Things have gotten really extreme now. This never happened during the USSR times, that I’m aware of. The US is just kidnapping Russian citizens randomly in countries all over the world as part of its interesting war stratagem. RT: Russian nationals should avoid making non-essential trips to the US and allied countries, the Russian Foreign... Read More

It’s a pity when a 760-page history of the Russian leadership’s thinking during the Cold War period, 1945 to 2022, earns consignment to the waste bin within the first nineteen pages, and in just three sentences. This ratio of toxicity to prolixity – 1 to 40 — is exceptional, although the price asked for it... Read More

The Cold War could have ended that year with the Moscow success of the American concert pianist Van Cliburn. . An American performed Russian music better than the Russian pianists. The Russians could have sabotaged Van Cliburn by leaving some piano keys out of tune or by the conductor changing pace on him. But the... Read More

The “Soviet Threat” which became Washington’s foreign policy mindset was a self-serving creation of Allen and Foster Dulles. The consequences of their creation and its recreation by the US neoconservatives await us unaddressed. Some years ago I reviewed Stephen Kinzer’s book, The Brothers, an extraordinary account of two men long serving at the top of... Read More

It's been said(by Mark Twain?) that history doesn't repeat itself but rhymes. A notable historical rhyme is between the current Taiwan crisis and the Manchurian crisis of the 1920s/1930s. In either case, a non-Chinese, even anti-Chinese, imperialist power attempts to pry away a key Chinese territory under dubious pretexts. Japan coveted parts of northeast China,... Read More

I have several times reported the same. Nixon was removed because he was making arms limitation agreements with the Soviets and opening to China. This was normalizing the enemy that the military/security complex needed for its budget and power. It was for the same reason that President Kennedy was assassinated by the military/security complex. The... Read More

Henry Kissinger at 100 years of age left the world he temporarily altered for the better after watching the neoconservatives in the Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden regimes wipe out his accomplishments. Kissinger and President Nixon were men of peace. They inherited a disastrous war–Vietnam–that they had no hand in making. President... Read More

Nationalism is the best defense against imperialism. Nationalism means a people minding their own business. It means having national sovereignty and respecting the sovereignties of other nations. Imperialism, in contrast, means trampling on the rights and independence of other nations. If National Socialism had remained in nationalist mode, it wouldn't have disrupted the world order.... Read More

Few people even know the name ‘Gehlen’, yet Reinhart Gehlen and his SS men not only shaped politically the newborn OSS and CIA, but also, to a significant extent, determined post-war American attitudes toward Russia. A zeitgeist that has remained largely intact to this day, Gehlen – ‘man of light and dark’; both Führer loyalist... Read More

A nagging problem for the 'conservative' side has been the ever-shifting configuration of the holy-vs-unholy spectrum. Naturally, people want to be associated with the holy than the unholy, no less than people prefer warmth and light over the cold and dark. There's a reason why most people gravitated to God and church than dark magic... Read More

As a participant in the 20th century Cold War, I can tell you that the Cuban Missile Crisis had the effect of convincing the leaders of the US and the USSR that trust had to be created between the two nuclear superpowers in order resolve differences and prevent a reoccurrence of tensions at the level... Read More

The last year's collapse of US-backed Afghan government hints at something about History. The Afghan military had lots of men and tons of the best equipment in the world supplied by the US. But after 20 yrs and 2 trillion dollars of so-called 'nation-building' by the US as the lone superpower, the Afghan Regime crumbled... Read More

The game of ASK A JEW. It’s a simple game that anyone can play, even a child. Its purpose is to understand the true nature of the People who rule over us. (For tips on how to play this game, skip most of this post and go to where it says *How to Play ASK... Read More

One of the biggest canards in the current discourse(approaching hysteria, or hyscourse) is that Blood and Soil is about Nazism. If Nazism was really about Blood and Soil, there wouldn't have been WWII. Germans would have been proud and content to be German in their own beloved nation-state. And there would have been peace with... Read More

It was an unforgettable evening in Moscow. I was taken by Russian friends to the city’s then largest cathedral which had been closed for decades by Stalin’s orders. Amid clouds of incense and the glow of countless candles, a chorus sang the old Orthodox liturgy. Most of the worshippers openly wept. This was the first... Read More

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union who died this week, was a member of that tribe of politicians who can diagnose a problem but don't know how to treat it. As he grew up, he couldn't understand why a nation blessed with extraordinary natural resources and an enviable geographically strategic position had... Read More

My obituary of Gorbachev brought interview requests from three major Russian media organizations. At the risk of being labeled “a Russian agent” I accepted. It was an interesting experience. Russians tend to see NATO on Russia’s border’s as Gorbachev’s fault for not getting in writing the George H. W. Bush administration’s guarantee that NATO would... Read More

Mikhail Gorbachev was the first President of the Soviet Union and the last Soviet leader. He was the best of the younger generation of Communist Party members who understood, like US President Ronald Reagan, the futility of the Cold War and the needless threat of nuclear Armageddon. Gorbachev also understood that the repressions and hardships... Read More

In the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden declared to the nation and world: "We are engaged anew in a great battle for freedom. A battle between democracy and autocracy." On her trip to Taiwan, Speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed Biden: "Today, the world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy. America's determination... Read More

During the 20th century Cold War with the Soviet Union, there were US Soviet experts who were concerned that the Cold War was partly contrived and, therefore, needlessly dangerous. Stephen Cohen at Princeton University, for example, believed that exaggerating the threat was as dangerous as underestimating it. On the other hand, Richard Pipes at Harvard... Read More

A week from now, the 29 member states of "the most successful alliance in history" will meet to celebrate its 70th anniversary. Yet all is not well within NATO. Instead of a "summit," the gathering, on the outskirts of London, has been cut to two days. Why the shortened agenda? Among the reasons, apprehension that... Read More

Throughout the long Cold War Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University was a voice of reason. He refused to allow his patriotism to blind him to Washington’s contribution to the conflict and to criticize only the Soviet contribution. Cohen’s interest was not to blame the enemy but to... Read More