ation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussion of the new US-Russian Cold War. Cohen points out that instead of cooperating with Moscow’s air war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the Obama Administration is threatening to send US planes and possibly troops to counter the Russian military operation there, while also stepping up NATO ground, air and sea exercises in areas on Russia’s own borders
Analysis
Mark Pfeifle: China Is Using the Russia-America Standoff to Win Big in Europe
Beijing is gaining energy-leverage in the region that is comparable only to that which Moscow enjoyed during the Cold War.
Paris Climate Talks Should Include Russia’s Lake Baikal
Following this year’s unnaturally dry summer, wildfires of an intensity not seen in decades have roared across the shores of Russia’s Lake Baikal. At their peak, they raged across nearly 150,000 hectares of land, an area roughly equivalent to that of the Houston metropolitan area. Greenpeace Russia estimates that over the course of July and August alone, up to 1.5 million hectares burned — that is, over 5.5 thousand square miles.
The image of Siberia burning is deeply unsettling, especially given its reputation as one of the coldest places on earth. Though wildfires in the region occur each year, their recent size and severity reveal broad ecological stress in the region. Of equal concern is Lake Baikal’s declining water level, which in early 2015 dropped below critical levels for the first time in more than three decades.
Paul Robinson: Cunning Trolls
If the latest stories in the Western press are to be believed, those dastardly Russians are responsible for turning a piece of anti-Russian propaganda into a viral video on social media. Curse them for their cunning!
Mary Dejevsky: Russia was the target of Nato’s own fake news
Military and media reports hyped the Zapad military exercise as a major threat. In fact, what took place was nothing as dramatic as the West’s warnings would have led you to believe.
Hannah Gais: Star-studded but otherwise utterly useless, the Committee to Investigate Russia serves little purpose
Spearheaded by actor and director Rob Reiner and Atlantic senior editor David Frum, CIR’s advisory committee, which includes war-hungry neoconservative scholar Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, political scientist Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, and former National Intelligence director James Clapper….
James Carden: Trump Has Given Russia Hawks Little To Complain About
Appointment hearings for Jon M. Huntsman and A. Wess Mitchell were wholly in line with the beltway consensus on Russia.
Ukraine Is in Danger of Becoming a Failed State
Bloomberg View’s Leonid Bershidsky reports “Americans are highly visible in the Ukrainian political process. The U.S. embassy in Kiev is a center of power, and Ukrainian politicians openly talk of appointments and dismissals being vetted by U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and even U.S. Vice President Joe Biden…Europeans too are involved in shaping the way Ukraine is governed, not just because they are donors — the U.S. is more important in that respect because of its influence on the IMF…”
Daniel Larison: Two Tedious Attacks on Realists
They might have saved everyone a lot of time if they had simply said, “Kissinger, si, Kennan, no.”
Egypt plane crash: This attack shows that Russia is hurting Isis
Isis evidently does not have any doubts about the Russian air strikes being aimed at itself and cannot have done so since the raids started on 30 September, because an operation such as getting a bomb on to a plane at Sharm el Sheikh airport would take weeks to set up. There is a further misunderstanding about the Russian attacks on Isis and other salafi-jihadi armed groups in Syria. They are much heavier than anything being carried out by the US-led coalition, with 59 Russian strikes on one day recently compared to the US launching just nine.
Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor PODCAST: The Silence of the Doves
Why, unlike during the preceding 45-year Cold War, is there no significant American mainstream opposition to the new (and more dangerous) one? Cohen poses this question as a kind of paradox for tonight’s discussion…
Bloomberg View: Wanted: Russia Experts, No Expertise Required
There’s a lot to unpack about the newly formed Committee to Investigate Russia, which aims to “help Americans recognize and understand the gravity of Russia’s continuing attacks on our democracy.” Perhaps its most striking feature is that no Russia experts are involved; that’s a sign of the times.
Russia is Targeting Jihadi Terrorists in Syria Including the Islamic State
The misrepresentation of Russia’s stated objectives in Syria and the Russian population’s reaction to President Vladimir Putin’s decision to intervene militarily in the war-torn country continues in U.S. mainstream media and think tanks
Obituary: Stanislav Petrov, Soviet officer credited with averting nuclear war, dies at 77
When alarms began to ring and a control panel flashed in front of Stanislav Petrov, a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel seated in a secret bunker south of Moscow, it appeared that the world was less than 30 minutes from nuclear war.
The Nation’s Patrick Lawrence Interviews Author and Journalist Stephen Kinzer
In this wide ranging interview, Stephen Kinzer wonders, “How would we react if the Russians had military maneuvers in Tijuana, or the Chinese opened a base in Montreal?…under international law and the principles of Westphalian independence, they have every right to do that. But in reality we would never tolerate that.
Who Were the Bolsheviks and Why They Matter Today…
Thom Hartmann talks with Professor Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies & Politics at NYU and Princeton. Professor Cohen’s books, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution and, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives, which examines the origins of the “New Cold War.” For the podcast, click below.
Is an Assad victory in Syria the lesser of two evils?
Dylan Royce, a Russian concentrator at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, writes that “If Syria turns into Russia’s new Afghanistan, it could also become a proxy war between Russia and the U.S., with all its grave implications. The rebels Washington supports will accomplish little more than helping the radicals into power…Syria might fall under the rule of those who will cause the country, its region, and the West far more harm than the victory of Syrian President Bashar Assad (and, thus, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin) ever could have.
It is therefore time to accept that the U.S. has run out of moves in Syria.”
James Carden: The Latest Push to Arm Ukraine
Then as now, arguments for arming Ukraine are based on disingenuous interpretations of past agreements and an equally reckless disregard for the present circumstances.
Following municipal elections, denial of Ukraine’s political divisions helps no one
No one in their right mind, of course, would claim that a writer who tried to analyze the economic, social, and political differences between New York and Texas was somehow engaged in “anti-American propaganda,” or an attempt to prove that the United States is a “fictitious nation.” But when it comes to Ukraine, the current government and its supporters are rabid in attacking anyone who points out that Ukraine is not united in its desire to fulsomely embrace the European Union.
Flashback: David Rieff on The False Dawn of Civil Society (The Nation, 2/4/99)
When it is said that civil society must be recognized as a new force in international politics, what is meant is a certain kind of civil society–in other words, a certain kind of political movement. But why should this be the case?