The Foreign Service Journal, April 2018

DEFINING DIPLOMACY for YEARS Above inSILVERFOILonCover 34 APRIL 2018 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL As the Cold War lurched to an end and the Foreign Service Act of 1980 came into force, new challenges emerged and the Journal’s profile got a refreshing boost. BY STEPHEN R . DUJACK THE JOURNAL IN TRANSITION THE 1980S M y tenure at AFSA started in 1981, just six weeks after the Foreign Service hostages held in Iran returned home, and ended a few months before the collapse of com- munism and ultimate dissolution of the Soviet Union. So I barely missed the two most important events affecting American foreign relations in that decade. But my seven years at the helm of The Foreign Service Journal occurred during the last gasps of the Cold War, what New York Times columnist Ross Douthat called “the Armageddon- haunted 1980s.” The face-off in Europe threatened to push the world to the nuclear brink. Meanwhile, the Middle East was an ongoing powder keg. And North-South issues were emerging to crowd ever- worsening East-West issues on the world stage.