The Sorry Side of USAID's Dismantlement

 CNN posted on 2 April 2025 an eight-minute clip titled "USAID Worker Feels Her Country Abandoned Her and Her Family" with Jake Tapper and Charlee Doom.  

When you devote your life to the U.S. Foreign Service, this is not the way you want your career to end.  America is or, at least, should be better than this.  

Chinese Evacuated from Ethiopia's Tigray Region

 The South China Morning Post published on 24 November 2020 an article titled "Chinese Flee Northern Ethiopia as Civil Conflict Hits Region" by Laura Zhou.

China has evacuated more than 600 Chinese nationals from the conflict zone in Tigray Region.  Most of them worked at the Welkait sugar factory or were building a water project near Mekele.  It is not clear if they will remain in Ethiopia.  

Ethiopia: 1977 Expulsion of Americans from Kagnew Station and Consulate General in Asmara

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training recently posted an account titled "Leaving with Their Heads Held High--The U.S. Expulsion from Eritrea, 1977." This is an oral history account of the 1977 demand by Ethiopian leader Mengistu Haile Mariam to close within four days the highly classified U.S. communications station known as Kagnew and the U.S. Consulate General in Asmara. It relies on the recollections of Keith Wauchope, who was in charge of the Consulate General at the time. This occurred at the height of the Cold War and a low point in U.S. relations with Ethiopia.

Protecting American Interests in Africa

This is a paper I delivered in Beijing on 9 March 2017 at a conference titled US-China-Africa: Practices and Cooperation in Protecting Overseas Interests hosted by the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations and sponsored by the Ford Foundation. My paper looks at the protection of US nationals and interests in Africa.

China-Africa Military Relations

The China Africa Project ran a 30 minute podcast on 30 June 2015 titled "China's Expanding Military Presence in Africa."  Eric Olander and Cobus van Staden interviewed me on a variety of China-Africa military issues, including UN peacekeeping operations, anti-piracy in the Gulf of Aden, military sales, emergency evacuation of Chinese nationals from Africa, and rumors of new Chinese military activities in Africa.