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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell struck an ominous tone about the state of world affairs Monday while promising that he will serve out the remainder of his current term in the upper chamber. McConnell (R-Ky.) didn’t reveal whether he plans to pursue an eighth term in 2026, but told Louisville’s NewsRadio 840 that his chief mission is pushing back against “isolationists” within the GOP. “I’m not leaving the Senate. And I’m particularly involved in fighting back against the isolationist movement,” the 82-year-old said.

Since Donald Trump’s rise within Republican ranks, conservatives have divided into two competing foreign policy camps. One contends that Trump’s approach suits the world in which we live and supersedes previous GOP national security and foreign affairs outlooks. A smaller contingent contends that Ronald Reagan’s understanding of America and his conduct of diplomacy remain the gold standard for U.S. foreign policy. Atlantic Council colleagues Matthew Kroenig (also a Georgetown professor of government and international relations) and Dan Negrea contend that considerably more agreement about foreign affairs prevails among conservatives than they themselves realize. When fleshed out, a Trump-Reagan fusion represents,...

China and the United States resumed military-to-military contacts with a series of recent meetings, delivering on a decision by their leaders at a November 2023 summit. Michael S. Chase (C, L), U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, Taiwan and Mongolia, hosts Chinese delegation led by Maj. Gen. Song Yanchao (C, R), deputy director of the Chinese Central Military Commission Office for International Military Cooperation for meetings at the Pentagon on Jan. 9. Two days of meetings, called the China-U.S. defense policy coordination talks, took place Jan. 8-9 at the Pentagon. It was the first formal in-person encounter between...

A day that changed the course of German history forever: On November 9, 1989 the pressures of revolution brought down the Berlin Wall. This episode of History Stories illustrates how months of protests and mass demonstrations lead up to this fateful day. Archival footage of news coverage of the events as they unfolded is paired with powerful statements from East Berliners as they crossed over to the other side.

A rusted Cold War missile was discovered in a deceased man's garage in Washington state, The Seattle Times reported. What seemed like an ordinary rocket caught the attention of the National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, prompting them to alert the Bellevue Police. The museum was made aware of the missile when someone called to offer to donate the rocket, purchased at an estate sale, said reports A bomb squad identified the relic as a Douglas AIR-2 Genie. The unguided air-to-air rocket was designed to carry a 1.5 kt W25 nuclear warhead. Fortunately, the lack of...

Richard Nixon in 1992, shortyl after the fall of the Soviet Union makes a prediction about the future of the cold war and Russia

In a speech at a Council on Foreign Relations dinner in his honor, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announces that the United States will protect its allies through the “deterrent of massive retaliatory power.” The policy announcement was further evidence of the Eisenhower administration’s decision to rely heavily on the nation’s nuclear arsenal as the primary means of defense against communist aggression. Dulles began his speech by examining communist strategy that, he concluded, had as its goal the “bankruptcy” of the United States through overextension of its military power. Both strategically and economically, the secretary explained, it was unwise...

Synopsis: A panel of Russian commentators on state owned television channel "Russia 1" discussing a recent 'naked party' by Russian elites and their reactions to it. Russia language transcript at the link. Click the 'more' button and you'll see the transcript feature.

The White House has announced it plans to use a cold-war era law to ease supply chain issues that the administration argues are contributing to higher inflation – a key electoral challenge to Joe Biden’s re-election chances next year as polling consistently suggests voters are not buying his Bidenomics pitch. In a statement, the White House said Biden will use the Defense Production Act to improve the domestic manufacturing of medicines deemed crucial for national security and will convene the first meeting of the president’s supply chain resilience council to announce other measures tied to the production and shipment of...

For U.S. special operations personnel, conducting high-altitude parachute jumps are pretty much par for the course. Yet doing so with a nuclear bomb strapped between your legs is on an entirely different level. That’s exactly what can be seen in the top shot above. Here, a U.S. Army Special Forces paratrooper is pictured free-falling during a training exercise with a Special Atomic Demolition Munition, or SADM, harnessed to them. A form of atomic demolition munition (ADM), SADMs were man-portable nuclear weapons, also known as "backpack nukes." These munitions were fitted into specially designed hard/cloth carrying cases for their transportation on...

Forty years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan lit a fuse that would bring down an empire. In a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, Reagan didn’t mince words. He put the blame for the Cold War solely on the shoulders of the Soviet Union, and called it an "evil empire." He rejected our policy of peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union. The U.S. would no longer accept perpetual Cold War with this evil empire, we would take steps to win the Cold War. On our terms. Without firing a shot. For decades American leaders, of both political parties,...

James Cagney is the chief exec of Coca-Cola’s West Berlin plant whose ambitious promotion plans are jeopardized when he becomes temporary guardian of his stateside superior’s wild and vacuous daughter. The girl (Pamela Tiffin) slips across the border, weds violently anti-Yankee Horst Buchholz, and before long there’s a bouncing baby Bolshevik on the way. When the home office head man decides to visit his daughter, Cagney masterminds an elaborate masquerade. The screenplay, based on a one-act play by Ferenc Molnar, is outstanding. It pulls no punches and lands a few political and ideological haymakers on both sides of the...

"No amount of reckless attempts will let the imperialist coalition forces overpower the heroic spirit of the army and people of Russia, distinguished by fiery patriotism, resilience and strong morale," Kim Yo-jong said TOKYO, January 27./TASS/.The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) will always "stand in the same trench" side by side with the Russian army and people, Kim Yo-jong, the Deputy Department Director of the Publicity and Information Department of the Workers Party of Korea, sister of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said on Friday. In a statement released by the KCNA news agency, she vowed that the...

It is folly to believe that the US should engage in a repeat of the Cold War with the rising world power that is China, reflecting the maxim that “Generals always fight the last war.” That implies that the current military strategy focuses too much on what happened before rather than what will happen next. Rather than repeating the Cold War, the US should rethink how it views its place in the world and work to partner with China on high-priority issues that affect both countries, like nuclear weapons, trade policies, natural resources, economics, etc. This necessarily requires that the...

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on Friday formally declassified an image then-US President Donald Trump tweeted in 2019 of a highly classified satellite photograph depicting the site of a failed Iranian rocket launch. NPR reported that the NGA declassified the image after a “grueling Pentagon-wide review to determine whether the briefing slide it came from could be shared with the public” in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the radio network. Many details on the original image remain redacted – a clear sign that Trump was sharing some of the US government's most prized intelligence on social media,...

President Joe Biden tried to downplay any new tensions with China on Monday, after meeting with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. “I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War,” he told reporters during a press conference after the three-and-a-half-hour meeting in Bali, Indonesia. Biden repeated that the United States policy in Taiwan had not changed at all, despite recent comments indicating otherwise. But he also downplayed any fears that China would move to take over the island.

US President Joe Biden’s administration will soon release its National Security Strategy, which is being revised in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The document will no doubt trigger a renewed debate about how the United States should gear up for a new cold war against Russia and China. But before we plunge into a global great-power competition, it’s worth recalling Biden’s promise to create a “foreign policy for the middle class” and take a look at what most concerns Americans.US President Joe Biden’s administration will soon release its National Security Strategy, which is being revised in the wake...

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last ruler of the USSR, has died at 91. On the one hand, that sounds pretty good. A long life, a long career, world fame, a one-time politician, then a popular public speaker and leader of a think tank. He outlived his wife by over 20 years, and stayed active and vocal until the end. In many ways, it sounds like a life that one would envy, doesn't it? However… What kind of a politician was he? And what kind of think tank did he run? What did he stand for in life? What did he advocate...

Gorbachev ended the Cold War like Louis XVI ended the French monarchy WaPo praises USSR's BidenI don't speak ill of the dead not because they cannot argue back but because they cannot hear me. Why waste my breath? Instead, let me take on David Hoffman's fact-challenged obituary of Mikhail Gorbachev, the 8th and final thug in charge of the Soviet Union, a communist dictatorship best known for killing about 50 million people and starving Ukraine into submission in the 1930s. Hoffman wrote, "Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, who embarked on a path of radical reform...

Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 92, Russian news agencies cited hospital officials as saying on Tuesday.