Garry Kasparov mastered the game of chess to become a world-famous champion. These days he’s facing a much tougher opponent: the corrupt leadership of Russia. Kasparov, a leader of the Russia opposition, spoke at Heritage about why Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is immune to the Obama administration’s reset strategy. In an interview at Heritage before […]
One would be justified in wondering, what makes Vladimir Putin feel he has to campaign? The opponents of his United Russia party and the added popular front are harassed even when they only want to make fun of Putin and compare him to Dracula. Only a tame or a discredited opposition like the Communists is […]
In 1974 Henry Kissinger marketed detente with the Soviet Union as a tool for spurring American trade and boosting an economy that had been hit by the post-Yom Kippur war oil price hikes. He encountered resistance in a Democrat-controlled Congress led by Senator Henry Jackson of Washington who sought to tie liberalization of trade with […]
Recent news reports have highlighted Chinese construction of a system of underground tunnels and raised serious questions about what they might imply regarding China’s nuclear capabilities. One story highlighted that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) may have some 3,000 miles of tunnels, sufficient to move systems underground across the breadth of the country. Much […]
The Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) took a hit when the German government decided to withdraw its support for the system. MEADS is a ground-based terminal ballistic missile defense (BMD) system developed jointly by the United States, Italy, and Germany. Germany’s step is not surprising. In February, the U.S. Department of Defense decided to […]
(Moscow) As politicians in Western capitals were taking quiet pleasure in the capture and killing of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi yesterday, opinions elsewhere were divided. In Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the Geneva Conventions had been breached with the killing of Colonel Gaddafi. “We have to lean on facts and international laws,” Mr Lavrov […]
Poland holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, but as the major issue confronting the union is the stability of the euro to which Poland has not switched (for the moment it is quite content with its zloty), it is Berlin rather than Warsaw that has been setting the tone. Even so, Poland’s finance minister Jacek Rostowski, who […]
The United States could find itself in a precarious position much worse than the recent D.C. earthquake if attacked by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapon. An EMP would cause current and voltage surges and burn out the semi-conductor chips of all electronic devices within the line of sight. A single nuclear weapon detonated at a […]
Russia’s military-industrial complex is offering an ominous weapons system in the international arms market called the Club-K cruise missile system. It consists of a quadruple launcher for Club cruise missiles hidden inside an innocuous-looking cargo container that serves as cover for the missiles’ Transporter-Erector-Launcher (TEL) and the control cabin, where two operators would handle the […]
Russian security serves have foiled a plot by a group of Islamists to blow up a high-speed train running between Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the Kommersant business daily said Monday. A blast on the same route that authorities blamed on Muslim rebels killed 26 people in November 2009. The respected daily said the group of […]
