The Foreign Service Journal, November 2016

14 NOVEMBER 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL These word clouds reflect the positive and negative things students at one U.K. high school associate with the United States. The problems [with Russia] are starting to get very critical. Syria is the one that’s the most critical, in my own view; but, secondly, our means of— channels of—communications, our ongoing dialogue, our understanding of the personalities in Russia and their understanding of us has ... gone way down from the way it was, say, 20 years ago. The United States tends to believe that when a war is over, it’s over. So when the Cold War was over, we really ratcheted back our diplomacy in Europe, in Russia, in all the areas which we thought had been taken care of, and we’re now paying a price for that. We just don’t have—the soldiers say we don’t have the boots on the ground. Well, we don’t have the pinstripe suits on the ground, either. We just don’t have the people out there who need to be doing the diplomacy. —Ambassador (ret.) John Kornblum, in a conversation with journalist Tom Ashbrook and Professor Angela Stent (Georgetown University) on the podcast “On Point with Tom Ashbrook, ” Oct. 11. Contemporary Quote One study suggests bluntly that the rate at which countries accrue unpaid parking fines in New York correlates well with that country’s own rate of corruption. That study, conducted by economists Raymond Fisman and EdwardMiguel in 2006, found no non-payments fromofficials from Japan, Canada, Turkey, Sweden or the United Kingdom, while the worst offenders were Kuwait, Egypt and Chad. —Gemma Dvorak, Associate Editor Colombia Peace Agreement Voted Down T he Colombia peace agreement of Aug. 25, which had been touted as a “transformational moment” and feted as a diplomatic success story, was rejected by an excruciatingly narrow 50.21 per- cent of Colombian voters on Oct. 2. Despite this setback, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 7 for his efforts to end the bloody 52-year war between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known as the FARC). In a statement, Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairman Kaci Kullmann Five said: “The award should also be seen as a tribute to the Colombian people who, despite great hardships and abuses, have not given up hope of a just peace.” All hope for peace in Colombia is not lost, with FARC leader Rodrigo Lon- doño Echeverri (who goes by the alias Timochenko) declaring that he remains committed to peace. “The only prize we aspire to is #PeaceWithSocialJustice for a #Colombia free of paramilitary violence, revenge and lies; #PeaceTa- keTheStreets,” he wrote on his Twitter account. —Gemma Dvorak, Associate Editor Ambassador to the U.K. Visits 150 Schools M atthew Barzun, the U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, is pas- sionate about engaging with young people. During three years at the helm of Embassy London, he has visited 150 schools to talk about American policies and hear what the youth of the United Kingdom think and feel about the United States. As part of the process, Ambassador Barzun asks students to write down pos- itive and negative ideas they associate with the United States. The word clouds shown here reflect what he learned at one of the school visits. —Gemma Dvorak, Associate Editor U.S.EMBASSYLONDON