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This chapter highlights the author's return to Moscow as the Washington Post's correspondent. The mood in Moscow had changed; the seventy-four-year-old Leonid Brezhnev, in power for seventeen years, was surrounded by an aging leadership that valued stability and its privileged way of life. Though the Kremlin was still spouting the same rhetoric about Communism marching toward a bright future, there was an air of disillusion and resignation all over Moscow. As the severe Moscow winter of 1981–82 took hold, the weather matched a deepening chill in US–Soviet relations. The Kremlin lambasted Ronald Reagan for “a campaign of hatred” against the Soviet Union and for wanting to “hurl the world back to the dark ages of the Cold War.” The chapter then considers how the author's relationship with the US embassy in Moscow deteriorated as his analysis began often to diverge from that of the embassy and the CIA.

This chapter explores the central tensions that animate hip hop diplomacy. One tension is between art and diplomacy, particularly in their distinctive approaches to process and views on outcomes. A second tensions arises because of the asymmetry of power between the United States and the countries that hip hop diplomacy programs visit. This chapter posits that hip hop diplomacy (and cultural diplomacy in general) operates in a zone of ambiguity, a state in which palpable, inescapable tensions and uncertainties hang over one’s every action. Specific examples come from hip hop diplomacy initiatives in El Salvador, India, Morocco, Senegal, and Zimbabwe. The chapter ends by offering guidelines for respectful, collaborative interactions in cultural diplomacy and cultural exchange programs.

This chapter discusses perceptions of Moscow’s ‘fifth column’ in the Irish state. While the communist party amounted to little more than an insignificant cult, not all communists declared themselves openly. Significantly, other political strands, particularly the IRA, were seen to be susceptible to communist manipulation. During the Cold War this gave rise to exaggerated fears about communism and its agents. Dublin officials co-operated with the British, and the Americans, in combating communists and their left-wing republican allies. In Northern Ireland, the Communist Party (CPNI) remained extremely weak, but retained influence of some significance within trade union officialdom. And, in Britain, the Connolly Association attempted to organise Irish exiles under the tutelage of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). The US embassy in Dublin was sensitive to any suggestion of communist activity; Irish and American officials placed intelligence co-operation on a formal footing in 1954.