Unlikely Diplomats

In 1951, Canada sent troops to western Europe to support its NATO allies. The brigade helped Canada establish its international status. In private, however, Canadian officials and military leaders expressed grave doubts about NATO's strategies and operational plans. Despite these reservations, they sent military families overseas and implemented personnel policies that permanently changed the distribution of the defence budget and the character of the Canadian Army. This original account of the evolution of the Canadian Army from a small training cadre to a truly national force offers a new perspective on military policy and diplomacy in the Cold War era.

In 1951, Canada sent troops to western Europe to support its NATO allies. The brigade helped Canada establish its international status. In private, however, Canadian officials and military leaders expressed grave doubts about NATO's strategies and operational plans. Despite these reservations, they sent military families overseas and implemented personnel policies that permanently changed the distribution of the defence budget and the character of the Canadian Army. This original account of the evolution of the Canadian Army from a small training cadre to a truly national force offers a new perspective on military policy and diplomacy in the Cold War era.

In 1971, Americans made two historic visits to China that would transform relations between the two countries. One was by US official Henry Kissinger; the other, earlier, visit was by the US table tennis team. Historians have mulled over the transcripts of Kissinger's negotiations with Chinese leaders. However, they have overlooked how, alongside these diplomatic talks, a rich program of travel and exchange had begun with ping-pong diplomacy. Improbable Diplomats reveals how a diverse cast of Chinese and Americans – athletes and physicists, performing artists and seismologists – played a critical, but to date overlooked, role in remaking US-China relations. Based on new sources from more than a dozen archives in China and the United States, Pete Millwood argues that the significance of cultural and scientific exchanges went beyond reacquainting the Chinese and American people after two decades of minimal contact; exchanges also powerfully influenced Sino-American diplomatic relations and helped transform post-Mao China.

This book tells an American success story: the rise of Johnny Young from a life of poverty in the American South and the slums of the North to the highest ranks of the U.S. Foreign Service. As the story unfolds, Young learns the value of hard work in the face of adversity, fights to acquire an education, meets the love of his life, becomes an accomplished diplomat, and serves on four continents to promote and defend American interests. This is also the story of the shared challenges and rewards of his familys life in the Foreign Service.

AN UNLIKELY HERO "This book is the gripping and inspiring story of the towering courage and indefatigable resolve of Adrianus Millenaar, a diplomat who stayed behind at the Dutch embassy in Berlin after Hitler's Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the Netherlands during World War II. Millenaar's daughter, Adriana Millenaar Brown, then a young child, remained with her parents throughout the war. Her book, which combines careful and detailed scholarship with eyewitness accounts, relates how her father worked to improve and spare the lives of many of the thousands of Dutch citizens whom the German police and military captured and sent to a variety of destinations and fates-forced labor battalions, prisons, concentration camps, forced conscription into the German military. Adriana Brown's book shines revealing light on both the depths of depravity to which humans sometimes sink and the heights of nobility to which they are capable of climbing." -John W. Chandler, President Emeritus, Williams College Adrianus Millenaar was a true Dutch war hero. In Berlin, in the lion's den, during World War II, by endangering his own life, he helped many Dutch prisoners and slave laborers. His story must be read. -Bert van der Zwan, Historian at the Netherlands foreign Office, The Hague

A unique account of how Chinese and American athletes, scientists, and artists rebuilt US-China relations in the 1970s.

About the book and authorWARD OF THE STATE - AIR FORCE - BRITISH NUCLEAR TESTS VETERAN - COLD WAR DIPLOMAT - BUSINESSThis is a true-life story told by a man who believes that despite his start in life he succeeded in reaching the almost impossible goals he set for himself. There is much to interest the reader: Domestic and child abuse - Ward of the state - Orphanages - RAAF service, British nuclear tests at Maralinga, Office of the Air Attaché, Washington, DC, USA; and Foreign Service at embassies in Moscow, USSR in the '60s and again in the '70s, at Santiago de Chile, and the Consulate-General in Chicago, USA, PTSD, and Business.The author spent his formative years in orphanages run by the Christian Brothers in Western Australia. After serving in the Royal Australian Air Force, he travelled, lived and worked in western Canada, and Washington, DC with the Office of the Air Attaché, Joint Staff HQ. He served with the Department of Foreign affairs (DFA) with postings to Moscow, Santiago de Chile, Chicago, and Moscow again, until being declared persona non grata by the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs after which he continued his career with the DFA back in Australia. After retiring from DFA, he had a successful career in business as a restauranteur on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, and later managed several film and video companies. His last business before retiring was as Agency Head of the French company Bollé in Queensland. After working as a volunteer, he returned to the workforce and joined the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Brisbane. He now works with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Department of Foreign Affairs as a Protocol Officer facilitating the visits of royalty, foreign presidents, prime ministers, and foreign ministers to Australia.

During the Cold War, thousands of musicians from the United States traveled the world, sponsored by the U.S. State Department’s Cultural Presentations program. Performances of music in many styles—classical, rock ’n’ roll, folk, blues, and jazz—competed with those by traveling Soviet and mainland Chinese artists, enhancing the prestige of American culture. These concerts offered audiences around the world evidence of America’s improving race relations, excellent musicianship, and generosity toward other peoples. Through personal contacts and the media, musical diplomacy also created subtle musical, social, and political relationships on a global scale. Although born of state-sponsored tours often conceived as propaganda ventures, these relationships were in themselves great diplomatic achievements and constituted the essence of America’s soft power. Using archival documents and newly collected oral histories, Danielle Fosler-Lussier shows that musical diplomacy had vastly different meanings for its various participants, including government officials, musicians, concert promoters, and audiences. Through the stories of musicians from Louis Armstrong and Marian Anderson to orchestras and college choirs, Fosler-Lussier deftly explores the value and consequences of "musical diplomacy."