On May 5, the Symphony Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater performed in Palmyra’s Roman Amphitheater to celebrate the site’s liberation from ISIS by Russian and Syrian forces. In the following piece, the scholar Rachel Polonsky examines Palmyra’s rich cultural history and interviews the Director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, on his vision for Palmyra’s future.
Analysis
Stephen F. Cohen: Unproven Allegations Against Trump and Putin Are Risking Nuclear War
“Russiagate” and the Skirpal affair have escalated dangers inherent in the new Cold War beyond those of the preceding one.
Patrick Lawrence: Let’s Not Fall Into the Cold War Arms-Control Trap
For our national security, we need self-control more than we need arms-control talks.
Prof. George Enteen: Comment on Max Boot’s ‘Russia’s War against the West’
Max Boot’s recent column, ‘Russia’s War against the West’ warrants comment. It was impassioned, closed-minded and capricious. [Read more…] about Prof. George Enteen: Comment on Max Boot’s ‘Russia’s War against the West’
PODCAST: Vladimir Putin: The 21st Century’s Greatest Statesman or Its Greatest Threat? (Stephen F. Cohen)
TheNation.com). This installment focuses on Putin’s policies at home and abroad since he became Russia’s leader in 2000.
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 atJennifer Wilson: Floating in the Air (On Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment)
In September 1865, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was living in Wiesbaden, Germany, and couldn’t pay his rent. A string of gambling losses had left him near financial ruin, a familiar circumstance for Dostoyevsky (as dramatized in his novel The Gambler).
Tom Switzer: Skripal: the West escalates, but where is the proof?
Australia, the US, and several EU nations joined forces with Britain this week to expel Russian diplomats from their nations. The decision is based on the widespread view that the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin is responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England earlier this month.
WWII Soviet Experience (Eisenhower Institute)
Americans have little conception of the Soviet Union’s experience in World War II. No cities in the United States were besieged, not a single bomb was dropped by an enemy airplane on any of our 48 states, no part of our population was enslaved, starved or murdered, and not one village, town or city was completely destroyed or even heard a shot fired in anger.
Ted Galen Carpenter: The Real Problem with Gina Haspel’s CIA Nomination
An especially insidious snare for a liberal democracy in the conduct of its foreign policy is the temptation to adopt the strategies and tactics of one’s adversaries. President Donald Trump’s appointment of Gina Haspel as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency highlights that problem.
The spirit of Ukraine’s Euromaidan Revolution has been betrayed (New Statesman)
Instead of able, technocratic leaders with strong ties to the West, we see a less reformist, less competent cabinet.
Sergei Karaganov: The West’s Unilateral Cold War
The problem between Russia and the West is really a problem among Westerners themselves. If there is a new cold war, it is only because established elites have not come to terms with reality: the balance of military, political, economic, and moral power has shifted too far away from the West to be reversed.
VIDEO Stephen F. Cohen: Who Will Stop the US-Russia Arms Race?
AARON MATE: Why does Russia blame the U.S. for the arms race? …to discuss this, I spoke recently to Professor Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton. And I began by asking him what Putin is seeking in his relationship with the U.S. STEPHEN COHEN: Well, let’s begin by saying that there’s hardly been a time when Putin did not call for good relations with the United States, even in the worst of times. And he continues to refer to American political leaders as ‘my partners,’ even in the worst of times. This, by the way, drives harder line, or harder line people in the Soviet security establishment up the wall. They say to him, why do you keep calling them your partner?
VIDEO: Why Cold War Again?” – Stephen F. Cohen & Roundtable Discussion at Dartmouth College
ACEWA Board Member and Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen was the keynote speaker at a conference held at Dartmouth College (via Skype) on the New Cold War this past weekend. Professor Cohen’s talk was followed by a panel discussion featuring Michael Gorham (University of Florida), Steven Lee Myers (New York Times), Natalia Rostova (senior correspondent, Slon ru.), Alexander Baunov (Carnegie Center, Moscow) and Eugene Rumer (Carnegie Endowment).
Lyle Goldstein: Wanted: A Coalition of ‘Disinterested Powers’ Capable of Saving Syria
Russia and the United States joust with proxies (mostly), while the Syrian people suffer.
The Kremlin Seeks to Reestablish Washington Ties (Dmitry Gorenburg)
Last week, I was once again in attendance at the Russian MOD’s Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS). This was the fifth such conference and the third that I’ve attended…The overall tone was less hostile toward the United States than last year.
Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton: NATO Expansion: What Yeltsin Heard
Russian president led to believe Partnership for Peace was alternative to expanded NATO Documents show early Russian opposition to “neo-containment;” more U.S. assurances to Russia: “inclusion not exclusion” in new European security structures.
Robert Wright: Overdoing the Russia Thing
I hate to obsess over the Resistance’s obsession with this whole Russia thing, but: This week brought (1) a fresh reminder that Russia is far from the only country whose influence on American politics bears watching; and (2) a reminder of the (as economists say) “opportunity cost” of spending so much time watching Russia. [Read more…] about Robert Wright: Overdoing the Russia Thing
William Jay Risch: Turning a protest into (someone else’s) metaphysics
A new account of Ukraine’s Euromaidan focuses on the spirit of revolution rather than dissecting events as they emerged.
William Courtney: Putin can learn from Gorbachev on how to gain from future US talks
Vladimir Putin has won a flawed election to a fourth term as Russia’s president, and Donald Trump has suggested the two will likely meet soon. For the Kremlin leader, however, a summit may draw shortcomings into sharper relief.
Ukraine’s displaced people: Status unknown (Vitalii Atanasov)
Two years have passed since the first internally displaced people (IDPs) appeared in Ukraine. Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, some residents of the peninsula fled to mainland Ukraine…A much greater influx of refugees began later that summer, when the military conflict began in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine.