Category Archives: Cold War

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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Pope in open challenge to Poland’s martial law – archive, 12 June 1987

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12 June 1987: The meeting of John Paul II and the leader of Solidarity, Lech Walesa, is a turning point for the post-communist future of the country

The Pope came to Poland’s Baltic coast last night, and confirmed what he called “the important reality of the term ‘solidarity’ and its eternal significance.”

Speaking once again to a rapt audience of a million or more, each one hanging on his every word, he declared: “The word ‘solidarity’ was uttered right here, in a new way and in a new context. And the world cannot forget it.”

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Under Boris Johnson, Putin and Trump the world has uncanny parallels to 1945

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Russia on the offensive, Brexit Britain stands alone, and US disdain for European allies recalls its naivety with Stalin

Victory in Europe was made possible by a remarkable military collaboration between the main anti-Axis powers – the US, Russia and Britain. But the three-way relationship, between Franklin D Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, was never easy, and it set a pattern of national rivalry, suspicion, fear and distrust that persists to this day.

A row over a top-secret message, known as SCAF-252, sent to Stalin in late March 1945 by Gen Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme allied commander, shows how fraught the relationship could be. In it, Eisenhower detailed his plans for the final defeat of Nazi Germany – but omitted to first consult or inform his British allies.

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Poland marks 10 years since plane crash that killed ruling elite

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Nationalists renew criticism of Moscow’s handling of disaster which killed president and other senior politicians and military officers

Poland’s ruling nationalists held scaled-down events to commemorate the 10th anniversary of a plane crash in Russia that killed top politicians and military officers, and renewed criticism of Moscow’s handling of the disaster.

Senior officials laid wreaths on Friday at a monument in the capital, Warsaw, to honour the late president Lech Kaczynski, who died. They walked in single file, guarded by police wearing surgical masks.

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MoD proposed Russian membership of Nato in 1995, files reveal

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Released papers expose ‘associate membership’ plan and Yeltsin’s drinking habits

Russia could have become an “associate member” of Nato 25 years ago if a Ministry of Defence proposal had gained support, according to confidential Downing Street files which also expose Boris Yeltsin’s drinking habits.

The suggestion, aimed at reversing a century of east-west antagonism, is revealed in documents released on Tuesday by the National Archives at Kew.

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In place of Berlin’s Wall now stands a barrier of sullen resentment | Neal Ascherson

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Reunification has only fed resentment and alienation among the ‘losers’ of the old East Germany

But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.

The night the Berlin Wall opened was like that. Thirty years on, I know people who were there and whose eyes fill with tears when they try to talk about it. Seamus Heaney understood how the “moment of rhyme”, when the right thing suddenly and unexpectedly and enormously happens, can last for a lifetime. The unrepeatable shock of recognition.

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‘It was gut-wrenching’: Berlin Wall tunneller recalls 1971 capture

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Tunnel to East Berlin filled in by Stasi is excavated and opened to public for first time

A tunnel built under the Berlin Wall to allow dozens of East Germans to escape to freedom has been exposed for the first time in almost half a century.

Hundreds of volunteers, including some of the original tunnellers, dug up 189 cubic metres of earth beneath a 19th century brewery to allow access to the former escape route. It will open to the public on Monday as part of celebrations to mark 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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‘My ties to England have loosened’: John le Carré on Britain, Boris and Brexit

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At 87, le Carré is publishing his 25th novel. He talks to John Banville about our ‘dismal statesmanship’ and what he learned from his time as a spy

I have always admired John le Carré. Not always without envy – so many bestsellers! – but in wonderment at the fact that the work of an artist of such high literary accomplishment should have achieved such wide appeal among readers. That le Carré, otherwise David Cornwell, has chosen to set his novels almost exclusively in the world of espionage has allowed certain critics to dismiss him as essentially unserious, a mere entertainer. But with at least two of his books, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and A Perfect Spy (1986), he has written masterpieces that will endure.

Which other writer could have produced novels of such consistent quality over a career spanning almost 60 years, since Call for the Dead in 1961, to his latest, Agent Running in the Field, which he is about to publish at the age of 87. And while he has hinted that this is to be his final book, I am prepared to bet that he is not done yet. He is just as intellectually vigorous and as politically aware as he has been at any time throughout his long life.

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Confession of British spy for the Soviets made public for first time

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Double agent Kim Philby’s confession partially released to National Archives

Extracts from Kim Philby’s official confession to the UK’s security services in which he likens joining the Soviet secret police to signing up to the army, have been made public for the first time.

Philby, one of the Soviet Union’s most notorious British cold war spies, fled to Moscow shortly after his 1963 admission of guilt.

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Revolutionary poster designs from cold-war Cuba – in pictures

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An upcoming exhibition at London’s House of Illustration collects 185 posters and magazines from Cuba’s golden age of design, from the 1960s to the early 90s.

“The posters tell us that Cuba sees supporting the struggles of liberation movements internationally as an integral part of its own revolution,” says curator Olivia Ahmad.

Designed in Cuba: Cold War Graphics is at House of Illustration, London N1 from 27 Sept to 19 Jan

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How a pan-European picnic brought down the Iron Curtain

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On 19 August 1989, Hungarians and Austrians gathered in friendship at the border, paving the way to unification

When the end finally came for the Iron Curtain, it was not bulldozers or hammers that struck one of the first decisive blows, but a picnic.

Thirty years ago this Monday, on 19 August 1989, thousands of Hungarians and Austrians gathered at the border fence between the two countries, which also marked the dividing line between the Communist bloc and the west. They had come for a “pan-European picnic” of solidarity and friendship across the Iron Curtain, as momentum for political change increased and the Eastern bloc regimes struggled to keep up with rising popular discontent.

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Now kids, help us to kill Bin Laden! The dark side of Washington’s spy museum

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The bugged shoes and poison brollies are fun and fascinating. But why are the sections about state-sponsored torture and assassination so uncritical?

Sitting in a glass case, standing out against a backdrop of deep red, there’s an ice axe that still bears a rust mark, the consequence of a bloody fingerprint left on it decades ago. One day in 1940, this axe was hidden inside Ramón Mercader’s suit jacket, suspended by a string, as he walked into the office of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary living in exile in Mexico, having been sentenced to death as an “enemy of the people” in his home country.

Mercader slipped behind Trotsky’s desk and brought the axe down with tremendous force, penetrating two-and-three-quarter inches into his skull. Trotsky died 26 hours later. Mercader served 20 years in prison then returned to a hero’s welcome in Moscow. On his deathbed in 1978, his last words were: “I hear it always. I hear the scream. I know he’s waiting for me on the other side.”

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Smuggled over the border: the school trip, the Stasi and the East German defector – podcast

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In December 1984, a group of teenagers on a school trip from West Germany crossed the border into East Germany. When they returned, an East German defector was hiding under a seat on their bus. Sophie Hardach speaks to those involved 35 years on and revisits their incredible story. Plus: Jo Holdaway on the GM anti-virus drug that saved her daughter’s life

It began as a typical 1980s school trip: a group of teenagers piled on to a bus, Duran Duran were on the stereo and spirits were high. What happened next caused a sensation: it was part The Famous Five and part John le Carré thriller.

The teenagers were from Marburg in West Germany, crossing the border into East Germany. While they were there, they managed to evade their minders and hatched a plot to smuggle a young defector out of the country with them. It was a plan fraught with danger: leaving East Germany was a criminal offence and hundreds of people had been killed making the attempt.

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‘Ma’amageddon’: secret plans for Queen’s nuclear address revealed

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National Archives’ cold war exhibition shows planned scenarios such as arrest of Michael Foot

In the apocalyptic event of a nuclear strike on Britain, the government offered householders make-do-and-mend advice on how to create refuge shelters under stairs and tables, and knock up temporary toilets from a chair and bucket.

Few were reassured by the DIY defences advocated in the widely lampooned public information “Protect and Survive” pamphlet, published in 1980, and a new cold war exhibition at the National Archives in Kew, featuring such a shelter, will do little to augment faith in this as a robust strategy for civilian survival.

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New York state security: Manhattan’s KGB Spy Museum – in pictures

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A museum in New York claims to be the only collection focusing on the KGB’s espionage operations in the world. The newly opened exhibition hall, housed in a former warehouse on 14th Street, is home to 3,500 original period objects, which the designer of the museum, Julius Urbaitis, has gathered after 30 years of research around the world

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The Walking Dead: Rick Grimes launches war against Negan

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John McCain mocks Trump as he savages wealthy young men who avoided the Vietnam draft 'with a doctor's note for a bone spur' - the same reason the president gave for not going to war US ready to put 'nuclear bombers on 24-hour alert' for the first time since the end of the Cold War amid growing tensions with Russia and North Korea 'Even when he was mean to me he was funny': Jay Leno pens an touching tribute to his long-time rival Letterman congratulating him on his Mark Twain award... but still reminds everyone he won it FIRST Body of little girl, 3, who went missing after her father put her out in an alleyway 'frequented by coyotes' at 3am as punishment for not drinking her milk has been 'found in a culvert' Kathy Griffin lashes out at attorney Lisa Bloom asking her to refund the tens of thousands of dollars she wasted on her legal services after the Trump severed head controversy ... (more)