Safirka: An American EnvoyKent State University Press, 2000 - 241 pages Peter S. Bridges's service as an American ambassador to Somalia capped his three decades as a career officer in the American Foreign Service. Safirka, a frank description of his experiences in Somalia and elsewhere, offers pointed assessments of American foreign policy and policymakers. Bridges recounts his service in Panama during a time of turmoil over the Canal; in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis; in Prague for bleak years after the Soviet invasion; in Rome when Italian terrorists first began to target Americans; and in key positions in three Washington agencies. In Somalia Bridges managed the largest American aid program in sub-Sahara Africa. He dealt with a postcolonial regime, hobbled both by traditional clan rivalries and by a leader who cared far less about Somalia's people and progress than about maintaining his control over that poverty-stricken, strategic - which soon erupted in civil war. |
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... friends and allies . These people , known by the lower classes as rabiblancos , or white - tails , sent their ... friends . After dinner the men sat on our balcony and made me a proposal : the Unit- ed States should quietly finance an ...
... friends in Italy's other parties and give cachet to the Communists . I began to acquire a number of friends among Italian journalists , non - Communist politicians , and foreign ministry officials - I was also reporting on the course of ...
... friend had told me a few days earlier that the state clothing factory had labored for months to produce these ... friends didn't want to help . We had decided to help . Many soldiers in that parade were wearing new American boots ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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