The Foreign Service Journal - January/February 2018

50 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL advantage of living in a relatively peaceful region. Peruvian and Ecuadorean military units clashed again on the border in 1995. Once more, the United States, collaborating with the Rio Protocol governments and working through the Organization of American States, established a truce; finally, in 1998, Peru and Ecuador established an agreement on boundar- ies, ending the 150-year dispute. Diplomacy is our nation’s most effective foreign relations tool (and by far the least costly in money and lives) for the pro- tection and promotion of our country’s interests and security. Diplomats with well-established contacts and knowledge of the history, culture and language of a country are best able to calm tense situations early and be persuasive voices of reason. Edwin G. Corr, a career FSO (1961-1990), was U.S. ambassador to Peru, Bolivia and El Salvador; deputy assistant secretary for international narcotics control; deputy chief of mission in Ecuador; and a Peace Corps regional director in Colombia. He also served in Thailand, Mexico and on various State Department desks. He was a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps and is a retired professor and administrator. Slowing the Spread of HIV China, 2013 • David Cowhig During my five years in the science section at U.S. Embassy Bei- jing, with the strong support of science counselors Marco DiCapua, David Bleyle and Kurt Tong, my reporting on HIV/AIDS and public health in China helped the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) work more effectively with Chinese partners fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Dangerous blood plasma collectionmethods at government blood banks in China had spread the virus to tens of thousands of people from 1994 onward. On the basis of internal reports done in 1995, China began requiring HIV testing of blood sellers, but reports documenting the unsafe practices of local authorities were kept secret. However, an outraged Chinese government official did share some of those secret reports withme at considerable personal risk. In 1997 official blood plasma collection centers using dangerous methods were closed, but some continued to run pri- vately—and illegally—particularly in China’s most populous and most impoverished province, Henan. Dr. Gao Yaojie with AIDS orphans in rural Henan Province, China. COURTESYOFDAVIDCOWHIG