Rajiv Gandhi, son of India’s long-time Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, had no intention of entering politics like the rest of his…
The NPT and the Aftermath of India’s Nuclear Test — May 1974
Operation Smiling Buddha was the assigned code name for India’s first nuclear weapons explosion on May 18th, 1974. India declared…
Normalizing Ties with Franco: “I don’t have to like the son of a bitch, do I?”
For many people, Spain in the 1930s and 40s was a country of despair, where the dreams of democracy and…
Rebel With a Cause — Struggling with the Armenian Genocide
2015 marks the 100th anniversary of what a number of international organizations, countries, and even some U.S. states formally recognize…
Saving a Lost Generation – The Rush to Adopt Romania’s Orphans
The despotic reign of Romania’s Nicolae Ceauşescu caused deplorable living conditions for Romanians and left its most vulnerable citizens –…
The Seychelles – Gangsta’s Paradise
A country of white sand beaches and palm trees, the Seychelles is an exotic tourist destination. It also happens to…
A Flood of Cuban Migrants — The Mariel Boatlift, April-October 1980
One of the most contentious events in mass migration started on April 1, 1980 when several Cubans took control of…
The Ivory Coast’s Félix Houphouët-Boigny – “A Master Manipulator and Destabilizer”
The late President Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) did not look like a “strong man.” He was small…
The Iran-Contra Scandal
One of the biggest foreign policy scandals of the last half-century was the Iran-Contra affair, in which the Reagan Administration,…
The Nazi Invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece
Axis military efforts in the Balkans, compared with the rest of Europe, had not gone well. Italy had invaded Greece…