Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has wrapped up a visit to Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The meetings come at a time of increased tension between Washington and Moscow. Democracy Now speaks to Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University.
Analysis
VIDEO: Former UK Ambassador to Syria Peter Ford Discusses the Latest Charges Against Syria (BBC)
Former British Ambassador to Syria Peter Ford believes that the chemical attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun may not have been committed by the Assad regime.
PODCAST: ‘Words Are Also Deeds’: Unverified Stories and the Growing Risk of War With Russia (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 argues that the American political-media establishment has embraced two fraught narratives for which there is still no public evidence, only “intel” allegations.
An American Dream Fulfilled (Sarah Lindemann-Komarova)
While the United States government was secretly preparing to bomb Syria, I was in my Siberian university classroom.
MSNBC’S RACHEL MADDOW SEES A “RUSSIA CONNECTION” LURKING AROUND EVERY CORNER (ARON MATE)
ONE DAY AFTER her network joined the rest of corporate media in cheering for President Trump’s missile attack on Syria, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was back to regular business: seeing Russian collaboration with Trump at work.
Syria strike follows Washington’s failed foreign-policy playbook (Katrina vanden Heuvel)
At this point, the primary consequence of Trump’s muscle-flexing has been to dramatically increase tensions with Assad’s most important ally, Russia. Defying the charge that he is “Putin’s puppet” has conveniently quieted Trump’s domestic critics and distracted from the investigation into his campaign, but it has also brought the United States much closer to a dangerous confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia.
Bill Bradley: 5 Steps for Peace in Ukraine
Given the events of the past couple of weeks, including, but not limited to: the US Senate including a provision in the Defense Authorization Act which requires that 20 percent of the funds earmarked for Ukrainian security assistance be spent on lethal weaponry for Kiev; John McCain’s denigration of the Minsk II accords in a Washington Post editorial; and NATO’s decision to place troops and weapons on Russia’s western frontier, we thought it would be appropriate to re-run Sen. Bill Bradley’s recent piece on the Ukraine crisis in Time magazine.
What Ukraine’s Jews Fear (NY Times Op-ed)
Babi Yar’s commemorative memorial was vandalized nine times in 2015 and 2016, with everything from painted swastikas to an attempt on Rosh Hashana to burn down a menorah at the site. More recently, a Holocaust memorial in the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil was painted with a swastika and SS runes.
Trump and Putin Hit the First Bump in the Road, and It’s Called Syria (Nicholas Gvosdev)
For all of the reporting suggesting that Trump wants to conduct a “transactional” foreign policy, the reality is that the Kremlin is quite clear in its insistence that it will do nothing on credit and vague assurances of future American goodwill. This may explain why the promise of a Tillerson-Putin meeting, although never formally scheduled, now appears to have been revoked.
How Moscow views Nagorny Karabakh
As the crisis in Ukraine approaches the year and a half mark, policymakers ought to be on guard against repeating the same mistakes that led to the crisis in the first place. With that in mind, we will occasionally be running articles aimed at shedding light on other potential areas of conflict between East and West with a focus on the several ‘frozen conflicts’ that dot the landscape of the post-Soviet space. The first in this occasional series is by a young scholar of Russia and the Caucasus, Pietro Shakarian.
Selection and Maintenance of the Aim (Paul Robinson)
Strategy, Clausewitz said, is about applying means to achieve ends. It follows that good strategy requires one first to select sensible and achievable ends, and second to ensure that one actually apply one’s resources in such a way as to advance towards those ends.
PODCAST: Scott Horton Talks To Cybersecurity expert Jeffery Carr on Russia Hacking
Jeffrey Carr, an international cybersecurity consultant, discusses the low evidentiary standard the US government and media has used to make very serious accusations about Russian hacking of Ukrainian military software and, by extension, the DNC emails. Carr says that CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity report – the basis for all these accusations – is the worst he has ever read.
The Man Who Spoke Truth to Power: Andrei Sakharov’s Enduring Relevance
In the decades since Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan began working together to end the Cold War, much has changed. Science and technology have reshaped global communication, finance, and culture. Terrorism and violent extremism threaten global stability, while climate change threatens the planet itself. But one grim element of the old order war remains a constant: Mankind still possesses the knowledge and means to destroy itself with nuclear weapons…
Putin is part of a continuum that stretches back to the tsars (Geoffrey Hosking)
In aggressively asserting his country’s strength, Putin wants Russia to regain its status among the great nations contesting power and wealth with one another.
NATO Ups the Ante In the Ukraine Crisis
The events of this week have extinguished any glimmer of hope that may have been sparked by John Kerry’s diplomatic parley with the Russians in Sochi this past May. All the while, the administration, aided and abetted by a compliant Congress and a complacent media, stands idly by as the war parties on both sides of the Atlantic march on, unencumbered and virtually unopposed.
Trump’s Syria misadventure: If this all goes wrong, media must shoulder the blame (Danielle Ryan)
On MSNBC, Brian Williams was almost teary-eyed, waxing lyrical about the beauty of it all. On CNN, Fareed Zakaria hailed Trump’s moral awakening, arguing: “I think Donald Trump became the president of the United States” that night.
Syria and the Call of the Quagmire (Paul Pillar)
Throughout the Cold War, the superpowers were careful to avoid any such direct engagement with each other, however much they sponsored and equipped armed proxies. That was part of why Carter did not get into a direct military fight in Afghanistan. It would be most unwise to throw away such caution where the Russians are involved today.
Wilkerson: Trump Attack on Syria Driven by Domestic Politics (Real News)
Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, tells Paul Jay that the Syrian Government may not be responsible for the chemical attack and that Trump’s response was a violation of international law
Russia’s Lethal Nuclear Arsenal Gets an Upgrade: Should NATO Worry?
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave brief remarks at the opening ceremony of ARMY-2015, an exposition where Russia’s defense contractors demonstrated new military technology for foreign weapons buyers…Highlighting several pieces of Russia’s plan to modernize its military, Putin mentioned that, “This year we will supply more than forty new intercontinental ballistic missiles [ICBMs] to our nuclear force.”
This simple statement ignited a minor fervor in NATO countries.
Trump’s Bombing of Syria Spells the Premature End of Détente (James Carden)
President Trump’s decision to launch an air strike on the Al Shayrat airfield in Syria confirms what had been only too obvious in recent weeks, that Trump, far from representing a clean break with the regnant foreign policy orthodoxy of endless military intervention in the Greater Middle East, has instead become captive to it.