Three almost uninterrupted centuries of Russian self-comparison, self-assessment, self-identification with the West and ever deeper involvement in the intra-Western geopolitical and imperial competition have come to an end.
Analysis
Stephen F. Cohen: How the Russiagate Investigation Is Sovietizing American Politics
“Collusion,” “contacts,” selective prosecutions, coup plotting, and media taboos recall repressive Soviet practices.
Mikhail Gorbachev: A Nuclear Arms Race Will Produce No Winners
Despite everything, it is still in our power to avoid nuclear confrontation.
Tucker Carlson: Why Are These Professional War Peddlers Still Around?
Pundits like Max Boot and Bill Kristol got everything after 9/11 wrong but are still considered “experts.”
Paul Robinson: Three Russias
This week, the American press, and in particular the New York Times, has provided us with three contrasting images of Russia. Let’s take a look at each in turn.
Andrew C. McCarthy: Collusion: The Criminalization of Policy Disputes
The word covers every contact between anyone connected to Trump and anyone connected to Russia, with no need to show that a crime was committed.
Frida Berrigan: 25 Years Jail-time for Protecting the Planet?
The Kings Bay 7 were trying to put an end to the threat of nuclear war. Now they face a quarter-century behind bars.
Angela Stent: Vladimir Putin’s Big Push Into the Middle East
Free of Soviet-era baggage, Russia is busy cultivating ties across the region, including key U.S. allies Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Washington Times: Yanks to the Rescue 2.0
The date of the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election, March 31, is rapidly approaching. Perhaps even more important to the outcome than the fluctuating opinion polls showing abysmal levels of popularity of all 44 contenders is another question: Who is Washington’s preferred choice?
VIDEO: TYT: Agressive Progressives: Jimmy Dore Talks to Stephen F. Cohen
In truth, these Cold War deniers were either uninformed, myopic, or unwilling to acknowledge their own complicity in the squandered opportunity for a post-Soviet peace, even an American-Russian strategic partnership. Now the deniers’ most prestigious and influential foreign policy organization, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), has issued an official report fully acknowledging, even eagerly declaring, that “The United States is currently in a second Cold War with Russia.”
Paul Robinson: Censors for Democracy
This blog was listed as a ‘pro-Kremlin, conspiracy theory, extremist website’. According to its recommendations, therefore, Irrussianality would be censored, tagged red, and hidden by search engines. If a moderate academic website like this can be labelled in this way, who can possibly consider themselves safe? Anybody who’s not marching in lockstep with the guardians’ narrative is liable to find themselves a target.
Patrick Armstrong: Russia Observer
How much better off we’d be if Trump had never uttered the words “Russia” or “Putin”…
Gareth Porter: The Real Motive Behind the FBI Plan to Investigate Trump as a Russian Agent
The idea that American citizens were somehow at risk of being led by an agent of the Russian government “wittingly or unwittingly” did not appear spontaneously. It had been pushed aggressively by former CIA Director John O. Brennan both during and after his role in pressing for the original investigation.
James Carroll: The Most Dangerous Weapon Ever Rolls Off the Nuclear Assembly Line
Last month, the National Nuclear Security Administration (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) announced that the first of a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons had rolled off the assembly line at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in the panhandle of Texas.
Mary Dejevsky: Trump’s summit with Kim Jong-un is it shows what could have been with Russia
The change that has come about in Asia has been welcome. Similar things could have been achieved in Europe, had we allowed Trump to treat Putin the way he treated his North Korean counterpart.
PODCAST: Retropod: The Soviet officer who stopped World War III
In 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Union’s Air Defense Forces, trusted his gut and averted a global nuclear catastrophe.
Paul Robinson: Three Russias
This week, the American press, and in particular the New York Times, has provided us with three contrasting images of Russia. Let’s take a look at each in turn.
PODCAST: Aaron Mate: “The Russians Are Coming!”
Aaron is gong to break down “Russiagate,” taking a sober look at the media frenzy of “bombshell” stories asserting a Russian conspiracy behind the 2016 election. Maté explains why he thinks this narrative ultimately aligns with the longstanding interests of U.S. establishment power. For more, follow Aaron’s coverage of RussiaGate on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1095409176862429184
James Bamford: The Spy Who Wasn’t
The U.S. government went looking for someone to blame for Russia’s interference in the 2016 election—and found the perfect scapegoat.
Leonid Bershidsky: Trump Doesn’t Need North Macedonia in NATO
Letting a small country with a puny defense budget join the military alliance serves no purpose.