Soviet Union

Father of containment

November 15, 2011

Henry Kissinger reviews noted Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis‘s new book on the father of [Soviet] containment, George F. Kennan: Nonetheless, no other Foreign Service officer ever shaped American foreign policy so decisively or did so much to define the broader public debate over America’s world role. This process began with two documents remembered [...]

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Russia’s destabilizing foreign policy in Latin America

September 20, 2011

Stephen Blank (professor of national security affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College) in an opinion piece entitled “Russia’s Second Wind in Latin America,” which was published last month, assesses Russia’s foreign policy in Latin America focused on profit, influence, destabilization and anti-Americanism: Russian policy is not driven by Latin America’s views, but by [...]

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Relying on central planning

July 30, 2011

Military strategist John Robb draws parallels between the decline of the Soviet Union and what the United States is experiencing today as the result of the misallocation of resources due to a reliance on central planning. Robb is the author Brave New War, a book that I highly recommend to CPD readers wherein he details a new form of [...]

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Cuban armed forces of yesteryear

December 4, 2010

Via the Atlantic Monthly, twenty-two years ago: Since 1980 Cuba has become the most thoroughly militarized nation on earth. According to the authoritative London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Cuban regular army numbers 145,000 men, most of them conscripted privates who serve for three years. They are backed up by at least 110,000 ready [...]

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Our Little Castro in Belarus

July 30, 2010

Konstantin Sonin, a Professor of Economics at the New Economic School in Moscow, penned an article in the Moscow Times where he compares the economic and political consequences of Moscow’s support of local “tsars:” Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko. The political life of Cuban leader Fidel Castro goes on and on, thwarting all attempts to [...]

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Profound political and economic reforms underway?

July 19, 2010

Mauricio Vicent wrote in today’s El País that in the official media of Cuba there is talk of “reforms” that will be launched after August. According to sources consulted by the daily, the Raul Castro government will make ”changes,” which include: expansion of self-employment and above all the cooperativization of some services; continuation of reductions in subsidies and social [...]

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