TIG Post

Tag: Cold War

  • Germany and its NATO allies aim to jointly purchase air defence systems

    In order to jointly acquire air defence systems that shield allied territory from missiles, Germany and more than a dozen NATO allies have their sights set on the Israeli Arrow 3 system, the US Patriot, and German IRIS-T units, among other options.

    “With this initiative, we are living up to our joint responsibility for security in Europe – by bundling our resources,” Christine Lambrecht, Germany’s defence minister, said during a ceremony at NATO’s Brussels headquarters where 14 countries signed a letter of intent.

    Estonia wasn’t present at the event but will also be part of the initiative, dubbed “European Sky Shield”. In total it comprises half of NATO’s members – including Germany, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Norway, Latvia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Belgium, Czechia, Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, and Slovenia.

    Ground-based air defence systems such as Raytheon’s Patriot units or the more recently developed IRIS-T are in short supply in many Western nations, which were reluctant to invest too much money in military capabilities after the end of the Cold War.

     

  • Mikhail Gorbachev: Mourners line up to pay homage to the final Soviet leader

     The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to peacefully end the Cold War, is being remembered by mourners in Moscow.

    There is somber music playing within the House of Unions’ Columned Hall. On the balcony, a sizable Gorbachev image in black and white is displayed.

    In an open casket, the former president is surrounded by a guard of honor.

    As they pass by, the people lay flowers. There is a sea of red carnations.

    It was here that Gorbachev’s predecessors, Soviet leaders like Lenin, Stalin, and Brezhnev, lay in state, too.

    Many Russians blame Mikhail Gorbachev for launching reforms that caused economic chaos and for letting the Soviet Union fall apart.

    But in the streets around the Hall of Unions, long lines of Muscovites – young and old – are queuing up to pay their respects.

    Liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky is there and he says: “These people came to Gorbachev to say ‘Thank you Mr Gorbachev. You gave us a chance, but we lost this chance.”

    One man who is not here is Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin’s official explanation: No space in his schedule. However, this is widely seen as a snub.

    Mr Putin once called the dissolution of the USSR the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”.

    Mr Gorbachev took power in 1985, introducing bold reforms and opening the USSR to the world.

    But he was unable to prevent the collapse of the union in 1991, and many Russians blame him for the years of turmoil that ensued.

    Outside Russia, he was widely respected, with the UN Secretary-General António Guterres saying he had “changed the course of history”, and US President Joe Biden calling him a “rare leader”.

    But Saturday’s ceremony is not a state funeral – a sign that the current Kremlin leadership has little interest in honouring Mr Gorbachev’s legacy.

    It was well known that Mr Putin and Mr Gorbachev had a strained relationship – their last meeting was reportedly in 2006.

    Mourners attend a memorial service for Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, at the Columned Hall of the House of Unions in Moscow, Russia September 3, 2022.REUTERS

    Former Soviet leaders who died lay in state in the same imposing Columned Hall of the House of Unions

    Most recently, Mr Gorbachev was said to have been unhappy with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, even though he had supported the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.

    The hospital in Moscow where Mr Gorbachev died on Tuesday said in a short statement that he had been suffering from a long and serious illness. It did not reveal the cause of death.

    In recent years, his health had been in decline and he had been in and out of the hospital. In June, international media reported that he had been admitted after suffering from a kidney ailment.

    He is seen in the West as an architect of reform who created the conditions for the end of the Cold War in 1991 – a time of deep tensions between the Soviet Union and Western nations, including the US and Britain.

    He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 “for the leading role he played in the radical changes in East-West relations”.

    But in the new Russia that emerged after 1991, he was on the fringes of politics, focusing on educational and humanitarian projects.

    Gorbachev made one ill-fated attempt to return to political life in 1996, receiving just 0.5% of the vote in presidential elections.

    Reagan and Mikhail GorbachevGETTY IMAGES

    Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987

  • World was safer during Cold War – security adviser

    The West risks entering a nuclear war because it is not talking enough to Russia and China, the UK’s national security adviser has said.

    Sir Stephen Lovegrove said rival powers understood each other better during the Cold War, and that a lack of dialogue today made miscalculations more likely.

    “In the obligatory Churchill quotation, we want jaw-jaw, not war-war,” he said.

    He added that we were in a “new age of proliferation” in which dangerous weapons were more widely available.

    It came ahead of a phone call between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first call between the two leaders since March.

    They are expected to discuss ongoing tensions over Taiwan and Trump-era tariffs on Chinese imports.

    Sir Stephen was delivering a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC, focusing on the implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and what he called a “much broader contest unfolding over the successor to the post-Cold War international order”.

    He said that, throughout the decades of the Cold War, the Western powers benefitted from negotiations that “improved our understanding of Soviet doctrine and capabilities – and vice versa”.

    “This gave us both a higher level of confidence that we would not miscalculate our way into nuclear war,” he said.

    “Today, we do not have the same foundations as others who may threaten us in the future – particularly China.

    “Trust and transparency built through dialogue should also mean that we can be more active in calling out non-compliance and misbehaviors where we see them.”

    Sir Stephen continued that the risk of an “uncontrolled conflict” was being heightened by Russia’s repeated violations of its treaty commitments as well as the pace of China’s expansion of its nuclear arsenal and its apparent “disdain” for arms control agreements.

    He also spoke of the danger associated with the rapid advance of technology and the number of states now developing arms such as land-attack cruise missiles.

    He said there was “no immediate prospect of all of the major powers coming together to establish new agreements”, so the Nato powers could focus on “work of strategic risk reduction”.

    “We should take early action to renew and strengthen confidence-building measures to… reduce, or even eliminate the causes of mistrust, fear, tensions and hostilities,” he said.

    “[Such measures] help one side interpret correctly the actions of the other in a pre-crisis situation through an exchange of reliable and uninterrupted information on each other’s intentions.

    “Confidence and trust grow when states are open about their military capacities and plans.”

    The threat of nuclear war hung over the Cold War. At times in the early 1960s and early 1980s there were risks it might flare hot.

    But overall, structures were put in place – like arms control negotiations and hotlines – for the two sides to talk.

    But many of those same guard-rails are not around now, as tensions grow between the West, Russia and China.

    New technologies like cyber-attacks could quickly escalate a conflict in unpredictable ways, while new types of delivery systems may tempt countries to use nuclear weapons in different ways.

    And hanging over all of this is the concern that more countries are seeking to develop their own weapons.

    Altogether, that leads to the fear that this emerging and unstable world could be more dangerous than that of the past.

    Source: bbc.com