Category: Uncategorized

An article in Foreign Affairs by Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, stresses the importance of a country’s values to its role in international affairs. He says: Foreign policy is often based on three pillars: values, interests, and power. These three elements are key when the balance and dynamics of…

Ian Bremmer’s email regarding Trump’s new National Security Strategy echoes David Brooks’ article about the need for morality in America’s national life. Ian Bremmer writes: What’s most striking to me about this document isn’t any specific policies, but what it reveals about values. Increasingly, the United States and Europe don’t…

David Brooks wrote in the Atlantic: So how can neoconservative thinking help us today? The first big lesson of neoconservatism is that character is destiny. That lesson applies whether you’re talking about the character of a leader, an organization, or a nation. If you disregard truth—as many Republicans plainly do…

In an article in The Atlantic, Amb. Bill Burnes decries the damage done to the Foreign Service and other government institutions by the Trump administration. This is not about reform. It is about retribution. It is about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government. It…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…