Other Hoover Russia Content

Sam Nunn Policy Forum to Discuss a World Free of Nukes
In the midst of unprecedented momentum among the international strategic communities for nuclear weapons disarmament, Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn Bank of America Policy Forum will present on March 29 “The Path Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons: The Euro-Atlantic Challenge.”. . . .

Too smart for our own good: How The “Best and Brightest” may hurt society
Should the label “intellectual” be considered one of admiration or derision? . . .

A messiah can't do it. To reshape the world, the US must first reform itself
When was the last time you heard anyone enthusing about Barack Obama's foreign policy? . . .

Rethinking Reagan: Conversation with David E. Hoffman (Part I)
With the Reagan Centennial Celebrations set to begin in just less than a year, www.thereaganfiles.com is conducting a series of conversations with noted Reagan historians. . . .

Reflections on the Revolution in America
These are exciting though scary revolutionary times, akin to the constant acrimony in the fourth-century BC polis, mid-nineteenth century revolutionary Europe, or — perhaps in a geriatric replay — the 1960s. . . .

Textbook fight illustrates government school problem
In my own field of work, university education, there are a great many who scoff at the idea of privatization, something that is exactly how a free society should handle all education from primary to post graduate schools. . . .

For Barack Obama, it all boils down to the power of golf
I recently broke through White House security and talked with the president about golf. . . .

Confronting a Nuclear Tipping Point
The idea of nuclear disarmament is gaining support internationally, with the United States leading the charge and China and Russia expressing interest, says George P. Shultz, Ronald Reagan's secretary of state from 1982-89. . . .

Flat Tax Chronology
A chronology of countries that have adopted a flat tax, indicating the year of adoption, the personal income tax rate, and the corporate income tax rate appears below. . . .

Is Tom Hanks Unhinged?
Much has been written of the recent Tom Hanks remarks to Douglas Brinkley in a Time Magazine interview about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific. . . .

Resetting Our Reset Foreign Policy
Obama’s old foreign policy wasn’t working; thank goodness he’s hitting the reset button. . . .

Will Iraq's democracy vindicate Bush?
Israel may have to retire its title as the only democracy in the Middle East. . . .

Arnold Beichman dies; anti-communist scholar and author
Arnold Beichman, 96, an author, scholar and influential polemicist best remembered for his sharply anti-communist writings, died Feb. 17 in Pasadena, Calif. . . .

The Hurt Locker’s Greatest Victor
The Oscar-winning war drama provides a timely reminder: America’s army is fighting so that Iraqis might live free. . . .

2010 Northern California Book Award nominees
The Northern California Book Awards continue to be a good gauge of the literary talent this part of the world has to offer. Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Lynn Freed, Yiyun Li, D.A. Powell - they're all nominees this year, along with many others. . . .

The Flat Tax at Work in Moscow’s Real Estate Market
Those of you who have followed the flat tax revolution, beginning with the Baltic state of Estonia in 2004, know that Russia was the first large country to adopt the flat tax, effective January 1, 2001. . . .

What America is he talking about?
In 2004, Harvard political philosophy professor Michael J. Sandel, whose popular class, "Justice," has become a PBS series – made the following observation: "Today, in the thrall of markets and market-oriented thinking, we are all too tempted to think of democracy in economic terms alone. . . .

No Allies, But Plenty of Enemies
Almost 30 years after losing a war over the Falkland Islands, Argentina is once again warning Britain that it still wants back what it calls the Malvinas. . . .

Arnold Beichman, Political Analyst, Dies at 96
Arnold Beichman, a prominent political analyst, author and newspaper columnist known for being ardently anti-Communist, died Feb. 17 in Pasadena, Calif. . . .

Why Did Macro Policy in Emerging Market Countries Improve?
The resilience of emerging market economies severely hit by the panic of 2008 is amazing, especially in comparison with the long emerging market crisis period of a decade ago. . . .

Tomorrow’s Wars
Enormous, massively destructive engagements may again be on the horizon. . . .

What Would Reagan Do?
Dr. Kiron Skinner, fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, breaks down Reagan’s approach to foreign policy and national security. . . .

America, the fragile empire
Here today, gone tomorrow -- could the United States fall that fast? . . .

LDC Debt
In going through memos I wrote at the Council of Economic Advisers, I came across the following memo that I wrote to Jeff Frankel, who replaced Paul Krugman as the International Finance economist at the CEA. . . .

The U.S. is at a crucial point in defining its direction
On the day last week when President Obama was hosting his health-care summit -- and struggling to make a fractured political system work -- a quiet event was taking place on Capitol Hill that celebrated a moment when political will and idealism fused to produce the liberation of millions of people. . . .

United States Is Vulnerable To Collapse (Feb/2010)
Niall Ferguson's 'Complexity and Collapse' in the March/April 2010 Foreign Affairs reports that imperial collapse comes much faster than many historians believe, and the U.S.'s military overstretch and fiscal deficits may make it next. . . .

McCain could help Obama reduce nuclear threat
When President Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway on Dec. 10, he recommitted our country to working to reduce the danger posed by nuclear weapons. . . .

Wandering, Waiting
In European cities before the revolution: polemics, squabbles and 'sexuality.' . . .

Why Partisan Bickering Works
The indignant call for "bipartisanship" today is from people who want to pass health-care legislation over the equally indignant objections of many, many, many Americans. . . .

Lithuanian KGB Archives Opened to Scholars
In an earth shaking act of scholarly friendship, the Lithuanian government has agreed to make available to the Hoover institution a complete set of microfilms of the Lithuanian KGB archives, spanning the entire history of the Soviet occupation. . . .

Global security depends on sharing scientific progress
Partisan feuding is undermining America's ability to use our leadership in science in technology to advance U.S. foreign policy and competitiveness. . . .

Casualness, complacency and the curbing of the Dollar
As the globe "weans itself off the US dollar," the world's reserve currency is in question and the U.S. is being far too complacent about the demise. . . .

Book Review: How thinkers drive policy
As Paul Johnson succinctly put it, intellectuals are more interested in ideas than in people. . . .

No Need for Hubris on Matters of National Security
Vice President Joe Biden recently opined that he did not think the terrorists were able to pull off another attack of the 9/11 magnitude: "They are, in fact, not able to do anything remotely like they were able to do in the past.". . .

Reagan Ranch Roundtable Featuring Martin & Annelise Anderson
The February Wendy. P. McCaw Reagan Ranch Roundtable will feature best-selling authors and Hoover Institution Fellows Martin & Annelise Anderson on Friday, February 19, 2010. . . .

Arnold Beichman, 1913-2010
Word has just arrived of the death of Arnold Beichman at the age of 96. . . .

The Tragic Truth of War
What we dare not say: Killing the enemy brings victory. . . .

Ex-senator Nunn warns of nuclear terror threat
It’s probably a safe bet that former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) has never been mistaken for a movie star, yet he plays a central role in one of the world’s biggest potential dramas: keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. . . .

Selling Freedom Cheap
If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms, in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office. . . .

Bidenism
Consider for a minute the Joe Biden odyssey on Iraq, because it has proven a variable primer on how the political class reinvented itself depending on the current pulse of the battlefield. . . .

Ex-Texas Rep. Charlie Wilson, who helped arm Afghans during war against Soviets, dies at 76
The late Rep. Charlie Wilson worked tenaciously to funnel millions of dollars in weapons to Afghan rebels who fought off the Soviet Union, only to watch Afghanistan plunge into chaos and eventually harbor al-Qaida terrorists. . . .

The sight of Ukraine's lumpen victor should stir the EU's own into action
Yanukovych's election is a startling historical turn, but the country can still have a more prosperous, free and European future . . . .

Germany's Call for Removal of US Missiles in Europe Reopens Debate
Germany's new coalition government is calling for U.S. nuclear missiles to be removed from Europe. . . .

Germany Is Chastised for Stance on Nuclear Arms
The German government’s effort to remove the remaining American nuclear weapons on its soil has been sharply criticized by a former leader of NATO, who said the move was driven more by populist sentiment than any long-term strategic goal. . . .

Russia and U.S. Lead Calls to Reduce Nuclear Arsenals
For many years, the Munich Security Conference has been dominated by rivalry and suspicion between Russia and the United States. . . .

Working towards a world free of nuclear weapons
Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle met elder statesmen from Germany and the US who are working to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. . . .

America Rides Off Into the Sunset
Thousands in Tokyo have been echoing Barack Obama's signature call for "change" -- but as in "Change! Japanese-U.S. relations." . . .

Why Are There No Arab Democracies
During democratization’s “third wave,” democracy ceased being a mostly Western phenomenon and “went global.” . . .

Disarmament Summit Focuses on Russia, Middle East
Disagreements on Russia's tactical nuclear arsenal and questions over how to deal with Middle Eastern nations with suspected nuclear weapons programs hampered discussions yesterday at a global nuclear disarmament conference in Paris, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Feb. 2). . . .

Internationalizing Enrichment and Solving the Problem of Spent Fuel Stotage
Ellen Tauscher Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Hoover Institution, Stanford University Stanford, CA . . . .

Nuclear arms will soon proliferate. So here's a plan to scrap them all
The tipping point is close when every country will want to be another nuclear France. . . .

Mr. President, Words Matter
Obama, the rhetorician, forgot that people might actually take seriously what he said. . . .

City's 'genius' key to U.S. defense
Abizaid praises level of cooperation among entities here . . . .

Disarmament talks strained over Mideast, Russia
Tensions over nuclear weapons in the Middle East and over Russia's tactical arsenal tangled talks Tuesday aimed at pushing for global nuclear disarmament. . . .

Ronald Reagan, a Man With a Plan
Political platforms are usually written for election campaign purposes, then quickly scrapped after a presidential election. . . .

Our Obama Saga. Part One—Chapters One to Four
I think our Obama collective story will be some day written something like this. . . .

Keith Knutson: 65 years of the nuclear threat
The hope that the conclusion of World War II would usher humankind into a peaceful and rational world was exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945 - along with, of course, the first two nuclear bombs. . . .

Europe Agonistes
Amid all the Davos musing about a G2 world dominated by the United States and China, Europe was a very muted presence. . . .

India's model of growth is more viable than China's because it's more chaotic
Niall Ferguson is arguably the most influential historian of our time . . . .

Decoding Biden
The vice president's opening gambit. . . .

Child Adoption and Graft Top U.S.-Russian Talks
A U.S.-Russian government commission on civil society distanced itself from discussing human rights issues at its first meeting, focusing instead on corruption and the adoption of Russian children. . . .

Interview: McFaul On U.S., Russian Stereotypes And His Controversial Co-Chair
The first meeting of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission’s Civil Society Working Group was held in Washington on January 27. . . .

Abizaid outlines strategic hot spots
The Huntsville-Madison County area stands as a center of innovation, opportunity and technological excellence, said retired Army Gen. John Abizaid, presenting congratulations and thanks to hundreds of business and civic leaders Thursday for what the area has become over the 20 years since his last visit. . . .

Cold Warriors say no nukes
Four Cold Warriors, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), made a bold, dramatic and — to some — unexpected statement with a film I was privileged to write and direct. . . .

U.S. should ratify Test Ban Treaty
More than a quarter century ago, as U.S.-Soviet Cold War tensions peaked, President Ronald Reagan declared, "The only value in possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they can't ever be used. . . .

The President's Nuclear Vision
We will spend what is necessary to maintain the safety, security and effectiveness of our weapons. . . .

Nuclear Tipping Point
Nuclear Tipping Point is a conversation with four men intimately involved in American diplomacy and national security over the last four decades. . . .

Documentary Advances Nuclear Free Movement
The documentary Nuclear Tipping Point features interviews with four former U.S. government officials — all dedicated Cold War warriors when they were in office — who now advocate the elimination of nuclear weapons. . . .

Preventing Armageddon: 2010 Drell Lecture examines the road to nuclear arms elimination
What would a world without nuclear weapons look like, and how might it be achieved when Iran and North Korea are seeking the Bomb? . . .

As Predictable as Clockwork — the Obama three-step
This presidency has about as much subtlety as a grade-B western, soap opera, or teen-age tantrum. . . .

U.S. Should Embrace Using Nukes for Nuclear Threat Only, Experts Say
The greatest contribution the Obama administration's forthcoming review of U.S. nuclear strategy could make to nonproliferation is to establish a doctrine that pledges to use such weapons only against atomic threats, a leading disarmament advocate said last week (see GSN, Jan. 19). . . .

Goodbye to oil that: the excesses of today's quest for crude
In 1998, with the international oil business in the midst of one of its recurrent doldrums – prices had slumped to $10 a barrel, a 50-year low – executives at the company then still known as British Petroleum braced for a test supremely laden with significance for the company, and, as it would turn out, for the industry, too. . . .

Why the Great and Growing Backlash?
What Scott Brown’s election portends for the Obama agenda. . . .

Ten Obama Promises – Which Ones Came True?
One year after the inauguration of Barack Obama, face the United States changes according to the reforms initiated by his government. Launched, but not necessarily succeeded . . . .

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Former Secretary of State George Shultz Headline Global Zero World Summit in Paris February 2-4, 2010
The Global Zero Summit February 2-4 in Paris will convene 200 international political, military, business and faith leaders -- as well as student leaders -- to discuss practical policy proposals for the phased, verified elimination of all nuclear weapons and to launch a global grassroots campaign. . . .

Truth or consequences or neither
Michael Boskin, an economist at Stanford and head of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush, has written a very important piece about abuse of data by governments. . . .

It’s Declinin’ Time Again
The doomsayers are back. Regardless of what they say, the United States remains first on any scale of power that matters—economic, military, diplomatic, or cultural. By Josef Joffe.

Secret Justice Is No Justice
Moscow hunted, caught, and punished three terrorists in the late 1970s. Or did it? KGB documents show how a climate of secrecy may leave the case forever in doubt. By Mark Harrison.

Agents of History
Secret police keep wonderful records. Researchers who study Lithuania can thank the KGB—and some hardworking archivists—for a priceless historical collection. By Maciej Siekierski and Richard Sousa.

Universal Questioner
Hoover fellow Peter Berkowitz on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the late Soviet dissident and honorary Hoover fellow to whom “one word of truth outweighed the whole world.”

Energy Extortionists
Why do the dictators rage? Because, thanks to oil, they can. By Victor Davis Hanson.

Why Pakistan Must Succeed
The war in Afghanistan, a primitive land of 28 million, now threatens Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of 180 million. The collapse of Pakistan would place in danger a third nation: ours. By Thomas H. Henriksen.

Tattered Road Map
Even in a land divided so bitterly and so long, modest hopes persist. By Robert Zelnick.

For The New Middle Class, Greater Democracy Or Authoritarian 'Stability?'
Decades of disruptions have hindered the middle class across much of Eurasia. . . .

Don't Like the Numbers? Change 'Em
If a CEO issued the kind of distorted figures put out by politicians and scientists, he'd wind up in prison. . . .

Truths We Dare Not Speak
There are a number of things we simply no longer talk about. . . .

Are Christians Key to Anti-Nuke Movement?
On April Fool's Day in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to pursue a significant reduction in nuclear arms with "effective verification measures." . . .

Intellectuals and Society: Part II
Ideas are such intangible things that it is hard to believe that they have had a huge impact on the lives of people who are not intellectuals and who, in many cases, have paid little attention to those ideas. . . .

Intellectuals and Society
There has probably never been an era in history when intellectuals have played a larger role in society. . . .

Obama as Greek Tragedy—Part One
The blueprint of a Sophoclean or even Euripidean tragedy is pretty straightforward. . . .

Investments Will Remain a Gamble Until Rule of Law Comes to Russia
The Russian economy is as much a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma as Winston Churchill found its foreign policy to be in the days of Joseph Stalin. . . .

Failure in Copenhagen
Relative to initial expectations, and given that the heads of almost all leading nations attended, the recently concluded United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen was an embarrassing failure. . . .

Our 2009 Chickens and Their 2010 Roost
A quiet year laid the groundwork for a troublesome one. . . .

As threats multiply and power fragments, the coming decade cries out for realistic idealism
An Islamist terrorist caught trying to crash a plane over Detroit creates a flash of illusory clarity. . . .

Iran Gives West One-Month ‘Ultimatum’ to Accept Nuclear Counterproposal
Iran’s foreign minister warned the West on Saturday that it had one month to accept Iran’s counterproposal to a deal brokered by the United Nations aimed at slowing the Iranian nuclear program, or else Iran would begin further enriching its nuclear fuel stockpile on its own. . . .

The Inertia Option
I hope Iran policy makers in Washington and Europe are reading histories of that world-changing year, 1989. . . .

Rand and Libertarianism
The question still comes up, "What does Ayn Rand have to contribute to Libertarianism?" . . .

Our flip-flopping wars
We don't hear all that much about Iraq these days, do we? . . . .

Obama and the Malleability of History
In pursuit of noble goals, Obama ignobly twists the truth. . . .

Why Everyone Read Samuelson
The late Nobel laureate's mathematical approach to economics has been a mixed blessing. . . .

Analysis: A year on, Iran, NKorea threats worsen
Another year has passed in the world's standoff with Iran and North Korea over nuclear weapons, and the situation has only gotten worse. . . .

Is America a Deer in the Headlights?
No one quite knows what is going on. . . .

Obama’s Wheel of Fortune
The president’s luck has changed — and he doesn’t seem to have noticed. . . .

Why Are We Tiring of Obama?
The China Presidency . . . .

Obama's Peace Prize brings hope for a world without nukes
Today, President Barack Obama, one of the most respected men of our age, will receive the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. . . .

California Insurance Companies Urged to Divest from Iran
California's Insurance Commissioner wants insurance money out of Iran, and one Iran expert believes economic pressure on the regime in Iran could be more effective now with a deteriorating economy. . . .

The Obama administration's 'reset button' for Russia
The interests of the Obama administration in improving ties with Russia, a policy metaphorically first described by Vice President Biden in February 2009 as ‘pressing the reset button,’ are principally driven by three goals. . . .

Resetting the Reset Button
Obama wanted to set our diplomacy on a new track. . . .

Commentary: Gulled by Gul
From his former incarnation as strategic adviser to Pakistan's politico-religious parties, the one-time Pakistani intelligence chief Hamid Gul has resurfaced as de facto minister of propaganda and disinformation for the Taliban insurgents. . . .

Voting Present on Iran
Obama’s serial deadlines and hope-and-change rhetoric have not affected the Iranians. . . .

'We must play an active role to establish a nuclear weapon free world'
The Netherlands, as a member of Nato and host to the International Court of Justice, needs to declare itself in support of nuclear disarmament. . . .

Analysts Say Ahmadinejad Is Bluffing About New Enrichment Sites
Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad left no doubt about Iran's ambitions. . . .

Punishing Allies . . .
The view of Obama from Central Europe. . . .

Riding the Back of the Tiger
What Causes Wars?. . .

With this timid choice of leaders, the EU may have the faces it deserves
The holders of the new top jobs can perfectly represent a Europe that does not dare to project its values as a continent. . . .

Myth Defied
Two biographies of the Russian revolutionary get past the myths and explore the life and death of Trotsky - who was just as ruthless as Stalin. . . .

Revolutionary's Road
Of all the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution, Leon Trotsky commanded the most compelling public presence and, eventually, exerted the most lasting influence on Western intellectuals. . . .

Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary
Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary Bertrand Patenaude, research fellow at the Hoover Institution, recounts the life of Red Army chief Leon Trotsky. . . .

Bosworth prepares a small U.S. delegation to N.Korea
The size and schedule of the U.S. team heading to North Korea on Dec. 8 and led by Stephen Bosworth, U.S. special representative for North Korea Policy, appears to some as rather “small” relative to the intense interest and large expectations surrounding the visit. . . .

What Niall Ferguson thinks now
There's nothing like a long-running equity rally, a return to something resembling normalcy in the credit world and fresh signs of economic recovery to lift the gloom of a dreary late November day. . . .

Iranian art offers window to changing world
In Iran, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, though it brought to power a fundamentalist regime, also spawned new art from dissidents and from those inspired by the revolutionary cause. . . .

Where Has the Thrill Gone?
Who appointed over 40 ambassadors on the sole basis of campaign contributions, or has as many lobbyists in government as did any President in memory? . . .

When Reality Catches up to Rhetoric
The growing problem for the Obama administration is that the public has finally caught on that the president's tough rhetoric and soaring oratory don't match reality. . . .

The best books of the year
Our reviewers name the titles that have meant the most to them over the past 12 months. . . .

Obama’s Prissy America
Why does Obama’s tolerant, apologetic America seem so very self-centered? . . .

Timothy Garton Ash: Democracy Still Under Threat 20 Years After Velvet Revolution
In 1989, British writer and Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash reported on the wave of democratic revolutions that swept Europe, and witnessed some of its key events. . . .

Havel warns against new faces of totalitarianism
Former Czech president Vaclav Havel warned against new forms of totalitarianism in his speech that he ended by the exclamation "People, Look Out," at Charles University's Faculty of Arts Saturday. . . .

Russia, U.S. Expect New Nuke Treaty in December
The presidents of the United States and Russia said yesterday their governments would reach agreement next month on a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, but a U.S. official warned that the new deal would not be in place when the 1991 pact expires on Dec. 5, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, Nov. 13). . . .

U.S., Russia stand together on Iran
Presenting a united front on Iran's nuclear energy program, President Barack Obama and Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev warned Sunday that they were losing patience with Tehran and wouldn't wait much longer for it to accept a proposal to resolve the dispute. . . .

Where escape is stealing from the state
I took part Nov. 9 in a panel discussion on the collapse of the Soviet empire, in the company of several others who managed to escape the system, two former Cubans and one former Russian. . . .

What Bush Inherited, and What He Left Left Behind
George W. Bush inherited a recession. . . .

European Intellectuals Warn Of Democracy Crisis 20 Years After Berlin Wall's Fall
Public cynicism and corruption in politics are threatening democracy in Europe. . . .

US-Russian Negotiators Likely to Miss December 5 Deadline for New Nuclear Treaty
After months of insisting negotiators would make the December 5, 2009, deadline, President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev acknowledged today that they were now attempting to have a re-negotiated START nuclear disarmament treaty ready to sign by the end of the year instead of by December 5 when the old START treaty expires. . . .

Obama Says Time Running Out for Iran in Negotiations
President Barack Obama said time is running short for Iran to accept terms of a deal offered by international negotiators seeking to prevent the Islamic republic from building a nuclear weapon. . . .

Russia, U.S. leaders discuss arms pact, Iran
The Russian and U.S. presidents said on Sunday they hoped to strike a new deal for arms cuts by the end of the year. . . .

Klaus, Michnik to attend Havel's celebration of end of Communism
Czech President Vaclav Klaus, Polish dissident Adam Michnik and French philosopher Andre Glucksmann will attend the concert on Saturday to be staged by former president Vaclav Havel on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Communist regime, his office told CTK yesterday. . . .

Letter: Looking Again at Reagan and 'Tear Down This Wall'
In his account of President Ronald Reagan's June 12, 1987 Berlin Wall address ("Four Little Words," op-ed, Nov. 9) Anthony Dolan, my boss in the Reagan speechwriting shop, describes a wonderfully improbable pair of events. . . .

The Lesson Of The Zil
As millions celebrated the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall this past week, I found myself facing up to a discomfiting fact: Although I possess vivid memories of the event, no one under the age of about 25 shares them. . . .

Europe's next chapter starts now. It rests on looking beyond our borders
Monday's celebration in Berlin was a brilliant closure. The opening of a European foreign policy looks more shaky. . . .

Eyewitness To History: The Fall Of The Berlin Wall
Twenty years ago today — on Nov. 9, 1989 — crowds swelled at the barrier that divided East and West Berlin as the wall that stood as a symbol of the Cold War came down. . . .

Scott Hennen Show: 10:10 Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson, former Reagan speechwriter, who wrote the Tear Down That Wall Speech on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. . . .

While Obama sleeps
NRO posted five segments of Peter Robinson's Uncommon Knowledge interview with Victor Davis Hanson and Robert Baer. . . .

The Berlin Wall with Vaclav Klaus: Chapter 2 of 5
Are there parallels to be drawn between a united Europe and the late, unlamented Warsaw Pact? . . .

Tear Down This Wall
Today, folks in their 20s may have a difficult time recalling just why a Wall was erected in Berlin sometime in the past, and may wonder why such a fuss is being made today in the media and why celebrations are being held to commemorate the disappearance of the Wall. . . .

Why 1989 Doesn't Matter
As conventional wisdom has it, the fall of the Berlin Wall marked a watershed moment of world-historical importance. . . .

‘With Them or With Us’
The regime’s commemoration of the Iranian hostage crisis didn’t quite go according to plan. . . .

The Berlin Wall with Vaclav Klaus: Chapter 1 of 5
Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus discusses the events of 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down. . . .

From Berlin to Baghdad
Will the peoples of Islam tear down their walls as the people of Central and Eastern Europe tore down theirs? . . .

On 20th anniversary of fall of Berlin Wall, remembering Reagan's influence
The fall of the Berlin Wall symbolizes the end of the Cold War, just as the Wall itself for so long symbolized the division and competition between the communist East and the democratic West, between capitalism and socialism. . . .

George Shultz Remarks
Former Secretary of State George Shultz delivered the keynote address at an event to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and pay tribute to Ronald Reagan. . . .

The Legacy of 1989 Is Still Up for Debate
The historical legacy of 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and the cold war thawed, is as political as the upheavals of that decisive year. . . .

RFE And ‘The Curtain Of Silence’
“It is enough that I speak; I shall destroy this wall of fear.” . . .

Remembering a revolutionary
In 1940, while living in exile in a small town outside of Mexico City, Leon Trotsky — the writer, revolutionary and Marxist theorist — was startled awake at four o'clock in the morning by sounds he at first believed were fireworks, but were in fact the exploding of automatic gunfire. . . .

The Year the World Really Changed
What exactly was the historical significance of Nov. 9, 1989? . . .

Mikhail Gorbachev – the forgotten hero of history
At the Brandenburg Gate tomorrow evening in Berlin, one of the defining figures of the last century's history will sit down to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in which he played a key role. . . .

Four Little Words
Ronald Reagan would embarrass himself and the country by asking Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, which was going to be there for decades. . . .

Iran's 'Great Satan' addiction
It has been more than a month since what was touted as a breakthrough meeting with the Iranians in Geneva over their nuclear program. . . .

Revolutions Of '89: 'At The Moment Of Crisis, Nobody Was At Home'
As "Newsweek's" bureau chief for Germany, Eastern Europe, and the Balkans, American journalist Michael Meyer was a professional observer of the revolutionary wave that swept across Central and Eastern Europe in 1989. . . .

Thinking the Unthinkable on Nuclear Policy
Abolition of nuclear weapons has indeed been an elusive dream ever since the birth of the atomic age in 1945. . . .

Reason.tv: Reason Foundation Co-Founder Tibor Machan on Ayn Rand
"I think that for Ayn Rand to have survived and made a life for herself, she almost needed that edgy personality, otherwise she would have been destroyed," says Machan, who was born in Hungary in 1942. . . .

Jazz at Liberty
Recently I asked a colleague, “How many times have you gone looking for John Kennedy’s speech at the Brandenburg Gate and wound up listening to Phil Woods blowing sax?”...

The Fall of the Soviet Empire
Victor Sebestyen, a journalist specialising in East European affairs, whose own family fled Hungary when he was a boy, has provided the reader with a dramatic account of the death throes of Communism in the six Soviet satellite countries comprising the Warsaw Pact: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Romania and Bulgaria...

Afghan Mythologies
As President Obama decides whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, we should remember that most of the conventional pessimism about Afghanistan is only half-truth...

1989 changed the world. But where now for Europe?
Year of revolutions: Mired in the narcissism of minor difference, Europe is failing to face up to the world its revolution helped to create...

On Iran and North Korea, Obama's nuclear-free vision is at stake
One year after his election, Barack Obama appears no closer to his big hope for a legacy as US president: A determined global effort for a world with zero atomic weapons...

Tender strides against an epic backdrop
Barbara Kingsolver's new novel, "The Lacuna," is the most mature and ambitious one she's written during her celebrated 20-year career, but it's also her most demanding...

America The Indispensable
The Berlin Wall collapsed amid a failed faith in communism and exalted hopes for a world free of rivalries and conflicts...

Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall
On June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan stood in front of the Berlin Wall, the Brandenburg Gate rising behind him, to deliver a speech I had drafted...

Hoover Institution Acquires Melita Norwood Papers
Kim Philby was part of the Cambridge Five, who were arguably the most notorious Soviet spies operating in Great Britain from the 1930s through the 1950s...

Want a Stronger Democracy? Invest in Education
Argentina’s poor economic performance during the 20th century reflects, in part, political instability and the mistaken policies of dictatorial regimes...

'Tear Down This Wall'
Writer of historic speech on 'Fox & Friends'

Nov. 1: Newsweek on Air, After the Wall
After the wall...

Life in Walltown, Germany
Imagine waking up one fine Sunday morning to learn that they are laying down barbed wire in Washington...

A Very Interesting Next Three Years
If one were to collate the public statements and actions of many in the Obama administration, one would conclude that the most conciliatory past language masks the most divisive, polarizing administration in recent history–a fact born out by most polls...

Talking with Iran -- and sending a message
Iran's rejection last week of the Obama administration's proposal for a deal over uranium wasn't the end of nuclear negotiations with Tehran...

Daniel Johnson: The Berlin Wall ... Seven Minutes that Shook the World
The Cold War was the first conflict that came close to annihilating Western civilisation — the first but almost certainly not the last...

Ayn Rand and the philosophers
My assignment at a conference last week at the National Liberal Club in London, was to discuss whether Ayn Rand's ideas had the kind of philosophical meat worth the respect of those who take the discipline seriously...

Bibi's Choice
Don't be misled by how little was said about Iran in the major speeches recently delivered by President Barack Obama at Cairo University and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University...

After the Wall: A Debate Over Democracy's Reach
To many observers, the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, symbolized the triumph of liberal democracy and free markets over their last serious ideological rival...

Truman and the Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy
Upon entering office, Barack Obama knew little about foreign policy...

This EU job is no presidency. It will rely on another. And it won't be Blair
Now the European Union is damned if it doesn't and damned if it does...

Analysis: US Making Plans For Iran Nuke Strategy
The Obama administration is quietly laying the groundwork for long-range strategy that could be used to contain a nuclear-equipped Iran and deter its leaders from using atomic weapons...

James Woolsey on Energy
Woolsey is currently co-chairman (with former Secretary of State George Shultz) of the Committee on the Present Danger, as well as chairman of the advisory boards of the Clean Fuels Foundation and the New Uses Council and a trustee of ...

Korea Capitalizes on Global Power Shift
The year 2009 was a milestone for Korea as it was hit hard by the global financial crisis but recovered at the fastest pace among major economies, demonstrating its capability...

All Falling Down . . .
Obama’s mega-borrowing is predicated on a rather thin margin of safety...

Remembering the Marshall legacy
Fifty years ago, a towering figure of the 20th century passed from the world scene...

Metropolitan Glory
John Julius Norwich is an earnest and somewhat stiff-backed editor...

PC Alert
It all began on a Sunday evening...

A new North American union
Candidate Barack Obama made the North American Free Trade Agreement an early target...

Biography
For an architect of the 20th century's signature people's revolution, Leon Trotsky wasn't much of a people person...

Where Is U.S. Foreign Policy Headed?
Neoliberalism, which dominated the decade before 9/11, had an exuberantly simple vision...

America’s Obama Obsession
For 30 months the nation has been in the grip of a certain Obama obsession, immune to countervailing facts, unwilling to face reality, and loath to break the spell...

Armageddon Time
Victor Davis Hanson is a military historian; Robert Baer a former CIA field officer...

Trotsky at last
In an idyllic one-acre olive grove that slopes down to the sunset and the sea, on Büyük Ada, the largest of the beautiful and well-policed Prinkipo islands just a ferry ride from the centre of Istanbul, stands a villa that once belonged to Sultan Abdul Hamid II’s head of security...

Russia in U.N. rights dock for journalist murders
Russia was grilled on Thursday by U.N. human rights experts over murders of journalists and activists, the independence of its judiciary and abductions during counter-terrorism campaigns in Chechnya...

The kitty-cat who roared
President Obama keeps roaring out deadlines like a lion -- only later to meow like a little kitty...

Britain fluffed the German question. Now Britain is Europe's great puzzle
History comes back to haunt us...

1989!
Unsurprisingly, the twentieth anniversary of 1989 has added to an already groaning shelf of books on the year that ended the short twentieth century...

Close Read: The Very Best Year
“The year 1989 was one of the best in European history,” Timothy Garton Ash writes in the New York Review of Books...

Revising the Revolution
What are we to make of Trotsky?...

Recipe for Failure
Want to know what's going to happen with climate change?...

Iran's Openness to Nuclear Compromise Debated
The dramatic expansion of Iran's uranium enrichment program over the last decade has led some analysts to speculate that Tehran could accept measures aimed at preventing it from building bombs in exchange for greater international acceptance of its nuclear work, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Oct. 14)...

Hot to Trotsky:Life of enigmatic revolutionary sizzles in stellar biography
There’s not a single figure in the 20th century, historical or fictional, with a more suspenseful ending to their biography than Leon Trotsky, nixed in Mexico with an icepick through the skull...

Obama’s Theorems
Part of the problem with the president’s agenda is that it is predicated on a number of radical ideas that are asserted, rather than proven...

The Unknown War
On August 23, 1989, officials from the newly reformed and soon-to-be-renamed Communist Party of Hungary ceased policing the country’s militarized border with Austria...

Nobel award recognizes U.S. dominance
As an American of African descent, I swelled with pride when I heard that the Norwegian Nobel Committee selected President Obama to receive the Nobel Peace Prize...

Bombing The Moon
The rocket that NASA aimed at the Moon last week did not produce the public relations bonanza the agency was hoping for--a cloud of dust visible to amateur earth astronomers...

New Survey on Islam Calls Into Question Population Figure Used by Obama
A comprehensive new survey of the world’s Muslim population finds that nearly one in four people on the planet is an adherent of Islam, but the number of Muslims it gives for the United States is significantly smaller than those routinely cited by Islamic organizations – and used by President Obama in his Cairo speech last June...

Bertrand M. Patenaude discusses and signs Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary
Stanford University lecturer Bertrand M. Patenaude tells the dramatic story of Leon Trotsky's final years in exile in Mexico...

Trotsky by Robert Service: review
Trotsky, like Mao and to some extent Lenin, has long been one of those Communist titans who, for some, achieved the status of fashionable radical saints, even in the democracies that they would have destroyed in an orgy of bloodletting...

War and Peace: Clash of the Nobels
The controversy over President Obama’s peace award is nothing new. The history of the prize has been anything but peaceful. By Bertrand M. Patenaude.

The Mundell-Laffer solution
Team Obama is in economic trouble on two fronts right now: The dollar could be headed toward its demise while the jobs and unemployment numbers have gotten worse...

Wall Street bailouts: Business as usual
Economics professor Allan Meltzer once said, "Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin."...

Guru America
President Obama last week flew to Copenhagen to persuade the International Olympic Committee to award the 2016 games to Chicago, his hometown...

Friends in Disagreement
THE UNITED STATES WAGED THE COLD WAR for 40 years, and for 40 years George Kennan and Paul Nitze were perennial players in the struggle—from its beginning, which Kennan catalyzed, to its end...

The Buck Passes Here
Meet the Obama whiners...

INTRIGUE: INTRIGUING
There hardly can have been a job in the 1930s and '40s with a higher mortality rate than secretary to Leon Trotsky...

U.S. Wonders if Iran Is Playing for Time
President Obama got what he said he wanted when United States negotiators met with their Iranian counterparts this week in Geneva: direct engagement, without preconditions, with Iran...

A gripping new account captures the October Revolution's great intellectual facing doom (and feeding bunnies)
No matter what your political orientation, if you believe -- or ever did believe -- in the potential betterment of humanity, then you've got something to learn from the strange and tragic story of Leon Trotsky...

The Age of Nice, or Politics as Psychiatry
Will Obama's administration end up as a remake of Jimmy Carter’s?...

Iran Open to Wider Nuke Talks as Powers Await Action
Iran opened the way to wider talks on its disputed nuclear work as U.S. and European officials said they awaited follow-through on allowing international inspections and limiting uranium enrichment...

Three Dangerous Stooges
Last week, three dictators — from Iran, Libya, and Venezuela — delivered lunatic hate-speeches at the General Assembly of the United Nations...

Worldview: The West's leverage in Iran
The United States and five other major powers will begin direct talks with Iran today in Geneva, but the agenda still isn't settled...

Iran: Saber-Rattling or Bigger Threat?
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards wrapped up three days of war games with a big bang, test-firing the longest range missiles in its arsenal...

Soviet Shoes
I mentioned in Tuesday's post that one of my favorite passages from Scott Shane's Dismantling Utopia is the passage about shoes...

Europe must decide if it wants to be more than Greater Switzerland
Once upon a time, and a very bad time it was, the world trembled when Germany spoke...

Experts divided on how to handle Iran (Video)
Iran raised international tensions Monday by test firing missiles that have the capability of reaching U.S. military bases in the Middle East, as well as Israel and parts of Europe...

Worldview: Obama faces a huge task in rallying global power
It was a week of stunning contradictions for Barack Obama...

World leaders vow to seek nuclear-free world
World leaders Thursday vowed to work to stop the spread of atomic weapons and rid the planet of nuclear arms at an unprecedented Security Council summit hosted by US President Barack Obama...

Kiron Skinner: Obama Reneges on Long Standing Defense Pact
U.S. foreign policy expert Kiron Skinner tells Newsmax.TV that Obama’s nixing of the European missile defense shield is very disturbing...

Expert: Obama's End to Missile Shield Sends Dangerous Message
The Obama administration's decision to scrap plans for a missile shield in Eastern Europe conveys a dangerous signal to other countries that the United States can't be trusted, says international relations expert Kiron Skinner...

Iran Proposes Plan for Reducing Fears on Nuclear Program
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday said his nation could make its nuclear scientists available to answer questions from their counterparts from other nations in an effort to build trust in Tehran's peaceful nuclear intentions, the Washington Post reported yesterday (see GSN, Sept. 23)...

Security Council backs abolishing nuclear arms
World leaders agreed Thursday on the sweeping goal of a planet free of atomic weapons, but faced continued divisions over details of one of their thorniest challenges, Iran's nuclear program...

U.N. Passes Nuclear-Safeguards Plan
The United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously approved a nuclear-safeguards resolution drafted by the Obama administration to lay the legal framework for military and diplomatic action against nations that use civilian nuclear technology for military purposes...

Obama-led UN council backs broad nuclear agenda
With President Barack Obama presiding, the U.N. Security Council on Thursday unanimously endorsed a sweeping strategy aimed at halting the spread of nuclear weapons and ultimately eliminating them, to usher in a world with "undiminished security for all."...

The nuclear tipping point
The potential spread of nuclear weapons to states and terrorists, the spread of nuclear technology and know-how and the residual nuclear threat from the cold war have brought us to the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era...

Why Democrats Fail at Arms Control
In his address to the U.N. General Assembly yesterday, President Barack Obama once again stated his goal of "a world without nuclear weapons."...

Obama to world: Don't expect America to fix it all
President Barack Obama challenged world leaders Wednesday to shoulder more of the globe's critical burdens, promising a newly cooperative partner in America but sternly warning they can no longer castigate the U.S. as a go-it-alone bully while still demanding it cure all ills...

Iran hit with new demand as U.N. meets
The United States and other major powers on Wednesday told Iran to prepare a "serious response" by October 1 to demands it halt its nuclear program or risk the consequences...

The bold plan to grab Soviet uranium
ON A snowy day in December 1993, just months after Andy Weber began his diplomatic job at the US embassy in Almaty, Kazakhstan, he met with a tall, bullet-headed man he knew only as Colonel Korbator...

A Clear Path Forward For the UN on Nuclear Disarmament
This week, President Obama will chair a UN Security Council meeting on nuclear nonproliferation...

He Did It His Way
This is a very worthwhile book, whose title incites hopes for a vast plot confected and executed in all its intricacy by a much more complicated figure than Ronald Reagan is generally reckoned to be...

Obama's Middle East Gambit
Masters of the art teach that subtlety, indirection, and on occasion mis-direction are crucial to successful diplomacy...

Obama and Ahmadinejad: The Politics of Face Time
It was just over two years ago that Barack Obama, then the junior senator from Illinois with aspirations to the presidency, famously pronounced during a Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C., that he would be willing to hold direct talks, without preconditions, with the president of Iran...

Letters: Undercutting Reformers
Regarding Chester Crocker’s “Terms of Engagement” (Views, Sept. 14): Mr. Crocker’s endorsement of engagement with adversaries builds a strong case for talking with rogue states...

A New Nuclear-Arms Race
Call it a shot heard round the world...

New Missile Shield Strategy Scales Back Reagan’s Vision
The new plan that President Obama laid out for a missile shield against Iran on Thursday turns Ronald Reagan’s vision of a Star Wars system on its head: Rather than focusing first on protecting the continental United States, it shifts the immediate effort to defending Europe and the Middle East...

Obama won't stay the course in Afghanistan -- then what?
Skepticism grows in President Obama's party about his presumed endorsement of General Stanley McChrystal's assessment of the strategy and resources required to succeed in Afghanistan...

Reagan with Steven Hayward: Chapter 4 of 5
Steven Hayward discusses Reagan, Gorbachev, and the end of the Cold War...

Reagan with Steven Hayward: Chapter 2 of 5
Steven Hayward discusses Reagan and the Cold War — before Gorbachev...

This way for the gas
The road to Sangachal is a Potemkin motorway: four to six lanes, neatly demarcated and newly paved, with panoramic views of the Caspian Sea, the hills that rise above Baku and the Bibi Heybat Mosque, which was built in 1257, destroyed by Stalin in 1934 and rebuilt in 1998...

Why did the second world war begin?
Why did a second world war begin in Europe on 1 September 1939, little more than 20 years after peace had been concluded at the end of the first world war?...

The nuclear pecking order
Perhaps, the sense of suggesting a nuclear pecking order and its placement along an ascending incline is best reflected in a recent study, “America’s Strategic Posture”, by William Perry and James Schlesinger, who propose that disarmament, looked at today, seems like a mountain peak from the bottom, which is just not visible...

Hoover Institution archives yield fresh insights into modern Chinese history
THE financial crisis has had considerable impact on the Hoover Institution's finances, yet it remains committed to its traditional strength and a new focus on east Asia, according to Richard Sousa...

Japanese Elections Complicate East Asia Policy
Among the many pledges the Democratic Party of Japan made before it swept to power in a landslide victory on Sunday was to rebalance the U.S.-Japan alliance...

The Morning Show - September 1, 2009 at 7:00am
The Morning Show analyzes the Election Victory for the Opposition in Japan...

Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary
Interview with Bertrand M. Patenaude, Ph.D., Research Fellow, Hoover Institution Library and Archives and Lecturer, Stanford University...

Worldview: With strife in Iran, U.S. should put brakes on applying pressure
The September deadline set by President Obama for Iran to restart talks about its nuclear program is rapidly approaching...

Kennedy's Secret Soviet Overture Against Reagan
President Ronald Reagan and Sen. Ted Kennedy were good friends, according to Nancy Reagan...

Where next for Russia?
It's been ten years since Vladimir Putin assumed power in Russia...

Ted Kennedy's Soviet Gambit
Picking his way through the Soviet archives that Boris Yeltsin had just thrown open, in 1991 Tim Sebastian, a reporter for the London Times, came across an arresting memorandum...

Twilight In Mexico
Leon Trotsky, the third big name of Soviet ­Communism after Lenin and Stalin, was ­murdered by a Kremlin hitman in his Mexico hideaway on Aug. 20, 1940...

The Default Power
Every 10 years, it is decline time in the United States...

Inside Obama Administration, a Tug of War Over Nuclear Warheads
U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden in early June blocked a Defense Department bid to revive a defunct program aimed at fielding modern nuclear warheads across the strategic arsenal, according to those familiar with the episode (see GSN, June 24)...

Democratic Ukraine, autocratic Russia: Why?
Developments in the former Soviet Union in recent years were fascinating for the specialist and might have puzzled the layman: Why have Europe’s two largest countries developed in such different ways?...

Rose Friedman, Economist and Collaborator, Dies at 98
Rose Friedman, a free-market economist whose extraordinary collaboration with her husband, Milton, proved essential to his Nobel-prize-winning career, died Tuesday at her home in Davis, Calif...

Stalin in charge
The torrent of documentary material released in the 1990s on the workings of Stalin’s totalitarian rule is still more than a trickle – despite Putin’s repression of the Russian media and NGOs, despite the overt rehabilitation of Stalin as the great personnel manager and author of military victory, and despite the restrictions on historical archives and foreign researchers...

'Antiques Roadshow' appraises rare political posters at Stanford's Hoover
It is an image both familiar and rare: A World War I poster of a bearded, stern-eyed man in red, white and blue; his finger leveled at the viewer over a text that reads: "I want you for U.S. Army."...

Martin & Annelise Anderson, Co-Authors, "Reagan's Secret War"
Martin & Annelise Anderson, Co-Authors, "Reagan's Secret War," discuss Pres. Ronald Reagan’s Cold War foreign policy...

Obama’s Bookshelf
Our president has been spotted carrying an assortment of books, from FDR biographies to the collected poems of David Walcott...

Video: Voices from The Economist to Amnesty International
The Oslo Freedom Forum brought together some of the world’s leading minds to honor heroic survivors of political oppression and persecution this May 18-20 in Norway...

Sailing to Byzantium
Millions of Euros have transformed Rhodes into a sort of Frankish and Venetian Disneyland...

Trotsky with Hitchens and Service: Chapter 5 of 5
Christopher Hitchens and Robert Service scrutinize the modern romantic view of Leon Trotsky...

Trotsky with Hitchens and Service: Chapter 4 of 5
Christopher Hitchens and Robert Service talk about Trotsky’s “moral moments.”...

Penultimata: Tranquil reflections on a passionate past
Even if you do not know much about Stalin, you know that he killed millions of his own people...

Trotsky with Hitchens and Service: Chapter 3 of 5
What if Trotsky, rather than Stalin, attained control of the Soviet Union?...

Duncan Wields $100 Billion to Make U.S. Schools Like Chicago’s
Sue Duncan has taught poor kids at her after-school center on Chicago’s South Side for 48 years...

Owning Up to Israel’s Bomb
President Barack Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons, and the recent agreement he signed with Russia aimed at cutting back the nuclear stockpiles of both countries, enhances his moral and political leadership...

Trotsky with Hitchens and Service: Chapter 2 of 5
Christopher Hitchens and Robert Service discuss the defeat and exile of Leon Trotsky...

China dips its toe in the Black Sea
Like the star gazers who last week watched the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, diplomatic observers had a field day watching the penumbra of big power politics involving the United States, Russia and China, which constitutes one of the crucial phenomena of 21st-century world politics...

Trotsky with Hitchens and Service: Chapter 1 of 5
Christopher Hitchens and Robert Service introduce Leon Trotsky, whom Service describes as “one of the half-dozen outstanding Marxist revolutionaries.”...

Nuclear Weapons and Moral Questions: The Path to Zero
It is an honor and pleasure for me to offer some modest reflections on “Nuclear Weapons and Moral Questions: The Path to Zero.”...

Disarmament Movement Needs Youth Involvement to Counter Cynicism
President Barack Obama's lofty pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons is off to a peculiar start...

Good summer reading on the Cold War
A key figure in the early days of the Reagan administration tells of one of the first meetings the new president had with his military and security advisers...

Saakashvili Opponents Scoff at Reform Pledges
President Mikheil Saakashvili on Monday tried to break a three-month political standoff two days before a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden...

Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Will The Obama - Medvedev Commission Help Boost US-Russian Relations?
One of the key results of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow last week was an agreement to form a U.S.-Russian Bilateral Presidential Commission, which the two presidents will chair, while U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov coordinate its routine activities...

Obama and Medvedev Secure Secret Channel
A surprise decision by Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama to form a working group on civil society has raised controversy because of a decision to name as its co-chairs Kremlin deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov and Michael McFaul, special assistant to Obama and National Security Council director for Russia...

“Reset” has uncertain future
The results of the Medvedev-Obama summit, which took place last week in Moscow, are at the same time encouraging and alarming...

He who pays for the pipelines calls the tune
TRAGEDY and farce have too often been the hallmarks of European efforts to improve energy security...

Disarmament Advocates See a New Chance to Go to Zero
ALMOST FROM THE moment the first atomic bomb was detonated in New Mexico in July 1945, the menacing aura of the nuclear age has inspired visions of a world free of nuclear weapons...

Barack, Dmitry—and (offstage) Vladimir
THE body language said it all...

Legislation on Clean Energy
In late June the House of Representatives approved The American Clean Energy and Security Act...

The Savior of Nuclear Disarmament
The financial crisis that has wreaked havoc across the country has given plenty of ammunition to detractors of Ronald Reagan’s economic plans, drawing a critical eye toward the former president’s policy decisions and potentially tarnishing the Gipper’s legacy...

Tactical Nuclear Weapons, the Menace No One Is Talking About
All hail the U.S. and Russian negotiators who begin work this week on a new strategic nuclear weapons reduction treaty, a worthy goal...

Georgia sovereignty, integrity ‘must be respected’: Obama
Georgia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity “must be respected,” US President Barack Obama stated Monday during a joint Kremlin press conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev...

Iran Gets Spotlight at U.S.-Russian Summit
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian Dmitry Medvedev focused largely on Iran during their summit in Moscow this week, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, July 6)...

NIGHTLY NEWS for July 6, 2009, NBC
Can President Obama take the chill out of relations with Russia?...

Obama Team Mulls Dumping Bush Missile Defense Plan
Media sources are reporting that the White House is examining options for a missile defense system for Europe, with some indications that the Obama Administration may drop the previous Administration's plans...

Obama boxes with Putin's shadow
President Obama's second day in Russia on Tuesday was a fire hydrant of news -– most of it overshadowed by coverage of Michael Jackson's funeral –- in which Obama boxed with the shadow of Vladimir Putin, the man who many have concluded runs the Kremlin by proxy...

Mixed results for Obama's first Moscow summit
For two days, President Barack Obama pressed the reset button with Russia...

Obama Resets Ties to Russia, but Work Remains
President Obama kicked off a new chapter in Russian-American relations with significant progress on several fronts during a two-day visit to the nation that began Monday...

Staggering Budget Gap and a Reluctance to Fill It
No one argues that the staggering deficits run up by the American government in a bid to rescue the economy are desirable, healthy or even sustainable — not if the national debt continues to swell at its current pace...

Quotations of the day
"It's not, in our view, a zero-sum game, that if it's two points for Russia it's negative two for us, but there are ways that we can cooperate to advance our interests and, at the same time, do things with the Russians that are good for them as well."...

Russia, U.S. Cooperation on Afghanistan Shows 180 Degree Turn
A deal between the United States and Russia to increase assistance and training in Afghanistan is being hailed by Obama administration officials as "historic" and demonstrative of two nations no longer fighting a Cold War...

Economy On Back Burner On Day One Of Obama-Medvedev Summit
Looking to pull the U.S.'s relationship with Russia out of its "sense of drift," President Barack Obama said his administration will cooperate with the Kremlin on a series of matters, from transporting soldiers to Afghanistan to intensifying communication on health matters...

Debt Burden Quickens Power Shift as G-8 Loses Clout
The world’s most affluent nations will take decades to work off the biggest buildup in debt since World War II...

Russia Presents Test for Obama
President Obama is scheduled to leave Washington tonight on a week-long trip that will help determine whether his personal popularity and fresh policy approaches can yield concrete results on difficult issues including arms control, missile defense and nuclear nonproliferation...

Obama, Putin meet at last, exchange pleasantries
President Barack Obama, meeting Tuesday with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for the first time, called their talks "an excellent opportunity to put U.S.-Russian relations on a strong footing."...

Obama to Press Kremlin on Energy
U.S. President Barack Obama will press Russia to drop its “zero-sum” attitude on alternative energy supplies out of the former Soviet Union and offer cooperation in preventing climate change through better energy technology during a visit to Moscow next week, U.S. officials said...

The Rise of McFaul
Not every academic researcher gets a chance to put her or his theory into practice -- that's kind of the definitive Ivory Tower stereotype: lots of big words and lofty principles that don't necessarily matter in real life...

Obama to Russia: Let's Cool the Planet and the Nukes
One day ahead of his first visit to Russia as President, Barack Obama said Sunday he wants to "press the reset button" on American-Russian relations...

The un-American way of life
Most adults now living were born during the Cold War, a 45-year standoff between competing political and economic systems that threatened civilization with nuclear annihilation and asked virtually every human being on earth to pick a side...

Obama-Medvedev Relations ‘Reset’ May Stop at Arms Cut
Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev will be looking to trumpet their commitment to reducing nuclear arms when they meet in Moscow next week...

It's in US interest to sign nuclear test ban treaty
While the economy, energy and health-care issues dominate our national dialogue, another issue deserves equal attention: the proliferation of nuclear weapons...

Managing American Hegemony
Whether the United States will remain the world’s dominant power is a question that will be answered by . . . the United States. A talk with Hoover fellow Kori N. Schake. By Christian Brose.

NATO at Sixty
An alliance for the purposes of defense has grown into an alliance for the purposes of democracy. By Zoltan Barany.

Iran's rogue regime
A.D. 2009 in the Islamic calendar is 1430 A.H. (Anno Hegirae, which began with the prophet's flight from Medina to Mecca)...

Our Decaying Nuclear Deterrent
A bipartisan congressional commission, headed by some of our most experienced national security practitioners, recently concluded that a nuclear deterrent is essential to our defense for the foreseeable future...

Ideas and Consequences
Celebrating the ninetieth birthday of the Hoover Institution, a revolutionary place. By Nicholas Siekierski.

A Better Look at Lithuania
Lithuania's history is not a closed book. The Hoover Archives holds a number of rich sources. By Inga Arlauskaite.

The Searcher
With the publication of Reagan's Secret War: The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from Nuclear Disaster, historians Martin and Annelise Anderson have once again swung their wrecking ball...

Tough to intercept missiles
Due to the severe economic slump, the United States recently announced that it would make substantial cuts to its costly and controversial missile defense program...

1979: The Great Backlash
If you want to understand the surge of politicized religion, post-communist globalization, and laissez-faire economics that has defined our modern era, forget 1968...

The Quiet American: William Perry's unfinished business
Turning up to hear former US Secretary of State for Defense William Perry address a meeting of the Henry Jackson Society at the House of Commons the other day, I had it mind to investigate the following:...

Obama’s Arms Control Ideas Unrealistic
President Obama must heed the advice of a new congressional commission which warns against bargaining away our nuclear deterrent at the upcoming Moscow summit...

'Obama Is Certainly a European'
Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash discusses the demise of Europe's social democrats, threats to the European Union posed by populist nationalists, the imminent change of government in Great Britain and America's rapid slide to the left...

Fragile at the Core
Most of the time, foreign relations are kind of boring — negotiations, communiqués, soporific speeches...

Lion's Den: The Middle Eastern cold war
A cold war is "the key to understanding the Middle East in the 21st century."...

N-disarmament impossible in today's world
When Ronald Reagan was president he scheduled a weekly one-on-one meeting in the White House with Secretary of State George Shultz...

BRIC Leaders Aim To Build On Growing Economic Clout
The name was coined by an economist to group together the world's biggest emerging economies...

Did Stalin Poison Lenin?
In the Hoover Institution Archives’s Volkogonov microfilm collection, there is a remarkable document dated March 23, 1923 from Joseph Stalin to the Politburo...

U.S. Fed in Trouble as Falling Dollar Risks Bond Investors Revolt
Frank Shostak writes: A growing concern for Fed policy makers is a weakening in the US dollar against major currencies...

Williamson Evers on Anti-Intellectualism in America
Williamson "Bill" Evers, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a conservative, expounds on why students in the U.S. don't perform as well in math and science as students do in some other countries...

Current U.S. Dollar Currency Controls
National fiat currencies represent the common stock of nations...

Who Will Buy Our Debt?
For the financial cognoscenti, the cause of our fiscal and monetary crisis is very clear: deflection of responsibility...

For Timothy Garton Ash, Europe Means Shared History
What does it mean to be European, and what is Europe's future?...

Floor Statement by Senator John McCain a World Without Nuclear Weapons
Mr. President, today we celebrate the unveiling in the Capitol of a statue of Ronald Reagan, one of our country’s great presidents and a personal hero to me throughout my political life...

The Age of Middle East Atonement
President Obama made an earnest effort — as is his way in matters of discord — to split the difference with the Islamic world...

Tianamen's legacy of boldness
On the evening of May 14, Jiang Qisheng, widely seen as one of China's most courageous dissidents, drafted and e-mailed to a friend a public statement commemorating the victims of the Army crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago...

Twenty years after a victory and a defeat, time for a progress report
Someone should institute an annual 4 June review of the Chinese, European and American models...

BOOKS: 'Reagan's Secret War'
Filled with material heretofore classified, "Reagan's Secret War" documents many meetings of the National Security Planning Group that show how President Reagan sought to replace the old policy of facing off with the Soviet Union through the lens of "mutually assured destruction" with steady reductions of nuclear weapons, leading to their eventual elimination...

Road To Zero Nukes Remains Fraught
On May 19, President Obama and his top national security advisers huddled in the Oval Office with an unlikely collection of Cold Warriors...

A nation up for grabs
Pakistan is in political and military play. And the stakes in its struggle against Islamic extremism could not be higher for the South Asian country or the United States...

Perry, Scowcroft Say U.S. May Need to Use ‘Coercion’ to Stop North Korean Nuclear Aspirations
Former Defense Secretary William Perry and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft say it may become necessary for the U.S. to use military force to stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions...

U.S. Presses China for Tough Response to North Korea
The United States is pressing China to consider taking a variety of severe sanctions against North Korea, including the inspection of suspect ships and planes, as it tries to ratchet up the global response to Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test, administration officials said Thursday...

How to Reduce the Nuclear Threat
Monday's North Korean nuclear test was a dramatic reminder of the challenges to eliminating nuclear weapons world-wide...

China Can Only Gain from Being Tough on N.Korea
After North Korea conducted its second nuclear test on Monday, the UN Security Council convened an emergency meeting that condemned the test and began searching for a new resolution...

Obama treaty push hinges on global 'listening' net
In high-rise offices along the Danube, scientists riveted to computer screens "listen" to sounds no one can hear, "feel" every rumble in the Earth, "sniff" global skies for exotic gases — on alert for signs of a newborn atomic bomb...

What to Do About North Korea
The North Korean launch of its Taeopodong-2 missile and its second nuclear test have laid bare the paucity of President Obama's policy options...

Pres. Obama Oval Office Meeting on Nonproliferation Policy
President Obama met with Fmr. Sec. of State Henry Kissinger, Fmr. Sec. of State George Schultz, Fmr. Senator and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn, and Fmr. Sec. of Defense William Perry to discuss key priorities in U.S. nonproliferation policy in the Oval Office...

Pres. Obama Oval Office Meeting on Nonproliferation Policy
President Obama met with Fmr. Sec. of State Henry Kissinger, Fmr. Sec. of State George Schultz, Fmr. Senator and Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn, and Fmr. Sec. of Defense William Perry to discuss key priorities in U.S. nonproliferation policy in the Oval Office...

Obama Leads Chorus of Support for Nuclear Disarmament
U.S. President Barack Obama yesterday promised to place nuclear nonproliferation high on his administration's agenda, Agence France-Presse reported (see GSN, May 5)...

1989 – 'Poland's gift to the world'
EXCLUSIVE - We interview British historian and journalist Timothy Garton-Ash in the run-up to June’s twentieth anniversary of the first democratic elections in Poland...

Make your revolution at a round table, but add a truth commission
As a piece of carpentry, this table is nothing to write home about...

Remarks by the President After Meeting with Former Secretary of State George Shultz, Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Former Senator and Chairman of the Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn, and Former Secretary of Defense William Perry ...
THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody. I just had a wonderful discussion with four of the most preeminent national security thinkers that we have -- a bipartisan group of George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Bill Perry, and Sam Nunn -- all who've come together and helped inspire policies of this administration in a speech that I gave to Prague, which set forward a long-term vision of a world without nuclear weapons...

Shultz, Kissinger, Perry and Nunn
President Obama hit a home run on the national security front today, gathering a host of foreign policy graybeards to validate his call ...

U.S., Russian officials to discuss new nuclear treaty
Russian and U.S officials are meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Moscow to discuss a replacement pact for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I, which is expiring in December...

Obama meets on nuclear weapons
President Obama brought in some old foreign policy hands -- both Democrats and Republicans -- for some counsel today on how to fulfill his long-term vision of ridding the world of nuclear weapons...

Obama: Reducing spread of nukes a high priority
Preparing for a July summit on the issue with his Russian counterpart, President Barack Obama on Tuesday said it is "absolutely imperative" that the United States take the lead in reducing the spread of nuclear weapons...

The US and Russia begin disarmament talks
The US and Russia have begun renegotiating the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on Monday in Moscow...

Obama, With Help, Makes Anti-Nuclear Push
President Obama told a huge crowd in Prague last month that he is committed to “a world without nuclear weapons.’’...

Clock ticking as Russia, US kick off nuclear arms talks
Russia and the United States open fresh nuclear disarmament negotiations this week under pressure to strike a deal by year’s end that experts say will have far-reaching consequences for world security...

Obama and Netanyahu Meet - What's Next?
The meeting on May 18 of two newly elected leaders, Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu, raise a basic question about US-Israel relations: Will this long-standing alliance survive its 62nd year?...

Eat the Tigers!
In India, China and Russia, there were once 100,000 wild tigers...

Exclusive: Authors of Commission Report on Nuclear Deterrence Should Be Commended – And Heeded
Government sponsored Commissions are frequently created...

Our Government, For Better Or Worse
Ever since I came into contact with government, both state and federal, and especially in the four decades since first going to work in it, I've been struck by the gap between what many Americans expect of government and what it's actually good at doing...

We need a European foreign policy. Improbable? Yes. Impossible? No
Fly-over country...

Shultz honors late professor
Not a seat was empty in Memorial Church last night as Hoover Fellow and former Secretary of State George Shultz delivered a powerful speech on “The Power of Ought” in his role as the 2009 Rathbun Visiting Fellow...

A Good Time to Stop Butting Heads
There has always been an acute shortage of optimism in Russia...

Ed Meese hailed for defending freedom
On July 9, 1985, Ed Meese dropped a constitutional bombshell on Washington, D.C. that shook the foundations of the federal judiciary all the way to the Supreme Court...

Anti-nuke set courts religious leaders
If you’re a religious conservative, it’s hard not to feel a little unwanted...

A New President and a New Generation Seek a Nuclear Weapons Free Future
An important article appeared today in the Washington Post...

U.S. urged to increase Japan nuclear talks
The United States should launch a full dialogue on nuclear issues with Japan, parallel to Washington's efforts to hammer out a new atomic arms limitation deal with Moscow, according to a congressional report released Wednesday...

Strategic Posture Panel Reveals Split Over Nuclear Test Pact Ratification
A congressionally mandated expert panel yesterday reported that its members were divided over whether the U.S. Senate should ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but it unanimously advised the White House to clarify specific activities banned by the accord (see GSN, April 22)...

R.I.P., Jack Kemp
Jack Kemp, who died Saturday at age 73, did something exceptional...

Commission Recommends Renewed US Leadership on Nuclear Arms Reduction
A report released in Washington on Wednesday recommends strengthened U.S. leadership in global efforts to prevent further nuclear weapons proliferation...

Americans want it all, provided somebody else pays for it
Today's Americans inherited the wealthiest nation in history — but only because earlier generations learned how to feed, fuel, finance and defend themselves in ways unrivaled elsewhere...

Dreams of a multi-polar world? Be careful what you wish for
The makeup of the "Ad Hoc Committee to Run the World" is changing...

Expert Groups Largely Back Obama's Nuclear Stance
Two bipartisan panels of nuclear weapons experts are endorsing much of President Obama's ambitious arms-control effort in advance of next week's nonproliferation talks here between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton...

Ferguson-Scowcroft Conference Call
CHARLES FERGUSON: Good morning, everyone. This is Charles Ferguson. I'm the Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology at the Council on Foreign Relations, based in Washington, D.C. And it's my pleasure to release the Independent Task Force on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy report...

Krugman vs. Ferguson: a Battle of Decades
So often discussion of economic policy drifts into "decade talk."...

Nashville preacher leads no-nuke push
Tyler Wigg-Stevenson doesn't carry peace signs or wear tie-dyed T-shirts emblazoned with "No Nukes."...

The Great Enigma
Even those who count Ronald Reagan among the handful of great American presidents have a hard time saying exactly where his greatness lay, or how it made itself felt...

N. Korea has small nuclear arsenal but lacks deployment ability: U.S. report
North Korea possesses “a small nuclear arsenal” but may have the capability to deploy it, according to a recent U.S. report...

Survival Tactic
North Korea's rocket launch of April 5, the U.N. Security Council vote to condemn the launch and strengthen sanctions, and the North's decision of April 14 to pull out of the six-party talks have thrown a monkey wrench into prospects for a negotiated resolution of Pyongyang's nuclear-weapon and missile programs...

Europe's future depends on voters. But not on the European elections
The other day I heard a pro-European British politician say the most extraordinary thing...

George Shultz Joins Evangelicals in Anti-Nuke Campaign
Former Secretary of state George Shultz has teamed up with a slew of evangelical Christians to launch what could be seen as a crusade with a quixotic goal: the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons...

Zero nuclear weapons still a distant dream
In early May, representatives from 191 countries will assemble in New York to discuss the fate of one of the most popular international treaties: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Only four countries—Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea—will not be present; the first three because they are not parties to the NPT and the last one because it is deemed to have withdrawn from it...

Papers of Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Imre Pozsgay Available for Research at the Hoover Institution
In August 1989, hundreds of East German visitors poured across the border from communist Hungary to Austria and freedom...

Gorbachev on PBS
Tuesday’s Charlie Rose show on PBS was an hour with former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev and George Shultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State during the Gorbachev era...

Kafka meets Orwell
I am writing on the long flight back to Los Angeles from Geneva, where I have just attended the so-called Durban Review Conference of the United Nations, aka Durban II...

Black-leather pragmatist
In a recent lecture on Russian politics, Berkeley Professor Emeri-tus of Political Science Ken Jowitt challenged the Western world to shed its outdated and simplistic view of world powers as divided into autocracies and Western-style democracies...

Константин Л. Захарченко, 1900-1987

Николай Дмитриевич Тальберг, 1886-1967

Александр Каллиникович Свитич, 1890-1963

Иван Алексеевич Поляков, 1886-1969

Константин Николаевич Николаев, 1884-1965

Владислав Альбионович Маевский, 1893-1975

Священник Стефан Ляшевский, 1899-1986

Петр Николаевич Краснов, 1869-1947

Владимир Сергеевич Хитрово, 1891-1968

Святослав Варлаамович Денисов, 1878-1957

Константин Ставрович Черкассов (Лагоридов), род. 1921

Архиепископ Аполлинарий (Кошевой), 1874-1933

Иван Михайлович Андреев (Андреевский), 1894-1976

Архимандрит Амвросий (Коновалов), 1890-1971

An hour with Mikhail Gorbachev and George Shultz
An hour with Mikhail Gorbachev, former President of the Soviet Union and George Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State...

The U.N.'s Durban II Debacle
As I write this, the United Nations Durban Review Conference on "racism" is still officially in session, stumbling toward the close, on Friday, of its five-day run at the U.N.'s palatial offices on the shores of Lake Geneva...

Василий Иванович Алексеев, 1906-2002

Владимир Конкордович Абданк-Коссовский, 1885-1962

Constantine L. Zakhartchenko, 1900-1987

Nikolai Dmitrievich Talberg, 1886-1967

Aleksandr Kallinikovich Svitich, 1890-1963

Ivan Alekseevich Poliakov, 1886-1969

Konstantin Nikolaevich Nikolaev, 1884-1965

Vladislav Al’bionovich Maevskii, 1893-1975

Zionism and Racism, Again: Durban II
It took the Obama administration some time to get the full picture...

Reverend Stefan Liashevskii, 1899-1986

Petr Nikolaevich Krasnov, 1869-1947

Gorbachev, Shultz find Reykjavik revived in Rome
Back in the Cold War, an eon ago, in a little white house in Iceland, the Russian and the American parried and probed each other as antagonists...

U.S. Military Power Could Hinder Nuclear Disarmament Goals, Gorbachev Says
The overwhelming military power of the United States might force other countries to retain their nuclear deterrents, ultimately frustrating the Obama administration's stated goal of pursuing global nuclear disarmament, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said yesterday (see GSN, April 9)...

Vladimir Sergeevich Khitrovo, 1891-1968

Sviatoslav Varlaamovich Denisov, 1878-1957

Konstantin Stavrovich Cherkassov (Lagoridov), born 1921

Archbishop Apollinarii (Koshevoi), 1874-1933

Ivan Mikhailovich Andreev (Andreevskii), 1894-1976

G20 a circus for clowns
THE Group of 20 meeting in London produced plenty of media hype and uncritical commentary but very little to resolve the global financial difficulties...

Gorbachev: US military power blocks `no nukes'
President Barack Obama's call for a nuclear weapons-free world is welcome, but the huge U.S. defense budget may prove an "insurmountable obstacle" to reaching that goal, former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Thursday...

Vasilii Ivanovich Alekseev, 1906-2002

Archimandrite Amvrosii (Konovalov), 1890-1971

Vladimir Konkordovich Abdank-Kossovskii, 1885-1962

The limits of realism
A decade ago I attended a talk that Suzanne Massie gave at Yale, in which she described her curious relationship with President Reagan as a regular informal advisor and back-channel interlocutor on Soviet affairs...

Rice, on the Record

"The world is tough, but it’s no tougher now than when we came, and some pockets of it are a lot, lot better." A talk with former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. By Kimberley A. Strassel.

The Unfinished Work of Sidney Drell

Reflecting on his career as one of Stanford’s "Pioneers in Science," the physicist and Hoover senior fellow says the need for arms control is more pressing than ever.

Obama aiming for a nuclear-weapons-free world
In a speech held in Prague, US President Barack Obama became the first president in more than 20 years to publicly state that the US should aim for a world free of nuclear weapons...

How Obama can start closing the growing partisan chasm
A recently released Pew Poll suggests that Barack Obama is experiencing the widest partisan divide in approval of any President in the last four decades...

Piratical Thoughts
Pirates (the word peiraô is Greek for ‘to try’ or ‘make the attempt’) were common in the ancient world...

Letters from the Gulag

Even in the bleak world of Soviet labor camps, people wrote letters. A remarkable cache shows one prisoner’s struggle—to be remembered, and to survive. By Emily Johnson.

People power
Before he became world famous for putting forth his theory of a “clash of civilisations”, the political scientist Samuel Huntington was known for his work on the processes of democratisation...

Nanda: Obama's tour a grand success
By all accounts, President Barack Obama's European tour was a grand public relations success...

The Human Element: When Gadgetry Becomes Strategy
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the political debates concerning the nature and scope of U.S. involvement in those countries, have resurrected the “lessons” of Vietnam once again...

Schram: Nuking nukes no new idea
It has been almost four decades since Spiro Agnew warned us to beware of "nattering nabobs of negativism" (an oratorical gem that proved to be a genuine Safire)...

U.S. to Join Iran Talks Over Nuclear Program
The Obama administration said Wednesday that the United States would start participating regularly with other major powers in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program...

The Nuclear Illusionist
"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something."...

No Secrets
When Secretary of State Dean Acheson outlined, on January 12, 1950, what he termed America’s “defensive perimeter” in Asia, his failure to include South Korea went largely unnoticed in the United States...

World approaching new nuclear tipping point
With the world standing on what some experts fear is the beginning of a dangerous new nuclear age, U.S. President Barack Obama received thunderous applause on Friday when he told a European audience one of his goals was “a world without nuclear weapons.”...

Analysis: Obama no-nukes pledge not so farfetched
President Barack Obama's startling call Friday for a "world without nuclear weapons" brings to mind Ronald Reagan's idealistic, unfulfilled dream of eliminating the threat of nuclear annihilation...

President 50/50
The most successful practitioner of community organizing looks around for what he thinks is a problem, chastises both sides and allots absolutely equal blame, gives exalted moral lectures about compromise and understanding, and then waltzes away well paid, praised for his moderation, but having accomplished nothing...

With Czechs In Disarray, Obama Comes To Prague
For the Czechs, this weekend's EU-U.S. summit was to have been the crowning achievement of their country's six-month European Union presidency...

Obama, Russia's Medvedev Announce New Arms Control Plan
President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have announced plans for deep, new cuts in their arsenals of nuclear weapons as the first step toward charting a new course in U.S.-Russian relations...

Mass Incidents in China and the United States and Predicting Results
China's Public Security Ministry reported 87,000 mass incidents in 2005, up 6.6 per cent over the number in 2004, and 50 per cent over the 2003 figure...

When ignorance and bigotry conjoin; Israel and the two-state delusion
The above is an ethnic map of counties in the United States...

G-20 could help US, Russia “reset” ties
Among the many great expectations being loaded onto this week’s G-20 summit in London is the hope that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his US counterpart, Barack Obama, will decisively push the “reset” button to reverse the nearly decade-long downward spiral in Washington-Moscow ties...

A Rookie President
Someone once said that, for every rookie you have on your starting team in the National Football League, you will lose a game...

The Good—Part III
Ok—after those depressing six “bad” and “ugly” trends, here are three things that bring at least some optimism in otherwise trying times...

The Obama–Medvedev G-20 Meeting: The Agenda for the First Encounter
On April 1, President Barack Obama will meet for the first time with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the G-20 summit in London...

Towards zero: Obama grasps the nuclear nettle
Fixing the economy, withdrawing from Iraq, overtures to Iran, a plan for Afghanistan, a thaw with Moscow and a bargain with Beijing ... I could go on...

Barack Obama, Global Community Organizer
Remember the phrase "community organizer," plucked from his CV by Barack Obama and invoked as a pre-election boast?...

Gorbachev upbeat on U.S.-Russia ties after Obama visit
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said on Thursday he was more optimistic about the prospect of improving U.S.-Russian relations after meeting U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this month...

Moscow's Expensive Game
In the wake of the Russian Security Council's meeting on 24 March, the body's secretary Nikolai Patrushev announced that Russia would not become involved in any sort of expensive arms race...

The G20 summit in London will be missing one great power. Guess who?
When President Barack Obama comes to London next week, he will find one great power missing at the world's summit table: Europe...

Russia Upbeat on Prospects for Better U.S. Ties
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed optimism Friday that relations with the United States could be improved, while one of his top officials appeared to connect any future nuclear arms reductions to U.S. missile defense plans, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, March 20)...

Medvedev 'counting on a reset'
Some of the biggest names in U.S. diplomacy of past decades met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other Kremlin leaders Friday, in an effort to improve frosty relations that experts say could threaten many U.S. foreign policy goals...

Former top U.S. officials push diplomatic effort to repair ties with Russia
Three former U.S. secretaries of state are in Moscow to press an informal bid to seek an end to the big chill in relations between the old Cold War allies, which has hampered U.S. efforts in everything from the struggle against nuclear proliferation to supplying troops in Afghanistan...

Veterans of U.S. Diplomacy Try to Revive Nuclear Arms Talks With Russia
Three former American secretaries of state and a former secretary of defense were in Moscow on Thursday for informal meetings with top Russian officials in an attempt to pull relations between the United States and Russia out of a tailspin before the countries’ presidents meet for the first time next month...

Congress and President Obama's National Security Agenda
A key bellwether vote in the new Congress came on February 13 when only three Senate Republicans broke ranks from their party and voted with Democrats for President Barack Obama's $787 billion stimulus bill...

Kissinger, Baker Visit Moscow as Obama Resets Ties
Henry Kissinger and James Baker, two former U.S. secretaries of state, will fly to Moscow for talks with Russian officials after President Barack Obama pledged to “reset” relations with Russia...

News in Brief: U.S. Group to Visit
Former U.S. Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James Baker will fly to Moscow for talks with Russian officials Friday...

British Leader Seeks Renewed International Commitment to Nuclear Disarmament
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown today called on nuclear-armed nations to make meaningful arsenal reductions as part of a "global nuclear bargain" to persuade other countries to curb their atomic ambitions (see GSN, Feb. 5)...

Terror by Quota: State Security from Lenin to Stalin (an Archival Study), by Hoover fellow Paul R. Gregory
Terror by Quota: State Security from Lenin to Stalin (an Archival Study), by Hoover research fellow Paul Gregory, is an original analysis of the workings of Soviet state security organs under Lenin and Stalin that addresses a series of questions that have long resisted satisfactory answers...

European Leaders Push Back on Obama's Calls for Aid
Ahead of a high-stakes economic meeting of the Group of 20 nations, European countries are striking an uncompromising tone toward Washington, bolstering President Barack Obama's political opponents at home and pouring some cold water on Europe's love affair with the new U.S. president...

COLUMN:The DOW at 36,000 and the end of history:Bernd Debusmann
It's no longer in print but you can get it over the Internet and $1.99 (plus shipping and handling) buys you a well-preserved copy of DOW 36,000, a book that has become an emblem for really, really wrong forecasts...

New Book Dissects Reagan's Role In The Cold War
What role did former President Ronald Reagan play in ending the Cold War — and how did that role evolve?...

Stage Set For A Collision: Lieberman, Netanyahu and Barack Obama
With the expected designation of Avigdor Lieberman as Israel’s next foreign minister in a narrow, right-wing coalition led by Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, the stage seems set for a political collision course between Jerusalem and the rest of the world, including the U.S...

Planetary peril: ‘Axis of Upheaval’ forms around world
A bill pending in the Legislature would make it illegal for employers to ask job applicants if they own a gun...

U.S. Eyes Iran for Resupply of Afghan Forces
The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is mulling a plan that would use Iranian territory to rescue the deteriorating logistics network currently used to supply U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, administration officials said...

NATO expert joins national security team
Stanford researcher Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall will join the Obama administration as a special assistant to the president and senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council...

'The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan' by James Mann: A look at how the president helped end the Cold War
Did Ronald Reagan truly engineer the end of the Cold War, or was he just a bumbler who watched Mikhail Gorbachev at work?...

Georgia, a Nation Stalled On the Road to Democracy
Mikheil Saakashvili strode into Parliament like a returning hero, basking in applause...

Japanese perceptions of Obama's nuclear 'twin commitments'
How does Japan view U.S. President Barack Obama's "twin commitments" to the goals of nuclear abolition and maintaining an adequate deterrent as long as nuclear weapons remain?...

The World According to John Bolton: Chapter 3 of 5
John Bolton says Vladimir Putin is clearly focused on reasserting Russian hegemony, a troubling development that invites a strong U.S. response...

Lessons from History: The Twentieth Anniversary of the Soviet Withdrawal From Afghanistan
The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December of 1979...

Emergency EU Summit Puts Premium On Unity
As they gather for a short emergency summit in Brussels, European leaders will be battling centrifugal forces...

UCSC alum makes case for justice in the nuclear debate
The stalemate in nuclear disarmament talks can be unfrozen if all states, those with nuclear capabilities as well as those without, are given equal voice in the discussion...

Crisis to trigger global political turmoil: historian
A financial expert from Harvard Business School believes the global economic downturn will trigger major political upheaval in many countries...

A Funny Sort of Depression
Are we headed to something like the Great Depression?...

Nuclear is going worldwide, but U.S. is not in the game
Nuclear power plants, already more popular outside the United States than stateside, are popping up all over the developing world...

Reflecting on George H. W. Bush's Legacy
Every presidential library has its own distinct approach to its namesake and to history...

S. Korea: NKorea deploys new ballistic missile
North Korea recently deployed a new type of medium-range ballistic missile capable of reaching northern Australia and the U.S. territory of Guam, South Korea's Defense Ministry said Monday...

'There will be blood'
Harvard author and financial crisis guru Niall Ferguson has landed with a thud in Ottawa, spreading messages that could make even the most confident policy makers squirm...

Russia expert appointed to national security posts
Stanford political science Professor Michael McFaul has been tapped by President Barack Obama to serve as special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council...

Our Battered American
I am meeting a few battered Americans these days...

US-RUSSIA: Kinder, Gentler Tone, Same Policy Tradeoffs
The relationship between the U.S. and Russia, which reached a nadir this past August during the war in Georgia, appears to have experienced a slight thaw during the first month of the Barack Obama administration...

McFaul will be Russia hand
Stanford's news service reports that Stanford political science Professor Michael McFaul — who shaped Obama's Russia policy during the campaign — "has been tapped by President Barack Obama to serve as special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs at the National Security Council."...

STANFORD PROFESSOR NAMED TO NATIONAL SECURITY.
A Political Science professor from Stanford University has been appointed to a position on President Barack Obama's administration...

Getting rid of walls?
Growing old, I realise, is not so much about ageing as losing interest...

Learning Not to Love the Bomb
THE Obama administration seems ready to resuscitate relations with Russia, including by renewing nuclear-arms-reduction talks...

Nominating America To Be The World's Designated Driver
Obama's first foreign policy decisions bode well for establishing America's role as a global "designated driver" in the 21st Century, when the world is drunk on unprecedented trends in finance, governance, geopolitics, religion, war, weather and more...

New route links Afghanistan to sea, via Iran
As President Obama's foreign policy team tries to make lemonade out of the diplomatic lemons it has inherited around the world, one region could represent low-hanging fruit: the Khyber Pass linking Pakistan with Afghanistan...

The Globe's Emerging Middle Classes
As economically developing countries grow prosperous, their middle classes understandably become more satisfied with their lives...

G-7 Takes ‘Back Seat’ as Crisis Pushes G-20 to Fore
The Group of Seven, whose finance chiefs convene this weekend in Rome, is ceding its traditional power to rebuild the world economy to a broader body of governments that now wield greater sway over global growth...

One Last Push to Save Manas Air Base
The Washington Times reports that the Obama administration is sending a high-level delegation to Moscow to save access to a key air base for the Afghanistan war...

Outside View: Getting to nuke zero
Mohamed ElBaradei proposes a five-point plan to eliminate nuclear weapons...

Beyond the Age of Leverage: Alternative Cures for the Global Financial Crisis
It began as a sub-prime surprise, then became a credit crunch and is now a global financial crisis...

US can't ignore foreign threats in economic crisis, experts warn
The United States cannot be distracted from dealing with foreign threats and challenges even as it works to avert an economic collapse at home, US economists warned Wednesday...

EXCLUSIVE: Envoys rush to Moscow to save key base
The Obama administration sent two top officials to Moscow on Wednesday in a determined effort to retain access to a key military base in Central Asia and the first major test of the new administration's relations with Russia...

The fog lifts a little in Israel
As we noted yesterday, the Israeli election has left Benjamin Netanyahu pretty well-positioned to form a new government in which he will be the Prime Minister...

Containing the fire of the gods
Over 200 years ago, the philosopher Immanuel Kant defined the ultimate choice before mankind: World history would ultimately culminate in universal peace either by moral insight or by catastrophe of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice...

Our Brave New World
Be careful when one uses the superlative case—best, most, -est, etc.—or evokes end-of-the-world imagery...

Campaign promises: nuclear arms control
It's been more than 20 years since Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan stunned the planet by proposing that the U.S. and the Soviet Union embark on a quest to free the world of nuclear weapons...

Keynes can't help us now
It began as a subprime surprise, became a credit crunch and then a global financial crisis...

Capitalism should not amount to theft
When telemarketers call to sell a product, one can hang up or, if one is adventurous, fall into a trap...

Been There, Done That in the Middle East
With much fanfare, President Barack Obama announced a new effort to end the endless Israeli-Palestinian struggle—by naming a brand-new Mideast envoy, former senator George Mitchell...

The nuclear threat: a new start
President Obama has said that he intends to “make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in [US] nuclear policy”...

Framed by water: U.S. & Global Trade, Politics and Law
Water flows through the center of commerce, politics and law—in the history of the American republic and in the current debates of the international community...

Humbled Masters At Davos
"How could we have been so stupid?"...

Obama, Pentagon pull in different directions on no nukes goal
President Barack Obama has set a goal of a "world without nuclear weapons" but the Pentagon is leaning in a seemingly contradictory direction: a modernized nuclear arsenal...

Obama Should Engage Russia at Highest Level
The odds are increasing that U.S.-Russia relations could be rebooted as both sides send positive signals to each other...

30 Years Of Tragedies And Triumphs
It has been 30 years of transformation, of good times and troubled times...

Titans of capitalism shaken and stirred
This year the soul-searching was blunt and the debates were reassuringly honest...

Tit-for-tat as world leaders take over Downturn Davos
Davos was the high temple of free markets and free trade...

Davos in the Media: The Forum Draws Some Heat
Even as Congress looks for ways to expand President Obama’s $819 billion stimulus package, the rest of the world is wondering how Washington will pay for it all, The New York Times reported...

Oil prices expose a chink in armour
Not too long ago, Iran’s ruling mullahs appeared unstoppable...

Book review: "Inside the Stalin Archives'
In January 1992, Jonathan Brent, the editorial director of Yale University Press, flew to the newly re-established nation of Russia in a bid to secure the rights to publish selected material from Soviet archives for the Annals of Communism project of his press...

American Power: Past Is Prologue

Memo to the new leadership: don’t just charge ahead, think ahead. By Thomas H. Henriksen.

Common Ground in the Caucasus

Why the United States, Europe, and Russia must not permit the conflict in Georgia to blind them to their shared interests. By Henry A. Kissinger and George P. Shultz.

The Putin Doctrine

“Russia has only two reliable allies—its army and navy.” Invading Georgia, Russia reverted to form. By Josef Joffe.

An Uneasy Feeling
All Americans must appreciate the outpouring of good will, unity, and hope for a successful Obama administration...

The Shadow Banking System
I recently finished Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008...

Patriot, Poet, and Prophet

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a man whose flaws and virtues alike were heroic, was a true Russian. By Robert Conquest.

A No-Longer-Useful Lie

In its waning years, Gorbachev’s Kremlin resolved to come clean about an old and jealously guarded secret. By Mark Harrison.

Remembering "Bill" Boreysza

Warrior, Polish patriot—and remarkable Hoover librarian. An appreciation by Maciej Siekierski.

Obama Promises the World a Renewed America
President Obama used his Inaugural Address to promise the regeneration of an America many in recent years had feared lost...

Britain can build on friendship to forge new link with US
WHEN Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton holds her first meeting with her British colleagues, there could be a certain déjà vu in the air...

Peddling Stalin
Russian and foreign scholars took on Stalin at the International Conference on Stalinism held last month in Moscow...

Not Included: An Oil Change We Can Believe In
President-elect Barack Obama's tricked-out Chrysler sedan is on the auction block, but it may cost eBay bidders upwards of $150,000...

Obama inherits a world of troubles
President Barack Hussein Obama will arrive at the White House on Tuesday and inherit a world of troubles weighty enough to make Atlas groan...

North Korean, Iranian Nuclear Efforts Pose Early Test for Obama
Arms control specialists from the Bush and Clinton eras warn that the most pressing problem for the new Obama administration will be finding a way to halt the nuclear weapons programs of Iran and North Korea...

New school flunks unity test: Hebrew-language charter should not have been approved
I am deeply impressed by the philanthropy of financial whiz Michael Steinhardt, but totally baffled by the decision of the New York State Board of Regents to approve his proposal to open a publicly funded Hebrew Language Academy Charter School in Brooklyn...

Transition Rumint: Names for the weekend
A brief names post, before the weekend...

"Insurmountable Opportunity"
One of the biggest and most fateful choices Barack Obama will make as president will be the shape of the nearly $1 trillion economic stimulus package that Congress will likely pass within the next two months...

Nuclear Weapons for All? The Risks of a New Scramble for the Bomb
The global financial order has been shaken...

Obama And The Russians Need Each Other To Solve Key Problems
The day after Barack Obama's electoral victory last autumn, most world leaders were falling over themselves to congratulate the new U.S. leader...

Outlook 2009 (Global economy): The end of Chimerica?
Ten years ago, there was a strange competition in the United States to see who could be more arrogant...

Obama's King
When John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the first Irish Catholic President of the United States in 1960, his brother Robert remarked that in thirty years an African American could win the office too...

Victory Over Islamism?
Victims caught in terrorist atrocities perpetrated for Islam typically experience fear, torture, horror, and murder, with sirens screaming, snipers positioning, and carnage in the streets...

Towards a Biden-Putin Commission
When Senators Obama and Biden are sworn in next week, they will face immediate challenges ranging from the need to pass a new economic stimulus plan, responding to the Gaza war, implementing a new Iraq/Afghanistan policy, etc., with perhaps the most important being to lower the public's expectations for a quick turnaround...

Clinton faces touch challenges in new role
Senator Hillary Clinton looks to be headed to an easy confirmation as secretary of state...

Hoover exhibit explores buildup to World War II
Italian troops stream into Addis Ababa in May of 1936, setting the stage for a brutal occupation of Ethiopia...

Ludicrous but embraced
Mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar...

From Gaza to Guantanamo
If one can endure the creepy, multifarious Hamas recruiting videos of Gazan children with suicide belts, camouflage uniforms, and toy AK-47s shouting to “kill the Jews”, and then collates all that with the images of young Hamas males with hoods and masks, RPGs and rocket launchers, screaming about the death to come to Israel with the now boilerplate “Day of Death” and “Day of Punishment”—with all the bizarre use of the vocative (“O Israel, you will see your rivers of blood” or “O Olmert, we will cut your head off!”)—then it is hard to comprehend the switch to a sudden victimization mode, in which weeping Hamas operatives appeal to Europeans, the news agencies, and other Arabs for relief from the suddenly militarily competent and fierce Jews...

The UP side of global warming
Global warming might not be a disaster, according to some experts, who are pushing the notion that global warming has plenty of benefits, especially for certain northerly regions, such as Canada, Russia and Scandinavia...

Toward a nuclear-free world: a German view
In 2007 Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn issued an appeal for a world free of nuclear weapons...

Getting to Zero
Proliferation -- from Russia, North Korea, Iran and the freelance efforts of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan -- is at "a tipping point" that will be "irreversible, and dangerous beyond the imagination of most people," [Former Defense Secretary William] Perry says...

Europe is failing two life and death tests. We must act together, now
Weak, divided, incoherent, hypocritical and infuriating - that's how you hear the EU described privately in Beijing and Washington...

The World Supports Hamas? Of Course, They Do!
I got more than the usual nasty letters this week over voicing support for Israel...

An imaginary retrospective of 2009
It was the year when people finally gave up trying to predict the year ahead...

The Election as Seen from Moscow
Though it received little mention during the primary process, Russia was one of the four countries that the Presidential candidates spoke of when they debated in October on foreign threats to the United States, with the other three countries being Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran...

Obama Gets Telegram, No Spot in Speech
President Dmitry Medvedev appeared in no hurry Wednesday to congratulate Barack Obama on his victory in the U.S. presidential election, sending the senator a telegram after eschewing an opportunity to acknowledge the win in his state-of-the-nation address...

The war on coherence
It is amazing how swiftly a new crisis can knock into perspective one which dominated discussion only a short time before...

U.S. Should Keep Engaging Russia, Obama Adviser Says
A Barack Obama adviser said the U.S. should keep open negotiations with the Russian government on a missile-defense system for Europe and support Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization...

US document calls to update nuclear arms
Continued study and development of a new generation of nuclear weapons and modernization of the aging manufacturing infrastructure needed to build them are necessary to maintain "the ultimate deterrent capability that supports US national security."...

The Real Obama: Part II
A recent Republican campaign ad sarcastically described as Barack Obama's "one accomplishment" his supporting a bill to promote sex education in kindergarten...

War Puts Russia on U.S. Election Agenda
When U.S. Senators Barack Obama and John McCain go live on air to battle over foreign policy in their first presidential debate Friday, last month’s conflict with Georgia might mean that Russia will feature more prominently, the candidates’ top advisers said...

Analysis: Kremlin closely watches U.S. elections
As the U.S. presidential contest enters its final weeks, the Kremlin has grown increasingly upset with what it regards as Russia-bashing by both candidates at a critical time in relations between Washington and Moscow...

A Heartbeat Away from Controlling Our Nuclear Arsenal
Nuclear weapons pose the ultimate test of presidential judgment...

New York Times Editor Philip Taubman Appointed Stanford Scholar, Adviser
Philip Taubman, reporter and editor at the New York Times for nearly 30 years and an expert on national security issues, has been appointed as a consulting professor at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and as an adviser to the campus on university affairs issues...

Time Running Out for U.S. Voters
As the U.S. presidential election campaign heads into the home stretch, U.S. voters living in Russia will have to make up their minds earlier than the folks back home...

Bay Area's Brain Trust
From smashing fundraising records to prepping for debates to flying East to advise on the country's financial meltdown, Bay Area residents are among John McCain's and Barack Obama's very top counselors and fundraisers...

A New Era of Democratic Socialism has Begun in the United States
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan symbolized the end of socialism as a prominent economic philosophy...

Government Equity in Private Companies
The Federal government of the United States has seldom taken an equity interest in private companies, although this has been proposed sometimes, especially as a way to get higher returns on social security assets...

Russia Wards Off Financial Crisis, But For How Long?
Almost exactly 10 years after a devastating market crash that eradicated much of its middle class, Russia is once again in the grip of financial turmoil...

Nuclear weapons: Countdown to zero?
Despite the financial meltdown, despite the ongoing war in Iraq, despite impending global warming and the energy crisis, the most important issue facing the next president will be nuclear weapons and the increasing chance of a catastrophe worse than Hiroshima...

The End of Prosperity?
Congress's initial rejection of the Bush Administration's $700 billion bailout plan calls to mind an unhappy precedent...

Finding Common Ground
The crisis over Georgia raises an issue familiar from history: In 1914, an essentially local issue was seen by so many nations in terms of established fears and frustrations that it became global in scope and led to the First World War...

America’s Nervous Breakdown
Ancient thinkers from Thucydides to Cicero insisted that money was the real source of military power and national influence...

Strange Bedfellows
Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama further proved Friday night how little American politicians understand Russia and Georgia...

Time is Running Out
Obama’s constant deference to McCain as in “John is right…”; the worried side-looks over at McCain, who, in contrast, addressed the audience; and the desire for false intimacy (employing “John” instead of “Sen. McCain”) reflected the relative lack of gravitas on Obama’s part—something that transcends education, eloquence, and youthful vigor...

What price peace?
Conventional wisdom holds that battles are bad for bourses...

Modern Market Thinking Has Devalued a Deadly Sin
Today, Gordon Gekko could not get away with the paean to greed that he delivered in the 1987 movie “Wall Street.”...

Alatas, Perry to join nuclear panel
THE former United States defence secretary, William Perry, and the former Indonesian foreign minister, Ali Alatas, are among the high-profile statesmen and diplomats to have been recruited by Gareth Evans as members of the Rudd Government's nuclear commission...

War Puts Russia on U.S. Vote Agenda
When U.S. Senators Barak Obama and John McCain go live on air to battle over foreign policy in their first presidential debate Friday, last month's conflict with Georgia might mean that Russia will feature more prominently, the candidates' top advisers said...

The time has come for a final report on the 43rd president of the US
As the two men who would succeed him train like Olympic athletes for tomorrow's foreign policy debate, pause for a moment to complete your final report on the 43rd president of the United States...

The Limits of Obamamania in Europe
I recently returned from a trip this summer to the battlefields of Europe’s past—among them Waterloo, Verdun, and Normandy—and had a number of discussions with Europeans of all sorts...

Don't sell America's economy short
Avisiting Israeli Cabinet minister made two interesting points at a conference in Washington over the weekend...

Why We Fight: Martin van Creveld's 'The Culture of War'
Martin van Creveld is one of the world's most prolific military historians, and has written in serial fashion about the state of present-day military conflict in light of the past...

Focus On Issues: China Looks Ahead
Despite the success of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, 2008 has been a difficult year for the People’s Republic of China...

West Nile: Where's the DDT?
West Nile virus has hit California particularly hard this year, causing at least 155 serious illnesses – more than twice as many as in any other state – and three deaths...

Fossilized Foreign Policy
Much of what Barack Obama has said about the world beyond our shores is about five years out of date...

The West Hails Georgia As a Democracy. But Is It One?
GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin made news when she confirmed her belief that Georgia belonged in NATO, even if it meant that "perhaps" the United States would have to go to war with Russia...

We're On Top
Starting today, the United Nations' headquarters in New York turns into a caravanserai for the world's presidents, prime ministers and panjandrums...

Journalists Lose at Harvard
If there’s a choice between historians and journalists as chroniclers of contemporary history, historians win hands down—at least at the Harvard University Library...

Rough Week, But America's Era Goes On
Does Wall Street's meltdown presage the end of the American century?...

Rice Tries Taming Putin While Still Engaging Him
President George H.W. Bush once introduced Condoleezza Rice to his Soviet counterpart as the aide ``who tells me everything I know about the Soviet Union.''...

U.S.-Russia Relations in the Aftermath of the Georgia Crisis
Thank you Mr. Chairman for inviting me to appear before your Committee. As has become our custom together in recent years, I appear here not out of pleasure, but because of bad news coming out of Russia and the former Soviet Union...

Gorbachev gets Liberty Medal tonight
When former President George H.W. Bush bestows the Liberty Medal on former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev Thursday night at the National Constitution Center, it will be a short-lived nostalgia trip back to the good old days of Russian-American relations...

Dragging Kennedy Into a New Fight
At its best, counterfactual or "virtual" history (to use Harvard historian Niall Ferguson's term), the exploration of what might have happened if history had not taken a certain turn, can be a fascinating intellectual exercise, a "what if" that illuminates what did happen...

Their struggle
In September 1942 Heinrich Himmler had an imperial vision...

Will the U.N. unseat the Junta?
With the palpable frustration of Burma's democratic opposition to United Nations efforts in Burma following the Special Envoy's most recent visit, but scarce mechanisms through the international body appear left to opposition politicians and activists to alter the balance of power in the crisis stricken country...

Georgia Conflict Reveals Contrasts Between Candidates on Russia
Among the foreign policy challenges facing the next president, U.S.-Russian relations loom large, and differences between how Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama might handle matters related to Moscow came to light during the recent Georgia conflict...

Questions of Security
JOHN McCAIN and Barack Obama are two of the most remarkable Americans to enter public life...

A worrying new world order
NEVER has the European Union enjoyed such diplomatic prominence as this week, when Nicolas Sarkozy of France led an EU delegation to Moscow to secure yet another promise of Russian troop withdrawals from Georgia...

Russian Peace Deal Would Reassure Investors: Michael R. Sesit
It sure feels like it's time to hold cash, buy gold, invest in Swiss francs and be wary of stocks, as the standoff between Russia and its former Cold War foes persists over the country's attack on Georgia...

We friends of liberal international order face a new global disorder

Obama Up, Obama Down…
Campaigns are cyclical...

The Other 9/11 Story
Seven years ago we suffered the worst attack on the American homeland in our history...

Georgian strife causes political rifts
The fallout from Russia’s conflict with Georgia is producing an unusual split in American politics — not between the parties so much as between the presidential candidates and their colleagues in Congress...

The Foreign Policy Difference
The candidacy of Barack Obama seems to have lost some of its luster of late, and I suspect this has something to do with large questions many Americans still harbor about his view of the dangerous world around us...

Must Counterinsurgency Wars Fail?
When it comes to a state fighting a non-state enemy, the impression widely exists that the state is doomed to fail...

Invasion’s ideologues: Ultra-nationalists join the Russian mainstream
A decade ago, many of the most influential thinkers in today’s Russia were in the intellectual wilderness...

The Vision of the Left
Conservatives, as well as liberals, would undoubtedly be happier living in the kind of world envisioned by the left...

U.N. Roots for Obama, but Should Give McCain's Ideas a Chance
Foreign diplomats and most U.N. officials are rooting for Senator Obama to win the White House in November, though they have wisely avoided thinly disguised interference in the American presidential election...

Leading historian issues warning of a new cold war
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...

Seize chance to free world of nuclear weapons
Nearly 60 years ago, Americans learned of the first case of nuclear proliferation...

Punishing Putin?
Can the United States and the West punish Vladimir Putin for his hot war on Georgia in a way that catches his attention?...

Pro-Kuchma revisionism raises its ugly head
Swedish economist Anders Aslund’s praise of former President Leonid Kuchma [Moscow Times, Aug. 28, “Leonid Kuchma Built a Prosperous Ukraine”] came as a shock to most observers of Ukraine...

The Politics of Experience, Zardari on Pakistan, and Wall Street's Challenge
A selection of op-eds and editorials from the U.S. and around the world...

Only a combination of deterrence and detente can meet this challenge
As you read this, another corner of Europe has been ethnically cleansed...

Foreign Policy "Experience"
Now that the Democrats have recovered from the shock of Governor Sarah Palin's nomination as the Republican's candidate for vice president, they have suddenly discovered that her lack of experience in general— and foreign policy experience in particular— is a terrible danger in someone just a heartbeat away from being President of the United States...

Where Does the GOP Go From Here
When John McCain accepts the Republican nomination tonight, he will address a party that doubts itself...

Realists unite
Now is the moment to forge a new, broader, politically potent coalition of realists to shape U.S. foreign policy, if the high priests of the realist camp would only grasp it...

Why McCain Still Has a Chance to Win
With Barack Obama already established as a skillful rhetorician, people keep asking me, a former White House speechwriter, about John McCain...

Russia Deal May Fall, a Casualty of Conflict
Just three months ago, President Bush reached a long-sought agreement with Russia intended to open a new era of civilian nuclear cooperation and sent it to Congress for review...

Blustering approach toward Russia won't work
One can understand that President Bush feels a certain emotional commitment to Georgia, which provoked a Russian invasion by sending troops into the “breakaway” province of South Ossetia a few weeks ago, bringing on memories of the Cold War...

Farewell, NATO
When I was growing up in the 1960s, we had a majestic Santa Rosa plum orchard on my family’s farm...

Diplomats Court Obama Foreign Policy Team at Denver Convention
Oman's ambassador to the U.S., Hunaina bint Sultan bin Ahmad al-Mughairi, was doing some serious mingling among the Democratic foreign policy elite at the Denver Art Museum...

The Rise of the Putin Doctrine
True, Georgia's Mikheil Saakashvili is not a very smart president...

Conventional Nights
Let us hope that the Republicans avoid the teary-eyed, drippy stories that almost all these Democratic speakers insist on inflicting on us: in this Oprah world, one would think that there is mass starvation, depression, and general mayhem...

The Great Depression with Amity Shlaes: Chapter 4 of 5
Shlaes describes how the New Dealers of the 1920s and 1930s were greatly influenced by the Soviet Union and Mussolini’s Italy...

Obama Would Isolate Russia for Recognizing Breakaway Regions
Barack Obama and some of his advisers offered conflicting views on how to respond to Russia's recognition today of Georgia's two breakaway regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia...

How the Reagan Doctrine Once Again Defeated the Russians
Today, in 2018, as we look back at the first Russian-Georgian War of the 21st century, which erupted 10 years ago, we can recall the extreme pessimism that many felt at the time...

Reinventing the Evil Empire
For the West, everything changed but stayed the same, hard-wired and in place...

Neighbors right to remain fearful of Russian force
Thomas Friedman of The New York Times writes that he is against expanding NATO...

THE STANLEY FOUNDATION: A NEW LOOK AT NO FIRST USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Earlier this year, the staff of the Stanley Foundation's US Nuclear Review project assembled several experts on nuclear weapons in a discussion on the feasibility of the United States adopting a policy never to strike first using nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict...

Foreign policy all talk, no action
Speak softly and carry a big stick, Theodore Roosevelt urged...

The Cold War, reheated
So you haven't liked the last couple of decades?...

U.S. Sees Much to Fear in a Hostile Russia
The president of Syria spent two days this week in Russia with a shopping list of sophisticated weapons he wanted to buy...

The Next President
The next president will inherit leadership of a nation that is still the most powerful in the world -- a nation rich with the continued promise of its dynamic and increasingly diverse population, a nation that could, and must, again inspire, mobilize, and lead the world...

Blame Everyone Except Russia!
Everyone is distracted by the Olympics...

Amateurs Outdoing Professionals
When amateurs outperform professionals, there is something wrong with that profession...

Russia moves up on next president's agenda
Two weeks ago, it seemed the most pressing foreign policy problem for the next occupant of the White House would be extricating the United States from Iraq, or deciding how many troops to move to Afghanistan...

'No business as usual,' NATO warns Moscow
NATO closed ranks against Russia yesterday, vowing to expand its membership at the risk of angering the Kremlin and suspending talks with the superpower until it withdraws from neighbouring Georgia...

Putin fiercely guards reach of 'post-Soviet' Russia
The Russian invasion of Georgia is the culmination of a years-long crisis that stems from different perceptions about Russian and U.S. interests and influence in the former Soviet lands around Russia's borders...

Georgia on Our Mind
What is happening in the republic of Georgia is all too reminiscent of what happened back in 1956, when Russian tanks rolled into Hungary — and the West did nothing...

The critical pick: secretary of State
As the party conventions draw near, there has been a flurry of media speculation about the McCain and Obama choices for vice president...

Silence on Georgia
DID YOU see the huge crowd outside the Russian embassy protesting the war in Georgia?

Will China Become the No. 1 Superpower?
As the world focuses on China during the Olympics and keeps a watchful eye on Russia's military moves in Georgia, there is an underlying expectation — and for some, fear — that China is poised to become the world's new No. 1 superpower...

Looking Into Putin's Eye Fails as War Shows Friendship's Limits
President George W. Bush once told the world that he had looked Vladimir Putin in the eye, gotten ``a sense of his soul'' and found the Russian leader to be ``very straightforward and trustworthy.''...

Determinants of the Olympic Success of Different Countries
Hundreds of millions of men and women all over the world have been tuned to their television sets and clued to their computer screens as they followed the Olympic extravaganza in Beijing...

A Not Very Driven Interview
Obama, like Socrates, announced in Berlin that he was a citizen of the world...

Trigger happy and oil mad
Dig deep enough and you come to oil and gas...

Russia's Anti-Democratic Paradox
With one hundred days in office and a war with Georgia under his belt, Dmitry Medvedev still has Western politicians confused...

Re-examining propaganda years later
In 1953 I was smuggled out of Hungary by a professional “flesh peddler” (as Time magazine called these extremely helpful people) and landed, for three years, in Munich, Germany...

POLITICS: U.S. Debates Putin’s Ambitions
Just days after the outbreak of war between Russia and Georgia, the debate in Washington over how to view the crisis historically has become nearly as contentious as the debate over how to respond politically...

McCain displays credentials as Obama relaxes
For the last several days, Senator Barack Obama has seemed to fade from the scene while on his secluded vacation here, as his opponent, Senator John McCain, has seized nearly every opportunity to display his foreign policy credentials on the dominant issue of the week: the conflict between Russia and Georgia...

Russia, Georgia battle over oil
There is a strong case to be made that Russia's interest in Georgia is tied to oil and natural gas...

Foreign Policy Watch on Georgia
Fortunately, the Obama and McCain campaigns have decided that a Russian border war is too important to turn into a political punching bag...

Russia and Georgia: A Collision Waiting to Happen
In the five-day war between Russia and Georgia that broke out over South Ossetia, there is the inevitable inclination to assign blame...

Russian support for Iran sanctions at risk amid Georgia rift
Fierce American criticism of Russia's military action in Georgia is almost certain to jeopardize a very different US strategic objective: stepping up pressure on Iran with another layer of United Nations sanctions...

US weighs in on punishing Russia for Georgian invasion
There appears to be a breakthrough in the crisis in the Republic of Georgia...

Human Nature Being What It Is
We saw a glimpse of the back to the future world with the neo-czarist invasion of Vladimir Putin...

Brave Old World
Russia invades Georgia...

Obama faces first real time foreign policy crisis with Georgia-Russia conflict
The swelling conflict between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia is the first major real-time foreign-policy crisis faced by Barack Obama...

Why Georgia-Russia Conflict Is Significant For U.S.
The military action in South Ossetia is highlighting Russia's role in global geopolitics. Alex Chadwick talks with Stanford political science professor and Barack Obama campaign advisor Michael McFaul about what the clashes mean for Russia's place in the post-Cold War world...

Chaos in the Caucasus
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced Tuesday that his country would stop its attacks against Georgia, declaring that the small southern country had been adequately "punished" for its own recent military actions against the separatist region of South Ossetia...

U.S. relations with Russia growing icy in Georgia conflict's midst
Russia's invasion of Georgia has plunged relations with the United States to their iciest point since the Cold War, but just how deep the chill will go depends on whether Moscow turns its tanks around or sends them into Tbilisi, Georgia's capital, to oust the country's pro-Western government, U.S. officials and analysts said Tuesday...

Georgia and the democracy debacle
It's eminently clear to everyone paying even the slightest bit of attention that the recent battle in South Ossetia between Georgia and the South Ossetians, quickly followed by even larger scale battles between Georgia and the Russians, has far more to do with oil pipelines and grand strategic concerns than democracy and self-governance...

The blame game in Georgia: Pundits unload on the crisis in the Caucasus
Victor Davis Hanson at National Review online makes the point that it’s Moscow, not Georgia, that has adeptly seized on the timing of the crisis...

On Georgia Crisis, McCain's Tone Grows Sharper
Aides to Republican Sen. John McCain were scrambling last Thursday morning even as his plane was descending into Des Moines...

Russia Invades Georgia, U.S. Issues Sharp Rebuke
Michael McFaul, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was online Tuesday, Aug. 12 at 1 p.m. ET to discuss the Russian-Georgian conflict regarding South Ossetia, Russia's move to take control of western Georgia, and the U.S. response...

The West's Islamist Infiltrators
Aafia Siddiqui, 36, is a Pakistani mother of three, an alumna of MIT, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University...

Ossetia fighting a test for Obama
The swelling conflict between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia is the first major real-time foreign-policy crisis faced by Barack Obama...

War in Georgia, Politics in D.C.
Russia's invasion of Georgia spread into a multi-front war Monday as Moscow's troops attacked in the west of the country and took the town of Gori in its center, effectively splitting the nation in two...

A Different Canon
This summer, the American Foreign Service Association put out a recommended reading list for its members...

Welcome Back to the 19th Century
Wait a minute, isn't this the 21st?...

Bush's Georgian Betrayal
Back in 2005, speaking before a crowd of more than 150,000 exuberant Georgians cheering "Bushi! Bushi!", President Bush made a promise to the people of that former Soviet republic: "The path of freedom you have chosen is not easy, but you will not travel it alone...

McCain and Obama condemn conflict in Georgia
John McCain and Barack Obama both condemned Russia's escalating assault on its pro-United States neighbor of Georgia...

Moscow’s Sinister Brilliance
Lost amid all the controversies surrounding the Georgian tragedy is the sheer diabolic brilliance of the long-planned Russia invasion...

Russian invasion
David Satter, a leading authority on Russia, joins CNN's Kitty Pilgrim to discuss the latest on the Russian invasion...

China's strong march
Marius Kloppers made a family gamble on China seven years ago, well before its industrial machine began to shake the world...

Full text of 2008 Nagasaki Peace Declaration
We will not forget the atomic cloud that rose into the sky on that fateful day...

Oil and prestige fuel the 'New Cold War'
THE UN headquarters on New York's East River was supposed to have been in darkness on Friday night, the diplomats tucked up at home to watch the fireworks of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony...

Georgia Conflict Tests
The violence between Russia and Georgia quickly thrust foreign policy into the U.S. presidential election, with John McCain standing to benefit and Barack Obama facing a more perilous situation...

U.S., allies keep up pressure on Russia to end attacks in Georgia
The United States and its allies scrambled Sunday to respond to Russia's attack on Georgia, including asking Moscow whether it intended to overthrow democratically elected President Mikheil Saakashvili...

Taunting the Bear
The hostilities between Russia and Georgia that erupted on Friday over the breakaway province of South Ossetia look, in retrospect, almost absurdly over-determined...

Summer of Reflection
Beneath all the doom and gloom, what strikes one this late summer is the sheer resurgence of the United States...

The Misconception of Russian Authoritarianism: Part 4 - From Reformist Czars to Gorbachev
The Russian hero who defeated Napoleon was a very liberal thinking Tsar in the beginning of his reign...

Solzhenitsyn Was a Russian Patriot
Those of us who had long been concerned to expose and resist Stalinism, in the West as in the USSR, learned much from Alexander Solzhenitsyn...

The Great Terror: An Introduction
The Great Terror of 1936 to 1938 did not come out of the blue...

Life and works of Alesandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, RSFSR (now Russia) to a young widow, Taisiya Solzhenitsyna (née Shcherbak), whose father had risen, it seems, from humble beginnings, much of a self-made man, and acquired a large estate in the Kuban region by the northern foothills of the Caucasus...

Macroeconomic Crises Since 1870
An economic crisis may be defined as a situation in which a nation's per capita GDP or consumption suffers a fall of at least 10 percent over a short period. For example, in the United States from 1929 to 1933, per capita GDP fell by 29 percent, while per capita consumer spending fell by 21 percent...

Beware false prophets
There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times...

Iran Looms As Nuclear Party Crasher
Missiles flare through the skies above Iran. U.S. and British warships stage all-hands-on-deck maneuvers in the Persian Gulf...

Walker's World: Which Iran is in charge?
Will the real Iranian government please stand up to be identified?...

Nuclear ban? Start with U.S.
Wednesday is the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and an appropriate time to reflect upon the persistence of nuclear danger...

Where Art Thou, Hillary?
I think buyer’s remorse will soon set in among Democrats...

India, China, and Russia—Three Countries That Can Say No
The rise of India and China and the oil wealth of Russia have transformed the power structure of international relations...

Lenin's Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives
When the once-secret Soviet state and party archives were opened in the early 1990s Western scholars were able to gain new insight into the inner workings of the Soviet Union...

The real nuclear threat
We heard a lot recently about the nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran...

Back to the USSR
John McCain likes to compare himself to Theodore Roosevelt, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan...

In Defense of WWII: Chapter 4 of 5
Niall Ferguson, author of The War of the World, describes the Allies in WWII as just as brutal as the German and Japanese opposition...

Russian Riches
It’s easy to understand why Russia is able to flex its muscles in international affairs and why Vladimir Putin is so popular with the Russian people...

In Defense of WWII: Chapter 3 of 5
Hanson and Hitchens take on Buchanan’s argument that Germany invaded Russia only because Britain under Churchill was determined to partner with Russia against Germany...

Economics Does Not Lie
Though economics as a discipline arose in Great Britain and France at the end of the eighteenth century, it has taken two centuries to reach the threshold of scientific rationality...

It’s America, Obama
What disturbed me about Barack Obama's Berlin speech were some reoccurring utopian assumptions about cause and effect — namely, that bad things happen almost as if by accident, and are to be addressed by faceless, universal forces of good will...

Ask McCain and Obama if they'll work to create a world free of nuclear weapons
What would the presumptive presidential candidates do about the nuclear weapons that threaten the planet?...

‘This Is the Moment’
Given the size of the audience in Berlin Thursday, the enthusiastic response, and the standard lines about how we-were-, -are-, and -will-be-friends boilerplate, one wonders whether all it took to win the Euro-hearts and minds was to have a charismatic, multiracial American spice up a standard George W. Bush speech about helping the world, addressing AIDs, more troops in Afghanistan, etc.?

In conversation with the "Iran expert"
President Bush recently authorized William Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, to attend a meeting in Geneva on Iran’s nuclear program...

Short-Term Relationship
This author, a so-called expert on Europe and trans-Atlantic relations, has had more hits from big-time U.S. media in the last five days than in the last five years: Newsweek, CNN, NPR, Lehrer, Reuters, even Al-Jazeera English...

Review: The World Without Us
How many times have you seen the images on television of people in foreign countries railing against American presence and influence overseas?...

The End of Humanity: Nukes, Nanotech, or God-Like Artificial Intelligences?
The Global Catastrophic Risks conference sponsored by the Future of Humanity Institute concluded on Sunday...

Reagan Information Agency chief Charles Wick dies
Charles Z. Wick, who as director of the U.S. Information Agency under Ronald Reagan expanded American broadcasts to Cuba and Russia but whose agency was accused of blacklisting liberals from a government program, has died...

Obama’s Key Foreign Policy Advisers
Senator Barack Obama has a tight-knit group of foreign policy aides supported by a huge 300-person bureaucracy, organized like a mini State Department...

A Cast of 300 Advises Obama on Foreign Policy
Every day around 8 a.m., foreign policy aides at Senator Barack Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters send him two e-mails: a briefing on major world developments over the previous 24 hours and a set of questions, accompanied by suggested answers, that the candidate is likely to be asked about international relations during the day...

Re-Thinking the Iranian nuclear threat
WOULD IT be a great disaster if Iran had nuclear weapons?...

Foreign policy questions for candidates
Foreign policy and national security issues take center stage once more in the presidential race, as Sen. Barack Obama undertakes his first overseas trip as the presumptive Democratic nominee...

An Uncomfortable Conversation about Nukes
Why are Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry, and Sam Nunn writing opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons?...

With no laurels to rest on, U.S. must regain can-do spirit
In the past 20 years, we were lectured constantly about "post-industrial" America...

Obama vs. McCain: Seven Areas of Agreement, and Six of Disagreement, on Nuclear Weapons
In a campaign that features back and forth on issues large and small, where Barack Obama and John McCain disagree on everything from taxes to offshore drilling to Social Security to Iraq, it is amazing how much agreement there is on nuclear weapons issues...

Decline and fallacy
American crises seem to produce two kinds of diagnosticians, those who want to scare their readers and those who want to reassure them...

McCain's bad G-8 judgment call
This week's Group of 8 meeting in Japan raises some important questions about Sen. John McCain's approach to the art of diplomacy...

Morning Update: The Intelligence Vote
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) on Wednesday voted in favor of a new FISA bill (WashPost) which lifted restrictions on domestic spying and granted legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated in the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program...

Analysis: Iran runs risk in missile tests
Iran's bold move in test-firing nine missiles Wednesday could be desperation or bravado, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that powerful figures in Tehran are spoiling for a radical confrontation with the United States...

What Reagan and Shultz Can Teach Us About Talking to Iran
In their column on National Review on June 24, 2008 called “10 Concerns about Barack Obama,” William Bennett and Seth Leibsohn, begin their list of attacks on Senator Obama by writing that “Barack Obama’s foreign policy is dangerous, naïve, and betrays a profound misreading of history.”...

Good and Bad Times
Obama said not a word last autumn about the Moveon.org slander of Gen. Petraeus when he was running hard left of Clinton and the Moveon.org crowd was essential to his candidacy...

McFaul Defends Obama's Russia Policy and Himself
The following is a letter written by Obama foriegn policy advisor Prof. Michael McFaul in response to Robert Dreyfuss's blog entitled: The Rise and McFaul of Obama's Russia Policy...

[The Islamist-Leftist] Allied Menace
"Here are two brother countries, united like a single fist," said socialist Hugo Chávez during a visit to Tehran last November, celebrating his alliance with Islamist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...

Forty Years After Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, US Tops World in Nuke Arsenal
This week marks the fortieth anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, when nuclear powers agreed to eventually eliminate their nuclear weapons, and non-nuclear states agreed not to seek to develop nuclear weapons capabilities...

Deterrence the name of the game
KEVIN Rudd's recently announced international commission on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament certainly has its work cut out...

Reflection Day
On this Fourth of July of our discontent — with spiraling fuel prices, a sluggish economy, a weak dollar, mounting foreign and domestic debt, continuing costs in Iraq, a falling stock market, and a mortgage crisis — we should remember two truths about America...

Crusading is not the answer, but nor is pulling up the drawbridge
Next week, a bunch of political leaders will sit around a table at the G8 summit in Toyako, Japan, contemplating the state of the world...

Marking Our Territory: 'Conquest' by David Day
David Day is an Australian scholar heretofore known as the author of a number of engaging accounts of Australian cultural history and the continent's uneasy relationship with Britain during World War II...

Japan and the Future of Nuclear Disarmament
Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s entry in the visitors’ book at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum last month may not sound so astonishing or dramatic...

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Turns 40 Today
Try an experiment today...

Niall Ferguson Says Allied Win `Tarnished' in World War II: TV
Historian Niall Ferguson compares the 20th century's unrivaled bloodletting to the mayhem in H.G. Wells's ``The War of the Worlds,'' with humans playing the part of the marauding Martians...

Historian Niall Ferguson speaks his 'peace' in 'War of the World'
Bruce Springsteen needed about 12 seconds in the song "Badlands" to explain why people are so nasty to one another...

Thinking the Unthinkable: A World Without Nuclear Weapons
When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev talked at the 1986 Reykjavik summit about giving up all of their nuclear weapons within a decade, it was dismissed as a trick or more frightening proof that the American president was out of touch with strategic realities...

Start worrying and learn to ditch the bomb
During the Cold War nuclear weapons had the perverse effect of making the world a relatively stable place...

A neverending story: The world at war
The title of this three-part PBS documentary series is no sloppy typo but deliberate wordplay on H.G. Welles' 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, which describes a devastating attack by Martians armed with death rays and robotic fighting machines that leaves most of the world's great cities in ruins...

FDI curbs threaten world growth
The United States and other beneficiaries of foreign investment are seeking to restrict it, a leading US think-tank says in a report, warning that this "protectionist drift" could roil capital markets and stifle global economic growth for years to come...

It Doesn’t Always Compute
Two of the Three in the Axis of Evil — Korea and Iraq –seem no longer to be acquiring weapons of mass destruction...

Commentary: Suez and Hungary redux
Israel's message to its only ally, the United States, was quite clear...

Geneva: Conference on Disarmament
Statement by Javier SOLANA, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, before the Conference on Disarmament, Geneva, 25 June 2008...

The Imitators: Part III
Some of the people who are most adamant against outsourcing economic activity from the United States to other countries often seem to think we should outsource our foreign policy to "world opinion" or act only in conjunction "with our NATO allies."...

THE STANLEY FOUNDATION: POLICY DIALOGUE BRIEF: US NUCLEAR WEAPONS POLICY AND ARMS CONTROL: 24/06/2008
On November 13, 2007, the Stanley Foundation convened a half-day discussion at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Washington, DC, with US administration officials, congressional staff, foreign diplomatic staff, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) policy experts, as one of a series of Stanley-organized discussions on US nuclear weapons policy...

Talking to enemy nations becomes a point of contention for McCain, Obama
A California voter named Stephen Sorta posed the question on YouTube, which was played at a Democratic debate, and Barack Obama swiftly answered, "I would."...

Is the United States becoming a socialist country?
It is becoming increasingly likely that the United States, which supposedly won the Cold War against the socialist Soviet Union, will soon become a socialist society...

'Refusenik': Resilient spirits survived the Soviet Union
Laura Bialis' powerful, stirring and comprehensive documentary "Refusenik" charts the long battle of Soviet Jews to win the right to leave their oppressive country...

New world orders?
With "war on terror" nearly seven years old, Philip Bobbitt, a distinguished US academic and former policymaker, has written a big book that attempts to reframe the way we think about terrorism and our response to it...

Raucous Russian Paper Closes
An English-language newspaper in Moscow famed for lampooning Russian and Western officialdom has shut down after it fell under the scrutiny of the government for its raucous content...

A DISARMING INITIATIVE
The elimination of nuclear weapons has resurfaced as a proposition after four former American secretaries of state and defence — George Schulz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Samuel Nunn — mentioned this possibility in newspaper articles in January 2007 and earlier this year...

McCain Raises Hopes of Security Council Aspirants
Uphill bids by Brazil and India to win permanent seats on an enlarged United Nations Security Council may get a boost if Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) becomes the next American president...

Opposing view: Prepare to attack
In a declassified National Intelligence Estimate, Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities, the U.S. intelligence agencies announced last December, "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."...

Arms talks relaunch
IT may take a while for Kevin Rudd's plan to save the world, aka eliminating all nuclear weapons, to be fulfilled...

Start drilling!
The other day in southwestern Fresno County, a poor part of Central California, I talked with a number of folks at a rural gas station...

This risks strangling freedom without any security gain
Today was a bad one for both liberty and ­democracy in Britain...

We need to turn-back the nuclear Doomsday clock.
Kevin Rudd's decision to establish a Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Commission is a vital and timely initiative, for nuclear risks have been rising...

McCain Signals Desire to See Reduction in Nuclear Arms
Sen. John McCain called for a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia on Tuesday, staking out a position on nonproliferation somewhat at odds with the policies of the Bush administration...

The Inflation You Just Can’t Stop
"What’s different?" asked colleague Manraaj Singh at this morning’s conference...

Leftist thinking left off the syllabus
Leftist ideology may be gaining ground in Latin America...

Inflation is a monetary phenomenon − Also in CEE
Inflation has risen dramatically all over Central & Eastern Europe over the last year...

Technological innovation and national security
Of the United States' US$600 billion defense budget, at least 40-50 percent goes to technology...

Pipes: Iran war definite if Obama wins
Neoconservative political analyst Daniel Pipes says if a Democratic nominee becomes president, Iran should 'watch out' for a US attack...

Obama is Europe's dream candidate, but we may have to settle for McSame
To say that Europeans will welcome President George Bush on his farewell visit to Europe next week would invite a charge of verb-abuse...

Envisioning a World Free of Nuclear Weapons
On the 40th anniversary of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), there is a resurgence of interest in achieving the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons...

Rudyard Griffiths: A Toronto audience flips for John McCain (and flops on Barack Obama)
Last week in Toronto, Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize winning author and former adviser to Barack Obama, was uncharacteristically downbeat...

New Opportunities for Nonproliferation
The 40th anniversary of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the treaty’s looming 2010 review conference offer serious opportunities to think anew about the challenges and the opportunities in the critical field of nuclear nonproliferation...

The Bad War?
Questioning the past is a good thing, but rewriting it contrary to facts is quite another...

Diplomacy thriving, but without U.S.
Just this spring, a number of diplomatic initiatives and conflict-settlement discussions are taking place without the United States, raising questions about the reach and strength of American global power...

McCain proposal for joint action gains support
Gaining ground this political season is a proposed League of Democracies designed to strengthen support for the next president's overseas agenda and ensure a global leadership role for the United States...

McCain's middle way on nuclear weapons
John McCain's new arms control proposals may be reminiscent of policies pursued by President Bush – President George H. W. Bush, that is, the current chief executive's father...

Cold War veterans to visit India
One or more of the former Cold War warriors, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn, are likely to visit India later in 2008 to press for practical steps to reduce dependence on nuclear weapons and begin the journey to their eventual elimination...

McCain: Back to the future
JOHN McCAIN gave a sage and substantive speech Tuesday on his approach to the dangers of nuclear proliferation...

Majority of Russians consider United States a force for evil: US election 2008
Given that Vladimir Putin, their revered prime minister, once likened the United States to the Third Reich, it should come as little surprise that Russians were more suspicious of their Cold War adversary’s motives than any other nationality surveyed...

The Jewish key to Henry Kissinger
To say that Henry Kissinger is the most controversial of twentieth-century American Secretaries of State would be an understatement...

McCain on "Nuclear Security"
Yesterday in Denver, John McCain gave a speech setting out his latest views on nuclear weapons...

“No nuclear weapons”
George Shultz was there when nuclear disarmament slipped through our fingers...

America's oil crisis demands a leader like Churchill
Through the 1930s, Winston Churchill was a has-been. He was old; he had been in Britain's Parliament for better than 25 years...

Curbing the global nuclear threat
While Americans justifiably focus their security concerns on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an equal or perhaps greater danger to the United States today is the global arsenal of nuclear weapons...

The Talking Cure?
In their litany of American presidents who met with hostile dictators, supporters of Barack Obama cite John F. Kennedy and his meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961...

A Cabinet of Soviet Curiosities
Sometimes the smallest of things can illuminate the largest...

U.S.-Russia Missile Defense Tensions and Russian Military Resurgence
For many in the U.S. and Britain, one of 2007's surprises - or shocks - was the resurgence of Russia as a force to be reckoned with...

Rising prices and job losses are the two most direct ways an economy inflicts pain on the average citizen.
Rising prices and job losses are the two most direct ways an economy inflicts pain on the average citizen...

New leaders unlikely to ease US-Russian tensions
Russia's new president has promised the kind of democratic change that Washington advocated during predecessor Vladimir Putin's tenure...

USA’s new Russian ambassador promises no changes in bilateral relations
In the near future the US Congress will consider the candidacy of a new US ambassador to Russia...

Trapped by the KGB
Journalists, for the most part, shun the idea of becoming part of the story...

Stopping Soviet Suriname
It was 25 years ago that a remarkable effort took place concerning a small, unremarkable country at the northern tip of South America: Suriname...

THE MORNING BRIEF
Defense Secretary Robert Gates yesterday suggested that in the years ahead, U.S. generals really should be trying to fight the last war, because Iraq represents both the future and the present for armed conflict...

The Challenge From China
Even as our hearts go out to the Chinese who have perished in the earthquake, we cannot lose sight of the fact that every day China is growing stronger...

Memory and Civic Education: The Perils of Cultural Amnesia
THE TRADITIONAL—and classical—definition of civic education rested on the assumption of a people’s collective memory...

Putin steps ... up?
In Casino Royale, the latest Bond film, 'M' declares, "Christ, I miss the Cold War!"...

Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives
On Christmas Day 1979, U.S. intelligence detected waves of Soviet military aircraft flying into Afghanistan...

Learning from Russia's Mistakes in Afghanistan
During a nine-year war, 620,000 Soviet troops served in Afghanistan...

This tale of two revolutions and two anniversaries may yet have a twist
During the Velvet revolution of 1989 I spied an improvised poster in a Prague shop window...

The Democratic Recession
There are two important recessions going on in the world today...

A Treaty to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Although few people are aware of it, there has been considerable progress over the past decade toward a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons...

Time to bury a dangerous legacy
ONE month after the terrorist assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, on October 11, 2001, President George W. Bush faced a more terrifying prospect...

Advice for the Nuclear Abolitionists
As for the argument that these measures might allow the United States to come to global nonproliferation issues from the moral high ground--having shown it is serious about reducing its own stock of nuclear weapons--the reality is that neither Russia nor China (let alone India, Pakistan, or Israel) is ever likely to give up its nuclear arsenal entirely...

Olli Rehn: Türkiye yol ayırımında (orjinal tam metin)
Europe's smart power in its region and the world...

Hoover Institution Press: Looking Backward and Forward, by Charles Wolf Jr.
Looking Backward and Forward: Policy Issues in the Twenty-first Century (Hoover Institution Press, 2008) is a collection of twenty–five essays written by Hoover senior research fellow Charles Wolf Jr. between 2002 and early 2007...

After America: Fareed Zakaria's 'Post-American World'
In recent years, a series of startling global developments has provoked a new round of thinking among students of international affairs about the international order and America's place in it...

United States Reducing Nuclear Weapons at an Extraordinary Pace
All three candidates for president of the United States have expressed support for nuclear arms reductions and strengthening the 1970 treaty governing nuclear nonproliferation...

Outside View: Overcoming nuclear legacy
Perhaps it says something about the "positive" state of Russian-American relations that the recent Bush-Putin Sochi summit could take place at all against the backdrop of Moscow's strenuous opposition to NATO expansion and Washington's plans to build a ballistic defense in neighboring countries...

Divided nations to meet on ailing atom control pact
More than 180 nations gather on Monday to seek elusive common ground on how to save the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...

Hoover Institution Library and Archives Open Exhibit Highlighting the Role of Soviet Dissidents and Their Supporters in the West
The Hoover Institution Library and Archives exhibition, To Choose Freedom: Soviet Dissidents and Their Supporters, offers a glimpse into the era of repression that followed the “thaw” of the Khrushchev years and extended through the perestroika and glasnost era of the 1980s...

Nonviolent Resistance to a Most Violent Regime, Part I
On April 14, the Hoover Institution of Stanford University hosted a conference on the Soviet dissident movement in the 1980s and its support by the U.S. government...

U.S. Race Advisers Sound Off on Russia
Senator John McCain has called President Vladimir Putin's Russia revanchist and suggested that it be expelled from the G8...

'Nonviolent Resistance to the Most Violent Regime'
On Apr. 14, the Hoover Institution of Stanford University hosted a grand conference dedicated to the Soviet dissident movement which took place during the 1980s and its support by the American government...

The Autumn of the Patriarch

When will an American president finally scrap our embargo on Cuba? By Oscar Espinosa Chepe and William Ratliff.

Smiley’s People

How the British became the most spied-upon people in Western Europe. By Timothy Garton Ash.

Weak Hand, Skillful Player

Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries shed light on his intricate moves in the game of international diplomacy. By Paul H. Tai.

The Last Dance
President Bush had barely settled into the White House when FBI agent Robert Hanssen was unmasked as a Russian spy of 22 years' standing...

Europe or Eurabia?
THE future of Europe is in play...

A question of democracy
A lecturer said Monday that Russia's politics is defined by three moral failings: corruption, an undemocratic mentality and a lack of democratic safeguards - and that undemocratic mentality has led to hundreds of unnecessary deaths...

Conference: Soviet Dissident Movement and American Foreign Policy During 1980s
When: Panel discussions from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., April 14, 2008, and pre-dinner speaker Yuri Yarim-Agaev from 6:45 to 7:30 p.m., April 14, 2008...

Michael McFaul
As the NATO summit kicked off in Bucharest on Wednesday, Michael McFaul, Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, joined RT to give his views on NATO's expansion plans...

Aiming to Ease Tensions, Without U.S.-Russia Pact
President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin brought their turbulent seven-year partnership to a close Sunday without a concrete deal on the issues dividing their wary nations but left behind a road map for their successors...

Keep your enemies closer
Should the next president talk to the country's enemies?...

Does Bush Know Something We Don't?
President Bush is ratcheting up expectations for his European trip, aggressively calling for continued expansion of NATO into the former Soviet Union and saying he is hopeful that a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on establishing a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe could be nailed down by Sunday...

Religion and Social Order
Filling the gap when autocrats fall

Meet the New Czar
A popular Soviet joke once asked when would the first Soviet-style election take place? ...

How Putin's Crackdown Holds Russia Back
If there is any causal relationship between authoritarianism and economic growth in Russia, it is negative, say Michael McFaul, a senior fellow with the Hoover Institution, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Associate Director for Research and Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University...

Medvedev-Putin Relationship May Guide Future Russian Policy
Dmitri Medvedev, 42, officially becomes president of Russia on May 7...

Bush puzzles over who'll be in charge in Russia
Imagine a crisis breaking out somewhere in the world, and US President George W Bush suddenly has to get the Kremlin on the hotline...

The Candidates and Russia
As expected, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was elected this week as the new president of the Russian Federation with 68% of the vote...

Russia Pumps Tens of Millions Into Burnishing Image Abroad
In early 2004, when Svetlana Mironyuk became director general of the Russian news and information agency RIA Novosti, she discovered that the descendant of the Soviet Union's global propaganda machine was dying on its feet...

Focus on Issues: Will Russia’s New Leader Continue Down Putin’s Path?
Outgoing Russian president Vladimir Putin's handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev has won the presidential election...

Booming Russia now facing debt crisis
The destination of choice for Red Square sightseers in the turbulent 1990s was Moscow's cavernous glass and steel shopping galleria known as GUM...

Sizing up Medvedev, the next Russian president
Dmitri Medvedev, the man chosen to be the next Russian president, sat surrounded by soldiers...

Russia has run rings round the west. A united Europe must stand up to it
This presidential election is such a cliffhanger...

What Russia's Election Means for our Presidential Candidates
What's remarkable about the U.S. election is how much it is about a change...

Symposium: Russia's "Higher Values"
As Russia's March 2 presidential election approaches, the tyrannical structures of Russian institutions become increasingly transparent..

Medvedev Should Move Beyond Autocracy
In December, Vladimir Putin ended the mystery about his successor...

Cold War Leaves Some Chilling Ghosts
'The Cold War as ancient history', ran a headline in the International Herald Tribune Feb. 4, above an article on how teenagers in the former East Berlin know little about communism...

Letter: Kremlin More Subtly Jams Freedom's Beams
Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss paint a demoralizing picture of Vladimir Putin's relentless attack on democracy and the toll it has taken on Russian society ("Notable & Quotable," Jan. 18)...

From Hoover Press: Lenin's Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives, by Paul R. Gregory
In Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives (Hoover Institution Press, 2008) Hoover fellow Paul R. Gregory has written 14 tales drawn from the Hoover Institution’s collections on the Soviet state and party archives...

Resurgent Russia? A Still-Faltering Military
Reports of its return have been greatly exaggerated

Resurgent Russia? Rethinking Energy Inc.
Five myths about the “energy superpower”

A Cold War redux is seen on the horizon
Growing friction between the United States and Russia over Iran is only part of an increasingly difficult relationship that many diplomats and experts consider to be in its worst shape since the end of the Cold War, and at risk of further deterioration...

Russia Sidelined in U.S. Campaign
With the U.S. economic downturn, the war in Iraq and the threat of looming conflict with Iran, it is little wonder that candidates in the heated U.S. presidential primaries spare few words for Russia...

Putin's tiff with Britain reflects authoritarian trend in Russia
The heated and sometimes comic diplomatic wrestling bout between London and Moscow is not just about the Kremlin's anger at Britain harbouring dissident Russian tycoons...

A Touch of Menace
Vladimir Putin. We may not know what he’s thinking, but we know only too much about his methods. By Robert Service.

More Stick, Less Carrot
Why Russia won’t play nice. By Michael McFaul.

Right and Wrong in Russia
The moral and spiritual malaise of a great nation. By David Satter.

Well-Spoken Dictators
Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wasn't the first tyrant to speak at Columbia. Arnold Beichman remembers when Hitler's ambassador showed up in 1933.

Bitter Harvest
The great famine certainly demonstrated Stalin's cruelty, but was it genocide? By Michael Ellman.

Communism Inc.
Over time, the Soviet Communist Party became oddly businesslike. By Eugenia Belova and Valery Lazarev.

Master and Masterpiece
Boris Pasternak's great work, Doctor Zhivago, has turned 50. The Hoover Institution shared some of its vast collection of documents and photos for an international symposium. By Leonora Soroka.

The Kremlin Fesses Up (a Bit)
Joseph Stalin never had any problem finding willing executioners...

Russian growth is stalked by inflation demons
As President Vladimir Putin’s second term draws to a close, markets could not be more enamoured with Russia’s strong economic performance...

The Myth of the Authoritarian Model
The conventional explanation for Vladimir Putin's popularity is straightforward...

Tsar struck
Choosing a “Man of the Year” is a risky business and writing about him even more so...

When an Ex-K.G.B. Man Says They’re Out to Get Him..
I called Alexander Litvinenko in London to ask him about poison and the K.G.B., and he was glad to oblige...

Small Democratic Step
For the last eight years of Vladimir Putin's presidency, friends of mine who either worked for or were simply sympathetic to the Kremlin have argued at various times that Russia was a "managed" democracy, a "sovereign" democracy or an autocracy like China on the long road to democracy via the autocratic-modernizer path...

The Recent Russian and Chechen Elections: Putin and His Mafia Allies Control Both with an Iron Hand
On December 3rd, Russia had yet another parliamentary election...

Sidekick-in-Chief
Russian President Vladimir Putin put an end to endless speculation Monday and tapped Dmitry Medvedev, a first deputy prime minister, to succeed him...

Putin Seeks Pliable Successor, New Role After Duma Campaign Win
With Russian opposition politicians planning long-shot presidential campaigns, Vladimir Putin is searching for a pliable successor who might even be willing to let him retake the reins, analysts said...

From Hoover Press: Implications of the Reykjavik Summit on Its Twentieth Anniversary: Conference Report, Edited by Sidney D. Drell and George P. Shultz
At their October 1986 meeting in Reykjavik, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev agreed on the need to eliminate nuclear weapons...

Becoming a Motor of the Global Economy
The International Monetary Fund’s latest annual report on Russia describes a remarkable trajectory no less exceptional than that of post-World War II Germany or Japan...

Becoming a Motor of the Global Economy
The International Monetary Fund's latest annual report on Russia describes a remarkable trajectory no less exceptional than that of post-World War II Germany or Japan...

New Russia Debate Takes Shape
In an interview with RFE/RL on October 23, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates stressed that Russia is still Washington's "strategic partner" and soft-pedaled fears about Moscow's newly assertive international posture...

Putin Needed to Hear It
If President Bush told his recent Russian houseguest a few uncomfortable truths, then Bush was only behaving as a friend. By David Satter.

Russia and nuclear disarmament
The vision of a nuclear-weapon-free world is as old as nuclear weapons themselves...

Watching Stalin Win
Transcripts of power sturggles in the Politburo, unseen for more than 70 years, are about to be published. Paul R. Gregory on a major historical find.

To the Barricades
Did Radio Free Europe inflame the Hungarian revolutionaries of 1956? Exploring one of the Cold War's most stubborn myths. By A. Ross Johnson.

‘Wild East’ All Over Again
There is a new macher in town...

Zhivago, 50 years after debut in West
In the period of de-Stalinization that followed Nikita Khrushchev's rise to power in the 1950s, optimists saw signs of a thaw...

Webcast: Congressional Hearing on Yukos
Tomorrow at 2:00 PM (EST), the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade, and Technology is holding a hearing on the Yukos affair with my colleague Tim Osbourne, Anders Åslund and others...

Fervor for Putin takes an icy turn
The Bush administration's failure to win Russia's consent to install U.S. missile defenses in its European backyard and a growing list of other disputes suggest that President Bush and his aides have misread the man whose "soul" Bush thought he'd divined when they first met six years ago...

Rice Avoids Criticizing Putin as U.S. Seeks Russia's Cooperation
With the Kremlin backsliding on democracy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has responded with expressions of dismay over a crackdown on independent institutions, while steering clear of any direct criticism of President Vladimir Putin's possible plan to extend his hold on power by becoming prime minister next year...

Kremlinology redux
Just when we thought we had things figured out, Russian President Vladimir Putin did the unexpected...

Russia's stability called frail
The prospect of Vladimir Putin at the helm in Russia for years to come has been hailed by Russians and foreign investors as an assurance of interim stability, but analysts say the concentration of so much power in a single set of hands jeopardizes stability in the long run and negates the system of checks and balances Russia so desperately needs...

From Russia, little love for U.S. plan
Offering a chilly welcome to a high-level U.S. delegation Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to pull out of a Cold War-era nuclear arms pact and warned Washington it risked marring relations with Moscow if it forged ahead with plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe...

European Missile Defense: The Technological Basis of Russian Concerns
The Bush administration is proposing to deploy a missile defense that it claims would protect most of Europe and the continental United States against potential long-range ballistic missile attacks from Iran...

Mikhail Trofimovich Zarochentsev

Михаил Трофимович Зароченцев

Alexander Yvanoff, 1896 - 1973

Александр Ефимович Иванов, 1896 - 1973

Oleg Yadoff, 1902 - 1961

Ядов Олег Иванович, 1902 - 1961

Vorontsov Family Papers

Воронцовы

Antonina R. von Arnold, 1896 - 1988

Антонина Романовна фон Арнольд, 1896 - 1988

Boris Nikolaevich Volkov, 1894 - 1954

Борис Николаевич Волков, 1894 - 1954

Vakhan Fomich Totomiants

Тотомианц Вахан Фомич

Sergei Sergeevich Tolstov, 1881 - 1950

Толстов Сергей Сергеевич, 1881 - 1950

Vladimir Iakovlevich Tolmachev, 1876 - 1947?

Толмачев Владимир Яковлевич, 1876 - 1947?

Olga Petrovna Tissarevskaia

Тиссаревская Ольга Петровна

Innokentii Nikolaevich Seryshev, 1883 - 1976

О. Иннокентий Серышев, 1883 - 1976

Konstantin Vasil'evich Semchevskii, 1894 - 1978

Семчевский Константин Васильевич, 1894 - 1978

Mary Catherine Roberts, 1884 - 1978

Робертс Мэри Катерин, 1884 - 1978

Mitrofan Ivanovich Retivov, 1869 - 1961

Ретивов Митрофан Иванович, 1869 - 1961

Rostislav Vladimirovich Polchaninov

Полчанинов Ростислав Владимирович

Vladimir Mikhailovich Perekrestenko

Перекрестенко Владимир Михайлович

Maxim Panteleieff, 1887 - 1958

Пантелеев Максим Петрович, 1887 - 1958

Nikolai Vasil'evich Orlov

Орлов Николай Васильевич

Iosif Konstantinovich Okulich, 1871 - 1949

Окулич Иосиф Константинович, 1871 - 1949

Andrei Mikhailovich Naidenov, 1896 - 1972

Найденов Андрей Михайлович, 1896 - 1972

Olga Morozova, 1892 - 1970

Морозова Ольга Александровна, 1877 - 1968

Iurii Petrovich Miroliubov, 1892 - 1970

Миролюбов Юрий Петрович, 1892 - 1970

Elizabeth Malozemoff, 1881 - 1974

Малоземова Елизавета Андреевна, 1881 - 1974

Anatole S. Loukashkin, 1902 - 1988

Лукашкин Анатолий Стефанович, 1902 - 1988

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Kurenkov, 1891-1971

Александр Александрович Куренков, 1891-1971

Iustina Vladimirovna Kruzenshtern-Peterets, 1903 - 1983

Юстина Владимировна Крузенштерн-Петерец, 1903 - 1983

Moscow is rethinking Russia's role in the world
Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko once declared that no conflict anywhere in the world could be settled without taking into account the interests of the Soviet Union...

George Koudinoff, 1896 - 1969

Георгий Васильевич Кудинов, 1896 - 1969

Nikolai F. Kostriukov, 1898 - 1987

Николай Федорович Кострюков, 1898 - 1987

Ivan Andreevich Kolchin, 1893 - 1967

Иван Андреевич Колчин, 1893 - 1967

Alex N. Kniazeff, 1909 - 1993

Алексей Николаевич Князев, 1909 - 1993

Georgii Titovich Kiiashchenko, 1872 - 1940

Георгий Титович Киященко, 1872 - 1940

Nikolai Petrovich Kalugin, 1902 - 1987

Николай Петрович Калугин, 1902 - 1987

Mstislav Nikolaevich Ivanitskii, born 1910

Мстислав Николаевич Иваницкий, born 1910

Evgeniia Sergeevna Isaenko, 1899 - 1969

Евгения Сергеевна Исаенко, 1899 - 1969

Vladimir N. Ipatieff, 1867 - 1952

Владимир Николаевич Ипатьев, 1867 - 1952

Vasilii Sergeevich Il'in, 1888 - 1957

Василий Сергеевич Ильин, 1888 - 1957

Semen Dmitrievich Ignat'ev, 1891 - 1974

Семен Дмитриевич Игнатьев, 1891 - 1974

Paul Haensel, 1878 - 1949

Павел Петрович Гензель, 1878 - 1949

Catherine A. Gumensky, 1897 - 1988

Екатерина Александровна Гуменская, 1897 - 1988

George C. Guins, 1887 - 1971

Георгий Константинович Гинс, 1887 - 1971

Pavel Timofeevich Filip'ev, 1896 - 1981

Филипьев Павел Тимофеевич, 1896 - 1981

Ivan V. Emel'ianov, 1880 - 1945

Иван Васильевич Емельянов, 1880 - 1945

Avenir Gennadievich Efimov, 1888 - 1972

Авенир Геннадиевич Ефимов, 1888 - 1972

Anton Antonovich Dobkevich, 1892/1894 - 1973

Антон Антонович Добкевич, 1892/1894 - 1973

Reverend David Antonievich Chubov, 1878 - 1956

О. Давид (Антоньевич) Чубов, 1878 - 1956

Nikolai Viktorovich Borzov, 1871 - 1955

Николай Викторович Борзов, 1871 - 1955

Andrew T. Beltchenko, 1873 - 1958

Андрей Терентьевич Бельченко, 1873 - 1958

Taissiia Anatol'evna Bazhenova, 1900 - 1978

Таисия Анатольевна Баженова, 1900 - 1978

Mother Ariadna, 1900-1996

Игуменья Ариадна, 1900-1996

Swamp Sunrise
Here are a few Washington events of note for Tuesday, September 18, 2007 as collected by the Associated Press...

Putin's pick for PM stuns Kremlin
Eight years ago Russia reeled with shock as President Boris Yeltsin named a shadowy former spy as his prime minister and preferred successor...

What If They Can’t Be Cowed Into Submission?
This past April, the American Jewish Historical Society honored George Shultz, the former secretary of state, for his very powerful contributions to the freedom of Soviet Jewry...

Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Is Democracy Promotion Dead?
Although this panel is usually devoted to Russia and Russian policies, it is useful from time to time to consider the policies of other countries that affect Russia, either directly or indirectly...

President Putin's Third Term
Americans might be pardoned for thinking that the presidential race is an out-of-control, ever-lengthening marathon...

Russia: Ghosts Of 1999 Haunt Presidential Succession
It was the summer of 1999, and Boris Yeltsin's boozy and tumultuous presidency was drawing to a close...

U.S. Catches at Any Excuse to Disarm Russia
The allegations about poor vitality of Russia’s missile warning system is an element of information war waged by some forces in the United States, said Gen. Col. Valter Kraskovsky, who was once in charge of the missile and space defense of Russia...

Cold War Relic
The Russian decision to suspend its participation in the treaty on conventional forces in Europe means that Russia will halt inspections of its military sites by NATO and no longer limit the number of its conventional weapons as it has been doing — at least in theory....

Some thoughts on the men at Walker’s Point
Maybe it's about turning the other cheek, but is it the thing you do in international diplomacy? ...

Decoding messages in Maine
George W. Bush made his most profound statement about Russia in a November 1999 speech when he correctly argued that "dealing with Russia on essential issues will be far easier if we are dealing with a democratic and free Russia..."

Bush reacts to months of criticism by the Russia's president with praise, friendship
fter hearing scathing criticism of the U.S. and its foreign policy from his Russian counterpart for months, President George W. Bush praised President Vladimir Putin for his truthfulness and frankness — a move that drew criticism from some Russia experts....

History Is Everything When Dealing With Modern Russia
You can expect to see pictures of President Vladimir Putin, not exactly your seafaring type, being whipped around the choppy Kennebunkport waters by Father Bush in his beloved sleek-nosed fast boat....

Russia: Observer Says Bush-Putin Friendship 'A Myth'
As the July 1-2 summit of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President George W. Bush approaches, RFE/RL Washington correspondent Vladimir Abarinov asks former "Financial Times" Moscow correspondent and author David Satter what he believes will be accomplished at the Bush family estate in Kennebunkport....

No Claws Bared As 'Lobster Summit' Ends With Putin Proposal
Bush and Putin claimed "a joint effort" helped land the Russian president a hefty striped bass during an early-morning fishing excursion....

President, Putin upbeat but still at odds on missiles
President Bush and President Vladimir Putin of Russia said yesterday that they had made some progress in bridging their differences over US missile defense plans in Europe, after an informal seaside meeting at the Bush family compound that was designed to repair fraying relations....

Big Powers Skirt Anti-Nuke Terrorism Treaty
But most of the major powers, including those with nuclear weapons, are giving it a miss -- at least so far....

Putin and Bush Look to Lower Tensions with Meeting
When Russian President Vladimir Putin visits President Bush at the Bush family summer home in Maine on Sunday, they will try to revive some of the personal rapport the two seemed to have early in their relationship....

Trying to Revive Bond With a Bolder Putin
The first time Vladimir Putin met President Bush's dog at the White House, the Russian president seemed distinctly unimpressed....

A Red Army Memoir of World War II
It is June 1944, and the Red Army is pressing its offensive against the German Wehrmacht in the Soviet Republic of Belarus, roughly 200 miles east of what is now the Polish border....

Putin's Soul
When President George W. Bush meets Vladimir Putin this weekend at his father's home in Kennebunkport, he will be trying to improve relations with a Russia that is becoming increasingly dangerous to the security interests of the West....

Hudson Issues Report on US-Russia Relations on Eve of Bush-Putin Summit
On the eve of the Bush- Putin summit meeting in Kennebunkport, four members of a Russian-American study group organized by the Hudson Institute said today that the present Russian regime is moving toward "a durable system of anti-Western authoritarian rule" and called on the U.S. to counteract this tendency by demonstrating strict fidelity to democratic principles...

Dark Memories
A brief history of Soviet torturers and assassins, some of whom had second thoughts. By Katya Drozdova.

Man of Failure
Boris Yeltsin was the tool of Russia’s emancipation and of its descent back into authoritarianism. By David Satter.

Picture a Democracy
Russians are not doomed to be ruled by despots, and the West should not resign itself to them. By Michael McFaul.

Swapping Labels
In much of the world, conservatives clamor for subsidies while liberals fight big government. In the United States, it’s the other way around. Here’s why. By Charles Wolf Jr..