Category: Diplomacy
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#54: UNGA 80
In September 2023, my coworkers and I experienced our first United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). To those unfamiliar with the foreign affairs conference that takes place annually in New York City, I wrote in Blog #27 about the opportunity I was given to explain the event to a curious young man and his family while…
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#41: The 2024 Olympic Games
In 1972, the “darkest day in Olympic history” occurred during the Summer Games in Munich. Largely in part to the criticism of government forces having killed numerous revolutionaries protesting the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, it was decided that the German police guarding Munich four years later would be unarmed and nonconfrontational. Taking advantage of this…
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#40: Jordan
Considered by many historians to be the oldest continuously inhabited place in the world, present-day Amman is the capital and largest city of Jordan. Nearly half the population of the country lives in the immediate area of the Biblical city which was once known as Philadelphia thanks to Ptolemy II (Philadelphus) so humbly naming it…
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#39: London
The center of the world. At least, that’s what it felt like. Coming from a relatively new country like the United States, the history of London England is too much to fathom. Experiencing the traditions and architecture of “The Square Mile”, as the City of London proper is occasionally referred to, is something one could…
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#36: The 75-Year Flood (Part I)
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a relatively new country as far as the rest of the world is concerned. Situated on the Arabian Peninsula directly across the Persian Gulf from Iran, its modern fortune arose from beneath its own desert floor in the form of oil and gas. UAE’s initial ruler quickly reinvested much…
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#34: Pretzels and Beer
Continued from Blog #33: Munich Security Conference Hallway reputation. Personal brand. Leadership shadow. Regardless of the buzzwords we use to describe the way others think about us in the workplace, a bad reputation can be hard to shake. The concept isn’t exclusive to humans, either. Amsterdam banned the smoking of cannabis in public in an…
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#33: Munich Security Conference
“Rechts!” barked the man sitting in the backseat with me, craning his neck to look out the rear window. Upon hearing this, our driver firmly tugged the steering wheel with a smooth confidence that could only come from highly specialized government training. The vehicle lurched into the lane to our right and the engine revved…
The Dark Passport 