Allusions to the past

1) The two Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers, which Russian media sources say were intercepted twice by NATO aircraft over Iceland and the Norwegian Sea on their way westward, landed at Venezuela's El Libertador air base on the eve of the significant date of September 11.

Their presence is intended as a "warning" to the U.S.

President Hugo Chavez said yesterday: "It's a warning. Russia is with us. ... We are strategic allies. It is a message to the empire."

2) "For those with a sense of history, a factor behind the 1962 Cuban missile crisis was Washington’s deployment of Atlas IRBMs in Italy and Turkey, which, in the wake of the confrontation, Washington quietly agreed to remove, as the development of ballistic missile submarines, the final component of Washington’s nuclear triad, obviated the need for forward basing of nuclear missiles off Russia’s southern shore. Forty years later, Turkey, sea power, and the Caribbean as subplots in rising U.S.-Russian tensions seem as interconnected as ever." (John C. K. Daly)