On April 6, 1994, the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were assassinated when their plane was shot down near Kigali…
Teaching the Foreign Service to Speak Foreign Languages
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) is the primary training institution to prepare American diplomats to advance U.S. foreign affairs interests,…
The Long, Incomplete Road for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
The movement to limit or even prohibit the testing of nuclear weapons has been around almost since the dawn of…
China’s Fight for Tiny Islands — The Taiwan Straits Crises, 1954-58
Recent disagreements over Beijing’s claim to the South China Seas (in which a tribunal constituted under the UN Convention on the…
Operation Storm — The Battle for Croatia, 1995
After the fall of Yugoslavia in the early 1990’s, the Balkans descended into a bloody ethnic and sectarian conflict. Although…
The Marooned Law of the Sea Treaty
The Law of the Sea Treaty (formally known as the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,…
“The World Was Tired of Haiti”: The 1994 U.S. Intervention
The United States found itself embroiled in several interventions in the 1990s that focused on upholding basic human rights standards…
How Did We Get Here? A Look Back at the Creation of the European Union
Welcome to Part I of our crash course on the formation of the European Union (EU). Each treaty signed between 1948…
We Don’t Give a Dam — The Feud Over Financing the Aswan High Dam
Egypt’s agriculture has always depended on the water of the Nile; the river’s perennial floods, while critical in replenishing the…
Towering Infernos – The Kuwait Oil Fires
A 2010 Time Magazine article rated it as the third worst environmental catastrophe in history, right behind Chernobyl and Bhopal. As Operation…