eastwestaccord

As the crisis in Ukraine approaches the year and a half mark, policymakers ought to be on guard against repeating the same mistakes that led to the crisis in the first place. With that in mind, we will occasionally be running articles aimed at shedding light on other potential areas of conflict between East and West with a focus on the several ‘frozen conflicts’ that dot the landscape of the post-Soviet space. The first in this occasional series is by a young scholar of Russia and the Caucasus, Pietro Shakarian.

Strategy, Clausewitz said, is about applying means to achieve ends. It follows that good strategy requires one first to select sensible and achievable ends, and second to ensure that one actually apply one’s resources in such a way as to advance towards those ends.

Jeffrey Carr, an international cybersecurity consultant, discusses the low evidentiary standard the US government and media has used to make very serious accusations about Russian hacking of Ukrainian military software and, by extension, the DNC emails. Carr says that CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity report – the basis for all these accusations – is the worst he has ever read.

In the decades since Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan began working together to end the Cold War, much has changed. Science and technology have reshaped global communication, finance, and culture. Terrorism and violent extremism threaten global stability, while climate change threatens the planet itself. But one grim element of the old order war remains a constant: Mankind still possesses the knowledge and means to destroy itself with nuclear weapons…

In aggressively asserting his country’s strength, Putin wants Russia to regain its status among the great nations contesting power and wealth with one another.

The events of this week have extinguished any glimmer of hope that may have been sparked by John Kerry’s diplomatic parley with the Russians in Sochi this past May. All the while, the administration, aided and abetted by a compliant Congress and a complacent media, stands idly by as the war parties on both sides of the Atlantic march on, unencumbered and virtually unopposed.

On MSNBC, Brian Williams was almost teary-eyed, waxing lyrical about the beauty of it all. On CNN, Fareed Zakaria hailed Trump’s moral awakening, arguing: “I think Donald Trump became the president of the United States” that night.

Throughout the Cold War, the superpowers were careful to avoid any such direct engagement with each other, however much they sponsored and equipped armed proxies. That was part of why Carter did not get into a direct military fight in Afghanistan. It would be most unwise to throw away such caution where the Russians are involved today.

Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, tells Paul Jay that the Syrian Government may not be responsible for the chemical attack and that Trump’s response was a violation of international law

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave brief remarks at the opening ceremony of ARMY-2015, an exposition where Russia’s defense contractors demonstrated new military technology for foreign weapons buyers…Highlighting several pieces of Russia’s plan to modernize its military, Putin mentioned that, “This year we will supply more than forty new intercontinental ballistic missiles [ICBMs] to our nuclear force.”

This simple statement ignited a minor fervor in NATO countries.

President Trump’s decision to launch an air strike on the Al Shayrat airfield in Syria confirms what had been only too obvious in recent weeks, that Trump, far from representing a clean break with the regnant foreign policy orthodoxy of endless military intervention in the Greater Middle East, has instead become captive to it.

As President Trump was launching his missile strike against Syria, CIA Director Pompeo and other intelligence officials weren’t at the table, suggesting their doubts about Bashar al-Assad’s guilt, reports Robert Parry.

It lets Democrats off the hook for their own failures—and betting the resistance on finding a smoking gun is a fool’s game.