Cold War

What would happen if the United States were about to be hit by nuclear weapons? Hopefully, the government would provide some warning through the federal alert system. But that system hasn’t always been in place—and it hasn’t always worked. For over 40 minutes on February 20, ...read more

In the early 1980s, Karl F. Koecher and his wife Hanna lived a gold-plated life in New York City’s swish Upper East Side. They drove a new, blue BMW and lived in a luxury co-op alongside the tennis star Ivan Lendl and the comedian Mel Brooks. Hanna was a diamond dealer, blue-eyed ...read more

Almost as soon as World War II ended, the question of what to do with a defeated, destroyed Germany threatened to drive a wedge between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies. At Potsdam in 1945, the Big Three (the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union) agreed to ...read more

The January 1968 capture of the U.S.S. Pueblo during a spy mission in international waters cost the life of one American sailor and began a grueling 11-month imprisonment for the other 82 Americans aboard. While the Pueblo crew was remembered for their bravery and defiance, ...read more

The military-industrial complex is a nation’s military establishment, as well as the industries involved in the production of armaments and other military materials. In his 1961 farewell address, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned the public of the nation’s ...read more

The Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966, giving the public the right to access records from any federal agency. FOIA plays an important role in keeping government transparent and accountable, and has been used to expose a ...read more

For several decades now, the U.S. has sought to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons. But ironically, the reason Iran has the technology to build these weapons in the first place is because the U.S. gave it to Iran between 1957 and 1979. This nuclear assistance was part of ...read more

For nearly 60 years, the Castro family controlled Cuba. But in April 2018, it was announced that the island nation long dominated by the specter of its former dictator, Fidel Castro, and his family will get a new leader. On April 19, 2018, the 86-year-old Raúl Castro will step ...read more

“We’re now living in a new world.” On Christmas Day 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev shocked the world with these words, announcing the dissolution of the Soviet Union and his resignation from its top post. After more than 40 years of the world seeming to teeter on the ...read more

Great events do not always have great causes. One of history’s biggest surprises is how sometimes a series of small, seemingly insignificant events can suddenly add up to momentous change. That’s how it happened with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the point-of-no-return moment in ...read more

What does the United States want to be to the world? And what would the world like? A welcoming beacon of democracy? A partner in trade and security? A wary, but distant ally? Or a fortress that has pulled up its drawbridge? For America’s allies and foes alike, the messaging of ...read more

The 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics have been the first Games in 34 years that Russia has not, technically, attended. After a years-long doping scandal, the International Olympic Committee stripped Russia of 41 medals and formally banned them from this year’s games, leaving ...read more

Hyper-partisanship. Excessive debt. Foreign influence in our elections. Sounds like a litany of some of America’s greatest challenges today. But some threats never end and these topped the list of what kept George Washington up at night, fearing for the future of the nation he ...read more

North and South Korea have been divided for more than 70 years, ever since the Korean Peninsula became an unexpected casualty of the escalating Cold War between two rival superpowers: the Soviet Union and the United States. A Unified Korea For centuries before the division, the ...read more

When the dreaded red phone rang inside the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) operations center on the last day of November in 1955, the mood at the nerve center of America’s nuclear defense grew nervous. At a time when the Cold War raged and Soviet fighter jets routinely ...read more

Ever since people began to speculate about “World War III,” its very name has implied its own inevitability. We talk about it not only as something that might happen, but something that will. And it’s been on our minds for a very long time. The phrase seems to have emerged during ...read more

When James Bond needed nifty espionage gadgets, like a Rolex-turned-circular-saw or a peel-off fake fingerprint, he could count on the Q branch of the British Secret Service. When American operatives need to snap photos on the down-low or transmit a secret code, they have the ...read more

The atomic bomb, and nuclear bombs, are powerful weapons that use nuclear reactions as their source of explosive energy. Scientists first developed nuclear weapons technology during World War II. Atomic bombs have been used only twice in war—both times by the United States ...read more