Cold War

The creation of the U-2 reconnaissance plane and its role in two tense Cold War episodes.

Roll over Ronald Reagan. When President Trump delivers his first State of the Union address, he will do so as the most conservative president of all time. At least, that’s what the Heritage Foundation seems to think.

Henry Kissinger aptly characterized two centuries of Russian foreign policy in his 2001 book Does America Need a Foreign Policy? “Throughout its history, with all its ups and downs,” he wrote, “Russia has conducted a persistent, patient, and skillful diplomacy: with Prussia and Austria against the…

Since Donald Trump took office, the growth of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and the increasing capability and diversity of its ballistic missile force have made that country the most urgent threat to U.S. national security. Observers as diverse as Mark Bowden in the Atlantic, Michael Auslin of the…

For those of us who wish (or hope) that Donald Trump may ultimately settle into something resembling a conventional president, his ex-chief strategist Stephen Bannon offered a glimmer of encouragement last week.

For those of us who wish (or hope) that Donald Trump may ultimately settle into something resembling a conventional president, his ex-chief strategist Stephen Bannon offered a glimmer of encouragement last week.

As Barack Obama leaves the Oval Office, so too will the “post-Cold War era" exit the scene. Another Lost Ark, it may wind up in an endless, dusty warehouse, a torrent locked in a raw wood crate.

Andrzej Wajda, the Polish film and theatre producer and director who restored his country's consciousness of its torment at the hands of its Russian and Nazi German enemies, died on October 9 in Warsaw at the age of 90. His body of work made him an outstanding personality in the past 60 years of…

The continuing controversy over Planned Parenthood’s sale of tissue and organs from aborted fetuses for research is eerily reminiscent of a Soviet disinformation campaign during the 1980s that accused the United States of kidnapping and killing babies and children in the Third World in order to…

At a conference this evening in Panama, President Obama announced after meeting with Cuban leader Raul Castro that "the Cold War is over."

The Scrapbook is sorry to hear that Andrew Marshall is retiring from the Pentagon, where he has led the Department of Defense’s internal think tank, the Office of Net Assessment, since 1973. Frankly, The Scrapbook is also a bit surprised. Marshall’s popular nickname, Yoda—taken from the sage of the…

While some in Congress have warned that Russian involvement in Ukraine portends a "looming" new cold war, Obama administration officials have for the most part brushed off the comparison. The president himself flatly said in July in response to a reporter's question regarding the Ukrainian…

The conflict in Ukraine took some dramatic turns this month that led many observers to conclude that the Kremlin was succeeding in its effort to keep Ukraine under Russia’s thumb, with the collusion of a spineless West. Actually, while Russia has wrested some concessions, the handwringing is…

Less than a week before President Obama and other NATO leaders gather in Wales for a two day summit, NATO is accusing Russia having "well over 1,000 troops" in Ukraine where Russian-backed separatists continue to skirmish with Ukrainian forces. This latest development underlines a statement on the…

In 1983, Barack Obama was a senior at Columbia University. He was not well known. He lived off-campus, had a few close friends, and spent a lot of time reading. He went to some meetings of the Black Students Association, but no one remembers seeing him there. He majored in political science, with a…

Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev says that "we are slowly but surely approaching a second cold war." He also said that U.S. President Barack Obama could be "more tactful politically" and that he's disappointed in some of the decisions Obama has made.

Vladimir Putin evidently feels a kind of boundless nostalgia for what he remembers as days of glory and pride, with parades and big red flags on the streets of Moscow with the rest of the world looking on in fear.

Jerusalem

And now the last of them is gone. Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, and Pope John Paul II—three who won the Cold War and, it isn't too much to say, saved the West (at least for a while!)—are no longer with us. Their examples remain.

Two contributing editors to THE WEEKLY STANDARD analyzed Kentucky senator Ron Paul's foreign policy address earlier this week. First, Robert Kagan writes in the Washington Post:

Red Conspirator

It was true then, and with each new bit of historical understanding we continue to realize it was more evil than we previously knew.

The Firm