On Tuesday, Ambassador Jack Matlock testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Amb. Matlock told the Committee that he is “deeply concerned with the direction U.S.-Russian relations has taken of late. The mutual accusations and public acrimony has at times been reminiscent of that at the height (or depth!) of the Cold War.” The entire written testimony can be found here: [Read more…] about Prepared Testimony By Jack F. Matlock, Jr. House Foreign Affairs Committee June 14, 2016
Analysis
Graham E. Fuller: Syria: bottom line questions
Does the US really want the war in Syria to end? In principle yes, but only under its own rigid terms which call for an end to Asad’s rule and the elimination of Russian and Iranian power in Syria. None of this is within the realm of reality.
JTA: Congress members call out Ukraine government for glorifying Nazis
More than 50 U.S. Congress members condemned Ukrainian legislation that they said “glorifies Nazi collaborators” and therefore goes further than Poland’s laws on rhetoric about the Holocaust. The condemnation came in an open bipartisan letter to Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan that was initiated by Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna of California and David Cicilline of Rhode Island.
America’s Many Mideast Blunders (Amb. Chas W. Freeman)
Mr. Putin’s intervention in Syria in 2015 relied for its success on ingredients similar to those in the pre-Tora Bora U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. The Russians committed a modest ration of air power and special forces in support of a Syrian government that had amply demonstrated its survivability in the face of more than four years of Islamist efforts to take it down. The Russian campaign had clear political objectives, which it stuck to.
Stephen F. Cohen: Forgotten Truths: On the Imperative of Cooperating With—Not Criminalizing—Russia
Cooperation with Moscow remains vital for American national security, but “Russiagate” allegations, now codified in a DNC lawsuit, are making that decades-long pursuit a crime.
On ‘Russian Assertiveness’ in Foreign Policy (Vladimir Brovkin)
Political Scientists like to explain reality in terms of familiar mental constructs, such as search for legitimacy, priority of domestic policy, newly found military strength, etc. And so what we have in these articles is a standard traditional application of those to contemporary Russian foreign policy. What is wrong with this is that it misses the emotional side of things, the gut feeling, the sense of pride and national injury. [Read more…] about On ‘Russian Assertiveness’ in Foreign Policy (Vladimir Brovkin)
Gordon Hahn: Broken Promise: NATO Expansion and the End of the Cold War – AN UPDATE
Immediately after I published the following, new revelations emerged from the U.S. National Archives confirming that Western leaders’ promised the Soviet leadership that NATO would not expand and that these promises were quite explicit, not limited to the issue of East Germany.
VIDEO: Stephen Cohen Asks Why Is The Western Media Ignoring The New Cold War?
Thom Hartmann speaks with Professor Stephen Cohen of The Nation about Russia, NATO, and our mainstream media’s refusal to report on the New Cold War.
Daniel Larison: The Ridiculous Proposal to Label Russia a State Sponsor of Terrorism
Sen. Cory Gardner made a bizarre proposal last week…
VIDEO: Interview with Richard Sakwa: With NATO exercises encircling Russia, U.S. might be sleepwalking to disaster
Interview with Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at University of Kent and author of the 2015 book Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, broadcast on The Real News Network, June 9, 2016.
Paul Robinson: On Canada’s Foreign Minister
…on occasion Ms Freeland appears to be less the foreign minister of Canada and more the foreign minister of Ukraine.
Paul Grenier: The Voluntarist Impulse and US Foreign Policy
We can see this voluntarism at work among our forebears. The Skripal affair in Britain led to almost immediate action—the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats from the United States alone—well before the facts of this dubious incident, which has led to zero deaths, could be established
Here’s why Trump’s foreign policy terrifies neocons (Ambassador Joseph A. Mussomeli)
During an ambassadorial conference in 2014, a former colleague breathlessly characterized the Ukraine crisis in neocon terms as a Manichean struggle between good and evil. Such comic-book notions now dominate our political discourse, distorting reality and making it nearly impossible to objectively assess complex issues.
Paul Pillar: The Terrorism Label
A recent op-ed from Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) calls for officially designating Russia a state sponsor of terrorism.
Nikolas K. Gvosdev: The United States, Russia and the ‘No Cost’ Paradigm
Washington think tanks can churn out studies about Russia, but the rationale behind them usually lack deep, strong roots sunk into the American public.
PODCAST: War With Russia Without Public Debate? (Stephen F. Cohen)
Nation Contributing Editor and ACEWA Board Member Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US–Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com). This installment returns to the large-scale NATO military buildup on Russia’s Western frontiers, again on land, sea, and in the air, now featuring Operation “Anaconda—2016,” an “exercise” involving more than 30,000 American and other NATO forces in Poland.
Gareth Porter: Another Dodgy British Dossier: the Skripal Case
Gareth Porter compares the same faulty logic employed in two purposely misleading, so-called British intelligence dossiers.
The William J. Perry Project
President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, Dr. William J. Perry, has a memoir out called My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, as well as a thought-provoking website in which he calls attention to the still current danger of a nuclear conflagration. Please check it out.
Emma Ashford: How Reflexive Hostility to Russia Harms U.S. Interests
Washington Needs a More Realistic Approach.
Explaining ‘Russian Assertiveness’ (Paul Robinson)
There is general agreement that the foreign policy of the Russian Federation has become much more assertive in the past decade. In the last few days, I have read several pieces which attempt to explain this.