Keith MacLellan's career covered a number of countries that were undergoing "interesting times", most notably: Laos in 1965–1966 when it was in some turmoil, including the Civil War, as a result of the conflict in neighbouring Vietnam; Pakistan in 1974–1977 when the then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was deposed; and in Afghanistan, in the same period, when a series of coups eventually led to the Soviet invasion. Finally, he witnessed the beginning of the unravelling of Yugoslavia in 1979 when President Josip Broz Tito's illness, and subsequent death in 1980, was creating a power vacuum that would end in ethnic divisions and civil war.