Cold War

Ben Macintyre's Redwood explores a Cold War spy defection that had deadly consequences for Iran

Polar War reflects the current reality of security considerations overwhelming all others, including the threat of climate change

A sweeping history traces the US Constitution's roots to medieval England, arguing it was shaped by crisis and expansion rather than pure ideals of liberty

How the US is abandoning the openness that helped it win the Cold War

Vasili Mitrokhin's lonely defiance inside the KGB reveals how a rotting security state hastened the Soviet collapse - and how its ghosts still haunt Russia today

A plutonium-packed generator disappeared on one of the world's highest mountains in a hush-hush mission the US still won't talk about

A balanced yet probing biography traces Francis Crick's brilliant scientific leaps and human flaws, revealing the mind behind DNA's discovery without fully interrogating his more troubling ideas

A timely book by Arvind Gupta and Rajesh Singh expands the idea of national security beyond the military to include climate, technology, and economic vulnerabilities

How a self-effacing, self-taught school headmaster from a small Burmese village became one of the most influential figures at the UN in the 1960s

For most Americans, the hostage crisis was the revolution's defining event

How the CIA, instead of pursuing scandalous swashbuckling interventions, smuggled books to weaken the Iron Curtain and offer Eastern Europe a glimpse of an alternative future

China on Sunday denounced US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth for calling the Asian country a threat, accusing him of touting a Cold War mentality as tensions between Washington and Beijing further escalate. The foreign ministry said Hegseth had vilified Beijing with defamatory allegations the previous day before at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a global security conference. The statement also accused the United States of inciting conflict and confrontation in the region. Hegseth deliberately ignored the call for peace and development by countries in the region, and instead touted the Cold War mentality for bloc confrontation, it said, referring to the post-World War II rivalry between the US and the former Soviet Union. No country in the world deserves to be called a hegemonic power other than the US itself, it said, alleging that Washington is also undermining peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific. Hegseth said in Singapore on Saturday that Washington will bolster its defences oversea

India's military spending in 2024 was nearly nine times that of Pakistan's expenditure, according to a study released on Monday by a leading Swedish think-tank that comes amid growing tensions between the two countries over the Pahalgam attack. India's military expenditure, the fifth largest globally, grew by 1.6 per cent to USD 86.1 billion while Pakistan's spent USD 10.2 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The top five military spenders -- the United States, China, Russia, Germany and India -- accounted for 60 per cent of the global total, with combined spending of USD 1635 billion, it said. China's military expenditure increased by 7.0 per cent to an estimated USD 314 billion, marking three decades of consecutive growth, the study noted. The communist nation accounted for 50 per cent of all military spending in Asia and Oceania, investing in the continued modernisation of its military and expansion of its cyberwarfare capabilities

The meeting of the US and Russian delegations in Istanbul followed initial talks in February, after the war in Ukraine triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since Cold War

The Kremlin said on Monday that President Vladimir Putin had made the decision to grant asylum in Russia to Assad

After a year of secret negotiations, 24 prisoners were swapped: 16 moved from Russia to the West, and eight from the West to Russia

Earlier this month, the US said it would start deploying long-range missiles in Germany from 2026

The move would have been banned under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by the US and the Soviet Union in 1987 but that collapsed in 2019