Category Archives: Cold War

New film unravels mystery of the Russian ‘spy whale’

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Director sets out to unmask the secret underwater agent known as Hvaldimir in new documentary

When a white whale, mysteriously kitted out with covert surveillance equipment, was first spotted in icy waters around Norway five years ago it seemed like an improbable chapter from a spy thriller. But working out the true identity and secret objectives of this beluga, nicknamed Hvaldimir by the Norwegians, quickly became a real-life puzzle that has continued to fascinate the public and trouble western intelligence analysts.

Now missing clues have surfaced that finally begin to make sense of the underwater enigma. The makers of a new BBC documentary, Secrets of the Spy Whale, believe they have traced the beluga’s probable path and identified its likely mission.

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Cold war satellite images reveal hundreds of unknown Roman forts

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Declassified spy images point to 396 undiscovered forts in Syria and Iraq, shifting understanding of Roman frontier

Declassified cold-war spy satellite images have thrown new light on the workings of the Roman empire by revealing hundreds of previously undiscovered forts, with dramatic implications for our understanding, experts have said.

Archeologists examining aerial photographs taken in the 1960s and 70s said they reveal 396 sites of unknown Roman forts in Syria and Iraq across the Syrian steppe.

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Kissinger at 100: the ‘bloody, dreadful, filthy’ Angolan civil war – in pictures

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The Guardian visited Angola in 2001 as the long civil war – aggravated by the interventions of Henry Kissinger – between Unita and the government neared its end. The images show how the conflict affected the people and landscape around the city of Kuito in Bie province

  • Photographs by Antonio Olmos

After largely ignoring the continent for years, Henry Kissinger, who shaped US foreign policy from 1969 to 1976 as secretary of state, became involved in successive crises in Ethiopia, Angola and Rhodesia in the 1970s.

The US intervention in Angola complicated the emerging conflict there that followed Portugal’s withdrawal from its African colonies after the fascist dictatorship was overthrown in a coup in Lisbon. Concerned that the communist MPLA forces would sweep to power and open the way for Soviet influence, Kissinger led the US into a lengthy involvement in Angola.

Top, a boy runs past a bullet-scarred government building in Kuito. A woman chops the stump of a tree. Refugees camped out near Cuemba deforested the area to provide shelter and fuel for cooking and heat. Bottom, mother and child at the Cuemba refugee camp. A family waits to be seen by doctors at a medical centre run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Camacupa

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Mikhail Gorbachev: a divisive figure loved abroad but loathed at home

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Despite being celebrated across liberal democracies, the former Soviet leader was reviled and unpopular in Russia

Until his very last day, Mikhail Gorbachev lived in a dual reality – loved and celebrated in Washington, Paris and London, but reviled by large numbers of Russians who never forgave him for the turbulence that his reforms unleashed.

His policy of ‘glasnost’, or openness, gave Russians previously unthinkable levels of freedom, but for many, his rule will be remembered by the dramatic plunge in living standards that followed.

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Revealed: UK ran cold war dirty tricks campaign to smear Kenya’s first vice-president

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Special unit spread fake news about leftist politician, Oginga Odinga, seen as threat to British interests in 1960s

British cold war propagandists smeared Kenyan vice-president Oginga Odinga in the 1960s in “black” propaganda operations, newly declassified files reveal.

The Foreign Office’s propaganda arm, the Information Research Department (IRD), targeted the Kenyan nationalist in a three-year campaign run by its dirty tricks section, the Special Editorial Unit (SEU).

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Secret British ‘black propaganda’ campaign targeted cold war enemies

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Britain stirred up tensions, chaos and violence in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, according to declassified papers

The British government ran a secret “black propaganda” campaign for decades, targeting Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia with leaflets and reports from fake sources aimed at destabilising cold war enemies by encouraging racial tensions, sowing chaos, inciting violence and reinforcing anti-communist ideas, newly declassified documents have revealed.

The effort, run from the mid-1950s through to the late 70s by a unit in London that was part of the Foreign Office, was focused on cold war enemies such as the Soviet Union and China, leftwing liberation groups and leaders that the UK saw as threats to its interests

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Red poets’ society: the secret history of the Stasi’s book club for spies

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For seven years, the East German security service’s poetry group met in Berlin to discuss literature. But there was more to it than just learning about iambic pentameter

At the height of the tense second phase of the cold war, a group of Stasi majors, propaganda officers and border guards convened at a heavily fortified compound in socialist east Berlin. From spring 1982 until winter 1989, they gathered once every four weeks, from 4pm until 6pm, at the House of Culture inside the premises of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment (the Stasi’s paramilitary wing), in Berlin’s Adlershof district. They met in a first-floor room adorned with portraits of East German leader Erich Honecker and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin that was closed with a security seal overnight.

But the Stasi men did not gather to gameplan nuclear war scenarios, work up disinformation campaigns or fine-tune infiltration techniques. They set out to learn about iambic pentameter, cross-rhyming schemes and Petrarchan sonnets. The group, which internal memos referred to as the Working Circle of Writing Chekists (a reference to the fearsome Bolshevist secret police, the Cheka), produced two anthologies over this seven-year period. I got hold of a copy of one shortly before I moved to Berlin in 2016. The slim paperback, its title Wir Über Uns (“We about us”) falling down the front page in curling calligraphic letters, felt like something out of a Monty Python sketch, or a spin-off from the film The Lives of Others. How had a secret police synonymous with the suppression of free thought ended up writing poetry? Over the coming months I tried to track down former members of the circles, and contacted them to see if they could tell me more.

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From eastern Europe we watch Ukraine in fear. Its fate could decide the continent’s future

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Past trauma means we worry about Russia reclaiming its cold war sphere of influence and that the west will again abandon us

Two points about the Ukraine crisis are crystal clear. First, Vladimir Putin wishes to reimpose Russian control over Ukraine, whatever the price. His political dream of restoring the Soviet sphere of influence is echoed in a wishlist of “security guarantees” presented to western governments by Russia in December 2021. Nato, he maintains, should return to the pre-1997 state of affairs; Russia, apparently, need not.

Second, whatever Putin decides in the current crisis, there are real fears in central and eastern Europe that settled borders are now under threat. These fears are grounded in reason. What seemed unrealistic in the immediate post-cold war years is now again a real possibility. Questions about our collective safety and security have returned, along with memories of a traumatic and not so remote past.

Karolina Wigura is a historian of ideas, board member of the Kultura Liberalna Foundation in Warsaw and a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin

Jarosław Kuisz is a political analyst and essayist, editor-in-chief of the Polish weekly Kultura Liberalna and a policy fellow at the University of Cambridge

Guardian Newsroom: Will Russia invade Ukraine? Join Mark Rice-Oxley, Andrew Roth, Luke Harding, Nataliya Gumenyuk and Orysia Lutsevych discussing the developments with Russia and Ukraine on Tuesday 8 February, 8pm GMT | 9pm CET | midday PDT | 3pm EDT. Book tickets here

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Russia’s belief in Nato ‘betrayal’ – and why it matters today

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The idea that the Soviet Union was tricked in 1989-90 is at the heart of Russia’s confrontation with the west

The current confrontation between Russia and the west is fuelled by many grievances, but the greatest is the belief in Moscow that the west tricked the former Soviet Union by breaking promises made at the end of the cold war in 1989-1990 that Nato would not expand to the east. In his now famous 2007 speech to the Munich Security Conference, Vladimir Putin accused the west of forgetting and breaking assurances, leaving international law in ruins.

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Britain owes an apology to my father and millions of other Indonesians | Kartika Sukarno

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The daughter of the Indonesian president responds to our story about the propaganda war waged against him

My father, Sukarno, the first elected president of Indonesia, was put under house arrest in March 1967 a few days after I was born. He was 67. In the months before, there had been a bloodbath in the country in which he lost many trusted friends and allies. The year before, he had sent my mother, who was pregnant with me, to Japan, her homeland, advising her to return to Indonesia when the situation improved.

It never did. Three years later, in 1970, I saw my father for the first time, on his deathbed. My mother and I had not been allowed to return to the country and we had been living in France. My father died a few hours after our plane from Paris landed. Thanks to the despotic rule of the second president – General Suharto – I was not able to see my father alive, although my mother had tried repeatedly to enter Indonesia.

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Slaughter in Indonesia: Britain’s secret propaganda war

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Declassified documents reveal how in 1965 a shadowy dirty tricks arm of the Foreign Office incited anti-communist massacres that left hundreds of thousands dead

In early 1965 Ed Wynne, an official from the Foreign Office in London in his late 40s, arrived at the door of a two-storey villa set in the discreet calm of a genteel housing estate in colonial Singapore.

But Wynne was no ordinary official. A specialist from the Foreign Office’s cold war propaganda arm, the Information Research Department (IRD), he had been assigned to lead a small team. A junior official, four local people and two “IRD ladies”, seconded to the unit from London, would join him.

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Revealed: how UK spies incited mass murder of Indonesia’s communists

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Newly declassified papers show shocking role played by Britain in slaughter

A propaganda campaign orchestrated by Britain played a crucial part in one of the most brutal massacres of the postwar 20th century, shocking new evidence reveals.

British officials secretly deployed black propaganda in the 1960s to urge prominent Indonesians to “cut out” the “communist cancer”.

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El Alamein, Dresden and a cold war spy: the incredible life of Victor Gregg

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A celebration of the achievements of the Britain’s oldest para veteran, who died last week aged 101

I first met Victor Gregg on a freezing afternoon in 2009 when we were to talk about his experiences in the second world war.

He was 90 and had sent me an email saying he would pick me up at Winchester station. When I arrived there was no sign of him. After 10 minutes a car parked up the road flashed its lights. It was Vic practising a routine he had learned more than 50 years earlier in the Western Desert, when Rifleman Gregg was assigned to Vladimir Peniakoff, the founder of “Popski’s Private Army”, a unit of British special forces. Vic’s job was to drive thousands of miles, alone, through the dunes, carrying stores and intelligence to Popski’s contacts. Vic said Popski had told him: “Before you go in, suss out how you are going to get out.” This was a life lesson for Vic, I had just been “sussed out” by him before going further.

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Louis Armstrong and the spy: how the CIA used him as a ‘trojan horse’ in Congo

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Book reveals how the jazz musician unwittingly became party to secret cold war manoeuvres by the US in Africa

It was a memorable evening: Louis Armstrong, his wife and a diplomat from the US embassy were out for dinner in a restaurant in what was still Léopoldville, capital of the newly independent Congo.

The trumpeter, singer and band leader, nicknamed Satchmo as a child, was in the middle of a tour of Africa that would stretch over months, organised and sponsored by the State Department in a bid to improve the image of the US in dozens of countries which had just won freedom from colonial regimes.

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Cold war or uneasy peace: does defining US-China competition matter?

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Many are beginning to fear the world may soon be caught in the crossfire between Beijing and Washington

In July 1971, US national security adviser Henry Kissinger embarked on a secret mission to China, then America’s sworn enemy. This 48-hour ice-breaking trip paved the way for Richard Nixon’s historic handshake with Chairman Mao a year later. Nixon’s visit altered the strategic geometry of the cold war and influenced Washington’s subsequent movement towards détente with Moscow.

Half a century on, as Joe Biden arrived in Cornwall to attend the G7 meeting, there was a looming sense of history in the making again – one that involves the talk of allies (a group of like-minded democracies) and adversaries (notably Russia and China). It is also one that invokes memories of the cold war in the 1970s, when strategists like Kissinger crafted the art of balancing power between the US, China and the Soviet Union.

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The Good American review: Bob Gersony and a better foreign policy

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Robert D Kaplan’s outstanding book makes a strong case for US engagement based on human rights and helping refugees

What adjective should describe “the American” active in foreign policy? Graham Greene chose “quiet”, as his character harmed a country he did not understand. Eugene Burdick and William Lederer used “ugly”.

Robert D Kaplan, one of America’s most thoughtful chroniclers of foreign affairs, proposes “good” to describe Bob Gersony, who in “a frugal monastic existence that has been both obscure and extraordinary” has devoted his life to using the power and treasure of the US to serve others through humanitarian action.

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George Shultz obituary

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Secretary of state to Ronald Reagan who worked with Mikhail Gorbachev to help end the cold war

Many politicians and diplomats from the 1980s lay claim to a pivotal role in ending the cold war, but the former US secretary of state George Shultz, who has died aged 100, had a better claim than most. And he was not shy in letting people know, as he did at length in his 1,184-page account of his years at the state department, Turmoil and Triumph (1993).

When he became secretary of state in 1982 – a job he was to hold for seven years – relations between the US and the Soviet Union were at a dangerous low. The administration of US president Ronald Reagan was packed with anti-Soviet hardliners. Reagan himself in 1983 dubbed the Soviet Union “the evil empire”.

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George Blake, notorious cold war double agent, dies aged 98

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Former MI6 spy exposed hundreds of western agents and settled in Soviet Union after escape from jail

The former British spy and Soviet Union double agent George Blake has died at the age of 98.

The RIA news agency reported that Blake died in Russia, citing the country’s SVR foreign intelligence agency. “We received some bitter news – the legendary George Blake passed away,” it said.

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The US-China rivalry is not a new cold war, and it’s dangerous to call it that | Mario Del Pero

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Important mistakes could be made if we look to the past to assess current tensions between the two countries

A “new cold war” has become almost a default description of the current rivalry between the United States and China. Some structural similarities do indeed exist with the post-second world war global stage, when the Soviet Union was pitted against the US.

Just as, say, in 1950, we live now in a sort of bipolar system. In terms of economic power, military might, global influence and ability to pollute the planet, two powers – China and the US – clearly stand in a league of their own. And just as during the cold war, this bipolarism is spurious and asymmetrical: simply put, one side – the US – is way more powerful and influential than the other. The similarities end, however, with this systemic parallel. As is often the case when thinking analogically, invoking a cyclical vision of history obfuscates more than it clarifies. More importantly, such thinking produces policy prescriptions – such as promoting an aggressive “containment” of China – which, in addition to being based on a superficial and misleading reading of history, are at best useless and at worst outright dangerous.

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