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Elections to UN bodies provide an important window into the work of the world’s largest and most important international organization. This case examines the role of a comparatively small state, Ireland, and its successful election to the UN Human Rights Council in November 2012.The case begins with background on the role of elections at the United Nations, both for the Human Rights Council and the Security Council. While elections to the Security Council traditionally attract the most attention, the Human Rights Council is an increasingly important venue for electoral competition among member states, and a site of significant controversies. This…

This case study explores the back-channel relationship between Henry Kissinger, who served as Nixon’s national security advisor (and later secretary of state), and Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet Union’s ambassador to the United States from 1962 to 1986. During the Nixon administration (1969-1974), the Kissinger-Dobrynin channel became the primary forum for candid discussion of the major issues in superpower relations, often to the exclusion of the traditional diplomatic bureaucracy of the U.S. Department of State.  The case, which is derived from the author’s book, Nixon’s Back Channel to Moscow: Confidential Diplomacy and Détente (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2017), combines a detailed historical…

On the night of April 26, 2007, riots erupted in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Groups consisting largely of ethnic Russians, who make up approximately one third of Tallinn’s population, protested in the streets, clashed with police forces, and looted and destroyed stores. Two days later, once the violence subsided, one person had died, more than 150 people were injured, and 1,000 individuals were detained. Protesters took to the streets in response to the Estonian government’s announcement that it would move the statue of the “Bronze Soldier”—a Soviet war memorial—from Tallinn’s city center to a military cemetery in the suburbs. For ethnic…

On the night of April 26, 2007, riots erupted in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Groups consisting largely of ethnic Russians, who make up approximately one third of Tallinn’s population, protested in the streets, clashed with police forces, and looted and destroyed stores. Two days later, once the violence subsided, one person had died, more than 150 people were injured, and 1,000 individuals were detained. Protesters took to the streets in response to the Estonian government’s announcement that it would move the statue of the “Bronze Soldier”—a Soviet war memorial—from Tallinn’s city center to a military cemetery in the suburbs. For ethnic…

In early 2007, Indian and Pakistani back-channel interlocutors, appointed by the respective heads of government, were preparing to finalize a secret deal to resolve their dispute over Kashmir. Had the negotiators managed to finalize a deal, the two counties would have signed it in a public ceremony. Such a deal could have brought the decades-long Kashmir conflict to a peaceful end. However, the deal, which was confidentially negotiated in secret third country locations for a period of close to three years, was neither finalized nor signed due to domestic political upheaval in Pakistan. Successive governments in Pakistan tried to continue…

This case study examines the twenty-six months of UN-facilitated, Cypriot-led negotiations to reunify the island of Cyprus from May 2015 to July 2017. Drawing upon the author’s experience as U.S. ambassador to Cyprus during this period, the case assesses the roles and negotiating positions of the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders, the United Nations, the European Union, the governments of the United Kingdom, Turkey, Greece, Russia, France, and the United States. Historically the United States has played the role of “honest broker” in negotiations over Cyprus; during this period, then Vice President Biden and later Vice President Pence took…

The case focuses on the events leading up to the January, 2018 ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) overturning anti-dumping and countervailing duties imposed by the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) on imports of the CSeries commercial jet, produced by Bombardier, Inc., a Canadian company.   The decision—and the imposition of the initial duties by the U.S. DoC—fundamentally reshaped the global aerospace industry. It led the two largest manufacturers (Airbus and Boeing) to essentially take over significant portions of the third and fourth largest manufacturers (Bombardier of Canada and Embraer of Brazil, respectively). ISBN: 978-1-56927-056-1 | Published: 2020

This case examines NATO’s decision to intervene in Libya in 2011. Drawing on the author’s experience as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Mission to NATO, the case assesses the decision-making processes in Washington, New York (the UN), and Brussels (NATO) that led the international community to launch a military operation in Libya under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. Through engagement with this case, students will develop an understanding of the opportunities and constraints of multilateral approaches to military intervention. The Libya crisis enables students to see the pros and cons of NATO-led operations and so-called coalitions of…