Cold War related content 

Accepting a reduced global status requires a more confident US. At ‘Ground Zero' in lower Manhattan, two empty spaces will be filled by water cascades, memorialising in a...

Political will alone will not be enough to bridge the gap between Europe and the US on security issues. Last Friday (10 June) in Brussels, Robert Gates delivered his last...

The experience of 1989 has some happy lessons for the Middle East – and some worrying parallels. The message from the superpower was clear. You are our allies. We...

The questions posed by the great experiment of German reunification remain only partially answered. Germany's reunification, 20 years ago last Sunday, was one of the largest...

Papandreou says Greece may be forced to turn to the IMF for help. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou today said he expects EU leaders to agree a special financial aid...

In memory of Roman Kupchinsky, a scourge of communists and post-communist kleptocrats alike. In their freedom they had no homeland. And in their homeland they had no...

The lack of fuss about the EU's foreign policy chief's employment history is symptomatic of the West's amnesia about the Cold War. Imagine a British Conservative politician...

China has plenty of reasons to develop a presence in eastern Europe. Should the region risk seduction? As the countries of eastern Europe bump nervously between a...

Remembering Reagan's stirring speech. “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Ronald Reagan's stirring speech at the Berlin Wall on 12 June 1987 was not the death blow to...

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has Europe entered a post-post-1989 period? “I smell an overall collapse,” Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Soviet prime minister,...

Annual military exercises in Norway reveal a great deal about closer co-operation and how much work NATO has to do. Imagine the mythical countries of Badland, Eastland,...

The ties may be binding, but they still need strengthening. Hillary Clinton's first trip to Europe since taking office as US secretary of state provides Europeans with an...

A former foreign minister argues that the French and Russian presidents are right to advocate a summit on a new security arrangement for Europe. Two events of great...

Containment is implausible; a Yalta-style conference would border on appeasement. A third, principled policy is needed. “Let's engage Russia if we can, but contain it if...

It is nasty and it is quite cold. But Russia is not strong enough to take part in a new Cold War. Defining the beginning and end of the old Cold War is tricky, let alone...

There are timeless lessons to be learnt from the Marshall plan about the value of soft power and about the qualities of leaders. As well as meeting European leaders during...

Investing in hard power cannot compensate for closing radio channels because of a weak dollar. For outsiders interested in the ex-communist world, the English-language...

Soviet propagandists during the Cold War were trained in a tactic that their Western interlocutors nicknamed ‘what-about-ism'. Any criticism of the Soviet Union...

What should the West think about Russia? That is the subject of a powerful new study by James Sherr, a senior lecturer and fellow at the Defence Academy of the United...

During the Second World War Finland committed the cardinal error of making an alliance with Hitler to fight Soviet Russia. It was what the English call “Hobson's choice”....