It was not the lethality of the AK that India feared, for it had a million-strong army to counter it. It was the psychological change that the assault rifle unleashed everywhere it went. AK stands for Avtomat Kalashnikova, and 47 denotes 1947, the year of its adoption by the Soviet military. The assault rifle made […]
The United States Air Force will dramatically expand its military presence across the Pacific this year, sending jets to Thailand, India, Singapore, and Australia, according to the service’s top general in the region. For a major chunk of America‘s military community, the so-called “pivot to Asia” might seem like nothing more than an empty catchphrase, […]
The efforts to re-establish ancient routes are tied up with the pragmatic needs of new nation states along the routes, such as in the former Soviet Union, for modern infrastructure and this millennium’s goals for development. Today, Unesco is perhaps less persuasive than the realpolitik of Uncad, UNDP, Unescap and ADB pooling their might to […]
For some 45 years after the end of World War II, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were locked in a deadly embrace of the Cold War. Then, communism lost the war of ideologies, the Soviet empire collapsed, and the two superpowers went in different directions. Nevertheless, it never ceases to amaze me how the two countries still seem to be joined at the hip, with the U.S. at times imitating and at times almost […]
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and Britain’s wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill enjoyed an alcohol-fueled all-nighter in Moscow as World War II was in full swing, previously secret files have revealed. Relations between the two leaders were stiff until Churchill arranged a tete-a-tete with Stalin, with the aid of interpreters, which led to a late-night boozy banquet in 1942, according to files released by Britain’s National Archives. Read […]
Are we on the brink of a new Cold War? The question isn’t as outlandish as it seemed only a few years ago. The United States is still the sole reigning superpower, but it is being challenged by the rising power of China, just as ancient Rome was challenged by Carthage, and Britain was challenged […]
As international attention continues to focus on the nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran, a less-discussed Asian country has quietly emerged as a leader in responsible nuclear development: Kazakhstan. In addition to its much-praised stint hosting last month’s international talks on the Iranian nuclear program, Kazakhstan is now in talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency […]
Whose fault is it that the Boston Marathon was bombed? Is Russia to blame for 250 years of trying to incorporate the Muslim North Caucasus nations, like the Chechens and Dagestanis, first into the czars’ Christian Orthodox Empire, then into the Soviet Union, and now into President Vladimir Putin’s all-controlling Russian state? Or is radical […]
The man at the helm in North Korea today is an accident of history, surrounded by vestigial assertions of narcissistic genius that are de rigueur for North Korea’s depiction of its own leaders. More than any time since the young Kim Il-song was surrounded by Soviet generals in the 1940s, the North Korean leader today […]
When elected president in 2000,Vladimir Putin‘s first order of business seemed straightforward: strengthen the Russian state and bring it back from oligarchic control and regional warlordism. Consolidation was in order. There were two ways to achieve that. Read Here – Moscow Times
looking beyond borders 