After the 1949 defeat of the Chinese Nationalists at the hands of Mao Zedong’s People’s Liberation Army, the newly-proclaimed People’s…
Tracking China’s Political Change through Dazibao Posters
Chinese “big-character posters,” or dazibao, are handwritten posters mounted on walls and published in papers or pamphlets to communicate protest…
A Bum Rap for April Glaspie — Saddam and the Start of the Iraq War
In the summer of 1990, concerns were growing that Saddam Hussein, who was massing troops near the border with Kuwait, was…
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…
Iraqi Kurds, Operation Provide Comfort, and the Birth of Iraq’s Opposition
In the aftermath of Iraq’s crushing defeat during Operation Desert Storm in February 1991, protesters and rebels in the northern…
Billion-Dollar “Plan Colombia” to End Decades of Civil War
Published January 2016 A guerrilla organization known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias…
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…
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…
Survivor of Two Concentration Camps, U.S. Ambassador to Three Countries
Robert Gerhard Neumann (1916–1999), seen at right with wife Marlen, served as U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia.…
Negotiating the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
One of the most critical problems facing the world today is the issue of climate change. Scientists have predicted that…