Teaching Assistant Evaluation Form Of The Department Of: Fill & Download for Free

YesI did an introductory session on OOP in MATLAB and solving differential equations for all first year bioengineering graduate students.I also prepared and taught 5 lectures in thermodynamics and one in transport processes for bio and chemical engineers (sophomores/juniors).I have had plenty of other opportunities (including teaching fellowships) that I have had to pass on, because the only thing that will get you anywhere in academia is "publishing good quality papers". Or so I am told.The easiest thing to do is to convince your advisor that you are (a) interested in teaching, (b) enjoy it very much and (c) are good it. Your advisor will either let you teach his/her class when he/she is not around or at a conference, and also let you know of other opportunities.But before that you have to TA first and establish yourself as someone who is good. In my program, all graduate students have to TA for one year. When you spend 5-6hrs a week, solving problems and interacting with 50-100 students for a year, people know if you are good. Students also get to fill out evaluation forms for TAs (at least in Maryland), so, if you make an impression, your department and other faculty members will know about it as well.Many schools award their best teaching assistants with distinguished/outstanding teaching assistant awards. Getting one of those awards will give you some recognition and credibility that you can build on.Graduate schools also offer teaching fellowships, some even let you prepare and teach summer courses. It might be a good idea to check your graduate school website for more details.PS: This answer is only applicable to (most or at least some) STEM programs in the U.S.

I kid you not, the first thing I did when I read the question was chuckle at the bit about free time :-)OK, deep breath. (as usual, answering from perspective of CS faculty in the USA)Yes, being a professor at a top university is stressful. I saw it in my faculty advisors at Yale and Berkeley, and I felt it first hand as faculty at UC Santa Barbara (assistant, associate then full professor), and now at Univ. of Chicago (chaired full professor). But then again, so is any other highly competitive job. Certainly, if you make it this far along, then you’ve been trained through experience on how to handle the stress well. So it is stressful, but we all have our own ways of handling it. Some approaches are not very healthy, and can lead to early burnout or disruptions in the non-academia parts of your life.Just saying work is stressful is not very helpful. Instead I will say that in general, faculty at top schools have far more work than there is time to do. There is no efficient schedule that we can come up with to actually get everything done. It’s generally impossible. Instead, our scheduling algorithms are more like prioritization algorithms, with the full knowledge that low priority items are likely to be ignored and forgotten. The more senior we get, the more work tends to come our way, and the more things fall off our plate and on to the floor. The number of “Hi, did you get my email about XYZ, because you never responded” emails I’ve gotten has dramatically increased over the years. A common piece of advice between faculty (that is rarely heeded) is that we all (and especially younger faculty) need to learn to say NO more often.Along those lines, we generally don’t actually have free time. We protect our family time fiercely. Outside of that, we just have time when we’re switching between tasks. And there are times when we should be working, and our brain just refuses to cooperate. To keep a good life balance, faculty tend to have to work hard to constrain the hours when we work, so work does not consume our lives. In addition to spending time with family and friends, faculty colleagues I know well generally have one or two hobbies they are passionate about and try hard to maintain. For some it’s long distance running, for others it’s cycling, travel or creating music, and others dance or art. For me personally, it’s a fairly even split between fantasy football, going to the gym, and travel (and of course Quora).Just to drive home the point about endless workload, here’s a list of work-related tasks that have come up regularly to consume my time this past year:Teaching activities: lecturing, prepping for lecture, writing/updating homeworks/class projects, grading exams/project papers/presentations, meeting with TAs, handling student requests/emails.Mentoring my (mostly PhD) students: 1-on-1 meetings, project meetings, signing forms, buying/reimbursing equipment they need, writing letters of references for jobs/internships/fellowships, giving feedback on paper drafts, conference talks, job talks, posters.Driving research: reading papers in related areas, brainstorming and planning projects, meeting new colleagues in CS and other departments to exchange research ideas, teleconferences w/ collaborators, dealing with IRB and legal requirements related to projects, buying/reimbursing/monitoring equipment/resources, writing presentations, writing funding proposals to NSF/DARPA/industry programs, writing annual reports for funded projects, managing funding and expenditures, attend research conferences.Work for the department: typically 3–4 committees with lots of meetings. For this past year, I was heavily involved in faculty hiring (reading/evaluating faculty apps, discussion/inviting candidates, hosting candidates on-site interviews, leading candidate discussions, recruiting candidates after offers), graduate affairs (evaluating grad students, changing PhD curriculum, dealing with any issues that pop up), graduate admissions (travel to recruit students, reading/evaluating PhD & MS apps, interviewing students, discussion, decisions on admits, recruiting admitted students, hosting visits), undergrad curriculum (changes to undergrad curriculum)Work for the campus: lots of ad hoc things that pop up. Participate in invited panels, give talks to visitors from government agencies/industry visitors/alumni, meetings for various campus-wide or inter-departmental initiatives, interact with the media and press as a limited representative of the department (and occasionally campus).Service for wider research community: serve on program committees for conferences (lots of this, reading and reviewing paper submissions), serve as chair on conferences, travel to serve on evaluation panels for funding agencies (US and other countries), write tenure letters for younger colleagues, write promotion to full letters for younger colleagues, write job letters for students/former colleagues, write letters for PhD applications by undergrads, serve on editorial board for journals, travel to serve on panels for conferences, travel to give keynotes for conferences/workshops.Various types of outreach: visit and give talks at companies, visit/give invited talks/meet faculty at other universities, serve as judge on hackathons, advise K-12 STEM/CS organizations, host undergraduate summer interns, host high school summer interns.I probably missed some details here or there, but I think I got the bulk of it. I probably do a bit more service than some, and there is generally less service type work for more junior faculty. Hopefully this gives you a sense of what faculty at good schools have to work with.

Seems like the Cold War is back in fashion againWhen did it start? What were its pivotal moments? How did it wind down? -Get some popcorn, queue up Cold War Music, and fasten your seat belts.​​​Japan's December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor was a defining moment not only for WWII, but also for the subsequent Cold War. This may seem shocking today, but even after the 1940 fall of France, the Battle of Britain and Germany's attempted (and failed) blitzkrieg in the USSR, the US public was neutral and did not favor sending troops overseas, or taking serious responsibility for the safety of major shipping routes far from North America. The US did not have a huge military and could not justify large military spending. This all changed on December 7, 1941 ("a date which will live in infamy"), and four days later Germany declared war against the United States.​​To be fair, the Roosevelt administration apparently anticipated the needed military build-up. The US also previously started economic help to the UK (seeing the British resolve in the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir) and to the Soviet Union. The Lend-Lease (which ramped up by the end of 1941) was a major effort to prop up the Soviet economy during the German onslaught and prevent the collapse of the Red army, while the Soviet industry was being relocated to the Ural mountains.When it became clear that the Axis (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan) would not win the war, the Allies (US, UK and USSR) met at the 1943 Tehran Conference to plan ahead and outline how Europe could be partitioned into spheres of influence. This can be illustrated by the Percentages agreementThe Percentages agreement was an agreement between Soviet premier Joseph Stalin and British prime minister Winston Churchill during the Fourth Moscow Conference on October 1944, about how to divide various European countries into spheres of influence...Winston Churchill (not Stalin) proposed the agreement, under which the UK and USSR agreed to divide Europe into spheres of influence, with one country having "predominance" in one sphere, and the other country would have "predominance" in another sphere. According to Churchill's account of the incident, Churchill suggested that the Soviet Union should have 90 percent influence in Romania and 75 percent in Bulgaria; the United Kingdom should have 90 percent in Greece; and they should have 50 percent each in Hungary and Yugoslavia. Churchill wrote it on a piece of paper which he pushed across to Stalin, who ticked it off and passed it back. The result of these discussions was that the percentages of Soviet influence in Bulgaria and, more significantly, Hungary were amended to 80 percent. Churchill called it a "naughty document".Such political agreements were finalized at the 1945 Yalta Conference, including the partitioning of Berlin. However, the actual progress on the battlefield was still important. Among direct consequences of the Percentages agreement were the Tito–Stalin Split and the unique status that Yugoslavia enjoyed during the Cold War - under the communist party, but not a Soviet dependent and more free-market than the Eastern Europe.WWII did not end with the End of World War II in Europe. The US overwhelmed Japan in the Pacific, but wanted to avoid fighting in the Japanese mainland and the inevitable huge casualties. One of the instruments was the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it did not seem to impress the Japanese Supreme Command (because the immediate destruction was comparable with the effects of massive American firebombings that occurred weekly). They were, however, impressed, by the Soviet invasion of Manchuria (violating the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact and taking many Japanese prisoner), which was followed by the Surrender of Japan to the US. In the days after, the USSR quickly annexed South Sakhalin and the Kuril islands, to which Japan still lays claim.Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin may have looked like best friends at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. But they considered the peaceful coexistence of their countries to be impossible, for non-negotiable reasons.​​​​Even before the war ended, the Soviets deployed The Thing:Theremin's device was used by the Soviet Union to spy on the United States. The device was embedded in a carved wooden plaque of the Great Seal of the United States. On August 4, 1945, a delegation from theYoung Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union presented the bugged carving to U.S. Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, as a "gesture of friendship" to the USSR's World War II ally. It hung in the ambassador's Moscow residential study until it was exposed in 1952 during the tenure of Ambassador George F. Kennan. The existence of the bug was accidentally discovered by a British radio operator who overheard American conversations on an open radio channel as the Soviets were beaming radio waves at the ambassador's office. The Department of State found the device in the Great Seal carving after an exhaustive search of the American Embassy, and Peter Wright, a British scientist and later MI5 counterintelligence officer, eventually discovered how it worked.The Thing was demonstrated by the US to the United Nations in the 1960s.​​Such Cold War cat-and-mouse games continued for a long time, including the 1978 Bulgarian umbrella (KGB-assisted poisoning of Bulgarian exile Georgi Markov in London with a sharp umbrella tip). They were aptly captured by the numerous James Bond (agent 007) films, produced regularly since 1962.​​The UN was created in 1946 trying to address the failure of the League of Nations to stop WWII. A particularly important construct was the UN Security Council, with five permanent members - the USSR, the USA, China, the UK, and France - holding veto power. Ukraine and Belarus were included as founding UN members in recognition of their sacrifices in WWII, although Stalin wanted all Soviet Republics to be (voting) members. The creation of Israel by the UN quickly lead to wars between Israel and Arab neighbors. While the USSR initially supported the creation of Israel, it turned against it in several short years (as Stalin alleged the doctors' plot - Jewish doctors who were out to kill him), and instead supported Arab countries.The stability and prosperity in Europe today, as well as the creation of the European Union in the 1980s, are largely due to the Marshall PlanThe Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative to aid Europe, in which the United States gave $13 billion (approximately $130 billion in current dollar value as of August 2015) in economic support to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948. The goals of the United States were to rebuild war-devastated regions, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, make Europe prosperous again, and prevent the spread of communism.The Marshall Plan required a lessening of interstate barriers, a dropping of many petty regulations constraining business, and encouraged an increase in productivity, labour union membership, as well as the adoption of modern business procedures.The Chinese Communist Revolution (1949) was hugely significant for the Cold war, and was followed by the Korean War (1950-53), which was a major test for the UN, but ended roughly where it started, except for huge casualties and massive devastation. While the US withdrew most of its troops from Europe after WWII, the Korean war forced the US to re-evaluate its military posture and assume much greater responsibility for world security.The USSR matched the US nuclear weapons within four years (Soviet atomic bomb project), but the Cold war really started with the creation of NATO (1949) and the Warsaw Pact (1955). The Turkish Straits crisis led to Turkey's joining NATO in 1952. While on the surface, the military stand-off was between two military blocks, the Cold War was "fought" over the supremacy of the economic models - the USSR was building a communist society according to the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, while the West was opening global trade and freeing the markets. With the war being "cold" (no direct fighting), the outcome would eventually be decided by economics.The US presidency of Dwight Eisenhower (1953-1961) - the supreme Allied Commander in Europe 1943-45 and, later, the military administrator of US-occupied Europe - undoubtedly contributed to the US posture during the Cold war and the Soviet perception of the US. He famously warned the public that the US military–industrial complex was getting strong enough to influence US foreign policy. The aggressive US foreign policy at the time can be illustrated by the successful 1953 Iranian coup d'état organized by the CIA and the botched 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, also organized by the CIA (in response to the Cuban Revolution in the mid 1950s). The USSR easily matched that by suppressing the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and spearheading the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to suppress an anti-Communist uprising. This led to the Brezhnev Doctrine, the 1978 communist coup in Afghanistan which was about to fail, and the subsequent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.Joseph Stalin died in 1953. Soviet domestic and foreign policies became erratic. Lavrentiy Beria, responsible for the NKVD (the precursor of the KGB), holding the Eastern Europe in check, and also for organizing very successful weapon design labs in prison camps (including the development of nuclear weapons) was arrested and executed on trumped up charges of spying for foreign powers. Soviet leadership had enough of dictatorship rule and hoped to distribute power more evenly. This became clear at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1956), which was such a shock that several high-ranked members of the Communist Party committed suicide after Nikita Khrushchev's speech denouncing Stalin's cult of personality. In March 1958, Khruschev became the Soviet Prime minister - holding both the top party post and the top government post (like Stalin back in the day and Putin today). Stalin's cool approach to foreign policy and WWII-alliance with the US and the UK fell apart when Nikita Khrushchev threw a tantrum at the United Nations on October 12, 1960, using his infamous shoe to illustrate how the Soviets would deal with the capitalists.​​A major development in the 1950s was the post-war Decolonization, during which the numerous colonies of European powers in Africa and East Asia became independent countries. They were generally poor and lacked official ideologies, so the Soviet block and the US-lead block spared no effort (and money) trying to influence those "third-world" countries. They formed the Non-Aligned Movement in the 1960s, but did not escape major turbulence (e.g., Events in Latin America During the Cold War). Also see the List of conflicts related to the Cold War.By the mid 1950s, both the US and the USSR tested thermonuclear weapons, and the main remaining technology issue was the delivery systems.​The first Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957 and the first human in space (Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1) were a shock for the US defense establishment because they clearly indicated the feasibility of Intercontinental ballistic missiles and the apparent technological supremacy of the Soviet Union.​​The US response was a huge increase of their R&D funding, as well as a commitment to a mission to the Moon (Apollo program). While the US easily matched first Soviet space missions, the USSR was unable to send a man to the Moon, despite well-funded attempts.​​The US and the USSR started building numerous Strategic bombers, Intercontinental ballistic missiles and Nuclear submarines, starting the enormously expensive Nuclear arms race. Prompted by the fear that the USSR was far ahead in strike weapons (the Bomber gap and the Missile gap), the US developed the Lockheed U-2 that could fly over the USSR and other countries, beyond the reach of fighter planes and air-defense missiles (for a few years).​​​Those overflights triggered two quintessential Cold-war events - the 1960 U-2 incident, where Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the USSR and captured, as well as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, where a U-2 detected Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba (deployed in response to US nuclear missiles in Turkey). The US responded with a naval blockade of Cuba. The Berlin Crisis of 1961 was another hallmark of the Cold war, resulting in the iconic Berlin Wall. The 1956 Suez Crisis, in which France and the UK sided withIsrael and overpowered Egypt, pushed Arab powers to the Soviet camp.Three events in 1963-64 marked a calming period in the Cold warthe Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treatythe assassination of John F. Kennedythe dismissal of Nikita Khrushchev.By that point, the USSR started experiencing serious economic problems, and apparently the coup against Khrushchev was prompted by his inapt economic policies. He was replaced by Leonid Brezhnev who ruled until his death in 1982. Today, Brezhnev is best remembered for his senility and slurred speech, for having a chest full of medals (many awarded by sycophants and himself), and for presiding over the Era of Stagnation in the 1970s.The calm was relative, given that Britain, France and China developed nuclear weapons of their own by the early 1960s and were busy with frequent tests. The lull in the Cold War was shattered in 1967, when, during the Six-Day War, US-supported Israel had seized the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank (of the Joran river) and the Golan Heights, growing its territory threefold. The USSR broke diplomatic relations with Israel and blocked all emigration by Jews to Israel. The Arab countries responded by the 1967 Oil Embargo to pressure the economies of oil-importing Western countries. This was followed by the 1973 oil crisis when OPEC cut oil exports (tripling the price of oil in the US) and the 1979 energy crisis caused by the reduction of oil exports after the Iranian Revolution (which was a surprise to both superpowers).​​The Vietnam War heated up in the early 1970s - initially a proxy war between North Vietnam (supported by China and the USSR) and the South Vietnam, it escalated with the direct involvement of the US. The USSR responded by sending advanced weapons systems, especially MiG fighters and very effective air defense, which surprised US forces. The US public, especially university students, protested against US participation and undermined domestic support for the war, which wasn't proceeding well anyway. The US withdrew, essentially losing the war.Anti-Vietnam protests at UC Berkeley:​​While oil prices grew sharply in the 1970s, the USSR ramped up oil exports and laid a network of pipelines toward Europe. This was later followed by a network of gas pipelines - first to Soviet cities, then to Eastern Europe, then to Germany. This brought mega-profits and propped up the Soviet economy, which showed clear signs of trouble. The leadership interpreted this as a great success of the socialist system, and Brezhnev announced in 1971 that the USSR reached the stage of developed socialism, on the way to building a true communist society.The Sino-Soviet split occurred in the 1960s, apparently on ideological grounds, leading to the Sino-Soviet border conflict in 1969. To some extent, this contributed to the US Rapprochement with China and Nixon's visit to China in 1972.The Cold War slowed down for a few years in the mid 1970s, marking joint US-Soviet space exploration (the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project).​​​​In the meantime, the USSR, flush with oil profits, embarked on a major rearmament program. Once again, the Cold War was all about whose economic and political model was stronger, whose science and engineering were better, and whose athletes won more olympic medals. Chess championships were particularly closely watched because having a world champion lead to claims of intellectual superiority (Chess the musical).​During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who was considered weak on foreign policy and defense, the 1979 Iranian Revolution deprived the USA of a close (albeit corrupted) ally in the Middle East. It was exacerbated by the Iran hostage crisis and soon followed by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the lengthy Soviet–Afghan War. The immediate US response was surprisingly strong. It included a boycot of the 1980 olympic games in Moscow, and a ban on high-technology exports including advanced computers (The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and the U.S. Response, 1978-1980). But this paled in comparison to the strategic response that unfurled over the next ten years. Ronald Reagan won the elections with his platform of strength, dramatically increased military spending, and set to deal with the USSR much more aggressively. The US mended relations with the Saudi Arabia and ensured more than sufficient oil production which resulted in the 1980s oil glut and gradually undermined the Soviet economy (which was in the Era of Stagnation, and only held up by oil revenues). The CIA organized armed resistance to the Soviet occupation and covertly provided air-defense weapons that shot down hundreds of Soviet aircraft (Launching the Missile That Made History). The recruitment and training was largely handled by Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organization.​​The death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982 was somewhat of a shock for the USSR, as this has not happened since the 1953 death of Joseph Stalin. The leadership was so old that the next two general secretaries of the Communist Party (Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko) died within several years. They were followed by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, who was younger and selected as a reformist, given the apparent decline of the Soviet economy.Top Soviet leaders, left to right: Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev.​​Throughout the 1980s, the gears of the US response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Reagan's aggressive policies were turning. When the USSR shot down the Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and denied responsibility, Reagan (a movie actor by trade) publicly called the USSR the Evil empire. Later that year, NATO held comprehensive ten-year military exercise Able Archer 83, which was interpreted by the USSR as a preparation for an all-out attack - 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident.In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev started a course toward broad reforms in the Soviet Union, but the economy was rotten, the agriculture did not produce enough food, and the military spending was high. The terrible 1986 Chernobyl nuclear-plant disaster was a major loss of face for the USSR - in terms of science, technology, industry, economics and even politically (showing the ineptitude of high officials).​​With their economy deteriorating and oil revenues dwindling, the USSR started taking on considerable debt, much of it to buy agricultural products in the US. Due to belt-tightening, Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1988. In the meantime, the resistance to the Soviet control of Eastern Europe was increasing. The Polish trade union Solidarity spearheaded this resistance, to the point where the USSR was massing troops near the Polish border. The invasion was essentially prevented by the financial dependence on the West, and allowing Poland to hold its first presidential elections won by Lech Wałęsa (the leader of Solidarity). With Poland becoming unfriendly to the Soviet Union, the presence of Soviet troops in Eastern Germany was a no-go. The Eastern Germans started marching against the Soviet rule, and the 1990s German reunification was negotiated by the Western German leadership with Gorbachev. The Berlin Wall fell.​​​Czechoslovakia and Hungary freed themselves of the Communist rule at about the same time, with surprisingly little drama. Romania was a little late to the game, but caught up quickly with the brutal killing of its long-time communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu. It turned out that the official data on total support for the Communist parties and their leaders in Eastern Europe was fake.Next up was the Soviet Union itself. With the increasing Soviet Food Shortages and protests, the security services weakened and the centrifugal forces increased. Watching the events in Poland, Czechoslovakia and E. Germany, the three small Baltic republics annexed by the USSR in 1940 took a firm course toward independence, which they achieved de facto in early 1991 with surprisingly little violence (several dozen dead) - perhaps because the Soviet leadership was under pressure from the West. In the meantime, the prevailing mood in Russia was "let's stop feeding other republics", and Boris Yeltsin took matters in his hands, confronting his mentor Gorbachev and declaring the independence of the Russian Federation from the Soviet Union. The Dissolution of the Soviet Union was accelerated by the August 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt organized by the KGB bosses when Gorbachev was on vacation in Crimea. This attempt was quashed, with Yeltsin's help, and the Communist party was banned in Russia for several years. Tanks were introduced into Moscow to keep order.​​Ukraine - the second most powerful Soviet republic - declared independence at about the same time (August 1991), and the independence of the three Baltic states was officially recognized by Russia. Other republics followed, and the dissolution of the USSR was finalized by the December 1991 Belavezha Accords.In the aftermath, the post-Soviet space saw economic collapse for the next few days. Countries that were propped by the USSR, such as Cuba, lost their support. The US and Western Europe were able to dramatically reduce military spending and troop counts in Europe, while providing some financial help to Russia and other ex-Soviet countries. The countries of Eastern Europe mostly joined the EU and NATO. Perhaps, the greatest beneficiary of the Cold War was China - starting with Deng Xiaoping, it managed to avoid the destructive influences of the Cold War and maneuver between the two superpowers, while growing its economy.Surprising as it may seem, the outcome of the Cold War is viewed differently in Russia and everywhere else. The US, and most of Europe view the dissolution of the Warsaw pact and the Soviet Union as the natural consequence of its misguided economic policies, militarism, and undemocratic governance. However, current Russian leaders consider those events accidental and blame them on individual leaders like Gorbachev (sometimes calling them traitors).Rather than acknowledge the loss of the Cold War, Russian media is quick to put the blame on the US for Russia's troubled economy in the 1990s (forgetting that the US provided food to Russia for many years, as well as military assistance and even contracts to the Russian space industry to keep it afloat). Key themes in modern Russian politics are "Russia's getting from her knees" and "forcing the US to treat Russia as equal" - nothing sinister on the surface, but the main means to achieve these results is not a strong, reformed economy, but a massive rearmament, including the development of new nuclear weapons, missiles, submarines, tanks and fighter planes. So, are we up for a replay of the Cold War? - not really, because Russia is a shadow of the former USSR, whereas Europe is more united than ever before, and the Western block is much larger than it was during the Cold War. Nevertheless, a replay of the last ten years of the Cold War is looking increasingly likely. In particular, Russian paranoia about NATO betrays the lack of a crisp idea behind which the nation can unite, or at least a compelling vision of the country's future - this is the real crisis, and has nothing to do with other countries.Did I get anything wrong? Miss something important? - I would have loved to include the Iran–Iraq War (since all key Cold-war players were involved), but had to draw a line somewhere.For more details, see the Wikipedia article on the Cold War .