The Second World War formally ended on September 2, 1945 with Japan’s surrender. There is a popular saying that a war is over when the last soldiers killed are buried. With WWII, however, things aren’t so simple.

The Second World War was a beast born of WWI, known in Europe as the Great War. Some alternative historians see them as two phases in the same war, separated by a fragile truce. This seems logical: For thirty years, the world tried to destroy itself in trenches and gas chambers, at logging sites and in slums blighted by misery and unemployment. It measured the shapes of skulls and class distinctions, and meticulously calculated the percentage of Jewish or Japanese blood in people destined for death camps or internment camps.

The Commonwealth is entering a period of geopolitical struggle with NATO and the United States for control over the territory of the erstwhile Soviet Union and nearby countries. The Alliance mounted an energetic campaign to enlist the services of post- Soviet republics in performance of its own military-political missions in the region. Russia’s geopolitical interests are in danger. Outperformed at every turn, the international structures it established in the region (CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization or CSTO and Shanghai Cooperation Organization) become virtual.

Exercise Peace Mission’2010 of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is to be launched in Kazakhstan on September 10. There appear to be no particular reason to run the exercise save for the necessity to show that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is still there.

Russia announced a 12-month extension of its grain export ban on Thursday, raising fears about a return to the food shortages and riots of 2007-08 which spread through developing countries dependent on imports.

The announcement by Vladimir Putin came as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation called an emergency meeting to discuss the wheat shortage, and riots in Mozambique left seven dead.