Analysis

If I had cornflakes for breakfast (which I don’t), I would have choked on them, reading Andrew Parker’s view of the threat posed by Russia, not just to the world at large – that is a commonplace of the “new cold war” discourse – but to the stability of the UK.

Turkey’s always-complex zigzags between its Western allies and their respective strategic rivals are more than notorious. Russia is a case in point. A year ago Turkey and Russia were on the brink of war over Syria. Today they are in a courtship that may include critical defense and procurement cooperation.

The following items come courtesy of Newsweek, The Washington Post and US News and World Report. They have appeared within the last several days and are representative of the media coverage regarding NATO and Russia. The first, from Newsweek (link below), comes from the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s Nolan Peterson who, for his work covering the Ukrainian civil war, was given an award by the US Embassy in Kiev by Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt.

Just ahead of the U.S. presidential elections, Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be pushing his conflict with the West to new heights…

Officials in Finland, Sweden and Norway are concerned about what have become almost routine acts of Russian aggression, how they can respond, and whether they could prevent an incident, or even an accident, from spiraling out of control. So now, quietly, they’re preparing for a confrontation.

Jeffrey Carr, a cybersecurity consultant and author of “Inside Cyber Warfare,” has been skeptical of the intelligence community’s assessment of the hacks–and the media’s coverage of this assessment–from the beginning. He talks to host Bob Garfield about his doubts, the risks of false attribution, and why we need a higher standard of evidence when making claims about cyber war.

In November last year, Mikhail Lesin was found dead in a hotel in Washington, DC…Without directly accusing Putin of murder, various mainstream media outlets have implied it by including Lesin in lists of ‘opponents’ of the Russian ‘regime’ whom the Kremlin has allegedly ordered killed.

The whipping up of a New Cold War with Russia and the demonizing of Vladimir Putin extend beyond The Washington Post to virtually the entire U.S. political/media establishment which has plunged into this dangerous terrain without any more serious thought and analysis than preceded the Iraq invasion, except now the target for “regime change” is nuclear-armed Russia and this adventurism risks the extermination of life on the planet.

Both Russia and the US election have generated reams of silly commentary in recent months, and it’s never been sillier than when the two issues have been combined.

Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com.) Unlike most installments, which cover an array of news stories, this one focuses on a single but encompassing subject: the nearly decade-long demonization of Putin by the US political-media establishment.

Control of this God-like power will soon be transferred to a new president. But do we really want to trust anyone with this situation? Not just with the power to order a nuclear strike — but the responsibility of deciding whether to do so in just minutes, on the basis of sketchy, preliminary information? There’s been scant comment this political season on why it’s still like this.

KCRW hosts NYU and Princeton Prof. Emeritus Stephen F. Cohen, the German Marshall Fund’s Derek Chollet, the Atlantic Council’s Elizabeth Braw, and RAND’s David Shlapak to discuss the tensions on in the Baltic region between NATO and Russia.

The U.S. and Russia are the world’s two mightiest nuclear powers, and yet over the years, they’ve made deals to reduce their respective arsenals.

Almost goofily, behind Official Washington’s latest warmongering “group think,” the U.S. has plunged into a New Cold War against Russia with no debate about the enormous costs and the extraordinary risks of nuclear annihilation, Gray Brechin observes.

According to Haaretz, “If tested in a showdown, Putin’s sole old smoky carrier is unlikely to prove as capable – it’s inferior, inexperienced and carries a history of mishaps. For now though, the Kremlin has one clear advantage.”

Beyond the government’s headline assertion that Russia is to blame, “it’s important to parse the public statement pretty closely,” said Susan Hennessey, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution. “They’re being really careful in their word choice.”

The European Union parliament often prides itself on being a model for international intergration on a global scale. Yet, the upcomong Boris Nemstov forum, billed as exemplifying EU-Russian dialogue, does not live up to the European parliament’s lofty reputation. Rather than EU-Russia dialogue, the forum is an example of Europeans talking to themselves and failing to engage in real politics. [Read more…] about The EU’s Amateur dialogue with Russia (Peter S. Rieth)

U.S.-Russian hostilities have the potential to impact the U.S.’ re-balance to the region to counter China. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, Japan has renewed its own outreach efforts to Russia. These efforts have lessons for the U.S. with respect to overcoming unproductive rhetoric and soberly recognizing shared security interests in arguably the most important geopolitical region of the future.

In post-Maidan Ukraine, temnyky, arrests and censorship have become commonplace. What’s more, repression against dissidents and even murder have become socially acceptable…To be fair, it should be noted that justifications of violence and murder of “enemies” have not been accepted by society as a whole – only by one segment of social media, the mass media and those who call themselves “Maidan activists”

Fareed Zakaria digs into heightened tensions between U.S. and Russia with ACEWA Board Member and NYU professor emeritus Stephen Cohen and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius