Russia is weaker than it looks, which is why NATO’s soft-power strategy can still prevail.
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That was the point Sean McCormack was making about Russia’s rickety fleet. Moscow is not the threat that it wants to appear. With more than 5,000 nuclear warheads and its status as the world’s largest energy exporter, it cannot really be [...]

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“Russia wants to demonstrate its force to the world, particularly the U.S., and show that it has re-emerged as a military power that has global interests and can exercise a global presence,” said Yevgeny Volk, a Moscow-based analyst for U.S. research group, the Heritage Foundation.
`Serious Concern’
“This is a serious concern to American leaders; it certainly [...]

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Russian lawmakers gave preliminary approval Friday to a 25 percent hike in defense spending — a sharp increase for Russia’s military that comes only a month after it crushed Georgia on the battlefield.
The boost in defense spending for 2009 fits in with Russia’s recent defiant posture toward the West, a stance that has seen relations [...]

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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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Article from Radio Utopie:
Georgia’s recent Military intervention in South Ossetia with US intelligence and Support has forced Russia to act! Unfortunately, today’s US Government around the World is still practising the old Cold war tactics of deceit and Propaganda.
The US are playing a dangerous and hypocritical game in Georgia as well as in Afghanistan, [...]

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What is the purpose of NATO? Western European countries can’t get out of their rocking chair long enough to be of much use to anybody, let alone themselves. Interestingly, the one place they get a spine is in their anti-Americanism.
I wonder if the people in Western Europe are just plain nuts, and how long do [...]

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Russia is deploying the threat to sell a “game changing” air defence system to Iran as a high stakes bargaining chip in its new “cold war” with America, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.
US intelligence fears the Kremlin will supply the sophisticated S-300 system to Tehran if Washington pushes through Nato membership for its pro-Western neighbours [...]

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Rethinking NATO and EU Enlargement
Summary: After the Cold War, NATO and the EU opened their doors to central and eastern Europe, making the continent safer and freer than ever before. Today, NATO and the EU must articulate a new rationale for enlarging still further, once again extending democracy and prosperity to the East, this [...]

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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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A New Cold war in the Caribbean?
The significance of the Izvestia bluster isn’t that the Russians could be coming again — Moscow’s Defense Minister later said any air force arrangement in Cuba would most likely involve stops for fuel rather than actual bases — but that they’ve returned to the idea of using the Caribbean [...]

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The best global strategy for the US may be the one that won the Cold War
Yet, with the seventh anniversary of 9/11 approaching, it seems clear that policy makers have not responded particularly well. Islamic extremists are gaining strength, while America finds itself increasingly isolated in the world. The coalition of the willing, never overly [...]

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In Madden’s historically linked world, the defeat of Carthage in 204 B.C. is the mirror image of the D-Day invasion of World war II. The contempt the Greeks had for Romans even after Rome saved them from civil war is a historical analog to the Europeans’ anti-Americanism and arrogance even after the American military bailed [...]

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A Russian-Venezuelan axis is a 21st-century throwback to the Cold war Soviet-Cuban alliance. Such a partnership bodes ill for energy security, for freedom in both nations, and for the Western Hemisphere.
Despite differences in culture, language, and geography, the rulers of Russia and Venezuela are increasingly rejecting civil society and narrowing political space in their respective [...]

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In reality, the conflict between Russia and Georgia is not just about Abkhazia but about Russia’s lingering resentment at what it regards as Western encirclement. Following the end of the Cold war and demise of the Warsaw Pact, Russia believed it had an assurance from Nato and the West that there would be no expansion [...]

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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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Russia’s angry response to an accord between Washington and Prague on building part of a U.S. missile defence shield in the Czech Republic is reminiscent of the rhetoric of the Cold War. Although Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says Moscow still wants talks on the missile shield, his Foreign Ministry has threatened a “military-technical” response if [...]

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A Global Approach to Iranian Nuclear Ambitions
Over the last few years, the United States has lost considerable influence and trust in the Middle East and other regions, undermining the expectations and power of US leadership in the eyes of the world. Today, Iraq remains mired in political discord combined with a tenuous security situation. At [...]

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At the height of the Cold War, the West feared the Soviet military. Now, it fears Russian energy companies, and the 800-pound gorilla of them all is Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas monopoly, currently the world’s third-largest company by capitalization.
Having absorbed capitalism with a rapacity that would make Lenin blush, Gazprom does not intend to rest [...]

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The US still has dozens of nuclear war heads stationed throughout Europe, including an estimated 20 in Germany. Yet, hardly anyone thinks this makes sense any more — apart from those at Germany’s Defense Ministry. By Cordula Meyer and Alexander Szandar more…

Russian Bear Roars: Why Is Moscow Risking a New Cold War?
Doubts about Security: German [...]

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A “new world order” cannot be based on “an Anglo-Saxon pattern that some have tried to establish for the rest of the world,” Lavrov said. It would involve doing away with “the Cold war architecture for the security of Europe.”
He proposed a European Security Conference to bring together the United States, Russia, the European Union [...]

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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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