…the relentless progress of pointless policy is a product of the way a certain group among the American elites think, described by sociologist C. Wright Mills as ‘crackpot realism’. Crackpot realists are technocrats and incrementalists; they work logically from one step to another, but do so in a bubble which is somewhat detached from reality. The result is a bit like an Impressionist painting, but in reverse – up close it makes perfect sense, but from far away it doesn’t make sense at all.
Analysis
Aaron Mate and Alyona Minkovski: FBI, DOJ Eye Russian Media Outlets as ‘Foreign Agents’
The US Justice Department and FBI are scrutinizing the Russian state-owned Sputnik and RT networks as potential ‘foreign agents,’ raising questions of press freedom, says independent journalist Alyona Minkovski.
Meduza: Comparing Russian and American government ‘propaganda’
In this infographic, Meduza compares the U.S. government’s international news media to RT and Sputnik, to get a better sense of just how big these operations are, relative to each other.
Shock and Awed: Yes, Russia Can Still Fight a War
Newsflash: Russia is not some tinpot third-world basket case with a make-believe army, but rather the nation with the third-highest military spending on the planet.
John Batchelor and Stephen F. Cohen PODCAST: Will Russia Leave the West?
The new Cold War could drive the planet’s largest country, long anchored politically in both geopolitical worlds, eastward to stay.
Reconsidering Russia PODCAST: Ambassador Jack Matlock Talks With Pietro Shakarian
In this wide-ranging interview, Ambassador Matlock discusses his interest in Russia, his first assignment in Moscow in 1961, his work for Presidents Reagan and Bush, Sr. as the American ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991, and his first impressions of, and meetings with, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Matlock also reflects on the folly of NATO expansion and an interventionist American foreign policy.
Josh Cohen: Here’s what a realistic Ukraine settlement may look like
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis wants the Trump administration to supply Ukraine with “defensive weapons” to combat the Russian-supported separatists occupying parts of eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region. On a recent visit to Kiev, Mattis told a news conference that these weapons “are not provocative unless you are an aggressor, and clearly Ukraine is not an aggressor.”
Want to understand why Putin does what he does? Look at a map.
Western leaders seem to have difficulty deciphering Putin’s motives, especially when it comes to his actions in Ukraine and Syria; Russia’s current leader has been described in terms that evoke Winston Churchill’s famous 1939 observation that Russia “is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma.” But it’s helpful to look at Putin’s military interventions abroad in the context of Russian leaders’ longstanding attempts to deal with geography. What if Putin’s motives aren’t so mysterious after all? What if you can read them clearly on a map?
Getting Ukraine Wrong (Gordon Hahn)
The Western media and DC think tanks continue to get Ukraine wrong.
REFLECTIONS ON “THE RISE AND REIGN OF VLADIMIR PUTIN”
Former Procter and Gamble CEO and ACEWA Founding Board Member John E. Pepper notes that “Putin understands that it will only be through a coalition of forces, prominently including the United States, that terrorism can be beaten, nuclear proliferation avoided and economic progress optimized.”
Further, Mr. Pepper is “convinced that if we were able to bring leaders together, to undertake specific goals, including combatting terrorism and taking steps to control the threat of nuclear annihilation, we can progress. It has always been human nature that we come together best when we face a common enemy. Unlike the past, we do not have ideological differences with Russia (as we do with ISIS) that should lead to war or that by their very nature lead to competing commitments to global expansion.”
LobeLog: Russia and Turkey: The Arms Deal that Signals the Age of Pragmatism
If any single arms deal can capture the shifting nature of Russian cooperation in the post-Cold War era, it is the pending sale of S-400 air defense systems to Turkey that now looks increasingly likely to happen.
Flashback: Charlie Rose Features Experts on US-Russia Post 9/11 (Air Date 11/5/01)
Professor Stephen Cohen and other experts examine the relationship between President George W. Bush and President Vladmir Putin.
The Origins of Separatism: Popular Grievances in Donetsk and Luhansk
What were the origins of separatism in the Donbas? When the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) were first proclaimed in early April 2014, their provenance was unclear, to put it mildly. Their self-appointed leaders were not well known. The organizations they represented before 2014 could generously be described as politically marginal. And yet, support for separatism in the Donbas began to grow. By the time armed militants began taking over regional government buildings in Donetsk in early April, large crowds accompanied them.
Flashback: U.S.-Russia Relations After September 11, 2001 (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)
U.S.-Russian relations offer one bright counter to this otherwise gloomier international picture.
Paul Robinson: Notes On a Visit to Sretenskii Monastery
Sretensky monastery is a massive and striking monument to those murdered not just by Stalin’s regime, but also by Lenin’s. With the full personal backing of the Russian president, it repudiates those regimes’s crimes in the most forceful manner.
Washington Post Op-Ed: Deep U.S.-Russia malaise calls for a liaison between Trump and Congress
Former Senator Sam Nunn and US Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz are co-chairmen of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. They write, “As Congress returns from its August recess, U.S.-Russia relations are in a deep ditch. This is a serious challenge for our governments and a danger to the people of both nations and indeed the world.”
PODCAST: Does Putin Really Want to ‘Destabilize the West’? (Stephen F. Cohen)
How Ukraine Is Forgetting Its Most Desperate Citizens
As victims of persecution and war, refugees are an extremely vulnerable population — but at least they fall under an internationally recognized protected category. What about those forcibly displaced people who do not fit under this legal definition? In Ukraine, where armed conflict between the military and pro-Russian separatists in the occupied east continues despite ceasefires, massive displacement is quickly leading to a major humanitarian crisis. What’s more, Ukraine’s displaced people have lost not only their homes but also many of their civil rights (including, most ominously, the right to vote). This is grim news for the country’s fragile democratic transition.
Hannah Gais: Who’s Afraid of the Russian Soul?
Today’s amateur Kremlinologists are keyboard ninjas with high-volume Twitter accounts and enough social media smarts to hijack the airwaves for their own puerile observations.
War and Peace — Revisited
Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar notes “Bashar al-Assad’s spectacular Moscow appearance – which enraged neocons/neoliberalcons to Kingdom Come – came complete with an ultra-high level dinner with Putin, Medvedev, Lavrov and Shoygu. It does not get more graphic than that; the order of priorities is to fight the “Caliphate” goons to death, and in parallel conduct a political process. Forget about regime change.”