A unified stance by NATO members and Gorbachev’s realization that it was better to go to global zero than to…
The INF Treaty, Part II — Moving from Arms Control to Arms Reduction
From November 1983 to March of 1985 negotiations between the United States and the USSR languished, leading the U.S. to…
Paul Nitze and A Walk in the Woods — A Failed Attempt at Arms Control
In 1976, the USSR deployed hundreds of intermediate-range SS-20s (pictured), which were an upgrade of the older SS-3 and SS-4…
A Crack in the Iron Curtain: Freeing Sharansky
As General Secretary of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev authorized the release of thousands of Soviet Jews who wanted to leave the…
A Blind Eye — Fighting Terrorism in the 1980s
The U.S. focus on terrorism began to intensify in the late 1970s and 80s. However, it was often difficult to…
Winning the Peace – USAID and the Demobilization of the Nicaraguan Contras
In the 1980s, one of the focal points of U.S. foreign policy was the rise of leftist militants throughout the…
Combining Forces to Counter Terrorism — The Birth of S/CT
U.S. inter-agency coordination on countering terrorism was limited, for bureaucratic and technical reasons, prior to the mid-1980s. As hijackings and…
Leveling the Playing Field in the Salvadoran Civil War
The Salvadoran Civil War, lasting from 1979-1992, pitted the military-led government of El Salvador against a coalition of five left-wing guerrilla…
Managing the End of the Marcos Regime
Intent on actively opposing the rule of Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos, Senator Benigno Aquino returned from exile in the U.S.…
Julia Chang Bloch’s Whole-of-Mission Approach in Nepal
In 1990, Nepal’s centuries-long history of monarchical rule and more recent autocratic substitutes were finally brought to an end in…