Last Thursday US Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden met separately with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian while the South Caucasus adversaries attended a 50-nation nuclear summit in Washington boycotted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. But no sooner did Kerry pronounce “an ultimate resolution” to the ongoing…
Category: Historical Study
Cold War Files: What If Japan Had Built an Atomic Bomb?
During the Cold War, the United States supported selective nuclear proliferation as a means of deterring a Soviet invasion of Europe. The Russians might not believe that the United States would trade Berlin for New York, but they might find a British or French threat more credible. Washington did not pursue the same strategy in…
Sweet Mother Russia: Putin’s “Gangster Rules”
Looking at some of the recent headlines in the news, you might almost feel as if you stepped back into a surreal time when the Cold War was not over and we lived with the constant threat that a war full of icy rhetoric could become hot with bullets and bombs. Putin, that lovable New/Old…
Examining Terrorist Tactics: Are Dirty Drones a Realistic Threat?
ISIS is planning to kill thousands of people by sending drones delivering radioactive material over Western cities—or so British Prime Minister David Cameron warned last week at a summit on nuclear terrorism in Washington. Rather than carrying a “dirty bomb” to disperse material with explosives, the drones would work like toxic crop sprayers—”dirty drones” perhaps—and…
Military History: The 30 Years War
Thirty Years By John Farnam Protestant King Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, the “Lion of the North,” the “Snow King,” led a lean, efficient, and highly-mobile army that was able to move faster and hit harder than any thrown against it. He was ahead of his time and nearly unbeatable. His greatest fear was territorial encroachment…
Ancient History: The Unknown Battle of 1250 B.C.
A battlefield of 3,250 years ago in Germany is yielding remains of wounded warriors, wooden clubs, spear points, flint and bronze arrowheads and bronze knives and swords. The gruesome scene, frozen in time by peat, is unlike anything else from the Bronze Age in Northern Europe, where, researchers thought, large-scale warfare didn’t begin until later….
World War Two History: The Rosenberg Diary
Secret Nazi Journal Reveals Inner Workings of Third Reich “Between 1936 and 1944, the Nazi mastermind kept a secret journal detailing his life in the corridors of power.” ALFRED ROSENBERG was a true believer. Remembered as the “chief philosopher” of the Third Reich, the Estonian-born National Socialist was member of Adolf Hitler’s early inner circle and helped author…
Espionage and Cold War Files: Extraordinary Lecture by Legendary Soviet Mole and Spy Kim Philby Emerges
A videotaped lecture by Kim Philby, one of the Cold War’s most recognizable espionage figures, has been unearthed in the archives of the Stasi, the Ministry of State Security of the former East Germany. During the one-hour lecture, filmed in 1981, Philby addresses a select audience of Stasi operations officers and offers them advice on…
World War Two History: The Battling Belles of Bataan
If you ever had occasion to do an R&R in Tai Pei, you know why a 19 year old, hormone engorged, no-time-in-grade Army sergeant would consider Tai Pei and “The China Seas Club” a prime destination. As far back as I can remember, my parents always kept a house in the Shilin District overlooking Tianmu….
The History of Terrorism: How a Spanish Assassination Helped Turn a Dictatorship into a Democracy
Spain gasped when the rumor spread that Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco had been killed in an explosion the morning of Dec. 20, 1973. It wasn’t until midnight that government-controlled media confirmed what many feared: The hand-picked heir to replace Gen. Francisco Franco had been assassinated. The bombing “changed Spain’s history” and contributed to a…