Visit to the American Embassy

On the 28th of September, SIB-Amsterdam visited the U.S. Embassy in the Hague. We were welcomed by the U.S. Cultural Attaché, who talked about his career path and the functions and organization of the Embassy. After 45 minutes, Pete Hoekstra arrived and, after a short introduction, told us we could ask him any question and he would answer at the best of his capabilities. After discussing his way to the top and his most common tasks (like creative tweets), we started the dialogue on the topic of digital diplomacy and how the US embassy strategizes on the digital media platforms. Shortly after, we came to an important topic for U.S. foreign policy: NATO and the fact that the Netherlands, together with other countries, is not honoring the deal by contributing to less according to the Ambassador. We followed the money trial towards the ‘unfair’ Chinese market and trade, and of course the climate with the U.S. leaving the Paris Agreement.Something the ambassador and the U.S. Embassy are quite proud of, is their investment in students. For example, they invest in the exchange of future world leaders between the U.S. and the Netherlands (and other countries). He also stated the upcoming entrepreneurial summit, which according to a SIB member could use more student input. The ambassador loved this plan, and after the whole dialogue, was thankful full our input and dialogue contribution. After all, he took over an hour to talk to us. We enjoyed the visit. It was an honor that the cultural attaché and the ambassador allowed us to visit and took so much time of their schedules for us.