The Foreign Service Journal, November 2007

Ralph Nelson Clough , 90, a retired FSO, died on Aug. 10 at the Sunrise Assisted Living Center in Arlington, Va. He had been a resident of Arlington for 40 years. Mr. Clough was born and raised in Seattle, Wash., where he developed a lifelong passion for the outdoors, expressed in mountain climbing (he made many ascents in the Cascades) and bird-watching. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Washington in 1939, and completed an M.A. in international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1940. In 1941, Mr. Clough joined the Foreign Service. His first posting was as a vice consul in Toronto. He was transferred to Tegucigalpa in 1942, and to Puerto Cortes in 1943. Mr. Clough was fluent in Chinese, and also spoke some Japanese and Korean. During the remainder of his 28-year diplomatic career, most of his assignments were in the Far East. In 1954, he was posted to Kun- ming, moving to Beijing in 1946. From 1947 to 1950, he served in Nanjing; he was then transferred to Hong Kong, where he served until 1954, when he was detailed to the National War College. In 1955, he was named deputy director of Chin- ese affairs at the State Department, becoming director in 1957. During the 1950s he was sent to Geneva and to Warsaw to attend talks with the Chinese. Following a posting in London, Mr. Clough was assigned to Taipei in 1961. There he rose to be deputy chief of mission, spending two years as chargé d’affaires. In 1965, he was detailed to the Harvard Center for International Affairs. He ended his diplomatic career with three years on the Policy Planning Council under Zbigniew Brzezinski from 1966 to 1969. After retirement, Mr. Clough began a second career as a writer on Asian affairs and American foreign policy toward Asia. During that 30- year period he had appointments at the Brookings Institution, the Wood- row Wilson Center for Scholars and the School of Advanced Inter- national Studies at Johns Hopkins University. At the time of his second retirement in 2003, he was teaching the graduate seminar on Taiwan and organizing the China Forum, a speaker series, while working at SAIS in Washington. Mr. Clough wrote and edited a number of books on the Far East and American foreign policy, including East Asia and U.S. Security (1975), Deterrence and Defense in Korea (1976), Island China (1978), Reach- ing Across the Taiwan Strait (1993) and Cooperation and Conflict in the Taiwan Strait (1999). He became well-known internationally as an ex- pert on the history and contemporary affairs of Taiwan. In addition, during the 1970s and 1980s Clough advised the House Committee on Foreign Relations’ Subcommittee on Asian Affairs. In that capacity, he accompanied Rep. Stephen Solarz, D-N.Y., then chair of the subcommittee, to talks with Presi- dent Kim Il Sung of North Korea in 1979 and wrote the report on the visit. Mr. Clough’s first wife, Mary Lou Sander Clough, died in 1950. He is survived by his wife of 54 years, Awana Stiles Clough of Arlington, Va.; two sons, Frederick of Santa Barbara, Calif., and Marshall of Greeley, Colo.; two daughters, Laurie Clough Schuda of Arlington, Va., and Drusilla Clough Hufford of McLean, Va.; six grandchil- dren, Gregory, Carrie, Christopher, Alexander, Stephanie and Susannah; his brother Ray Clough of Bend, Ore.; and numerous nieces and nephews. Jay Robert Grahame , 73, a retired Foreign Service officer, died on Aug. 6 at the Potomac Center Nurs- ing Home in Arlington, Va., of com- plications from diabetes. Mr. Grahame was born in Brook- lyn, N.Y., and grew up in Jamaica, N.Y. He received a bachelor’s degree N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 67 I N M EMORY