Cold War

YULI VORONTSOV, 78 Russian diplomat Yuli Vorontsov, who served the Soviet Union and Russia as ambassador to Afghanistan and the United States in a career spanning the Cold War and the Gulf War, died Wednesday in Moscow, the Foreign Ministry said. He also served as ambassador to the United Nations, France and India, and as the U.N. envoy overseeing the return or repatriation of the remains of Kuwaitis and others missing after the first Gulf War.

There's a little burning at first, and soreness can last a few days. But the shot in the arm is nothing compared with the misery of the flu, says Janet Howard, a certified medical assistant at Concentra Medical Center in downtown Baltimore. Nicknamed a "sticker," she can't count how many inoculations she's given since the beginning of last month when influenza season began. The flu shots are the best preventive measure against the worst of the winter viruses. But not everyone can or will get them.

This month, there was another parliamentary parlor game in Congress over the Iraq war. The occasion was the debate over the 2008 defense budget, which offered opponents of the war the opportunity to offer amendments for withdrawal timetables. But intentionally lost in the debate was a larger discussion of the budget itself. Before adjourning for the Columbus Day holiday, the Senate quietly passed a $460 billion defense appropriations bill. Add to this figure the nearly $200 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and the cost of nuclear weapons activities in the energy bill - and we're talking about $700 billion for defense.

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said the Army needs more money, not just to make up for the losses suffered in Iraq but also for chronic underfunding since the end of the Cold War. But Gates suggested that rather than using additional money to rebuild conventional war capability, the Army should ensure that it does not again forget the painful lessons it was forced to relearn in Iraq about fighting against an insurgency. Gates argued in a speech yesterday that after the Vietnam War, the Army "relegated unconventional war to the margins" of its training and spending priorities.

As the Bush administration attempts to beat back the nuclear weapons ambitions of Iran and North Korea, it recently raised the specter that the United States has become perilously close to neutering its own atomic capacity. The alarmist forecast emerges in "National Security and Nuclear Weapons: Maintaining Deterrence in the 21st Century," a July statement by the secretaries of defense, state and energy. According to the secretaries, the "aging" and "hazardous" Cold War stockpile puts at risk "the long-term ability of the United States to sustain its strategy of deterrence [and]

Statecraft And How to Restore America's Standing in the World Dennis Ross Farrar Straus Giroux / 370 pages / $26 Dennis Ross is scarcely the first person to conclude that the Bush administration "has roiled, not regulated, international security." But his views ought to matter. The chief peace negotiator in the Middle East for George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Ross is now a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. A neo-liberal, he is not opposed to the use of force, or, when the threat is imminent, to pre-emptive war. Unlike neoconservatives, Ross believes that democracy takes hold when it emerges from within, not when it is imposed from outside.

WASHINGTON -- After fighting to keep them secret for more than three decades, the CIA released hundreds of documents yesterday that catalog some of the most egregious intelligence abuses of the Cold War, including assassination plots against foreign leaders and illegal efforts to spy on Americans. The records are part of a trove of jealously guarded documents long known within the agency as "the family jewels." Assembled in the early 1970s as part of an internal probe of potentially embarrassing or illegal activities, the records were subsequently turned over to Congress, prompting multiple investigations and sweeping intelligence reforms.

In an indie scene where fashion, drugs, attitude and hair can determine one's authenticity, there is apparently zero tolerance for Christ. That seems to be the message coming out of a dustup over the Cold War Kids, a Long Beach, Calif.-based quartet performing before a sold-out crowd tonight at Washington's 9:30 Club. If you go The Cold War Kids perform at a sold-out show at 8 tonight at the 9:30 Club, 815 V St. N.W., Washington. 930.com.

WASHINGTON -- Donald H. Rumsfeld used his farewell address as defense secretary yesterday to warn against a weakening of American will in Iraq, saying a withdrawal of troops might provide short-term relief from U.S. casualties but would embolden extremist enemies. Joined by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at a Pentagon ceremony, Rumsfeld defied critics of his conduct of the war, saying a failure to project military strength would make the U.S. more vulnerable. "A conclusion by our enemies that the United States lacks the will or the resolve to carry out missions that demand sacrifice and demand patience is every bit as dangerous as an imbalance of conventional military power," he said.