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The choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has electrified many conservatives and strengthened John McCain's claim that his administration would be far more reform-minded than Barack Obama's. At the same time, it has triggered accusations that Gov. Palin is far too inexperienced to be vice president, and has little knowledge of national security issues. Mrs. Palin's lack of mastery of national security issues is often contrasted with Mr. Obama's vice presidential pick, Joseph Biden Jr. Mr. Biden has served in the Senate since 1973, is currently chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and is often described as a "statesman." In...

In New York, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein has ordered the release of eight more grand jury transcripts from the famous 1951 spy case that led to the conviction of the husband and wife pro-Soviet spy team of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Reuters reports this story as if there is some cloud of doubt still hanging over the Rosenberg's conviction despite that their guilt is no longer debatable. Yet here is Reuters giving cover to those who stubbornly wish to cast doubt on the U.S. prosecution of the Rosenbergs. It also gives Reuters and U.S. detractors the opportunity once again...

RUSSIA last night provoked fresh fears of a Cold War by boasting it has tested a new long-range nuclear missile. Moscow’s military chiefs revealed their Topol intercontinental stealth rocket had been fired successfully.

Syrian leader thought Cold War is back, but Russia made it clear Assad was wrongGuy Bechor Published:  08.28.08, 17:10 / Israel Opinion P{margin:0;} UL{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;margin-right: 16; padding-right:0;} OL{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0;margin-right: 32; padding-right:0;} H3.pHeader {margin-bottom:3px;COLOR: #192862;font-size: 16px;font-weight: bold;margin-top:0px;} P.pHeader {margin-bottom:3px;COLOR: #192862;font-size: 16px;font-weight: bold;} The Syrian army’s aging generals couldn’t believe their eyes: The Soviet Union is back. After seeing Russian tanks entering Georgia, they thought that time can be turned back two decades, to the era where the Soviet superpower backed President Hafez al-Assad; an era where Soviet advisors stayed in Syria, Soviet warships docked at the Tartus port, and Moscow transferred missiles and...

A new Cold War between Russia and the West grew steadily closer yesterday after the Kremlin gave a warning about “direct confrontation” between American and Russian warships in the Black Sea. Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, declared that Russia was taking “measures of precaution” against American and Nato naval ships. “Let’s hope we do not see any direct confrontation in that,” he said. Any attempt by countries in the West to isolate Russia would “definitely harm the economic interests of those states”, he said. A day after the Kremlin said that it was ready to...

Cold War tension rises as Putin talks of Black Sea confrontation Russia has criticised the US for using naval ships to deliver aid to Georgia Michael Evans, Defence Editor A new Cold War between Russia and the West grew steadily closer yesterday after the Kremlin gave a warning about “direct confrontation” between American and Russian warships in the Black Sea. Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, declared that Russia was taking “measures of precaution” against American and Nato naval ships. “Let’s hope we do not see any direct confrontation in that,” he said. Any attempt by...

A new Cold War between Russia and the West grew steadily closer today after the Kremlin gave a warning about “direct confrontation” between American and Russian warships in the Black Sea. Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, declared that Russia was taking “measures of precaution” against American and Nato naval ships. “Let’s hope we do not see any direct confrontation in that,” he said. Any attempt by countries in the West to isolate Russia would “definitely harm the economic interests of those states”, he said.

Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968) The general dissatisfaction within the Czechoslovak military became increasingly evident. In 1966 Czechoslovakia, following the lead of Romania, rejected the Soviet Union's call for more military integration within the Warsaw Pact and sought greater input in planning and strategy for the Warsaw Pact's non-Soviet members. At the same time, plans to effect great structural changes in Czechoslovak military organizations were under discussion. All these debates heated up in 1968 during the period of political liberalization known as the Prague Spring, when CSLA commanders put forward plans to democratize the armed forces, plans that included limiting...

East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, who oversaw some of the Cold War's biggest swaps of captured spies in Berlin, has died at 82, his family says.

This August 21st marks 40 years since the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, an invasion meticulously planned by the Soviet Union to crush the period of economic and political reforms known as the Prague Spring. Within hours of late August 20th and early August 21st some 2,000 tanks as well as an estimated 200,000 troops had poured in. It was the beginning of the occupation which changed the course of Czechoslovak history. Marta Hubscherová – a former radio reporter - witnessed the arrival of the first tanks in northern Bohemia; in an interview for Radio Prague in 2004...

Headline at http://www.marketwatch.com/ Crude tops $121 to close at a more than two-week high; natural gas gains SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures climbed above $121 a barrel Thursday to close at a more than two-week high, as the dollar fell against other major currencies and as tensions between the U.S. and Russia worsened.

During the Cold War, it always seemed the Russians were menacing because they were communists. Maybe the communists were menacing because they were Russians. During the same week in which Russia invaded Georgia, pulled back, accepted a truce, then invaded again, the Russian foreign minister point blank threatened to launch a nuclear attack on Poland. They’re not happy that the Poles agreed to host American missile interceptors. However over the Cold War may be, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Russia – against all apparent logical self-interest – prefers to be America’s enemy. The Russians, who claim to...

A top Russian general said Friday that Poland's agreement to accept a US missile defense battery exposes the country to attack, pointing out that Russian military doctrine permits the use of nuclear weapons in such a situation, the Interfax news agency reported. *** Interfax said he added, in clear reference to the agreement, that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them." Nogovitsyn said that would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, according to Interfax.

Sending US forces into Georgia, albeit to deliver humanitarian supplies, represents the most serious military escalation between Washington and Moscow since the end of the Cold War. Not since British paratroopers came nose to nose with Russian soldiers at Pristina airport in 1999 have the old East-West rivalries resurfaced in such explosive form. Back then, the situation was defused by General Sir Mike Jackson, the British commander, who refused to confront the Russians and “start World War III”. It is to be hoped that the commanders of the US Navy and Air Force now leading their forces to Georgia will...

Indefensible Deterrent by: Jeff Waldmann, August 13, 2008 The policy of deterrence needs to be eliminated as the guiding interest in American defense policy, says Dr. Keith B. Payne, President of the National Institute for Public Policy. Deterrence theory has been the guiding hand in U.S. defense policy since the start of the Cold War. Dr. Payne discussed the shortcomings of this theory at a July 28th Heritage Foundation lecture. “We know that the fear of escalation on occasion does not deter,” says Payne, “We have favored a theory truly built on fallacies.” Dr. Payne’s new book, The Great American...

Quite interesting discussion between more sane Left with less sane (some would say insane) Left. Leon Wieseltier does include some obligatory jibes at Bush/Chaney but otherwise provides a compelling argument  against reflexive blame Bush, "America made them do it" reaction of the crazy Left. Don't miss some interesting insights by a poster teplukhin2you down in the discussion area (at the TNR) on what might motivate Putin and his band of thugs.Excerpts and highlights are mine. Follow the link to the complete article.  ... My colleague John Judis has flabbergasted me with something he posted on these pages a few hours...

Deja Vu all over again: New cold war with same old players.Presidential contender Barack Obama told a group of Cold War reeanactors that he'd avoid another Cold War victory by offering the Russians Georgia and maybe throwing Alabama at the Ruskies. "It is time for a change, even if that change means we must go back to it being exactly the way it was," Obama said during a speech for Cold War reenactors, who gathered at their annual convention held in Moscow, Pa. "This is a time for slogans, not words."

HE LIT THE FUSE BY ACCIDENT, with good intentions serving as his matchstick. On June 8, 2005, at 10:50 a.m., a 26-year-old computer software engineer in Tehran created a seemingly innocuous entry on Wikipedia about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then a fringe candidate running for president of Iran. The minibiography was just 73 words long. Its author, Roozbeh Pournader, had no clue he was touching off an explosive war of words that would rage online for more than two years. "At that time," says Pournader, who now lives in California, "Ahmadinejad's running was considered a joke." Pournader is part of an army...

MOSCOW, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said on Tuesday he would pull his country out of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) grouping ex-Soviet states, Russian news agencies reported. "We are leaving the CIS for good and propose that other countries leave this body run by Russia," Interfax news agency said Saakashvili told a big rally in his support outside Georgia's parliament

Vice President Dick Cheney spoke to the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Sunday afternoon. The exchange is reported by the AP as: “The vice president expressed the United States’ solidarity with the Georgian people and their democratically elected government in the face of this threat to Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Cheney’s press secretary, Lee Ann McBride, said. Cheney told Saakashvili “Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community,” McBride said. The key terms here are “Russian aggression” and “must...

The Shadowserver Foundation, which tracks serious hacking, confirmed: "We are now seeing new attacks against .ge sites - www.parliament.ge and president.gov.ge are currently being hit with http floods." Mr Armin warned that official Georgian sites that did appear online may have been hijacked and be displaying bogus content. He said in a post on his site: "Use caution with any web sites that appear of a Georgia official source but are without any recent news ... as these may be fraudulent." The Baltic Business News website reported that Estonia has offered to send a specialist online security team to Georgia....

Q & A: Georgia-South Ossetia Fighting August 08, 2008 RFE/RL's Caucasus expert Liz Fuller answers questions on Russia's interest in South Ossetia and recent events that have caused the conflict to boil over. August 9: Q. What will be the impact of Abkhazia's decision to begin military operations against Georgian troops in the Kodori Gorge? A. I'm not sure whether they're planning to retake the Kodori Gorge, but they've obviously decided that this is the most useful strategic thing they can do to strengthen their own position, and this is something they can do in line with their cooperation agreement...

South Ossetia At Front Of New East-West Conflict? August 09, 2008 By Brian Whitmore A column of Russian troops on the march to Tskhinvali on August 9 In an effort to prod the West to Tbilisi's side in its rapidly escalating armed conflict with Russia, President Mikheil Saakashvili is invoking the ghosts of Cold War battles past -- Moscow's suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan in 1979. The Georgian leader's strategy is clear. Tbilisi's small army is no match for the Russian military machine. Saakashvili's only chance...

South Ossetia Sinks Into The Spin Zone A battle of perceptions August 09, 2008 By Robert Coalson In the modern world, wars are won and lost as much in the minds of global public opinion as on the battlefield. Even as the fighting between Russia and Georgia has raged in South Ossetia and other parts of Georgia, a fierce -- if uneven -- media battle has also unfolded. Each side is eager to establish its narrative of the situation and unfolding events. As on the battlefield, Russia enjoys vast material superiority in the information sphere. Its 24-hour English-language news channel,...

The “Red Army” poem goes beyond hoping for the communists to beat the Nazis in World War II and hails the Soviet revolution. It says:“Show the marveling multitudesAmericans, British, all your allied brothersHow strong you areHow great you areHow your young tree of new unityPlanted twenty-five years ago Bears today the golden fruit of victory!”

In 1949 a publication of the Soviet Academy of Sciences carried an item about a bizarre incident that occurred during excavations near the Kolyma River in the gold-mining region of northeastern Siberia. A subterranean stream was discovered, frozen long ago, containing fish and salamanders tens of thousands of years old. They were so well preserved that the men who discovered the stream broke open the ice and ate them. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who died on Sunday at the age of 89, managed somehow to read that piece.

Holidaymakers feeling nostalgic for the Cold War can now tour what was once a top secret bunker in the former East Germany. Opened to the public for the first time on Friday, it was meant to house the ruling Communist elite in the event of a nuclear attack.Something some visitors said they were relieved was no longer a concern:“What goes through my mind is that it is quite nice to stand around here, look at the bunker and talk to each other peacefully,” one man said.Close to the size of a football field, the bunker was designed to function...

Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, has died near Moscow at the age of 89. The author of The Gulag Archipelago and One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich, who returned to Russia in 1994, died of either a stroke or heart failure..... Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent his condolences to the writer's family, a Kremlin spokesperson said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy described as "one of the greatest consciences of 20th Century Russia." "His intransigence, his ideals and his long, eventful life make of Solzhenitsyn a storybook...

'Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel prize winner for literature who was exiled from the Soviet Union and graphically portrayed life in Soviet labour camps, was dead at age 89, the news agency Interfax reported early Monday. The agency quoted literary circles in the Russian capital. The world famous writer and historian had not been seen in public for months. He died from the aftermath of a stroke, according to unconfirmed information.'

To better understand Sen. Barack Obama, his speech before 200,000 Germans in Berlin is one good place to start. As we shall see, however, it does not leave one secure as to the senator's understanding of history, of America's role in the world, and what to do about evil, among other important issues. Obama: "At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning -- his dream -- required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West." Promised by the West? Or promised by America? It...

Polish authorities have erected a monument to US president Ronald Reagan, feted for his crusade against communism and seen by some as having hastened the collapse of the Soviet bloc, reports said Tuesday. Officials in the south-west city of Wroclaw unveiled the monument to the Hollywood actor-turned-president, apparently the first of its kind in Europe, Poland's centrist Dziennik daily reported Tuesday. "To Ronald Reagan for his struggle against totalitarianism -- from the residents of Wroclaw," reads the caption on the relief plaque erected at an intersection in the city bearing Reagan's name. During his two terms as president between 1981-1989,...

58 years later, records unsealed in Rosenberg spy case After 58 years, historians and journalists will have a chance to examine the secret grand jury testimony of witnesses in the espionage case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The couple was investigated in 1950, tried in 1951 for conspiracy to commit espionage and convicted and sentenced to death in 1953. Cold War scholars are hoping the grand jury transcripts will shed light on some nagging questions about the case -- primarily, just how strong the case was against Ethel Rosenberg. The National Security Archive, the American Historical Association, the Georgetown University...

Suddenly within the past month, it feels like we’re returning to the Cold War. It’s obvious that the Russians are quite annoyed by the attempts of the U.S. deploying a missile shield in Eastern Europe — the former backyard of the Russians.

Twenty years ago today (March 24, 2005), Army Major Arthur D. "Nick" Nicholson drove into East Germany to survey Soviet military activity. It was a bright Sunday morning, and he was about to become the last American to die in the Cold War. Relatively few people have heard of Nicholson, even though his killing dominated newspaper headlines around the world for several tense days two decades ago. A handful of people won't ever forget him: A small band of former comrades gathers at his Arlington National Cemetery each spring... I wrote about Nicholson's story in National Review last year. Since...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has signaled unease over the prospect of a possible speech by Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama at Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate, a spokesman said Wednesday. Merkel has "only limited understanding for using the Brandenburg Gate as an election campaign backdrop, as it were, and has expressed skepticism about pursuing such plans," Thomas Steg, a spokesman for the chancellor, told reporters. However, Steg stressed that the chancellor is "very happy" for Obama to visit Germany and meet her and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Berlin city officials said this week that members of the Democratic candidate's campaign had...

Top secret US military plans to test deadly nerve gas by dropping it on soldiers in a remote Queensland rainforest during the Cold War have been uncovered in Australian Government archives. Newly declassified Australian Defence Department and Prime Minister’s office files show that the United States was strongly pushing the Government for tests on Australian soil of two of the most deadly chemical weapons ever developed, VX and GB — better known as Sarin — nerve gas. The plan, which is disclosed for the first time on tomorrow’s SUNDAY program on Nine, called for 200 mainly Australian combat troops to...

Strategic bombers off the American coast, battleships in the Mediterranean -- the Russian military is displaying its might once again with Moscow pumping billions into new weapons. But where does the Kremlin see its enemies today, and why is it risking another nuclear arms race with Washington? At eleven o'clock at night, when the moon is reflected in the slow-moving waters of the Volga River, when the steppes are exhaling the heat of the day, and when the last bars are closing in Yekaterinburg and Pokrovsk -- old provincial cities on the river's left bank that are now called Marx...

Russian bombers have stepped up provocative flight exercises off the Alaskan coast, reminiscent of Cold War incursions designed to rattle U.S. air defenses. U.S. Northern Command, which protects North American airspace, told The Washington Times that TU-95 Bear bombers on 18 occasions the past year have skirted a 12-mile air defense identification zone that protects Alaska. The incursions prompted F-15s and F-22 Raptor fighters to scramble from Elmendorf Air Force Base and intercept the warplanes. The last incident happened in May. The venerable propeller-driven TU-95 came to symbolize the Cold War, as did its counterpart, the U.S. B-52 Stratofortress. "They...

The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, that touchstone of atomic espionage, is a case that launched a thousand doctorates and enough historical texts to make a library groan. Now, however, the 50-year-old record may grow even more complex: on Monday, the federal government, in an unusual move, consented to release most of the secret grand jury testimony taken in the case. In papers filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, prosecutors said that they would not oppose the release of testimony from 35 of the 45 witnesses who appeared before the grand jury in New York in 1950 and...

Last week my husband and I were fortunate enough to spend some time with former President George H. W. Bush and Mrs. Bush in Kennebunkport, ME. The first evening, a group of us gathered at Walker's Point, the Bush family compound that sits on a rocky outcrop on the Maine coast. As former President Bush showed us around, I was struck by how many times this man had contributed to the nation, in position after position, crisis after crisis. Yet many, even those in his own party, have tended to overlook his extraordinary accomplishments. After drinks at the Bush home,...

7:00 PM (et) 1 hr, 39 min Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs from Communism to Al-Qaeda Author: Robert Wallace and Keith Melton

VILLANOVA, Pennsylvania: As the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift approaches, recycled myths about its accomplishments drop from the sky like candy into the waiting arms of Americans hungry for a foreign policy alternative to endless war and secret torture. But politicians and pundits looking for a humanitarian policy to win the world's hearts and minds should look back to the airlift with caution. Sixty years after British and American planes began to fly supplies to West Berliners facing a Soviet blockade, even the faux news program "Colbert Report" has reprised the Cold War refrain that the airlift saved the...

Fellow Freepers, I'll be on the Michael Reagan show beginning at 5:30 EST tomorrow, June 11, 2008, to discuss my new book (out in Sept.), 48 Liberal Lies About History (That You Probably Learned in School). I know, "LS, how did you limit it to 48?" It was tough, but we did have a page limit. When writing this, I looked at about a dozen major U.S. history textbooks used in colleges, and some of the findings surprised even me---and I'm used to bias in academics. *Other than the A-bomb and FDR, the most common picture or image of 20th...

In these decadent times when powerful people in the West cannot conceive of any response to totalitarian jihad other than rank appeasement, and when the name of Che Guevara, a bloodthirsty Stalinist and enemy of freedom, is synonymous with heroism, it is vital that free people be familiar with — and honor — the examples of those valiant few who, living under totalitarianism, have stood up to it with a courage that today’s appeasers of Islam could hardly imagine. Among the greatest of these heroes is Vaclav Havel. Born in 1936, Havel spent his early years under the two major...

To some Czechs, it was the greatest escape of the cold war. As Czech fugitives, the three men ended up on wanted posters across East Germany. But here in central Europe, where history is often rewritten, there are many others who view the five young Czechs as reckless murderers, even though they dodged 24,000 Soviet soldiers and the East German police for 28 days through snow-covered forests to reach the freedom of West Berlin in 1953. ... The current Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, a liberal, decided in March to honor the three survivors as heroes, no doubt expecting some...

To some Czechs, it was the greatest escape of the cold war. As Czech fugitives, the three men ended up on wanted posters across East Germany. But here in central Europe, where history is often rewritten, there are many others who view the five young Czechs as reckless murderers, even though they dodged 24,000 Soviet soldiers and the East German police for 28 days through snow-covered forests to reach the freedom of West Berlin in 1953. ... The current Czech prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, a liberal, decided in March to honor the three survivors as heroes, no doubt expecting some...

After staring into the abyss of nuclear war over Berlin and Cuba, Kennedy chose that June as the "time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and truth is too rarely perceived - yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace." That speech went beyond the reviled Neville Chamberlain ("peace for our time") by calling for "not merely peace in our time, but peace for all time." Instead of aiming, with Woodrow Wilson, to "make the world safe for democracy," the speech proposed to "make the world safe for diversity," a step...

Communists also used political subversion to shape the course of World War II. They manipulated intelligence and State Department analysis to push America toward war with Japan, relieving the threat that Japan might go to war with Moscow. They fought against a plan to invade Europe through Italy, rather than France, as this would have imperiled the eventual Soviet control of Eastern Europe. Soviet agent Alger Hiss was a top advisor to Roosevelt at the Yalta conference that confirmed Soviet control of Eastern Europe, leading to forty years of tyranny and millions murdered in those countries.

A mission to find the lost wreck of the Titanic was actually a cover story for inspecting the wrecks of two nuclear submarines, the man who discovered the famous liner has revealed. Dr Bob Ballard led a team in 1985 that pinpointed the wreckage of the enormous ship 73 years after it sank in the Atlantic. But he almost didn't succeed after his top secret mission to find two Cold War subs left him with just 12 days to find the Titanic. The United States Navy lost two submarines during the 1960s - the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion -...

Today, for the first time in American history we have two --- count 'em, two --- hard-core Leftists running for the Democrat Party nomination. The Left hasn't had this kind of chance for power since Truman defeated Henry Wallace in 1948. Hillary and Obama are Marx twins who only differ in race and gender. All the media tell us is how great it is to have a woman and a black man running for president. What those two really believe, where they learned their quasi-religion, where they derive their support, who else they want to raise to power, and what...