“You know I have my ups and downs, but I have a pact with God. The pact is that no…
A Cold End to the Prague Spring
In 1968, growing opposition to the failing sociopolitical and economic policies of hard-line Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, led by Antonín…
Stalin’s Legacy: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict
Nagorno-Karabakh is a highly contested, landlocked region in the South Caucasus of the former Soviet Union. The present-day conflict has…
Cain and Abel: Splitting Up North and South Korea
With the end of World War II in August 1945, there was still no consensus on Korea’s fate among Allied…
Terror on the 9th Floor — The Kuala Lumpur Hostage Crisis
On August 4th, 1975, five members of the Japanese Red Army or JRA – a militant organization intent on overthrowing…
Jimmy Carter’s “Malaise” Speech
In the late 1970’s, in the wake of the Iranian Revolution and the ongoing hostage crisis, a massive oil shortage…
As If Getting a Venereal Disease Weren’t Bad Enough…
Chas Freeman had an extraordinary career in the Foreign Service. He accomplished the unparalleled feat of becoming nearly bilingual in…
A Completely Lawless Place – Beirut and the Assassination of Ambassador Meloy and Robert Waring
The Lebanese Civil War was a 15-year conflict that took the lives of more than 130,000 people. Throughout the early…
The Tiananmen Square Massacre — June 4, 1989
The 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square was one of the most heart-wrenching displays of state suppression of peaceful assembly in…
Back in the USSR — Life as a Student in Moscow in the 1960s
Grim. Tedious. Unrelentingly cold and dreary. Add in KGB surveillance and the fear that they truly were out to get…