…personalizing Russia’s problems while simultaneously blaming them on innate national characteristics serves only to confuse and to reinforce simplistic prejudices which suggest that whatever differences we may have with the Russians are entirely their fault. But maybe that’s the point.
Analysis
Lyle J. Goldstein: The Second Caribbean Crisis?
A Russian defense analyst conjures a U.S. military intervention scenario in Venezuela. It is not a pretty picture.
Actual questions posed to Tulsi Gabbard on Morning Joe:
“Is Assad a good person?”
“There have been reports the Russian apparatus that interfered in 2016 is potentially trying to help your campaign. Why do you think that is?”
“Have you met with any Russians over the past several years?” [Read more…] about Actual questions posed to Tulsi Gabbard on Morning Joe:
Professor Ellen Mickiewicz: The first step to persuasion…
Name-calling is ramping up in preparation for the 2020 U.S. presidential election. But there is a new dimension: because Russia puts out broadcast and digital material for consumption in the United States (so-called weaponized information), then Russia’s positive coverage is quite enough to define that candidate in the U.S. as foreign pawn. NBC, in a flawed report, seemed to have bought in to this unprofessional brand of journalism. There is powerful evidence to nullify it. Is anyone listening, viewing, reading the output of the Russia-linked entities? That, after all, is the first step to persuasion. [Read more…] about Professor Ellen Mickiewicz: The first step to persuasion…
Doug Bandow: Ignore the Free-Riding International Peanut Gallery
Imagine if Georgia, which helped provoke war with Russia in 2008, and Ukraine, which ended up in conflict with Moscow after a street putsch backed by the West ousted their elected president, joined NATO. Tbilisi and Kiev would push to borrow the U.S. military to fight their wars. Who would blame them? But it certainly would not be in America’s interest to let them.
Paul Robinson: Russia: Both Malevolent and Super-Efficient
… there’s no clear connection between regime type and aggression, either in Russia’s case or more generally; current East-West tensions owe much to clashing interests and the structure of the European security system, factors which won’t change no matter who rules in the Kremlin.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s Message to the New Cold Warriors:
“Knock it off…”
Jackson Lears: Imperial Exceptionalism
It is hard to give up something you claim you never had.
Dr. Hans Blix Talks to the European Leadership Network
Blix: You have to ask, “What is the necessity in having Albania or Montenegro in NATO?” It was created to protect the North Atlantic. Then it moved to the Black Sea. When is NATO going to move to the Caspian? That is my question.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Trump is igniting a perilous new nuclear arms race
President Trump is about to launch a new nuclear arms race.
Sheila Fitzpatrick: People and Martians
Born in 1917 to an American father and English mother, public-school and Oxford-educated, Robert Conquest made his first substantial contacts with the Soviet Union through his work in British intelligence during and after the Second World War.
Shane Ryan: Has Rachel Maddow Entered Her Infowars Period?
There’s a big difference between obsessively covering the Mueller investigation and…this.
Alexander Lukin: How the United States Got Russia Wrong
The West today is paying for its collusion with Russia in the 1990s.
The Local (Sweden): American whistleblower wins Sweden’s Olof Palme Prize
American military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the US government’s secret war plans for Vietnam in 1971, is set to receive Sweden’s prestigious Olof Palme Prize.
Sam Nunn and Ernest Moniz: The U.S. and Russia Are Sleepwalking Toward Nuclear Disaster
Reengagement with Russia is too important to wait for the Mueller probe to end. That means it’s time for Congress to take the lead.
Glenn Greenwald: NBC Smears Tulsi Gabbard, Relies on Firm Caught Fabricating Russia Data for the Democratic Party
The whole story was a sham: the only “experts” cited by NBC in support of its key claim [that Russia supports Gabbard] was the firm, New Knowledge, that just got caught by the New York Times fabricating Russian troll accounts on behalf of the Democratic Party in the Alabama Senate race to manufacture false accusations that the Kremlin was interfering in that election.
David C. Hendrickson: Fractured: Trump’s Foreign Policy after Two Years
As a visceral dislike of all things Putin and Russian seems to be broadly shared across the U.S. political spectrum, one ventures a contrary opinion with hesitation, but I think this ubiquitous Russophobia is a sort of frenzy, with wild accusation taken routinely as fact, and which is leavened with some good old fashioned ethnic prejudice…
Graham Allison and Dimitry Simes: A Sino-Russian Entente Again Threatens America
The U.S. must revise its policy toward Moscow if it is to meet the threat from a rising China.
Nadège Rolland: A China–Russia Condominium over Eurasia
The 2014 Ukrainian crisis irrevocably pushed Moscow to shift its focus from Greater Europe to Greater Eurasia. But Russia’s turn to the East is not only the ‘inevitable result of the US and EU geopolitical game’; it is also the logical consequence of the gravity shift towards an increasingly politically and economically powerful Asia-Pacific, which provides Russia with tremendous ‘cooperation and development opportunities’.
Messenger-Inquirer: Scholar from Owensboro warns of war in his latest book
A scholar and historian who was raised in Owensboro and is now widely considered an expert on U.S.-Russian geopolitics, has published his latest book, which warns of an ongoing Cold War that is perhaps even more dangerous than the last.