He was a brilliant scholar who focused on the Middle East and whose books were widely read by Arabists. His…
Strobe Talbott — “We’re Menaced by the Zombie Behavior of Nations”
Strobe Talbott assumed the presidency of the Brookings Institution in July 2002 after a career in journalism, government and academia.…
I, Spy? Diplomatic Adventures during Soviet-American Détente
Among the challenges of serving as a U.S. diplomat in the USSR during the Cold War years of 1945 to…
Charles Z. Wick: Diplomacy Hollywood-Style
Before being absorbed and restructured by the State Department in 1999, the United States Information Agency (USIA) was an independent…
The INF Treaty, Part III — Crossing the Finish Line
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…
Two Shades of Red: the Sino-Soviet Split
After the 1949 defeat of the Chinese Nationalists at the hands of Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army, the newly-proclaimed People’s…
The Fight for Non-Proliferation Begins at Home
The development and potential use of nuclear weapons defined the Cold War era and kept the world under the shadow…