Soviet Union

Russia and its nukes and chemical weapons “a brand new problem in those days – brand new to history, really, requiring new thought,” Carter said.

I remember sitting in my living room with my dad when I was a kid, watching Clint Eastwood in “Firefox.” The jet was just…cool: twin vertical stabs, two big motors, a ton of wing, canards, and more. It was just a big, menacing beast of an airplane. Arguably the most “futuristic” quality of the fictional […]

It is July 1965, and President Lyndon B. Johnson has made the decision to send troops into Vietnam. U.S. strategy in Vietnam demands a necessary escalation of force. American policy, stemming from Cold War doctrine, and events in Vietnam since at least 1954 have gone unchecked for too long. Yet, U.S. policy is destined to […]

United States Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson considered sharing the atomic bomb; in his plan to President Harry Truman. Secretary Stimson expressed a prophetic understanding of the global dynamics of what would soon become an international arms race for dominance of atomic and nuclear armament: The Cold War.  Secretary Stimson’s plan addressed the fundamental […]

In 1975, the USSR actually fired a cannon from an orbiting space station. Forty years later, we finally got a good look at this gun. A quarter of the century after the end of the Cold War, the only cannon that has actually fired in space finally comes to light. Installed on the Almaz space […]

Due to a sometimes hostile current environment, I believe there has been a steady decrease in the effectiveness of the U.S. intelligence community.

By the very nature of the services they provide, private military security companies thrive in non-permissive environments where violence and instability are commonplace.

These once-volunteers, now-professional soldiers, have been represented on the global stage by Mikael Skillt throughout the ongoing propaganda battle between Ukraine and the Russian intelligence services.

Romania, facing extreme corruption, must implement painful changes. As we have learned, corruption kills.

The one person who has capitalized on the collapse of the Soviet Union the most has been Vladimir Putin.

For as long as history has included naval military power, Russia has been on a quest to “reach the warm sea.” Something most Western nations take for granted, the presence of a port that doesn’t freeze in the winter can mean the difference between a thriving nation and one brought to its knees economically and militarily. […]

As Russia continues to exacerbate tensions in Eastern Ukraine, openly transporting resources in the form of military supplies to rebel contingents and funneling funding to established proxy regimes and operational commands inside Donbas, an interesting byproduct of the conflict is emerging throughout the rest of the post-Soviet space. In part one of this series, I examine […]