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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... needed a major opposition force , but it seemed to me tragic that Italians could not devise a Left opposition that was not tied , ideologically and financially as well , to the horrific system that ruled Russia . After three years in ...
... needed : timely reporting on the world's problems and clear recommendations on what , if anything , we should do about them . Our operations center ran twenty - four hours a day to keep on top of crises , and our secretariat staff ...
... needed . The Pentagon agreed with him , and several million dollars of our military assistance funds went subsequently to build a high - tech command , control , and communications center for Samantar in Mogadishu . It was , like many ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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