Washington, D.C., November 5, 1999 – The shocking seizure of the American embassy and its staff in Tehran on November 4, 1979, placed U.S.-Iran relations firmly in the deep freeze. Whatever hopes existed on either side for a rapprochement after the Shah’s departure at the start of the year were quickly doused. Twenty years later, the controversy over reestablishing ties rages on in both countries.
Washington, D.C., September 24, 1999 The relationship between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) over the fifty years since the PRC was established on October 1, 1949 has been extraordinarily complex. Extreme hostility turned into outright military conflict in Korea. Rapprochement in the early 1970s became a strategic partnership during the latter part of the Cold War--a partnership that was followed by today's often rocky relationship. Today and for the foreseeable future China will represent a key focus of U.S. foreign and international economic policy.
Washington, D.C. – To commemorate the historic competition of a U.S. and Cuban baseball team on a diamond in Havana this Sunday, the National Security Archive today posted a collection of documents which chronicles the origins of "baseball diplomacy"--an effort initiated 25 years ago. The documents, ranging from unclassified letters to declassified secret cables and high-level State Department memoranda, reveal the efforts of then-commissioner of baseball, Bowie Kuhn, and his counterparts in Cuba, along with aides to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, to arrange a game between U.S.