By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
Over the past several months we have written quite a bit about the Russian resurgence. This discussion predates Russia’s military action in Georgia. Indeed, we have discussed the revival of Russian power since at least 2005, the implications of the FSB’s return since April and the potential return of the [...]

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THE SCOTTISH historian Niall Ferguson has warned that the strategic alliance between China and Russia is more of a threat to the West than the credit crunch.
Ferguson, a best-selling author, broadcaster and professor of history at Harvard University, said that the development of the new Russia-China powerblock was set to put the two economic heavyweights [...]

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The often repeated refrain “we don’t want to be in another cold war” is nonsense - we are in one. And Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is a much more dangerous opponent than dozy old former head of state Leonid Brezhnev. However, the latest demonstration of this truth in Georgia is only a week old, [...]

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In recent years, Moscow started to think that it could most easily express its dissatisfaction with Western politics by resorting to old Cold war cliches. The Kremlin does not like that Ukraine and Georgia want to join NATO, therefore it claimed that Western military bases will inevitably be built in those countries and that they [...]

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The Cold war pitted two superpowers with nuclear warheads trained on each other — from submarines, from silos, from mobile launchers. One false move and the world was a fireball.
Ah, those were the days.
In the 21st century, however, outer space and nukes are the domains of many nations, led by a variety [...]

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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? By Christian Neef more… [ Forum ]

Flexing Muscles [...]

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Military alliances are always sold as things that produce security. In practice they tend to do the opposite.
The Cold war may be over, but you would never know it from NATO’s April meeting in Bucharest. The alliance approved membership for Croatia and Albania, and only French and German opposition prevented the Bush administration from adding [...]

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The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president — but this cold war is with Iran.
That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today — the struggle for influence [...]

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LONDON: The US risks starting a new Cold war by proposing to build its missile shield in central and eastern Europe, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned in comments published in London yesterday.
Washington claims the anti-missile system it wants to base in Poland and the Czech Republic is aimed solely at countering the threat from [...]

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By the third week of January this year, we heard Russia announce that it would not hesitate to be the first to use nuclear weapons in battle, that it would resume this May parading tanks and missiles through Red Square in the Soviet fashion, that it would reestablish the application of double jeopardy in criminal [...]

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The former KGB officer has adopted an increasingly bullish stance against perceived western military advances in the final years of his presidency.
A whole host of objections have riled western diplomats in recent months, leading analysts to suggest Russia is rediscovering the assertiveness it advanced in the cold war.
Read More…

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In order to accommodate the MiG-29K, the Gorshkov requires an extension to its flight deck to accommodate a CV capable airplane, installation of an arrested landing system like that used on U.S. and French carriers, plus a replacement of its maintenance intensive steam propulsion system with a diesel powerplant. All of this has proven to [...]

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Almost two decades have passed since the end of the Cold war but it seems like an unexpected chill has hit world relations.
In this four part series, Tim Whewell looks at the recent conflict of issues that could re-draw the old fault lines that once divided East and West.
Russia has fallen out with its western [...]

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What is the hardest to believe — but is, of course, possible — is that Putin simply will allow the Kosovo issue to pass. He clearly knew this was coming. He maintained vocal opposition to it beforehand and reiterated his opposition afterward. The more he talks and the less he does, the weaker he appears [...]

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The recent American shoot down of a failing spy satellite, using a SM-3 anti-missile missiles fired from an Aegis cruiser, upset Russia. U.S. military technology has been the bane of Russian military planning since World war II. Back then, billions of dollars worth of U.S. military equipment was shipped to Russia, and a generation of [...]

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Two decades have almost passed since the end of the Cold war but it seems like an unexpected chill has hit world relations.
In this four part series, Tim Whewell looks at the recent conflict of issues that could re-draw the old fault lines that once divided East and West.
Read More…
The Kremlin and the World - [...]

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If one extrapolates Russia’s development during the last eight years into the future, we will not only witness a second Cold War. The Russian Federation might become something like a new apartheid state where foreigners and non-Slavic citizens are treated separately from white citizens of Russia by governmental and non-governmental institutions. Some observers do, [...]

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If a struggle for resources unfolds between East and West, democratic values could be in for a battering.
Polls show that about one-third of Americans think China will soon dominate the world, and almost half fear its rise as a threat to world peace – results that could have time-travelled from the Cold War.
India, with its [...]

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Vladimir Putin has delivered perhaps his most menacing tirade against the West yet, repeating threats to train nuclear missiles on Europe and warning of unspecified retaliation if Kosovo declared independence.
Addressing his last press conference as Russian president, Mr Putin mounted a defiant display that demonstrated more emphatically than ever the widening gulf between Moscow and [...]

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Russia is waging a “little Cold War” against its Baltic neighbors, while luring Western Europe into energy deals that will later allow Moscow to extend its political influence through intimidation, a former president of Lithuania warned yesterday.
Russia has returned to its historical aggressive behavior, harboring “deep suspicions of the rest of the world” and dashing [...]

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Washington is trying to gauge whether Russia’s recent bomber mission near a U.S. aircraft carrier indicated Moscow’s return to a Cold war “mind-set” and is considering how the Pentagon should respond, a senior U.S. military officer said on Tuesday.
But other senior U.S. defense and Navy officials stressed they did not see Russia’s weekend bomber flights [...]

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