Oriental Review

US Missile Shields Demand a New Tough Response

Wrapping up the “sidelines” meeting at the Seoul nuclear summit, Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama acknowledged by mutual consent they failed to get ahead in finding a common stance on the most acute but still unsolved issue of global dimension – the creation of some kind of “cooperative” Russia – USA / NATO joint ballistic [...]

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US Ambassador’s Silicone Brains

On Monday January 30, 2012 a leading Russian TV channel showed an unexpectedly significant interview with Michael McFaul, the recently appointed US Ambassador to Russia. Why ‘unexpectedly’? Because the host of the show was Vladimir Pozner, patriarch of the Soviet/Russian television widely known for his pro-Western, liberal and hedonistic stance. We expected a regular one-way [...]

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The End of Reset

US Department of State spokeswoman Victoria Nuland announced on November 22 that the US stops supplying to Russia the data on conventional arms in Europe. Furthermore, Russian inspectors would not be admitted to US military bases in Europe. What could be the reasoning behind the radical US step which, it must be noted, fits with [...]

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Missile Defense: America Wants Russia to Take Her on Trust

The United States does not believe it has to give Russia a legal guarantee that the developmental American missile defense system is not directed against them. “We have given legally binding guarantees on offensive weapons against Russia. And that is really what they need,” said Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the State and Foreign Operations Subcommittee [...]

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The Prague Treaty Has Been Ratified: Now What?

Vladimir Yevseyev (Russia) On January 26, 2011, the Federation Council of Russia’s Federal Assembly ratified the New Russian-American Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). It shows that the “restart” of relations between our countries is on track. The US Senate consented to the Treaty in December. Now, only formalities remain to be done in order [...]

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The Lame Ducks Season

Irina Lebedeva (USA) November 15 will open the lame ducks season in the US: in the six weeks left till the new Congress is to take over, voting by the politicians temporarily exempt from accountability to their constituencies may produce otherwise unlikely results. The November 3 midterm elections predictably marked a comeback of the Republicans [...]

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Russian Reset Policy to Be Reviewed?

ORIENTAL REVIEW on Political Trust and Human Deception So far the most tangible outcome of notorious ‘Reset’ of the US-Russian relations (or perezagruzka, another Russian word of the global outreach) announced by foreign ministers last year was the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START III). As a reminder it limits the number of deployed strategic [...]

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Does America consider Russia friend or foe? Antimissile system will show

Washington and NATO have recently declared the intention of enhancing their partnership with Russia, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the saying goes, not in the promises. The “reset” of relations between the United States and Russia increasingly resembles a backroom card game, where the players are trying to read each [...]

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Unrevealed Aspects of START III

Viktor Kovalev (Russia) It became known almost immediately after the new START treaty was inked that the US had successfully tested its X-31 unpiloted spaceplane which would in the future serve as a space platform for high accuracy delivery vehicles carrying non-nuclear (or, potentially, nuclear) munitions. The system – an aero-ballistic capsule – is supposed [...]

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The World Has Moved Towards a Future Free of Nuclear Weapons

Taking stock of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington Delegations from 47 countries, plus the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency—the IAEA—and the European Union participated in the forum. Russia was represented by President Dmitry Medvedev. Discussions on all measures were closed, but we know that the heads of state spent most of their [...]

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Pres. Obama’s Nuclear ‘Pigeon’ Campaign

Leonid IVASHOV (Russia) Yesterday the United States officially introduced their new Nuclear Doctrine. Tomorrow, on April 8, 2010, the long-awaited START III Treaty between Russia and the US is about to be signed in Prague, Czech Republic. On April 12-13 Pres. Obama will host the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington D.C. In other words, we [...]

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