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Reporting from Washington - President Obama's ambitious plan to begin phasing out nuclear weapons has run up against powerful resistance from officials in the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies, posing a threat to one of his most important foreign policy initiatives. Obama laid out his vision of a nuclear-free world in a speech in Prague, Czech Republic, last April, pledging that the U.S. would take dramatic steps to lead the way. Nine months later, the administration is locked in internal debate over a top-secret policy blueprint for shrinking the U.S. nuclear arsenal and reducing the role of such weapons in...

...Obama's ambitious plan to begin phasing out nuclear weapons has run up against powerful resistance from officials in the Pentagon and other U.S. agencies, posing a threat to one of his most important foreign policy initiatives. Obama laid out his vision of a nuclear-free world in a speech in Prague in April, vowing the U.S. would take dramatic steps to lead the way. Eight months later, the administration is locked in internal debate... Officials in the Pentagon and elsewhere have pushed back against administration proposals to cut the number of weapons and narrow their mission.... The debate represents another collision...

The United States is about to lose a key arms-control tool from the closing days of the Cold War -- the right to station American observers in Russia to count the long-range missiles leaving its assembly line. The end of full-time, on-site access will likely ignite complaints in Congress, with insiders from both parties arguing over whether the George W. Bush or the Obama administration is responsible.

Events were not supposed to have turned out this way: Stalin is making a comeback in Russia, the Chinese Communist Party controls capitalism in China, Venezuela — once a friend of the United States — is now a neo-Marxist state, and Latin America itself is dominated by communist or far left regimes. When the Berlin Wall was destroyed by jubilant West Berlin youth, the nightmare was believed to be over. The communist true believers, however, are again a threat to humanity — even within the U.S. government. It is a story gets little coverage in the centralized media. Instead of...

Obama: We have reset U.S.-Russia relations @ 12:18 pm by Jeremy P. Jacobs President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev touted the results of the first day of their summit in Moscow at a press conference on Monday. Both presidents complimented the others' "business-like" approach to the summit and both appeared pleased with the agreements that came out of the first day. Obama said at the beginning at that shortly after taking office they "resolved to reset U.S.-Russian relations." "Today, after less than six months," he went on, "we have done exactly that." In particular, Obama touted the summit's agreements...

December 08, 2008, 4:00 a.m. A New Cold War?Western-hemispheric maneuvers. An NRO Symposium What does Russia docking in the Panama Canal this weekend mean? What should the Obama administration be thinking about it? National Review Online asked a group of Russian experts. David Satter The visits of Russian ships to Venezuela and the Panama Canal are part of a campaign of escalating Russian pressure — a campaign designed to prevent Ukraine and Georgia from being admitted into NATO. The inclusion of these two former Soviet republics in NATO does not threaten Russia militarily, but in the eyes of Russian...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Communists expect the global financial crisis will cause social unrest and help them challenge for power, the party's leader said on Saturday. Gennady Zyuganov told the party's annual congress the Communists should make maximum use of the growing public discontent caused by the economic downturn to try to restore their political strength. "The wind of history is blowing in our sails again ... At this time of crisis the world of imperialism is starting to die. We are standing on the threshold of political and social shifts," Zyuganov said in a 2-hour speech opening the congress....

Russia put the West on alert for a new Cold War that the Kremlin is ready to fight, its President said yesterday. President Medvedev set tensions soaring when he recognised the independence of two breakaway republics inside Georgia. “We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a Cold War,” he said. Hours earlier he had ordered his Foreign Ministry to start establishing diplomatic ties with the secessionist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The move brought instant condemnation from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other Western countries. President Bush appealed to the Kremlin to “reconsider this...

Us warship arrives in Georgia

The most grotesque aspect of Russia’s aggression in Georgia is the repeated Russian claim that Georgia poses a threat to Russia and its citizens. In language harking back to the Orwellian rhetoric of the Cold War, all Russian troops are “peacekeepers” and all Georgian forces are “diversionaries” and “terrorists.” Russian troops are now openly occupying Georgian territory on the grounds that law and order in Georgia has collapsed. Of course it has. Russian tanks and airplanes crushed it underfoot. Moscow bemoans the absence of “legitimate political leadership” in Georgian territories like Gori even as its troops occupy Gori without the...

WE have just had a lesson in how the next president of the US would react to a real menace to the world's peace. Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain were set a test with Russia's invasion of Georgia. The results? Be terrified that Obama leads in the polls. Russia has driven deep into Georgia on the excuse of defending separatists in the Georgian territory of South Ossetia - a pro-Russian statelet that Georgia has tried to bring back under its control. But the truth is Georgia is being punished for its sins against Russian pride and power. Those...

The more things change, the more they stay the same. In a replay of classic Soviet interventions from the cold war, using the flimsiest of contrived pretexts, Russia came to the rescue of a supposedly beleaguered minority in South Ossetia, a sparsely populated mountainous region and unimportant to Russian national security. Unimportant, but for the fact that Georgia, in which this afflicted minority resides, is a West-leaning democratic nation and US ally with aspirations of joining NATO. It is also a strategic conduit for oil from the surrounding region to the Black Sea and Europe. In this larger context, we...

Despite renewed friction between Russia and the United States, the specter of open conflict has faded since the days of the Cold War. However, equipment designed by the two nations remains on opposite sides of 21st-century battlefields. This isn't surprising: America is the top vendor of major conventional weapons, and Russia ranks number two. Both countries share a legacy of making military equipment to counter the other's capabilities and a long history of parlaying arms sales into geopolitical influence. These deals, sanctioned by both national governments, are extensions of foreign policy. A resurgent Russia wants cash and international influence, while...

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev today called on U.S. presidential candidates to develop alternatives to the use of military power, decrying what he called "increasingly visible signs of the militarization of politics and thinking in the modern world ... even though the military route again and again leads to a dead-end." Writing in the the Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Gorbachev said the Bush administration has shown a tendency to "seek to address these problems primarily through threats and pressure. Will the candidates develop an alternative approach to these most crucial problems? This is now the main question." RIA Novosti,...

Space warfare will be an integrated part of battle planning by the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) in any future conflict. One of the major proponents of integrated space power for the PLA, Major General Cai Fengzhen, believes that "control of portions of outer space is a natural extension of other forms of territorial control," such as sea or air control.[1] More seriously, because of American superiority in space, China's military theorists treat the United States as the most likely opponent in that domain of war. The head of the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, Lieutenant General Kevin...

Vladimir Putin has finally solved the intrigue of who will be Russia’s most powerful man should he obey the constitution and stand down as president next year. He will. The president’s address to Monday’s congress of the dominant United Russia party appeared to be handwritten, in large script in a spiral-bound notebook, and Mr Putin scribbled changes up to the last moment. But his speech, met with jubilation in the sunlit atrium of a conference centre near the Kremlin, carried the clear message that he intends to remain Russia’s key decision maker for years to come. Less clear is in...

Nothing but an announcement on Fox at this time.

RAF jets scrambled to intercept Russian planes By Sally Peck and agencies Last Updated: 7:54am BST 19/07/2007 Two RAF fighter jets were scrambled on Tuesday to intercept two Russian planes on course for British airspace, it emerged yesterday. The incident marked the latest escalation of tensions in the standoff between London and Moscow. As Moscow hesitated in its response to Britain's expulsion of four Russian diplomats, two Tornado fighters raced to meet the Tu95 "Bear" bombers that had been dispatched from their base near the northern port city of Murmansk in the Arctic Circle. The planes turned back before they...

RUSSIA COMPLETES SAM DELIVERY TO IRAN MOSCOW [MENL] -- Russia has confirmed the completion of anti-aircraft deliveries to Iran. A senior Russian official asserted that Moscow delivered all 29 TOR-M1 mobile, short-range surface-to-air missile systems to Iran in late December 2006. The official confirmed a previous statement by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who reported that the deliveries to Iran had been completed. "Russia has fulfilled its contract obligations and fully completed deliveries of TOR-M1 air defense systems to Iran," Sergei Chemezov, the director of the state arms export agency Rosoboronexport, said on Tuesday. "The systems were delivered in late...

U.S.-Russia chill revives Cold War memories MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping thaw relations between Moscow and Washington. Now he is warning that the two countries could slide into a new Cold War. After over a decade when the relationship between Moscow and Washington was nearly always upbeat, the mood in the two capitals has turned "sour", according to one Western diplomat. The adversarial attitudes of the Cold War have been resurfacing everywhere from the statements of politicians to the views of people on the streets and the choice of villains...

MOSCOW - Call it cold war II, the sequel. An intensifying shouting match between the US and Russia has stirred fears that the two former adversaries could be drifting back to a familiar ideologically charged rivalry. Most experts play down the new mood as a worrisome "chill," and some suggest that a change in leadership - slated for 2008 in both countries - might reverse the slide in mutual ties. But many Russians, who have watched as Western influence has thrust decisively into the former Soviet heartland since the USSR's 1991 demise, see it in darker, more visceral tones. The...

MOSCOW - Like an aging couple, Russia and the United States seem to spend more time squabbling over what divides them than building on their shared interests. Whether it's Iran, the Palestinian militant group Hamas or democracy movements in former Soviet republics, Moscow and Washington increasingly find themselves staring warily at one another across the fence. The Cold War is long over, but questions remain: Will Russia and the United States learn to live with their differences? Or will they get so wound up in recriminations that they can't move forward on the issues where they should find common ground?...

Close your eyes and say it out loud: "G-8." Let the two syllables run across your tongue again: "gee-eight." What images drift into your brain?If you are like most Americans, I suspect that this simple psychological experiment will produce something like, "stuffy statesmen, boring meeting, prepackaged conclusions." Or maybe, "screaming protesters, riot police, prepackaged slogans." Or even, "turn the page and read something else."~SNIP~Perhaps you think it ridiculous to sound so apocalyptic about a meeting that most Americans find too boring to read about. But don't listen to me, listen to Andrei Illarionov, an economic adviser to Putin before he...

Beijing Rejects Pentagon Report By ALEXA OLESEN, Associated Press Writer BEIJING -- China said Tuesday it has formally complained to Washington over a Pentagon report that calls China a potential military threat, and the foreign ministry accused the United States of trying to mislead public opinion. The report, released Friday, expressed concerns about Beijing's rising military spending to project power beyond China's borders. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said the report made "groundless accusations regarding the normal national defense development in China, interferes with China's domestic affairs and plays up the theory of the Chinese military threat, thereby misleading...

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday responded to worries of a looming crackdown on nongovernmental organizations by insisting that foreign funding of any political activity in Russia must come under state control. But Putin, making his first public remarks about a contentious NGO bill that the State Duma approved in a first reading Wednesday, also stressed that the legislation must not damage civil society. The bill in its current version would, among other things, require NGOs to reregister with the Justice Ministry and empower authorities to check that NGOs do not use foreign grants to finance political activities. Foreign NGOs have...

LIANYUNGANG (China), November 26 (RIA Novosti, Alexei Yefimov) - China expects Russia to build the third and fourth energy units of the Tianwan nuclear power station. "We would like to see Russia continue its participation [in the project]," Wang Jianhua, the first secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Lianyungang city committee, said. He stressed that Russian technology used in building the first two power units had proven excellent. "The decision on building units 3 and 4 will be made by the central authorities of course," Wang Jianhua added. The first unit is to go online in early 2006, while the...

MOSCOW – Russia and China could take a step closer to forming a Eurasian military confederacy to rival NATO at a Moscow meeting of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Wednesday, experts say. The group, which started in 2001 with limited goals of promoting cooperation in former Soviet Central Asia, has evolved rapidly toward a regional security bloc and could soon induct new members such as India, Pakistan, and Iran. One initiative that core members Russia and China agree on, experts say, is to squeeze US influence - which peaked after 9/11 - out of the SCO's neighborhood. "Four years...

"China is the biggest [espionage] threat to the US today," David Szady, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) head of counterintelligence, told The Wall Street Journal on 10 August. It is a concern fuelled by a number of Chinese defectors in recent months who claim Beijing is engaged in large-scale intelligence-gathering operations overseas. Chen Yonglin, the first secretary of the Chinese Consulate General in Sydney, Australia, defected on 4 June. Chen told Australian authorities that Beijing had been overseeing a network of more than 1,000 spies and informers in Australia. These claims were mirrored in Canada in July when...

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com Beijing devoted to weakening 'enemy' U.S., defector saysBy Bill GertzTHE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished June 27, 2005 China's communist leaders view the United States as their main enemy and are working in Asia and around the world to undermine U.S. alliances, said a former Chinese diplomat.     Chen Yonglin, until recently a senior political officer at the Chinese Consulate in Sydney, Australia, said in an interview that China also is engaged in large-scale intelligence-gathering activities in the United States that, in the past, netted large amounts of confidential U.S. government documents from agents.     "The United States is considered by...

Doctors at the Austrian clinic that treated Ukraine’s opposition leader confirm there was a plot to kill him MEDICAL experts have confirmed that Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s opposition leader, was poisoned in an attempt on his life during election campaigning, the doctor who supervised his treatment at an Austrian clinic said yesterday. Doctors at Vienna’s exclusive Rudolfinerhaus clinic are within days of identifying the substance that left Mr Yushchenko’s face disfigured with cysts and lesions, Nikolai Korpan told The Times in a telephone interview. Specialists in Britain, the United States and France had helped to establish that it was a biological...