The most spectacular episode of Harry Truman’s presidency will never be forgotten but will be forever linked to his name: the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and of Nagasaki three days later. Probably around two hundred thousand persons were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; the vast majority were civilians,…
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce,” a saying attributed to Karl Marx, comes to mind in this time of Trump. To those of us raised in the Truman era, when the Red Army was imposing its bloody Bolshevik rule on half of Europe, and NATO was needed to keep Stalin’s armies from…
In January, it was announced the UK government would launch the National Security Communications Unit, a dedicated organization to counter the growth of ‘fake news’ with disinformation of its own. While hailed as a new initiative, weaponizing information for defensive and offensive purposes is familiar territory for Whitehall. Almost half a year after the proclamation, concrete…
Trump turned heads this week when he described the EU as a “foe”. The “politically incorrect” and previously unthinkable remark came after last week’s testy NATO Summit during an interview that the US President gave to CBS News. Trump, when asked to describe the US’ “biggest foe globally right now”, jaw-droppingly said that “Well, I…
Future historians may well identify Russian President Vladimir Putin’s landmark March 1 speech as the ultimate game-changer in the 21st-century New Great Game in Eurasia. The reason is minutely detailed in Losing Military Supremacy: The Myopia of American Strategic Planning, a new book by Russian military/naval analyst Andrei Martyanov. Martyanov is uniquely equipped for the…
Historically, Germany maintained excellent relations with the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was fascinated by Islam, pursued archeological excavations, notably in Baalbeck, and participated in the construction of the first railways, including the Damascus -Medina line. The Reich and the Sublime Porte stood together against the British…
