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Australia is preparing for war in order to avoid it. Their historic new increase in defense spending and China’s dependence on them for iron ore make them an important ally. Australia’s defense funding for 2024 will be $35 billion USD, just over 2% of their GDP, and up from $20 billion in 2021. They’ve signed a new trilateral security agreement with the United States and United Kingdom that will give the Australian Navy a new weapon that only 6 other nations in the entire world have. Major upgrades are being made to their northern army, air and naval bases. But...

Since Donald Trump’s rise within Republican ranks, conservatives have divided into two competing foreign policy camps. One contends that Trump’s approach suits the world in which we live and supersedes previous GOP national security and foreign affairs outlooks. A smaller contingent contends that Ronald Reagan’s understanding of America and his conduct of diplomacy remain the gold standard for U.S. foreign policy. Atlantic Council colleagues Matthew Kroenig (also a Georgetown professor of government and international relations) and Dan Negrea contend that considerably more agreement about foreign affairs prevails among conservatives than they themselves realize. When fleshed out, a Trump-Reagan fusion represents,...

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a major ally of Vladimir Putin, has said that Europe should undergo a "moral cleansing," according to state news agency Belta. During a government meeting at the weekend, Lukashenko talked about fighting Nazis in the Second World War and said: "The time has come for the forgetful Europe to give itself a moral cleansing." "They — all who chose to forget — will have to look again at the grueling evidence of the bloody crimes of their own fathers and grandfathers," he said, according to Belta. "I must admit that we were delicately silent. In our...

Live: Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin meet in Geneva

Biden due up in two minutes. Putin stood up to reporters questions for 45 minutes. FOX news saying that's more time answering unscripted questions than Biden/Harris Combined in their first 100 days. Putin spun like crazy, commentators saying allowing him to go first was a miserable diplomatic mistake as he set the tone. Can Biden answer questions for 45 minutes? Will he correct the Putin misinformation?

eptember 30, 2020 Press Release WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and his colleagues on the China Task Force today released their final report with more than 400 recommendations to counter threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The Task Force, which launched in May of this year, was comprised of 15 members representing 11 different Committees, and spent the past few months examining topics including ideological competition, national security, supply chains, technology, economics, and competitiveness. Click HERE to read the final report. “We’re at the beginning of a New Cold War that will define American politics for...

The successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon powerful new rocket Tuesday ... was a tremendous step toward reasserting American leadership in space. The Falcon Heavy is the most powerful rocket launched in the U.S. since the Apollo missions – and the most powerful commercial rocket ever made. It can carry nearly 64 metric tons (141,000 pounds) into orbit. This is more than double the payload of the next-biggest rocket currently in operation. For perspective, SpaceX says this is, “a mass greater than a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage, and fuel.” SpaceX owner Elon Musk also said the rocket system...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Acrid, black smoke was seen pouring from a chimney at the Russian consulate in San Francisco Friday, a day after the Trump administration ordered its closure amid escalating tensions between the United States and Russia.</p> <p>Firefighters who arrived at the scene were turned away by consulate officials who came from inside the building.</p>

Today Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war against the hegemony of the U.S. Dollar. Of course, he couched the declaration in a statement saying Russia would work to counter the ‘excessive domination’ of certain reserver currencies. The comments were published in an article in the runup to the BRICs summit scheduled to begin Sept 3 in China. “We are ready to work together with our partners to promote international financial regulation reforms and to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies. We will also work towards a more balanced distribution of quotas and voting shares within...

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday that strains between Russia and the West have plunged the world into a "new Cold War". With tensions high over the lingering Ukraine conflict and Russia's backing of the Syrian regime, Medvedev said: "All that's left is an unfriendly policy of NATO against Russia". "We can say it even more clearly: We have slid into a new period of Cold War," he said, speaking at the Munich Security Conference. "Almost every day we are accused of making new horrible threats either against NATO as a whole, against Europe or against the US or...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has a new target in the revived cold war with Washington — the U.S. dollar. The website Russia Today* reported Tuesday that Mr. Putin has drafted a bill to block the use of both the American greenback and the euro in trade between the bloc of countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, including Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The measure “would help expand the use of national currencies in foreign trade payments and financial services and thus create preconditions for greater liquidity of domestic currency markets,” the Kremlin said in a...

New Cold War: A revised Russian military doctrine identifies NATO as Moscow's No. 1 threat, as the Obama administration announced it was returning control of 15 bases in Europe back to the host governments. Russian President Vladimir Putin gave President Obama a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking in the form of a revised strategic doctrine. It re-emphasizes that NATO, notwithstanding President Obama's "flexibility" and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "reset" button, is the No. 1 strategic threat facing Russia. We are reminded of Obama's rebuke of Mitt Romney in the third presidential debate, when the GOP nominee...

Chechen Residents: Dozens of Those Killed in Battle in Ukraine Have Been Delivered to the Republic. Local residents say that several dozen residents of Chechnya, who took part in the fighting in Ukraine and died in the Donetsk region, have been brought back to their homeland in the last few days, giving numbers from 35 to 40-45 dead. The Republic’s security agencies declined to comment on these reports, writes a correspondent for Caucasian Knot. Caucasian Knot has reported that, following the change of power in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea by Russia, clashes broke out in the towns of...

Poland's Sikorski: Russia would lose confrontation with West (Roundup) Europe News Aug 27, 2008, 13:03 GMT Warsaw - Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said in an interview Wednesday he would prefer Russia to work with the West and that Moscow would lose again if it came to confrontation. 'As Europe, we're 10 times richer than Russia and along with the United States 20 times,' Sikorski told the daily Dziennik. 'I'd prefer if Russia worked together and integrated itself with the wider-known West, but if it comes to confrontation, then it will lose again.' Sikorski's comments came a day after Russian...

<p>Russia's parliament has voted to suspend Moscow's support for a key treaty limiting the deployment of armed forces along its border with Europe.</p>

Even if one rejects Golitsyn's overall thesis -- viz., that Gorbachev's changes comprised a long-term strategic deception -- one must still acknowledge that Golitsyn was the only analyst whose crystal ball was functioning during the key period of the late 20th century. When the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1989, the CIA was chastised for failing to foresee the change. "For a generation, the Central Intelligence Agency told successive presidents everything they needed to know about the Soviet Union," said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "except that it was about to fall apart." Sovietologists both inside and outside CIA were indeed baffled,...

You know about the war, right? The war in which a nuclear-armed near superpower with 150 million inhabitants made an unprovoked attack on a neighbouring country with 1% of its population? That would be an attack on a NATO member, which all other NATO members are obligated to treat as an attack on them all. In terms of moral and legal obligations, the UK, the USA, Germany . . . in fact all NATO members, have been attacked by Russia. Here is what British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett had to say about the subject: And here is what US Secretary...

Russia and Ukraine are set to resume crisis talks on Friday in a bid to resolve a dispute over gas prices. Ukraine has rejected Moscow's offer of a loan to help pay for a controversial hike in the cost of Russian gas. Russia wants to quadruple the amount it charges Kiev for the gas in order, it says, to bring it up to global norms - but Ukraine is accusing it of spite. Russian President Vladimir Putin says the impasse has led to a "real crisis" in relations between the two countries. Russia says it will cut gas supplies by...

In the crowded hallways of the Polish Parliament, there is talk of a new Cold War in which the weapons have changed from nuclear warheads to oil and gas. The rival in a widening game of pipelines and corporate strategy is Russia and its empire of energy resources. Ninety percent of Poland's oil and much of its natural gas flow from Russia. Such equations are distressing for Poles as they rise in stature in the West while remaining in many ways subject to the political and economic whims of their past oppressor. "Russia is exploiting its control of oil and...

Pope John Paul II will be known for many great achievements, but foremost among them will be his unique role, in conjunction with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and others, in helping end the Soviet empire, a feat that few thought possible when he first donned the shoes of the fisherman over a quarter century ago. Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was from Poland, a front line in the Cold War against the Soviets. Unlike the traditional Italian Cardinals, he knew life well on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and thus was well-placed to bring it down. While we cannot know what...