American Committee for US-Russia Accord

When Russia attempted to negotiate a ceasefire and a peace deal with Ukraine in March 2022 the proposal on the table was that Donetsk and Lugansk would remain independent. There was even a suggestion the Donbass rebels could eventually return to Ukrainian sovereignty, albeit with a very high degree of regional autonomy.

It was the failure of the Istanbul peace negotiations and the continuation of the war that made Russia’s annexation of the Donbass inevitable; same was true of Kherson and Zaporozhe.

Nicolai N. Petro, Professor of Political science at the University of Rhode Island, published just a year ago, “The Tragedy of Ukraine: What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict.” He spoke with the superb Neutrality Studies podcast last week about Russia, Ukraine and this tragic and unnecessary war.

The American people urgently need to know the true history of the war in Ukraine and its current prospects. Unfortunately, the mainstream media ––The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, MSNBC, and CNN –– have become mere mouthpieces of the government, repeating US President Joe Biden’s lies and hiding history from the public.

Professor Paul Robinson talks about his new book Russian Liberalism.

It is now clear that the Ukrainian offensive of the summer and fall of 2023 has failed, with minimal gains and enormous losses. There has been no repeat of the sweeping Ukrainian victories of 2022. Ukrainian army chief General Valery Zaluzhny has admitted that the war has now entered a stalemate.

Professor Mearsheimer talks with Judge Andrew Napolitano on the latest developments on the Ukrainian front as well as his thoughts on a coming US-China clash.

John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy in Focus, has described those calling for diplomacy as ‘blinkered and arrogant’, urging them to ‘listen to our progressive brothers and sisters in Ukraine’ instead of ‘some set of abstract principles’. Writing in Foreign Policy, Alexey Kovalev has condemned the ‘twisted worldview’ of peace activists for whom ‘Ukrainians have no agency and Russia is the victim of a proxy war’. For such commentators, there is no need to untangle the knotted historical context or weigh up competing Ukrainian interests; we can simply switch our brains off and outsource all decision-making to those under attack.

A new report from the Valdai Discussion Club asserts that, “Somewhat belatedly, the centre of political initiative will also shift to the East. This phenomenon will not be a short-term one, but it will become a determining process during the 21st century and, most likely, beyond.”

Ambassador Freeman talks with the Brazil-based Dialogue Works  podcast. Freeman served as U. S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm) and was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs as well as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs from 1993-94, earning the highest public service awards of the Department of Defense.

This is a detailed reconstruction of the Ukrainian-Russian peace negotiations in March 2022 and the associated mediation attempts by the then Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, supported by President Erdogan and former German Chancellor Schröder. It was drawn up by retired General H. Kujat and Professor Emeritus H. Funke, two of the initiators of the recently presented peace plan for Ukraine. And it is also in connection with their peace plan that this reconstruction is so extremely important. It reminds us that we cannot afford to delay ceasefire and peace negotiations again. The human and military situation in Ukraine deteriorates dramatically, with the added danger that it could lead to a further escalation of the war. We need a diplomatic solution to this cruel war for Europe and the Ukraine – and we need it now!

Even before the start of Russia-Ukraine war in February 2022 former Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz and Senator Sam Nunn have co-authored an article in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs explaining that the risk of nuclear use has become disturbingly plausible—and proposing concrete steps to reduce the risk. “In the U.S.-Russia relationship, clashing national interests, insufficient dialogue, eroding arms control structures, advancing military technologies and new threats from cyber-space have destabilized the old equilibrium, creating a state of strategic instability where an accident or mishap could trigger a catastrophic chain of events,” – warned two distinguished politicians.

Just as pro-peace voices had warned, Ukraine is now looking at the worst of both worlds: accepting a far inferior peace deal, while having weathered the tremendous human and economic costs of a prolonged conflict. Most perversely, Kiev has been put into this position by those who postured as its most ardent supporters, the hawks who thought of the war as a way of humiliating Russia on the cheap.

After the end of the Cold War, hopes were high for an era of U.S.-Russian cooperation and peace and harmony in Europe. In a vitally important new book, The Lost Peace: How the West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War (Yale University Press November 2023), Dr. Richard Sakwa explores the reasons for the collapse of those hopes in the thirty years that followed. Understanding this history is vital not only to understanding the roots of the present disastrous war in Ukraine, but to formulating ways out of that conflict; and as the war sinks into a bloody stalemate and U.S. challenges elsewhere mount, finding such paths is among the greatest tasks facing U.S. diplomacy. Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute, discussed the book with the author.

Judge Napolitano and Col. Wilkerson confront the daunting neocon influence in Ukraine, its impact on US strategic interests, and the roles of contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

This weekend, ACURA’s founder, the legendary Professor of Russian Studies and Politics at Princeton and NYU, Stephen F. Cohen, would have turned 85. To mark the occasion, we are publishing the foreward to the forthcoming book, Russian Fate: Memoirs That I’ll Never Write, From the archives of Stephen F. Cohen.

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 This book is a collection of unique documents from the personal archive of American historian and Russianist Stephen Cohen: His letters to friends and colleagues in the Soviet Union and Russia, notes on and sketches of future writings, accounts of him and his work by those in the US and Russia. Documents are published in chronological order, the earliest from the period of perestroika when Cohen’s biography of Nikolai Bukharin was published in the Soviet Union, and the most recent material from after his death. 

This collection traces the trajectory of Cohen’s scholarly career which began – at least in Russia – with the 1988 publication of the Russian-language edition of his biography of Bukharin. It is therefore quite logical that this collection opens with Steve’s extensive correspondence with his Russian friends and colleagues regarding preparation of that edition. Their correspondence shows the book was considered by the Soviet side as not only a scholarly project dealing with the restoration of historical truth and the revision of dogmatic views – but rather as an important political project.  [Read more…] about Katrina vanden Heuvel and Gennady Bordiugov: Stephen Cohen’s Never Written Memoirs: A Foreword 

We will return on Monday, Nov. 27.

ACURA marks today’s anniversary by publishing two of President John F. Kennedy’s most significant speeches, the first, his landmark Cold War speech of June 10, 1963 at American University and then his October 26, 1963 speech at Amherst College on society and the arts.

On the morning of June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy arrived on the campus of American University set to deliver a commencement speech that would change the course of history. From the podium emblazoned with the presidential seal, Kennedy put forth “A Strategy of Peace,” a rallying cry for an end to the nuclear arms race with the Soviets and a beginning of a new era of peace with all nations.