The one-year anniversary of the tragic shooting down of Flight MH17 over Ukraine is an opportunity to take stock of the costs of Europe’s latest, biggest, and apparently most intractable security crisis.
Analysis
A Russian Role in Central Asia That America Can Live With
The ongoing war in Eastern Ukraine casts a long shadow over areas of shared American and Russian interest, making the Obama administration’s 2009 “reset” in relations appear a distant memory. However perceptions have shifted in the intervening six years, common concerns still exist between Washington and Moscow; chief among them: terrorism.
In the Horrorscape of Aleppo (Charles Glass)
Militarists in the White House, Congress, and the US media call for escalation against Assad and Vladimir Putin, but they might serve Syria’s beleaguered population better by seeking an accord with the Russians and Iranians. Until then, there will be more war crimes. And more war.
Why is attribution such a challenge? (Jeff Schilling)
I am always skeptical when I see that a particular threat actor has been identified, such as in the case of the recent DNC hacking event.
MH-17 Mystery: A New Tonkin Gulf Case?
In 1964, the Tonkin Gulf incident was used to justify the Vietnam War although U.S. intelligence quickly knew the facts were not what the U.S. government claimed. Now, the MH-17 case is being exploited to justify a new Cold War as U.S. intelligence again is silent about what it knows, writes Robert Parry.
PODCAST: Again, Is the Possibility of a Trump-Putin Détente Really Dead? (Stephen F. Cohen)
Princeton and NYU Professor Emeritus Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. Cohen reiterates a general theme he has developed in recent years: the exceedingly dangerous nature of the new Cold War makes détente – that is, negotiating areas of US-Russian cooperation to replace or offset perilous areas of conflict, imperative for American and international security.
What’s wrong with American articles about ‘The New Cold War’ with Russia? (Meduza)
The American mainstream [has] failed to show skepticism about a special declassified intelligence report on Russia’s attempts to influence the U.S. elections, despite the report’s lack of new information and failure to offer concrete evidence proving that Vladimir Putin wanted to undermine American democracy. Instead, most of the report consisted of an annex devoted to the Russian television channel Russia Today (RT).
Is the Ukrainian Crisis Triggering the End of the US-Dominated Post-1991 World Order?
Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussion of the new US-Russian Cold War. The discussion focuses on the impact of the conflict over Ukraine on other international developments, including the recent BRICS and Shanghai Cooperation summits in Russia led by Moscow and Beijing, Iran’s possible emergence as a major power, and the crisis in EU-Greek relations.
Do Any of Candidate Trump’s Foreign-Policy Promises Still Stand? (Doug Bandow)
President Trump’s recent comments on NATO demonstrate a larger dilemma.
Whom to Trust? (Robert Parry)
The dangerous reality is that this careerism, which often is expressed by a smug certainty about whatever the prevailing groupthink is, pervades not just the political world, where lies seem to be the common currency, but also the worlds of journalism, intelligence and international oversight
Why Is Washington Addicted to War?
…what a surprise it would be if the principal legacy for Obama were not the opening to Iran, even if it were to fulfill all positive expectations, but a deepening cold war, potentially even hot war, with Russia, writes American Conservative founding editor Scott McConnell.
More Pentagon Generals Line Up to Proclaim Russia’s ‘Existential’ Threat to U.S.
The two generals nominated to sit atop the Defense Department’s hierarchy agree: President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is the greatest threat facing the United States today.
U.S. Air Force Gen. Paul Selva — President Barack Obama’s pick to be the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that he “would put the threats to this nation in the following order: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea…
Challenging the Western narrative that says Russia isn’t free (Sarah Lindemann-Komarova)
Civil society in Russia appears to be coming into its own
Josh Rogin’s Lazy Tribute to Donald Trump (The National Interest)
What Rogin is doing isn’t reporting; it’s pandering.
PODCAST: Mounting Incitements to War With Russia (Stephen F. Cohen)
Princeton and NYU Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com). This installment expands upon last week’s, which focused on several highly questionable Washington narratives that imply the necessity of war with Russia.
Saving Maidan Ukraine From Itself: Mukachevo’s Implications
According to Dr. Gordon Hahn yesterday’s violent clash between Right Sector and Ukrainian police does not bode well for the Poroshenko government in Kiev. Hahn notes, “President Poroshenko is now faced with the Hobson’s choice of either disarming PS [Right Sector] and other armed neo-fascist groups and their ‘battalions’ in order to establish the Maidan regime’s monopoly over the means of coercion or fashioning yet another compromise with neofascism.”
Latest Developments in Eastern Ukraine (Prof. Paul Robinson)
bit by bit, as a result of the Ukrainian blockade and the Russian and rebel responses to it, the DPR and LPR are turning into de facto independent states without any substantial economic ties to Ukraine. The longer this goes on and the deeper the process the goes, the harder it will be to reverse it.
Six thoughts on the US bombing of Syria (Greg Grandin)
Washington’s use of the “established deconfliction channel” to warn Moscow that it was readying its missiles might have, for now, reduced the risk of escalation. But the risk is still substantial. That the bombing came on the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entrance into World War I underscores the oft-made point that war is unpredictable.
Russian and American experts both see no way out in Syria
Russia and the United States, who have favored opposite sides in the Syria conflict…are beginning to see eye to eye on one key point: the current path in Syria leads nowhere.
Have we forgotten the Cold War? Nuclear threat more real than ever. (Secretary William J. Perry)
I lived most of my adult life during the Cold War, and, throughout, I never lost sight of one overwhelming reality — at any time, the Cold War could turn hot, resulting in the extinction of our civilization. Now, inexplicably, we are recreating many of the conditions of the Cold War.