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2021 May

Summer of ’61: The Berlin Crisis and Great Power Rivalry

President John F. Kennedy arrived in Vienna sixty years ago with lofty expectations for a Cold War breakthrough. But rather than alleviating U.S.-Soviet tensions as Kennedy had hoped, his conference with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev instead precipitated a summer of crisis in Berlin, the perennial flashpoint of the Cold War. Probing Kennedy’s resolve, Khrushchev reissued...

Grounded: Belarus & the EU Swap Sanctions

Last weekend, Belarus dispatched a warplane to divert and ground a commercial Ryanair flight in Minsk. After landing, authorities swiftly moved to arrest journalist Roman Protasevich, a longtime critic of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko who, in a predictable turn, defended the move as an internal matter. In response, the EU banned Belarusian flights over the...

Chilling Effects: The Debate Over U.S. Arctic Policy

Ahead of a diplomatic swing highlighted by an encounter with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has broadcast the Biden Administration’s concerns about the militarization of the Arctic. Against the backdrop of increased Sino-Russian cooperation in the region, united by shared economic interests in its control, Blinken has stated that the...

All the Presidents’ Problem: Pursuing Peace with North Korea

In October 1994, the Clinton administration had momentous news to share with the world. It had reached an agreement with North Korea to incrementally achieve normalization and denuclearization. Pyongyang pledged to freeze and dismantle its nuclear reactors, submit to international inspections and comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The U.S. promised North Korea financing for...