eastwestaccord

Nixon’s secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Reagan’s ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock debated the future of NATO and Russia during the Budapest Summit on Dec. 5, 1994. Robert MacNeil moderated the discussion.

There is a growing realization that voters’ dissatisfaction with inflation resulted in Donald Trump’s election victory last month. But almost no attention has been placed on one of the major contributors to this inflation: the war in Ukraine, and the decision to repeatedly reject negotiating its end.

America has a bellicose, bullying, immature leadership that thinks military might is the answer to everything, as reflected by U.S. Special Forces in 80+ countries and roughly 800 bases globally. That global presence is unsustainable. It is also folly.

The significance of ATACMS lies not in their results on the battlefield, but in the expertise required to use them.

On November 21, just two days after Ukraine acted for the first time on U.S. permission to fire Western supplied long-range missiles deeper into Russia, Russia launched a missile attack on a military base in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. The base houses the missile and space company Pivdenmash, which produces missiles, rockets, satellites and engines.

A clip of Colby discussing the new right’s foreign policy with Tucker Carlson.

President Zelensky’s latest suggestions for how to end the fighting in Ukraine are not yet the basis for a peace settlement, but they contain some hopeful pointers towards one. They should form the starting point of the incoming Trump administration’s negotiations with both Moscow and Kyiv.

Col. Douglas Macgregor (ret.) is one of the most innovative thinkers of our time. In today’s Liberty Report he explains his recently-published detailed blueprint for a less expensive – and better – US military and a safer America.

It hardly needs pointing out that wisdom has not been among the defining characteristics of the Biden administration, the titular head of which spent the previous three decades loudly claiming that it was inconceivable that NATO expansion would provoke a Russian response. Better minds and men knew differently.

Eight years ago, when Trump was elected president for the first time, Gorka was one of his more controversial appointments as “deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs,” that is, deputy national security adviser.  That’s a hugely important position.  The deputy national security advisor assists the president in managing the entire intelligence community and manages the administration’s anti-terrorism efforts.  But Gorka immediately ran into trouble.

As it turned out, Gorka was, apparently, a sworn member of Hungary’s neo-Nazi Vitezi Rend, or “Order of Heroes,” a group that the State Department says was “under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany during World War II” and which continues to be neo-Nazi in its orientation.

Gorka only became an American citizen in 2012, and membership should have disqualified him not only from citizenship, but even from entering the United States in the first place.

Furthermore, at Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration, Gorka actually wore the uniform and badge of the Vitezi Rend, and the Times of Israel newspaper reported that he may even have inherited them from his Nazi grandfather.

ATACMs, Storm Shadows, Scalp, etc., can only be fired with the participation of U.S., British, and/or French officers, making them and their countries direct combatants in a war against Russia.

Matthew Miller tries to square a circle.

For almost a year the theme of “permitting” Ukraine to use the ATACMS and Storm Shadow/SCALP missiles for strikes into Russia’s interior has served as clickbait to offset Ukraine’s steady loss of ground.

To achieve peace, Western countries should consider supporting Ukraine’s transition to a neutral state. While this path may seem contentious, it presents the most viable solution to end the war and foster long-term regional stability.

About a quarter of a century ago around this very time, a newly elected Republican president who campaigned on a promise of a more humble, less arrogant foreign policy was assembling his foreign policy and national security team.  By the time he was finished, even the new president’s critics had to agree that the team he had assembled was an impressive one.  [Read more…] about What to Expect from Trump II: James W. Carden’s remarks at the Yerevan Dialogue on November 23

On this, the 61st anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, we present the film JFK: A President Betrayed, a 2013 documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman which shows how JFK embarked on secret back channel peace efforts with Nikita Khrushchev & Fidel Castro, as well as his determination to get out of Vietnam despite opposition inside the US government.

My current reading of what Russia has become is based on my own experiences as an historian of the Soviet Union who first went to that fascinating country in October 1964, followed by a year as an exchange student, 1965-1966. Entering the field of Russian and Soviet studies as a graduate student more than a half century ago and later as a young professor in the Cold War years, I thought of our generation, in those years of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, as generally progressive and in relationship to the major adversary of the United States as basically détentists, that is, hoping for political and intellectual openings with the USSR and softening of the aggressive rhetoric and policies of both the East and the West. The 1960s and 1970s was a time when it was customary to speak of “going into” the USSR and “out of” the Soviet Union, as if into a prison, rather than simply “to” or “from” the Soviet Union. The dark images of what was called totalitarianism were still quite dominant in the profession and in the broader public. [Read more…] about Ronald Grigor Suny: Cold War Effects; Comments for the NYU Jordan Center Workshop

On November 17, the U.S. told the world what they had told Ukraine three days earlier: Ukraine had permission to fire American supplied long-range missiles deeper into Russian territory.

Not much needs to be said about the risks involved in the decision. They are the same risks that have caused the Biden administration to hesitate in green lighting the strikes for months.