The American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) has issued a report, “At the Breaking Point” documenting the destructive measures taken against the Foreign Service and Foreign Service officers. Here is the executive summary of the report. •

Notes of an S&T officer ACDA In 1982 after my INR assignment, I took an assignment in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), which was not part of the State Department.  ACDA was an independent agency created by President Kennedy in 1961; it was abolished in 1999.  According to Wikipedia, its mission was to…

Trump’s decision to sue the WSJ for $10 billion is typical Trump, all bluster and publicity, no substance.  No new information about Epstein, just a threat, “If you question me, I will destroy you!”  For Trump, the law is a weapon, not a means of doing justice.  That’s how he sees it when he is…

The personnel cuts at the State Department have hit people working on science and technology particularly hard.  As a retired Foreign Service officer who spent a lot of time working on science and technology issues, I am not surprised.  I was also disappointed that State cut several civil service experts in the Bureau of Intelligence…

Fedscoop reports that at the State Department, impacted science and tech workers and department formers say the loss of knowledge threatens to impair the agency’s science and technology diplomacy. ByMadison Alder Areduction-in-force at the Department of State on Friday cut more people in science and technology bureaus than previously expected, casting uncertainty over the future…

Ian Bremmer comments on the usefulness of nuclear weapons. Does acquiring nuclear weapons make your country safer? It’s a difficult question. On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer looks back to the 1990s and a tale of two radically different nuclear—Ukraine and North Korea. Ukraine inherited the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal after the Soviet collapse. They gave them up…