The Solidarity Movement. Perestroika and Glasnost. The fall of the Berlin Wall. All of these movements, policies, or events had…
“The Cold War Was Truly Over” — The 1986 Reykjavik Summit
After the 1985 Geneva Summit, where President Ronald Reagan and leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, met for the first…
“The Wild West” — Peshawar and the Afghan Mujahedeen
In the late 1970s, the USSR had been supporting the Afghan government in its fight against rebels, who had made considerable…
From Russia with Love and Back Again: Rostropovich’s Exile and Return
Mstislav Rostropovich, considered one of the greatest cellists of the twentieth century, was born in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan…
George Shultz: “Your Country is the United States”
George P. Shultz was Secretary of State for President Reagan from 1982 to 1989, the longest such tenure since Dean…
Beijing Spring and the Lead-up to Tiananmen Square
The iconic image of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and brutal government crackdown on the peaceful demonstrators is that of the…
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…