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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Frozen Conflicts
The world is awash in sectarian violence. From the bloody killing fields of eastern Ukraine to the powder keg that is the modern Middle East, ethnic, religious, and cultural differences among groups continue to manifest in spasms of organized brutality. Unbeknownst to many in America, however, purportedly resolved clashes from the recent past simmer dangerously…
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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
9/11’s Enduring Shadow
Those of us who were of age on September 11, 2001 will never forget where we were or what we were doing when we learned of the terrorist attacks in New York city, Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania. Al Qaida’s bloody introduction to the American public a quarter century ago was our generation’s Pearl Harbor,…
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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Change of pace
I have come to an agreement with the publisher of our local paper, the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, to write periodic (4-5 per year-ish) articles on outdoor activities in New England, with a focus on New Hampshire. Note that these articles have nothing to do with foreign policy and, after this initial piece, will not be referenced…
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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Iran Update: The war expands
Expressing U.S. plans for dealing with Iran in his standard banal vulgarity, our commander in chief declared to Fox News on 29 July that “We are going to beat the (expletive deleted expletive deleted) out of them.” While his sophomoric bravado may resonate with a mulish base that confuses such schoolyard bombast for sound policy,…
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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
NATO, Then and Now
Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), famously remarked in the early 1950s that the purpose of the nascent alliance was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The conclusion of the recent NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, provides a propitious opportunity to…
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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Short FPRI Piece on the NATO Summit
I was asked by the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) to contribute a short piece for inclusion in a compilation of expert opinion on the recent NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. The longer article, in which my analysis of the Czech participation at the summit is included, can be found here.
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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
The Soft Center of NATO’s Eastern Flank
I have recently been working on a longer, analytic piece for the think tank world. The subject, highlighted in the title above, has been percolating in my Central European-centric brain for some time. The article went live yesterday at Delphi Global Research Center, a new think tank out of Wilmington, DE that was founded by…
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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Déjà vu All Over Again
Barbara Tuchman, one of America’s preeminent historians of the 20th century, wrote an analysis of some of the most consequential failures of leadership in world history. The March of Folly, published in 1984, deconstructs the egregious errors made by rulers, popes, kings, and presidents in four specific situations. The final chapter of the book, detailing…
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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
So Close Yet So Far
Sitting in a comfortable rental apartment in Liptovský Mikuláš, looking out on the majestic Vysoké Tatry (High Tatras) mountains in north central Slovakia, it is hard to imagine that less than two hundred miles to the east, a savage, and at this stage seemingly pointless, war continues to engulf Ukraine. Currently on a short “sabbatical”…
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Robert “Bob” Beck served 30+ years in US embassies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Bob is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Since retiring in 2020, Bob has taught, written about, and spoken on foreign policy across the scenic Monadnock region of southwestern New Hampshire.
Bulgaria’s Difficult Road to Political Stability
I write this post from Terminal E of Boston’s Logan Airport, awaiting my flight to Copenhagen and then on to Prague. Before starting my European adventure, I wanted to share my latest analytic piece for the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), which was published online earlier today. The article addresses the recent elections in Bulgaria,…
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