Cold War

• Fresh U.S. intelligence circulating in Congress reportedly indicates that Russia is developing an anti-satellite weapon in space with a nuclear component.
• Others suspect a weapon that is nuclear-powered but not a nuclear warhead.
• Relations between the United States and Russia are at their lowest in decades, and Russia is currently waging a war of aggression in Ukraine.
• This list includes Russia, the U.S., China and India, although none currently field weapons in space.

Cold War schemes

The recent revelations about Russian space weapons raise the specter that countries may decide to deploy nuclear weapons in space at some point. Some have tried before. The U.S. and Soviet Union researched nuclear detonations in space during the Cold War. In the late 1960s, the Soviets tested a missile that could be placed in low Earth orbit and be capable of coming out of orbit and carrying a nuclear warhead to Earth.

• Moscow and Washington negotiated these treaties to contain the Cold War arms race.
• These treaties constrained behavior in the late Cold War.

Nukes in space

• But why would a country want space nukes?
• In theory, weapons from space could avoid early detection radars and missile defenses.
• However, there are significant disadvantages to firing nuclear weapons directly from space.

Satellite killers

• Both precision-strike weapons and ground-based forces rely on satellite constellations like GPS or the Russian GLONASS system to find and reach targets.
• Countries may also want the ability to destroy an enemy’s space weapons, including space-based missile defenses.
• Nuclear weapons damage satellites because of a wave of gamma radiation that is created by a nuclear detonation.
• This radiation damages critical subsystems within a satellite.

New arms race?

• While there is not a universally accepted definition of strategic stability, scholars frequently define it as a combination of crisis stability, based on the risk of nuclear escalation during a military crisis, and arms race stability – when countries can avoid actions and reactions that spiral into a costly and dangerous arms race.
• Space-based nuclear weapons increase the risk that a country would resort to nuclear weapons during a crisis.
• Placing nuclear weapons in space could spark a new arms race.
• Escalatory pressures and the threat of an arms race exist even if the first mover places weapons in space defensively.

Spenser A. Warren does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• The war in Gaza isn’t only challenging the geopolitics of the Middle East: It is also complicating matters in Ukraine, as Russia seeks to capitalize on growing anti-Israeli sentiment in the Global South.
• Russia was slow to condemn the Oct. 7 attack in Israel and has hosted a succession of Hamas delegations in Moscow.
• As an expert on modern Russia, I see deeper dynamics at work.

‘A century of antisemitism’

• The Gaza war erupted at a crucial moment in the conflict in Ukraine.
• Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the fall of 2022 had stalled, while Republicans in the U.S. Congress blocked the Biden administration’s efforts to send more aid to Ukraine.
• At no point during her lengthy remarks, which ran to 1,500 words, did Zakharova mention that Jews had been among Hitler’s victims.
• The omission led to criticism that Russia is deliberately downplaying if not denying the Jewish Holocaust.

Weaponizing hate

• This is not the first time that the Russian foreign ministry has opened itself to accusations of antisemitism.
• (That Zelensky is Jewish) means absolutely nothing.
• And Lavrov soon returned to the theme of equating the actions of perceived enemies with those of Nazis.

This rising tide of state propaganda spilled over into some actual acts of mob antisemitism. In October 2023, at an airport in Dagestan, a Muslim-majority province in southern Russia, a a crowd hunted for Jewish refugees after a flight landed from Israel. Moscow has been accused of doing little to rein in such manifestations of antisemitism.

Distorting history

• Zakharova’s remarks can be seen as a continuation of the Soviet tradition of Holocaust denial.
• As the Soviet Union drew into closer alliance with the Arab world in the 1960s, the Soviet Union became increasingly hostile to U.S.-backed Israel.
• For example, Moscow was a sponsor of the controversial United Nations Resolution 3379, which denounced Zionism as a form of racism.
• The resolution, seen by critics as fueling antisemitism, passed the U.N. General Assembly in 1975 but was revoked in 1991.

Putin’s flirtation with antisemitism

• During the first years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, he had a very positive attitude toward Israel.
• In 2005, he was the first Russian leader to visit Israel.
• However, after 2021, as Russian officials started making absurd claims about neo-Nazis being in power in Kyiv, the relationship with Israel cooled.

Putin’s ploy may backfire

• Russia’s ploy to link the wars in Gaza and Ukraine may win it a few more friends in the Global South.
• But it risks alienating influential players such as India, which under Narendra Modi has become increasingly pro-Israel.
• The strikes by Houthi militants on ships in the Red Sea are of concern to India and others who see their international trade disrupted.

Peter Rutland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• It turned out Hunka had fought against the Allies as a voluntary member of the Nazi German Waffen-SS Galizien division.
• As I discuss in my new book, Fascists in Exile, Canada isn’t the only country where former Nazis fled after the second world war.

• Last year, however, his secret history was revealed: he was found to be a member of Nazi intelligence in occupied Lithuania during the second world war.
• He was almost certainly involved in the persecution and murders of Jews.

Denial, then investigations

• This group included soldiers who had fought in German military units, as well as civilian collaborators.
• But their resettlement in any country that would take them was a matter of political expediency in the fraught post-war and early Cold War period.

• The then immigration minister, Arthur Calwell, dismissed their claims as a “farrago of nonsense”.
• The migrants were used as labourers under a two-year indentured labour scheme and transformed into what the government called “New Australians”.
• Australia received at least eight extradition requests between 1950 and the mid-1960s for individuals suspected of WWII-era crimes from Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.
• As a result, there would be no further official discussions about any alleged perpetrators residing in Australia.

Family histories unearthed

• Many alleged perpetrators of crimes never appeared on any official, or unofficial, list, either before or after the Australian investigation.
• My own research, for example, has resulted in the compiling of hundreds of such names by painstakingly piecing together various archival fragments.
• For example, a colleague and I were alerted to some suspicious phrasing when the family of Hungarian migrant Ferenc Molnar, now deceased, placed a commemorative biography on the website Immigration Place Australia.
• The SBS television show Every Family Has a Secret has been approached by at least four people who have suspected a deceased family member was a Holocaust perpetrator or collaborator.

Dr Jayne Persian receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

• Following recitation of portions of the Lotus Sutra and the chanting of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, appreciation was expressed by Senior Vice President Hiromasa Ikeda on behalf of the Ikeda family, and national Women's Leader Kimiko Nagaishi and Soka Gakkai President Minoru Harada gave tributes.
• Daisaku Ikeda was a Buddhist philosopher, peacebuilder, educator, author and poet who dedicated his life to promoting peace through dialogue and spearheaded the Soka Gakkai Buddhist organization's international development.
• In 1947, Ikeda met Josei Toda, pacifist and leader of the Soka Gakkai who had been imprisoned by the militarist government during the war.
• Daisaku Ikeda (1928-2023) was President of the Soka Gakkai from 1960-79 and founding President of the SGI from 1975.