Stephen Kinzer
Relationships based on deals between leaders or ruling elites tend to collapse amid popular anger.Collection: Anger
In 1984, showing extraordinary courage, a group of Guatemalan wives, mothers and other relatives of disappeared people banded together to form the Mutual Support Group for the Appearance Alive of Our Relatives.Collection: Courage
During the Cold War, the non-aligned movement tried to become a 'third force' in world politics, but failed because it was too large and unwieldy.Collection: War
Allowing a friend to careen toward self destruction is not friendship. That is a habit the United States needs to break as it pursues a richer and more deeply supportive relationship with Israel.Collection: Friendship
Alliances and partnerships produce stability when they reflect realities and interests.
It is never wise to discourage youthful idealism.
Rwanda has emerged from the devastation of genocide and become more secure and prosperous than anyone had a right to expect.
The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers created the 'Fertile Crescent' where some of the first civilizations emerged. Today they are immensely important resources, politically as well as geographically.
New media and mobile entertainment are revolutionizing the way people learn about the world.
Samarkand, with its magnificent mosques, tombs and dazzling ensembles of ceramic tiles, is still one of the world's most awe-inspiring cities.
Challenging orthodoxy is a death sentence in Washington.
The United States is now harbouring Luis Posada Carriles. His continued freedom mocks victims of terrorism everywhere. It also shows how heavily the 'war on terror' is overlaid with politics and hypocrisy.
The United States has means to wound Latin American countries deeply, chiefly by altering trade policies to cut imports in ways that would throw thousands out of work.
No authoritarian leader cedes power easily or turns it over to bodies he cannot control.
Eagles rarely fail to catch their prey. They usually kill it quickly by breaking its neck with their powerful claws.
No one will ever be able to say what the comandantes would have done with their historic opportunity in Nicaragua if they had not been confronted with civil war.
American strategic doctrine suggests that Mexico is of second-level importance to the United States. It ranks below Japan and Indonesia, Brazil and India, Egypt and Israel, and European powers including Britain, France, and Germany. This is a grave geopolitical miscalculation.
The long conflict between Israel and Palestine has, for better or worse, become the world's conflict. It permanently destabilizes the Middle East, blocks the settlement of urgent crises, and intensifies looming threats to the West.
Land ownership in Guatemala is more unequal than anywhere else in Latin America. Roughly 90 percent of Guatemalan farms are too small to support a family. A tiny group of Guatemalans owns a third of the country's arable land; more than 300,000 landless peasants must scrounge a living as best they can.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has denounced negotiation with Iran as a 'historic mistake' that is making the world 'a more dangerous place.' His partners in Washington vigorously echo that view.
Every nation, like every individual, would like to believe it owes 'no apology' to anyone. Adults realise, however, that few among us are purely innocent or utterly blameless.
Iran, in its former incarnation as Persia, created the world's first empire, produced titanic figures like Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes, and is one of the great fonts of world culture.
No offense to Iceland, but Latin America is where the fugitive leaker Edward Snowden should settle.
The withdrawal of more than half a million Russian troops and dependents from Germany since 1991 is described by historians as 'the biggest pullout ever by an army not defeated in battle.'
There is very little hope that the United States or anyone else can do much to stabilize Iraq, Libya, Syria or Egypt. Stabilizing Iran, and bringing it back into the family of nations, is much more possible. That would be a 'win' for both sides.
'Operation Ajax' presents history in an entirely new way. It takes a true story and uses cutting-edge technology, never before used in this way, to bring it to spectacular life.
When Prime Minister Erdogan came to Washington in 2009, he sounded almost like the ambassador from Iran.
Washington sees the various local and national conflicts in the Middle East as part of a battle for regional hegemony between the U.S. and Iran.
The United States has dealt with the Middle East and surrounding regions for many decades in the context of the Cold War.
The long-term strategic goals of Iran and the long-term strategic goals of Turkey are close to the long-term strategic goals of the United States.
As long as Iran believes that its security will be increased by having a nuclear program, it's going to pursue its program.
Turkey can be a bridge to regimes and actions the United States can't reach. Turkey can talk to people the United States can't talk to.
Israel deserves special treatment from the United States, both for historical reasons and because there can be no regional peace without a secure Israel.
As the United States shapes and carries out its policies toward Muslim countries, it should do so with Turkey at its side.
The reason that Americans have not been able to see the great strategic benefit that could accrue from a closer relationship with Iran is emotion.
Emotion is always the enemy of wise statesmanship.
There is much to justify Turkey's reverence for Ataturk. He is the force that allowed Turkey to rise from the ashes of defeat and emerge as a vibrant new nation.
Without Ataturk's vision, without his ambition and energy, without his astonishing boldness in sweeping away traditions accumulated over centuries, today's Turkey would not exist, and the world would be much poorer.
Ataturk approved of the mevlevi dervish approach to God as being 'an expression of Turkish genius' that reclaimed Islam from what he saw as hide-bound, backward Arab tradition.
Because Iran understands Afghanistan far better than Americans do, making Iran a partner in a long-term effort to transform Afghan agriculture makes sense.
The Afghans are probably the world champions in resisting foreign domination and infiltration into their country.
If a leader comes to office in a seemingly fair election and tolerates dissent, he or she qualifies for our seal of approval.
Accepting that Arabs have the right to elect their own leaders means accepting the rise of governments that do not share America's pro-Israel militancy.
My general view is the delivery of news is changing in dramatic ways, and will continue to change into ways we can't even predict.
At the end of the day, there is still one function of journalism that cannot be computerized, and that is reporters. You're always going to need reporters.
The fundamentals of what journalism is about don't necessarily change. What will change is the delivery of news.
Americans overthrew governments only when economic interests coincided with ideological ones.
In 1983, most Nicaraguans had still not fallen to the depths of deprivation and despair which they would reach in later years, but many were already unhappy and restive.
In some countries that are darlings of the West, like Egypt, everyone knows the result of national elections years in advance: The man in power always wins. In others, like Saudi Arabia, the very idea of an election is unthinkable.
Iranians launched their constitutional revolution in 1906 and established their parliament soon afterward.