“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” This famous quote, widely attributed to Mark Twain, keeps playing in my mind as China mourns the death of former premier Zhu Rongji and reflects on his legacy. It was early afternoon on August 12 when I received a message from a friend on the mainland that…
When Operation Desert Storm ended in 1991, it blew the Soviet Union’s collective mind—and Moscow’s hangover has never ended. The hardest pill the Soviet general staff would have to swallow was that Iraq was fighting with Soviet doctrine: Soviet gear, Soviet training, and a Soviet-style air defense concept. The Russians expected Baghdad to be a…
ROBERT OPPENHEIMER, the father of America’s nuclear bomb, described his country’s atomic rivalry with the Soviet Union as “two scorpions in a bottle”. The risks of this standoff have been contained over the years by various arms-control agreements, most recently New START. But that treaty expires on February 5th, with no replacement—and to make matters…
NATO air planners looking east during the Cold War faced a vast, intimidating armada of bombers and attack aircraft. With superior numbers, the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Pact nations brandished a massive hammer of both nuclear and ‘conventional’ destructive force. Here are 12 Soviet combat aircraft that kept NATO awake at night: 12:…
Another high-stakes face-off between the United States and China has come and gone. The much-anticipated summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in Busan, South Korea, resulted in agreement on several points. The US agreed to reduce its so-called fentanyl tariffs on China by 10 per cent, suspend recently tightened technology…
Published on: Nov 03, 2025 09:15 pm IST The era of the Cold War had seen a different G2 — the US and the erstwhile Soviet Union — and nations were forced to align with one of the two blocs President Donald Trump has promoted the concept of a G2 — a grouping of the…
As China’s leadership meets this week to chart a policy course for the 15th five-year plan – China’s development blueprint for the rest of the decade – events that unfolded more than 70 years ago are echoing again. The growing external challenges of today have similarities to those the country faced in the 1950s –…