With a presidential visit comes months of preparation and stress. While big embassies with hundreds of staff members are often…
The Extra Special Relationship: Thatcher, Reagan, and the 1980s
The “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom has served to unite the two nations over the…
Nancy Reagan and the Runaway Chopper
When the First Lady of the United States comes to town, it requires almost as much planning and fanfare as…
When the Sudanese Autocrat Met President Reagan and Lost his Job
In 1969, Colonel Gaafar Muhammad Nimeiry (seen right), who three years earlier had graduated from the United States Army Command…
Taking the Chill off the Cold War: The First Reagan-Gorbachev Summit
The Geneva Summit of 1985 was the first meeting between President Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev to talk about the arms…
Al Haig and the Reagan Assassination Attempt — “I’m in control here”
When President Ronald Reagan was shot on March 30, 1981, chaos ensued behind the scenes at the White House. With…
The Reagan-Gorbachev Arms Control Breakthrough
Back to Memoirs and Occasional Papers The Reagan-Gorbachev Arms Control Breakthrough:The Treaty Eliminating Intermediate-range Nuclear Force (INF) Missiles This is…
The First Diplomatic Visit in Forty Years to the “Land of the Eternal Blue Sky”—Donald C. Johnson’s 1984 Visit to Mongolia
Mongolia—sparsely populated, largely nomadic, and surrounded by nuclear superpowers. The end of the Cold War could not have been the…
From START to Finish: Behind the Scenes of the Tense U.S.-Soviet Nuclear Disarmament in Reykjavík
The 45-year-long Cold War of protracted geopolitical contention between two global powerhouses helped determine the unprecedented magnitude of nuclear weapons…
The Siberian Pipeline
Imagine this: It is 1987, you are the president of the United States of America, your country is one of…