Idi Amin Dada, who came to be known as the “Butcher of Uganda,” rose to officer rank in the Ugandan…
Kyrgyzstan After Independence – An Unfulfilled Promise
After the collapse of the USSR, Kyrgyzstan, despite its isolation and lack of development, was considered to be one of…
Admitting the Shah to the U.S.: Every Form of Refuge has its Price
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, departed Iran on January 16, 1979, fleeing political unrest led by the Ayatollah…
Finale of the Persian Monarchy and Prelude to the Iranian Revolution
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, departed Tehran on January 16, 1979 to seek medical treatment and to escape…
Bad Blood: The Sino-Soviet Split and the U.S. Normalization with China
In the 1960s, in the depths of the Cold War, the world was viewed in terms of a zero-sum game:…
Thailand’s Bloodless Coups d’état
When a country undergoes internal conflict and something as dramatic as a coup d’etat, the results can often lead to…
Jesse Helms: The Senator Who Just Said No
Jesse Alexander Helms, a five-term Republican Senator (1973- 2003) from North Carolina, was known not only for his conservative beliefs…
The Neutron Bomb — A Negotiating Dud
The neutron bomb, a low-yield thermonuclear weapon which would be especially lethal to enemy ground troops but would not seriously…
Modern Turkey’s History of Military Coups
The July 2016 attempted coup d’état in Turkey was the latest in a series of military interventions in the nation’s…
“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…