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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... sent a lot of reports to Washington on recent and potential Panama events , and they sent our embassy copies of most of these . My chief found it convenient to snip pieces from the various reports as they came in during the week . Then ...
... sent a manifesto down to Santiago proclaiming revolution and calling on the peasants and townspeople to join them . Two companies of the Guardia Nacional , Panama's combined mili- tary and police force , were sent into the sierra ...
... sent two Coast Guard officers and two specialists from the Environmental Protection Agency to advise both us and the Somalis . The Soviet embassy sent its staff members ' children back to Moscow . My colleague the Romanian ambassador ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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