy and the social history of technology. Table of Contents: Introduction I. Control 1. The Anglo-American Crisis of 1812 2. Diplomatic Autonomy and Telecommunications II. Speed 3. The Trent Affair 4. Speed and Diplomacy 5. Diplomatic Time III. The Medium 6. The Zimmermann Telegram 7. Technical and Economic Factors Conclusion Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Index Reviews of this book: David Paull Nickles has plumbed the archives of four countries to determine just how transformative [the invention of the telegraph] really was. Under the Wire is a subtle and impressive examination of history. --Christian D. Brose, Wall Street Journal In this study of the impact of telegraphy on the management of international relations, the reader is rewarded time and again by finding original observations regarding familiar events. This is a book that can have a shaping effect not only on the field of international relations but on many others, since it compels one to think hard about how changes in technology affect behavior and thought among groups with deeply rooted traditions and beliefs. --Ernest R. May, Harvard University

From Hope to Horror
From Hope to Horror

Author: Joyce E. Leader

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2020-03-01

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 1640123253

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As deputy to the U.S. ambassador in Rwanda, Joyce E. Leader witnessed the tumultuous prelude to genocide—a period of political wrangling, human rights abuses, and many levels of ominous, ever-escalating violence. From Hope to Horror offers her insider’s account of the nation’s efforts to move toward democracy and peace and analyzes the challenges of conducting diplomacy in settings prone to—or engaged in—armed conflict. Leader traces the three-way struggle for control among Rwanda’s ethnic and regional factions. Each sought to shape democratization and peacemaking to its own advantage. The United States, hoping to encourage a peaceful transition, midwifed negotiations toward an accord. The result: a revolutionary blueprint for political and military power-sharing among Rwanda’s competing factions that met categorical rejection by the “losers” and a downward spiral into mass atrocities. Drawing on the Rwandan experience, Leader proposes ways diplomacy can more effectively avert the escalation of violence by identifying the unintended consequences of policies and emphasizing conflict prevention over crisis response. Compelling and expert, From Hope to Horror fills in the forgotten history of the diplomats who tried but failed to prevent a human rights catastrophe.

Raising the Flag
Raising the Flag

Author: Peter Eicher

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2018-06-01

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 1640120408

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Since its inception the United States has sent envoys to advance American interests abroad, both across oceans and to areas that later became part of the country. Little has been known about these first envoys until now. From China to Chile, Tripoli to Tahiti, Mexico to Muscat, Peter D. Eicher chronicles the experience of the first American envoys in foreign lands. Their stories, often stranger than fiction, are replete with intrigues, revolutions, riots, war, shipwrecks, swashbucklers, desperadoes, and bootleggers. The circumstances the diplomats faced were precursors to today’s headlines: Americans at war in the Middle East, intervention in Latin America, pirates off Africa, trade deficits with China. Early envoys abroad faced hostile governments, physical privations, disease, isolation, and the daunting challenge of explaining American democracy to foreign rulers. Many suffered threats from tyrannical despots, some were held as slaves or hostages, and others led foreign armies into battle. Some were heroes, some were scoundrels, and many perished far from home. From the American Revolution to the Civil War, Eicher profiles the characters who influenced the formative period of American diplomacy and the first steps the United States took as a world power. Their experiences combine to chart key trends in the development of early U.S. foreign policy that continue to affect us today. Raising the Flag illuminates how American ideas, values, and power helped shape the modern world.

The Dissent Papers
The Dissent Papers

Author: Hannah Gurman

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2012-01-24

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 0231530358

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Beginning with the Cold War and concluding with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hannah Gurman explores the overlooked opposition of U.S. diplomats to American foreign policy in the latter half of the twentieth century. During America's reign as a dominant world power, U.S. presidents and senior foreign policy officials largely ignored or rejected their diplomats' reports, memos, and telegrams, especially when they challenged key policies relating to the Cold War, China, and the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The Dissent Papers recovers these diplomats' invaluable perspective and their commitment to the transformative power of diplomatic writing. Gurman showcases the work of diplomats whose opposition enjoyed some success. George Kennan, John Stewart Service, John Paton Davies, George Ball, and John Brady Kiesling all caught the attention of sitting presidents and policymakers, achieving temporary triumphs yet ultimately failing to change the status quo. Gurman follows the circulation of documents within the State Department, the National Security Council, the C.I.A., and the military, and she details the rationale behind "The Dissent Channel," instituted by the State Department in the 1970s, to both encourage and contain dissent. Advancing an alternative narrative of modern U.S. history, she connects the erosion of the diplomatic establishment and the weakening of the diplomatic writing tradition to larger political and ideological trends while, at the same time, foreshadowing the resurgent significance of diplomatic writing in the age of Wikileaks.

The World of the Civil War [2 volumes]
The World of the Civil War [2 volumes]

Author: Lisa . Tendrich Frank

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2015-07-28

Total Pages: 747

ISBN-13:

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Covering everything from the arts to food and drink, religion, social customs, and technology, this two-volume set provides an in-depth, accessible look at the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of the American Civil War. The American Civil War caused dramatic changes in every aspect of life and society, affecting combatants and noncombatants at all levels of the socioeconomic scale. The World of the Civil War: A Daily Life Encyclopedia offers an accessible and reliable reference for the major topics that defined American life during the nation's most tumultuous era. Taking a blended approach to history, this book covers the military and political history of the era and examines the social and human experiences of the war, thereby offering a comprehensive look at the Civil War era's most significant events, people, places, and experiences. The thematic organization of this encyclopedia helps readers to more readily explore related topics. The subject matter explored in some 250 entries includes religious beliefs and practices; rites of passage; soldiers' lives and experiences; rural and urban life; social structure of the Civil War era—aristocrats, landowners, and slaves; men's and women's roles and responsibilities; holidays, festivals, and other celebrations; tools, machinery, and inventions; and justice and punishment. Readers will come away with an understanding of many aspects of daily life during the Civil War era and gain appreciation for the vast differences between life today and 150 years ago.