US Secretary of State Pompeo continues to travel the world, creating alarm, resentment and irritation almost everywhere. He maintained his lamentable reputation for crass rudeness by cancelling a meeting with Germany’s Chancellor Merkel on May 8 in order to go to Iraq, apparently to try to justify Washington’s despatch of nuclear-capable B-52H bombers and an aircraft carrier battle group to menace Iran.
The dream of Governor Gilpin and Tsar Nicholas II to unite both worlds new and old with rail will occur, as long as the west chooses to take history seriously and not sleepwalk into world war once more.
Whether the Arctic will become a platform for cooperation or warfare has been a question often posed throughout the past 150 years.
Our review of the State of the Nation speech given by President Vladimir Putin draws to a close. The speech was massive, and there remain in fact areas that we still did not cover that are worth reading in the full speech, linked here. However, insofar as Russian technology meets the world stage, this last area, scientific research and development, is extremely visible and important.
Since Russia’s Arctic economic and military activities have grown exponentially over the past few years, western press, especially in Canada which has long shared disputed Arctic Territory with Russia, have periodically sounded warning alarms to provoke fear that the Great bear is awakening with ambitions that threaten Canada and the Free world (which are often spun as synonymous concepts).
NATO military drills, dubbed Trident Juncture 2018, are currently taking place in Norway.
The military war game involves approximately 50,000 troops from 31 countries, 10,000 combat vehicles, 65 ships and 250 aircraft, all of which make up the the largest such exercise hosted by Norway since the 1980s and the largest military drill NATO has held in decades.
Trident Juncture 2018 started last week and will run until November 7.
Britain’s Daily Mail is a strident rag that is bought daily by over a million people who agree with its stance that most foreigners are inferior to Brits.
On September 30 the UK’s foreign minister, Jeremy Hunt, delivered an astonishing tirade, saying “The EU was set up to protect freedom. It was the Soviet Union that stopped people leaving. The lesson from history is clear: if you turn the EU club into a prison, the desire to get out won’t diminish, it will grow — and we won’t be the only prisoner that will want to escape.”
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union considered building a fleet of missile-armed Lun-class wing-in-ground-effect vehicles, also known as the “Ekranoplan.”
Russia’s fleet of icebreakers and Arctic capable ships have a unique ability to transport goods from Northern Europe to East Asia. During the Eastern Economic Forum, Vladimir Putin held talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in about the possibility of a free trade agreement between Seoul and the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union.
