Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, one the longest-serving rulers in history, opened his newly-independent country’s political system to multiple party…
One Laptop Per Child — A Paradigm Shift in Education
According to a 2015 Brookings study, while the number of children attending primary school globally has grown dramatically over the…
A Front Row Seat to the 1975 Coup d’Etat in Chad
Throughout the 1970s, trouble was brewing in Chad. President François (N’Garta) Tombalbaye was the first president of Chad following its…
The Inspector General — Rooting Out Fraud and Abuse in the State Department
With thousands of employees from dozens of countries spread across the globe, the U.S. Department of State sometimes falls victim…
Getting Kosovo Right: Working to Avoid Another Bosnia
Yugoslavia had long been a simmering caldron of ethnic and nationalist tensions. After the death of Yugoslav strongman Josip Broz…
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…
De-Baathification and Dismantling the Iraqi Army
The 2003 American invasion of Iraq, which came not long after the invasion of Afghanistan, proved to be highly controversial,…
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…