State Department announces new Taiwan envoy
Never be let it be said that the State Department doesn’t have a Taiwan policy! Foggy Bottom is sending an envoy to Taipei next week, although not the type of envoy you might expect. Major League Baseball All-Star and Hall of Fame nominee Barry Larkin will visit Taiwan as a “sports envoy,” along with former ...
Never be let it be said that the State Department doesn't have a Taiwan policy! Foggy Bottom is sending an envoy to Taipei next week, although not the type of envoy you might expect.
Major League Baseball All-Star and Hall of Fame nominee Barry Larkin will visit Taiwan as a "sports envoy," along with former Montreal Expo pitcher Joe Logan, the State Department announced in a release Thursday. This will be the second sports envoy program for the Sports United Office of the Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
"During the six day trip, Larkin and Logan will visit Taipei-Hsien and Kaohsiung. The Envoys will conduct six baseball clinics, visit an orphanage and a school for at-risk youth and attend an exhibition baseball game between two Taipei high schools," the release reads. "They will also interact with ten youth from Taiwan who visited the United States in September 2009 on a Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Sports United program."
Never be let it be said that the State Department doesn’t have a Taiwan policy! Foggy Bottom is sending an envoy to Taipei next week, although not the type of envoy you might expect.
Major League Baseball All-Star and Hall of Fame nominee Barry Larkin will visit Taiwan as a “sports envoy,” along with former Montreal Expo pitcher Joe Logan, the State Department announced in a release Thursday. This will be the second sports envoy program for the Sports United Office of the Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
“During the six day trip, Larkin and Logan will visit Taipei-Hsien and Kaohsiung. The Envoys will conduct six baseball clinics, visit an orphanage and a school for at-risk youth and attend an exhibition baseball game between two Taipei high schools,” the release reads. “They will also interact with ten youth from Taiwan who visited the United States in September 2009 on a Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Sports United program.”
The release makes no mention of the pending announcement of new arms sales to Taiwan. But hey, at least the State Department in on the playing field. And for what it’s worth, baseball is wildely popular in Taiwan, though a series of scandals have set the game back in recent years.
Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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