On September 6, 1976 a MIG-25 (foxbat), the most advanced Soviet fighter jet at the time, landed at Hokadote Airport…
Getting Mexico to the NAFTA Negotiating Table
U.S. diplomats who helped lay the groundwork for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) first had to overcome entrenched…
Protecting Greenland: The American Consulate at Godthab, 1940-42
During World War II, Nazi Germany invaded and occupied continental Denmark, leaving the Kingdom’s other two territories, the Faroe Islands…
Edward Elson: Entrepreneurial Ambassador to Denmark
The fall of the Soviet Union upset long-established power dynamics, leaving East and Central Europe, in particular, in uncharted waters.…
Fleeing Rwanda to Survive, then Returning to Rebuild, 1994
On April 6, 1994, the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were assassinated when their plane was shot down near Kigali…
Grapes of Wrath and Strained Relations with Chile
Grocery stores throughout the United States pulled tons of grapes from their shelves when traces of cyanide were found in two…
Negotiating the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT)
Due to rising concern about radioactive fallout from increasingly big nuclear tests underwater, in space, in the atmosphere and underground,…
“How many people can you fit on a 747?”- Operations Sheba and Solomon
The Ethiopian Aliyah, as it is known in Israel, was the migration during the 1980’s of thousands of Ethiopian Jews…
Kimberley Process: Commercial Diplomacy to Stem the Flow of Blood Diamonds
During the 1990s, several African countries, namely Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, and Liberia…
Seek and Destroy – The Mine Ban Treaty
Signed in Ottawa, Canada on December 3, 1997, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer…