Download or read book Embassies in Crisis written by Rogelia Pastor-Castro and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Embassies are integral to international diplomacy, their staff instrumental to inter-governmental dialogue, strategic partnerships, trading relationships and cultural exchange. But Embassies are also discreet political spaces. Notionally sovereign territory ‘immune’ from local jurisdiction, in moments of crisis Embassies have often been targets of protest and sites of confrontation. It is this aspect of Embassy experience that this collection of essays explores and Embassies in Crisis revisits flashpoints in the recent lives of Embassies overseas at times of acute political crisis. Ranging across multiple British and other embassy crises, unusually, this book offers equal insights to international historians and members of the diplomatic community.
Download or read book Embassies Under Siege written by Joseph G. Sullivan and published by Potomac Books. This book was released on 1995 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Embassies Under Siege, eyewitnesses present nine representative crises in vivid detail, examining the recurring challenges posed to diplomatic missions. The authors, all career Foreign Service officers, provide more than just frightening firsthand accounts of vulnerable people facing great peril. They also suggest useful lessons for protecting diplomatic personnel abroad. Many of these suggestions have already been implemented, and as old problems continue and new crises develop, the lessons learned from these cases prove invaluable. Through stories of great physical courage, professionalism, and resourcefulness, Embassies Under Siege paints a clear picture of the unique type of individual serving in the Foreign Service today.
Download or read book Embassies in Crisis written by Michael Bar-Zohar and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Crisis in American Diplomacy written by Smith Simpson and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Diplomatic Security Key Oversight Issues written by Michael J. Courts and published by U.S. Government Accountability Office. This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In response to increasing threats to U.S. personnel and facilities at overseas diplomatic posts since 1998, the Department of State (State) has taken a number of steps to enhance its risk management and security efforts. State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security (Diplomatic Security) leads many of these efforts with assistance from other bureaus and U.S. government agencies. Given the ongoing threats and the amount of resources needed to counter them, GAO has identified 11 key issues regarding Diplomatic Security that warrant significant Congressional oversight to monitor the cost, progress, and impact: Diplomatic Security Funding: Diplomatic Security funding has increased considerably in reaction to a number of security incidents overseas and domestically. In fiscal year 2016, total funding for Diplomatic Security operations--which includes its bureau managed funds as well as other funding such as personnel salaries--was almost $4.8 billion. Diplomatic Security Staffing Challenges: Diplomatic Security's workforce--including 3,488 direct-hire, 1,989 other U.S. government, and 45,870 contract personnel--continues to grow. However, potential challenges exist regarding the distribution of domestic and overseas positions, posting fully qualified individuals in the assignments with the greatest needs, and ongoing efforts to fill language-designated positions. Physical Security of U.S. Diplomatic Facilities: Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations collaborate to meet safety standards when constructing new embassies and mitigating risks at existing facilities. However, GAO made recommendations to address gaps in State's security related activities and processes. Physical Security of Diplomatic Residences and Other Soft Targets: State has taken steps to address residential security vulnerabilities and manage risks at schools and other soft targets overseas. However, GAO recommended actions to address weaknesses in State's efforts. Security Training Compliance: While State has robust security training requirements, it lacks consistent monitoring and enforcement processes, particularly for its Foreign Affairs Counter Threat training and for security refresher briefings at posts. Embassy Crisis and Evacuation Preparedness: Gaps in State's implementation and monitoring of crisis and evacuation preparedness could endanger staff assigned to overseas posts and the family members accompanying them. GAO has recommended actions to address these issues. Department of Defense (DOD) Support to U.S. Diplomatic Missions: Following the Benghazi attacks, DOD increased its support to U.S. diplomatic missions by creating dedicated military forces to respond to crises and expanding the Marine Security Guard program at overseas missions. However, State and DOD reported that they have experienced some logistical and other challenges. Dissemination of Threat Information: State has processes for communicating threat information to post personnel and U.S. citizens in-country. However, post personnel--including locally employed staff--have not always received important information in a timely manner. GAO has recommended steps State needs to take to address this concern. Countering Human Intelligence Threats: Foreign intelligence entities from host nations and third parties are motivated to collect information on U.S. operations and intentions. State has established measures to counter the human intelligence threat and works with other U.S. government agencies to identify and assess this threat. Ensuring Information Security: GAO has designated federal information security as a government-wide high-risk area and made recommendations to address these issues. State faces evolving threats and challenges to maintaining obsolete technology, defining clear roles and responsibilities for information security, and overseeing technology contractors. Status of Recommendations Made in Reports following the Benghazi Attack: In response to the Benghazi attack, State formed interagency teams to evaluate the security at 19 dangerous posts, convened an Accountability Review Board (ARB) to investigate the attack, and established panels to conduct further assessments. As of June 2017, State reported having addressed recommendations as follows: 268 of 287 made by the interagency teams, 26 of 29 by the ARB, and 64 of 75 by the panels. Terrorist attacks against U.S. diplomats and personnel overseas have led to increased attention of State's diplomatic security efforts. In this special publication, GAO identifies key issues affecting Diplomatic Security for Congressional oversight. These issues were identified from a body of related GAO work and State and other reports. GAO also interviewed U.S. officials from State and other agencies to obtain their views on key issues, obtain updated information and data, and follow up on actions they have taken on past GAO and other oversight report recommendations. What GAO Recommends: While State has taken steps to close recommendations made in past GAO reports, GAO identified 27 open recommendations from these reports (as of August 2017) that it believes should be given high priority for implementation. Of the 27 priority recommendations, 24 were related to diplomatic security.
Download or read book Behind Embassy Walls written by Brandon Grove and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents
Download or read book Madam Ambassador written by Eleni Kounalakis and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A helicopter ride to visit troops in the Afghanistan war zone, a tense meeting with the newly elected Prime Minister, and…a wild boar hunt! Eleni Kounalakis was forty-three and a land developer in Sacramento, California, when she was tapped by President Barack Obama to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Hungary under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During her tenure, from 2010 to 2013, Hungary was a key ally in the U.S. military surge, held elections in which a center-right candidate gained a two-thirds supermajority and rewrote the country's constitution, and grappled with the rise of Hungarian nationalism and anti-semitism. The first Greek-American woman ever to serve as a U.S. ambassador, Kounalakis recounts her training at the State Department's “charm school” and her three years of diplomatic life in Budapest—from protocols about seating, salutations, and embassy security to what to do when the deposed King of Greece hands you a small chocolate crown (eat it, of course!). A cross between a foreign policy memoir and an inspiring personal family story—her immigrant Greek father went from agricultural day laborer to land developer and major Democratic party activist—Madam Ambassador draws back the curtain on what it is like to represent the U.S. government abroad as well as how American embassies around the world function.
Download or read book The Ambassadors written by Paul Richter and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Veteran diplomatic correspondent Paul Richter goes behind the battles and the headlines to show how American ambassadors are the unconventional warriors in the Muslim world—running local government, directing drone strikes, building nations, and risking their lives on the front lines. The tale’s heroes are a small circle of top career diplomats who have been an unheralded but crucial line of national defense in the past two decades of wars in the greater Middle East. In The Ambassadors, Paul Richter shares the astonishing, true-life stories of four expeditionary diplomats who “do the hardest things in the hardest places.” The book describes how Ryan Crocker helped rebuild a shattered Afghan government after the fall of the Taliban and secretly negotiated with the shadowy Iranian mastermind General Qassim Suleimani to wage war in Afghanistan and choose new leaders for post-invasion Iraq. Robert Ford, assigned to be a one-man occupation government for an Iraqi province, struggled to restart a collapsed economy and to deal with spiraling sectarian violence—and was taken hostage by a militia. In Syria at the eruption of the civil war, he is chased by government thugs for defying the country’s ruler. J. Christopher Stevens is smuggled into Libya as US Envoy to the rebels during its bloody civil war, then returns as ambassador only to be killed during a terror attach in Benghazi. War-zone veteran Anne Patterson is sent to Pakistan, considered the world’s most dangerous country, to broker deals that prevent a government collapse and to help guide the secret war on jihadists. “An important and illuminating read” (The Washington Post) and the winner of the prestigious Douglas Dillon Book Award from the American Academy of Diplomacy, The Ambassadors is a candid examination of the career diplomatic corps, America’s first point of contact with the outside world, and a critical piece of modern-day history.
Download or read book FDR s Ambassadors and the Diplomacy of Crisis written by David Mayers and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating history of American diplomacy in the Second World War and the ways US ambassadors shaped formal foreign policy.
Download or read book The Colonels Coup and the American Embassy written by Robert V. Keeley and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The so-called Colonels&’ coup of April 21, 1967, was a major event in the history of the Cold War, ushering in a seven-year period of military rule in Greece. In the wake of the coup, some eight thousand people affiliated with the Communist Party were rounded up, and Greece became yet another country where the fear of Communism led the United States into alliance with a repressive right-wing authoritarian regime. In military coups in some other countries, it is known that the CIA and other agencies of the U.S. government played an active role in encouraging and facilitating the takeover. The Colonels&’ coup, however, came as a surprise to the United States (which was expecting a Generals&’ coup instead). Yet the U.S. government accepted it after the fact, despite internal disputes within policymaking circles about the wisdom of accommodating the upstart Papadopoulos regime. Among the dissenters was Robert Keeley, then serving in the U.S. Embassy in Greece. This is his insider&’s account of how U.S. policy was formulated, debated, and implemented during the critical years 1966 to 1969 in Greek-U.S. relations.
Download or read book Embassy Wife written by Katie Crouch and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A smart, sparkling novel that is one part social satire, one part travelogue . . . Comical and cool.” —Oprah Daily In Katie Crouch's thrilling novel Embassy Wife, two women abroad search for the truth about their husbands—and their country. Meet Persephone Wilder, a displaced genius posing as the wife of an American diplomat in Namibia. Persephone takes her job as a representative of her country seriously, coming up with an intricate set of rules to survive the problems she encounters: how to dress in hundred-degree weather without showing too much skin, how not to look drunk at embassy functions, and how to eat roasted oryx with grace. She also suspects her husband is not actually the ambassador’s legal counsel but a secret agent in the CIA. The consummate embassy wife, she takes the newest trailing spouse, Amanda Evans, under her wing. Amanda arrives in Namibia mere weeks after giving up her Silicon Valley job so her husband, Mark, can have his family close by as he works on his Fulbright project. But once they’re settled in the sub-Saharan desert, Amanda sees clearly that Mark, who lived in Namibia two decades earlier, has other reasons for returning. Back in the safety of home, the marriage had seemed solid; in the glaring heat of the Kalahari, it feels tenuous. And the situation grows even more fraught when their daughter becomes involved in an international conflict and their own government won’t stand up for her. How far will Amanda go to keep her family intact? How much corruption can Persephone ignore? And what, exactly, does it mean to be an American abroad when you’re not sure you understand your country anymore? Propulsive and provocative, Embassy Wife asks what it means to be a human in this world, even as it helps us laugh in the face of our own absurd, seemingly impossible states of affairs.
Download or read book Terrorism Betrayal and Resilience written by Prudence Bushnell and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On August 7, 1998, three years before President George W. Bush declared the War on Terror, the radical Islamist group al-Qaeda bombed the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where Prudence Bushnell was serving as U.S. ambassador. Terrorism, Betrayal, and Resilience is her account of what happened, how it happened, and its impact twenty years later. When the bombs went off in Kenya and neighboring Tanzania that day, Congress was in recess and the White House, along with the entire country, was focused on the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Congress held no hearings about the bombings, the national security community held no after-action reviews, and the mandatory Accountability Review Board focused on narrow security issues. Then on September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. homeland and the East Africa bombings became little more than an historical footnote. Terrorism, Betrayal, and Resilience is Bushnell’s account of her quest to understand how these bombings could have happened given the scrutiny bin Laden and his cell in Nairobi had been getting since 1996 from special groups in the National Security Council, the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA. Bushnell tracks national security strategies and assumptions about terrorism and the Muslim world that failed to keep us safe in 1998 and continue unchallenged today. In this hard-hitting, no-holds-barred account she reveals what led to poor decisions in Washington and demonstrates how diplomacy and leadership going forward will be our country’s most potent defense. Purchase the audio edition.
Download or read book Egypt s Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis written by Ahmed Aboul Gheit and published by American University in Cairo Press. This book was released on 2020-04-07 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Egyptian foreign minister’s fascinating account of his time in office during the final years of the Mubarak era Ahmed Aboul Gheit served as Egypt’s minister of foreign affairs under President Hosni Mubarak from 2004 until 2011. In this compelling memoir, he takes us inside the momentous years of his time in office, revealing the complexities and challenges of foreign-policy decision-making and the intricacies of interpersonal relations at the highest levels of international diplomacy. Readable, discerning, often candid, Egypt’s Foreign Policy in Times of Crisis details Aboul Gheit’s working relationship with the Egyptian president and his encounters with both his own colleagues and politicians on the world stage, providing rich behind-the-scenes insight into the machinery of government and the interplay of power and personality within. He paints a vivid picture of Egyptian–U.S. relations during the challenging years that followed September 11 and the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as we navigate the bumpy terrain of negotiations, discussions, and private meetings with the likes of Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, and Hillary Clinton. Successive attempts by Egypt to revive Palestinian–Israeli negotiations, U.S. assistance to Egypt, and the issue of NGO funding get full play in his account, as do other matters of paramount concern, not least Egypt’s strenuous attempts to reach an agreement with fellow riparian states over the sharing of the Nile waters; Sudan, Libya, and Cairo’s engagement with the wider African continent; the often tense negotiations surrounding UN Security Council reform; and relations with Iran and the Gulf states. More than a memoir, this book by a senior statesman and veteran of Egypt’s foreign affairs is a tour de force of Middle Eastern politics and international relations in the first decade of the twenty-first century and an account of the powers and practice of one of Egypt’s most stable and durable institutions of state.
Download or read book British Embassies written by James Stourton and published by Frances Lincoln. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique and glamorous book about British Imperial and post-Imperial architecture and a lively and evocative read for anyone interested in the international projection of British power and culture. British Embassies have a special role in our history. They represent our country in bricks and stone and have often expressed – at least in the eyes of foreigners – our national character. Whether they are Lutyens buildings in Washington, grand palaces in Europe, beautiful old colonial buildings in Asia, or secure compounds in the Middle East, they all have stories to tell and reveal the changing face of British diplomacy. A mixture of history, architectural description, diplomacy and anecdote, this large format picture book covers Residences and embassies in twenty-six countries to provide an authoritative text, accompanied by newly commissioned photography.
Download or read book The Six Day War and Israeli Self Defense written by John Quigley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war of June 1967 between Israel and Arab states was widely perceived as being forced on Israel to prevent the annihilation of its people by Arab armies hovering on its borders. Documents now declassified by key governments question this view. The UK, USSR, France and the USA all knew that the Arab states were not in attack mode and tried to dissuade Israel from attacking. In later years, this war was held up as a precedent allowing an attack on a state that is expected to attack. It has even been used to justify a pre-emptive assault on a state expected to attack well in the future. Given the lack of evidence that it was waged by Israel in anticipation of an attack by Arab states, the 1967 war can no longer serve as such a precedent. This book seeks to provide a corrective on the June 1967 war.
Download or read book Diplomatic Security written by Eugenio Cusumano and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The safety of diplomats has animated recent public and political debates. As diplomatic personnel are increasingly targeted by terrorism and political violence while overseas, sending states are augmenting host nations' security measures with their own. Protective arrangements range from deploying military, police, and private security guards to relocating embassies to suburban compounds. Yet, reinforced security may also hamper effective diplomacy and international relations. Scholars and practitioners from around the world bring to light a large body of empirical information available for the first time in Diplomatic Security. This book explores the global contexts and consequences of keeping embassies and their personnel safe. The essays in this volume offer case studies that illustrate the different arrangements in the U.S., China, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Israel, and Russia. Considering the historical and legal contexts, authors examine how states protect their diplomats abroad, what drives changes in existing protective arrangements, and how such measures affect the safety of diplomats and the institution of diplomacy. Diplomatic Security not only reveals how a wide variety of states handle security needs but also illuminates the broader theoretical and policy implications for the study of diplomacy and security alike.
Download or read book American Ambassador written by Waldo H. Heinrichs Jr. and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1986-11-27 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Joseph Clark Grew (1880-1965) is the story of the modern American diplomatic tradition. Grew served the U.S. government for over forty years, with an impressive career that included two ambassadorships, two secretaryships, two ministerships, and every junior rank in the service. Grew was in Berlin when the U.S. went to war with Germany in 1917, was American Ambassador to Japan during the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, was Undersecretary of State during the war, and was instrumental in planning U.S. postwar strategy in the Far East. In this rich and intimate biography, Heinrichs draws on Grew's vast diary, correspondence, and several private and official collections to reconstruct the life of an extraordinary career diplomat. Here, Joseph C. Grew emerges as a man of peace who used both skill and insight to slow the world's progress toward World War II.
