Richard D. Challener

Decisions at Yalta : an appraisal of summit diplomacy

A study of the effectiveness of summitry as a means of diplomacy. Using the example of the 1945 Yalta conference between Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt, the author argues that heads of state make ineffective negotiators.

The French Army: From Obedience to Insurrection

What tempts an army to move into politics and ultimately to pass beyond the threshold of legality into the realm of civil disobedience and insurrection? In Latin America and the underdeveloped world, where such occurrences have been common, the phenomenon of military “praetorianism” poses relatively few analytical problems for the historian or social scientist. But the forces in modern democratic societies which lead an army into rebellion are far more complex, just as, fortunately, they arise with far less frequency. In contemporary France the problem of military insurrection is especially complicated, all the more so since the French army, until the era of the Second World War, had always regarded itself as “ la grande muette ,” suffering but obedient, and the French officer corps had prided itself on its apoliti-cism and devotion to strict professional duty.

Career Diplomat: The Record of Joseph C. Grew

“The best thing about diplomatic life,” Joseph C. Grew once confided to his diary, “… is that one never knows when some event or development of prime importance is going to occur. We pursue the even tenor of our ways for weeks and months and then, often suddenly and unexpectedly, we find ourselves in the midst of a maelstrom of hectic activity, working day and night, rushing telegrams, drafting press communiques and speeches, dashing from place to place, doing useful work.” Turbulent Era , the account of the forty years he spent as a career diplomat in the American Foreign Service, is convincing evidence that Joseph Grew was present on an extraordinary number of occasions when something of importance broke and that, above all, he was always doing useful work for the country he served so faithfully and so well.