Hammering on Russia is a losing strategy for progressives as most Americans care about economic issues and it is the Republicans and corporate Democrats who stand to gain, argues Norman Solomon
Analysis
Jon Basil Utley: What Everyone Seemed to Ignore in Helsinki
The Washington establishment came to their own conclusions about Russia and NATO—but this is what they missed.
PODCAST: Hawks Again Thwart Yet Another Chance to Diminish the New Cold War in Syria and Ukraine? (Stephen F. Cohen)
Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com.) Tonight’s focus is on two possible diplomatic breakthroughs, regarding Syria and Ukraine, that might end or substantially reduce the US-Russian proxy wars in those countries and thus the new Cold War itself.
Lyle J. Goldstein: How Dangerous Is Putin’s Russia?
For the most part, those writing about Russia in the American media have no special training in Russia (language, history, etc.), nor any advanced schooling in the complexities of diplomacy either. They, therefore, consistently fail to understand that some stolen emails constitute a minute and even trivial issue when compared with a nuclear arms rivalry that will cost both countries trillions of dollars and could also pave the road to global apocalypse.
No one is asking Clinton or Trump about the No. 1 threat to security (Katrina vanden Heuvel)
In an election dominated by spectacle and confrontation, many policy issues have fallen by the wayside. But as the nuclear peril intensifies, we desperately need to have a real debate about issues such as the first use of nuclear weapons, taking our nuclear arsenal off hair-trigger alert, and at last ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty…
Paul Saunders: U.S.-Russia Summitry Is at Center Stage Again
Vladimir Putin may well have persuaded himself that meaningful cooperation with America is impossible. Yet for Russia, like for the United States, there are profound differences between a lack of meaningful cooperation and a reflexively hostile relationship in which each government is actively working to undermine the other’s interests and objectives
3 Nuclear-Weapons Programs President Obama Should Kill (Will Saetren)
Rather than tailoring the next generation of nuclear deterrence to geopolitical realities, the United States is replacing its massive nuclear arsenal on a one-for-one basis as if the Cold War never ended.
Paul Robinson: Resilient Russia
There is a particular breed of Russia watcher who likes to predict the country’s imminent collapse.
Ted Galen Carpenter: Russia Is Not the Soviet Union
Russia’s security interests actually overlap substantially with America’s.
Scott Horton Talks With Andrew Cockburn on U.S. Nuclear Weapons
Journalist Andrew Cockburn discusses the U.S. nuclear weapons program and our relation with other nuclear armed countries, especially Russia.
Kerry and Lavrov’s Syrian Diplomacy Shows (Once Again) The Value of Detente (The Nation)
While [Russian Foreign Minister] Lavrov correctly noted on Friday that “no one can give a 100 percent guarantee” that the plan will achieve its objective, the American war party lost little time in trying to undermine the diplomatic breakthrough.
Al Jazeera: After series of attacks, why is the far right ‘granted impunity’?
Despite a minuscule parliamentary presence, Ukraine’s far right has become a visible and dreaded political force.
With East Still at War, Ukraine Opens a Second Front—Against Journalists (World Politics Review)
…the government’s inaction in the face of attacks on journalists and its hostility, perceived and actual, to Russian-speakers hobble its ability both to present a united face to Russia and appeal to the West for support. If Poroshenko wants to boast of a thriving, democratic civil society, he needs to do more to protect and encourage one…
Matthew Dal Santo: Nicholas II: A Tsar’s Life for the People?
On July 16 and 17, Russia marked one of the most sensitive centenaries in its recent history: the slaughter of Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II, his wife (the Anglo-German Empress Alexandra), five children, and four remaining servants at point-blank range by a Bolshevik firing squad in 1918.
Seth Ackerman: Russiagate Can’t End Well for the Left
Liberals are using Russiagate to gin up nationalist fervor and anti-Russian paranoia. It’ll only backfire.
Syria ceasefire: Is US-Russia deal important and will truce hold? (Patrick Cockburn)
Is the agreement important? It is very significant inside and outside Syria because it is between the US and Russia, the most powerful players in the Syrian conflict, who can put pressure on their allies and proxies to comply.
Ben Spielberg: A Plea to Progressives: Reject Russia Hysteria and Prioritize Social Justice
Democrats need to be more careful about how they approach the issue of Russia and the 2016 election. Failing to do so could have very serious consequences.
What’s Behind Barack Obama’s Ongoing Accommodation of Vladimir Putin? (Glenn Greenwald)
The most significant such rhetorical template in the 2016 election — other than the new Democratic claim that big-money donations do not corrupt the political process — is that Russia is a Grave Enemy of the U.S.; anyone who advocates better relations or less tension with Moscow is a likely sympathizer, stooge, or even agent of Putin; and any associations with the Kremlin render one’s loyalties suspect.
Aaron Mate: Debunking the Putin Panic with Stephen F. Cohen (Video)
There is much to criticize the Russian president for, says Professor Stephen F. Cohen of Princeton and NYU, but many US political and media claims about Putin are false – and reckless
Patrick Buchanan: Putin’s ‘Evil Empire’? Sort of a Sad Overstatement
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce,” a saying attributed to Karl Marx, comes to mind in this time of Trump.