Robert Hanssen, a former F.B.I. agent who was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for spying for Moscow during and after the Cold War in one of the most damaging espionage cases in American history, was found dead in his cell in a federal prison in Colorado on Monday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons […]
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The White House will renew its effort to draw China into discussions about entering arms control talks, President Biden’s national security adviser said on Friday, and will attempt to establish a global accord that specifies that artificial intelligence programs can never be used to authorize the use of nuclear weapons without a human in the […]
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From 1950 to 1990, the U.S. Energy Department produced an average of four nuclear bombs every day, turning them out of hastily built factories with few environmental safeguards that left behind a vast legacy of toxic radioactive waste. Nowhere were the problems greater than at the Hanford Site in Washington State, where engineers sent to […]
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Though peace seems distant, the United States and Europe are debating how to guarantee Ukraine’s security once the fighting with Russia stops, even without a total victory by either side. West Germany may provide a model, a precedent for admitting a divided country into NATO. Despite its division and unhappy role as the border between […]
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Ever since World War II ended, Japan has been passing the buck. Sheltered by the postwar U.S. security alliance, Japan provided bases for American forces but kept its own military spending remarkably low for a country of its size and wealth, resisting American urging to share more of the burden. China makes that no longer […]
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To understand why progressives should challenge Joe Biden in the upcoming Democratic presidential primary, remember what happened during the last one. When Bernie Sanders exited the 2020 race — after winning more than 1,000 delegates — he cashed in his votes for public policy clout. Mr. Sanders’s supporters joined Mr. Biden’s allies in working groups […]
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Just days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Moscow’s forces massing on the border, officials in the medieval town of Lützen, Germany, afforded landmark status to a Soviet-era World War II memorial standing outside a kindergarten in the town center. “Glory to the great Russian people — the nation of victors,” reads an inscription […]
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BORNE SULINOWO, Poland — Set in a thick forest, ringed by limpid lakes and free of violent crime, the town of Borne Sulinowo in northwestern Poland has undeniable bucolic charm — except for the ghosts on every eerily quiet street of the Nazi and then Soviet soldiers who built it. Governed for the past three […]
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WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s most recent package of weapons for Ukraine includes relics from the Cold War to help blunt Russian advances and limit their ability to maneuver during an expected spring offensive. Those weapons, M21 anti-tank land mines, have been in service with the Defense Department since at least the early 1960s. An unknown […]
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Last month, Mr. Putin announced that Russia would suspend participation in the New START treaty — the last surviving arms-control agreement between the two largest nuclear-armed powers. Last weekend, he said he would position nuclear weapons in Belarus, provoking an outcry from NATO. But beyond making nuclear threats, the Kremlin’s options for how to hit […]
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Some leading intellectuals tell me that they resent Chinese online influencers and social-media nationalists for the same reason that I dislike Fox News: They’re opportunists, weakening their country with lies. Chinese nationalists, leftists, economic liberals — it’s hard to find a Chinese thinker alive today who hasn’t been profoundly influenced by American society and culture. […]
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Edward Wong contributed reporting. The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, […]
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Yet even the sharply reduced Russian and American nuclear arsenals are still enough to wipe out much of the world, China is pushing hard to become the third nuclear superpower, and at least six other countries, including the uber-dictatorship North Korea, have nuclear weapons (the others: Britain, France, Israel, India and Pakistan). Perversely, the complexity […]
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HELSINKI — A year ago, the day Russia invaded Ukraine and set in motion a devastating European ground war, President Sauli Niinisto of Finland declared: “Now the masks are off. Only the cold face of war is visible.” The Finnish head of state, in office for more than a decade, had met with President Vladimir […]
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WARSAW — President Biden’s sudden appearance in Kyiv’s presidential palace on Monday morning was intended first as a morale booster for shellshocked Ukrainians in the midst of a bleak winter of power outages and a bitter war of attrition. But it was also the first of several direct challenges on this trip to President Vladimir […]
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A few days before Christmas, a convoy of security vehicles invaded a quiet corner of Weilheim, a quaint Bavarian town of pastel squares and fastidiously kept cobblestone streets. Their target seemed as unassuming as the setting: a local children’s soccer coach. Before then, nothing had stood out about the man, fellow coaches recalled. He was […]
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The echo from the episode, though, serves as a reminder that powerful countries regularly spy on one another, which generally becomes a problem when it goes public or leads to misunderstanding or tragedy. In 1983, a Soviet warplane shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 after it veered into Russian airspace at night, killing 269 […]
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