New swamp report:$174 million was poured into the D.C. influence game over four years—that’s double earlier estimates.
David C. Speedie and Krishen Mehta: The Navalny Case: Usual Suspects, Actual Culprits?
We are concerned about the recent news relating to the poisoning of Russian opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, and believe that it may be another attempt by certain interested parties to worsen the already strained US-Russia relations.
Even those who despise President Putin know that he is not insane. [Read more…] about David C. Speedie and Krishen Mehta: The Navalny Case: Usual Suspects, Actual Culprits?
Paul Pillar: Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections is Even Worse Than You Thought
The misconduct for which Donald Trump has been impeached centers on an attempt to drag a foreign government into a U.S. election campaign. That caper has increased public attention to the problem of foreign interference in U.S. politics, but the problem is more extensive than discourse about the impeachment process would suggest.
Rajah Menon: Belarus’s Protests Aren’t Particularly Anti-Putin
With little chance of the installation of an anti-Russian regime in Minsk, Moscow doesn’t have much reason to step into the fray.
TNR: The Neocons Strike Back
How a discredited foreign policy ideology continues to wreak havoc in Washington and around the world.
Tom Couser: An Open Letter to Strobe Talbott About RussiaGate
Professor Tom Couser writes: I met Strobe Talbott in 1968 when he and I were graduate students at Magdalen College, Oxford. I liked him and respected him, and after we lost touch as friends, I followed his career at Time, the State Department, and the Brookings Institution with admiration. In recent years, however, I’ve become disillusioned with the foreign policy he advocated with regard to Russia and was disturbed to learn of his involvement in the genesis of the Russiagate narrative.
Lyle J. Goldstein: The Fate of the China-Russia Alliance
The Moscow-Beijing collaborative relations have already yielded major shifts in the military balance in the Asia-Pacific two times. Will the third time be a global transformation?
Aris Roussinos: The irresistible rise of the civilisation-state
A spectre is haunting the liberal West: the rise of the “civilisation-state”.
Lucy Komisar: Danish Press Board says report on Browder is true
In December, the Danish Press Board rejected a complaint that William Browder filed against Finans, Finans.dk, a Danish financial news outlet, part of the national daily Jyllands-Posten, that reported on his tax evasion and invented Magnitsky story in a documented exposé by journalists Jette Aagaard and Kristoffer Brahm.
Vadim Nikitin: What Belarus Stands to Lose
So far, none of the opposition leaders have demonstrated a vocal commitment to preserving Belarus’s key asset: its social and economic equality. Worryingly, two key opposition leaders, Tsepkalo and Viktor Babariko, a career banker, are known for their staunchly pro-business views and vocal support for privatization.
Paul Robinson: Striking Back
On more than one occasion I have complained about the all-too prevalent habit of smearing people as ‘Kremlin proxies’, ‘Russian agents’, and the like, simply because they happen not to share the belief that Russia is at the root of all the political turmoil recently experienced by Western states.
Zack Brown: New START: Why An Extension Is In America’s National Interest
Failing to renew the New START arms control treaty with Russia “is not a wise direction of travel,” said Rose Gottemoeller, a former Deputy Secretary General of NATO who ranked as one of President Barack Obama’s top nuclear security experts.
Lyle Goldstein: Russiagate Regrets
Washington, Moscow and the world will be harvesting the foul fruits of the Russiagate debacle for decades.
Ted Galen Carpenter: Why The U.S. Should Keep Its Distance From Belarus
Some will be pushing us into a standoff with Putin over this, but the last thing our leaders need is another Ukraine.
Aaron Mate talks with Professor Stephen F. Cohen
At the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, chief Democratic prosecutor Adam Schiff has claimed that the US is arming Ukraine “so that we can fight Russia over there so we don’t have to fight Russia here” and called Russia a “wounded, dangerous animal.” Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton University, says that Schiff’s rhetoric is “ignorant and debased.
David C. Speedie and Krishen Mehta: Russiagate and the New “Conspiracism”
David Speedie writes that, “the sage advice of John Quincy Adams two centuries and more ago about not going forth seeking monsters to destroy, the United States, or at least its political leaders, seem in need of an external threat to tackle and defeat.” His full article here: [Read more…] about David C. Speedie and Krishen Mehta: Russiagate and the New “Conspiracism”
Grayzone Project: Elizabeth Warren’s foreign policy team is stacked with pro-war swamp creatures
With her new list of foreign policy advisors, Warren unveiled a cast of pro-war think tankers, Cold Warriors and corporate careerists united in support of the Beltway consensus. So much for “big, structural change.
William Rutger: Why Americans Want a President Who Ends Endless Wars
A new poll shows that the U.S. public supports a more realist foreign policy and wants its leaders to focus more on pressing domestic needs than overseas projects.
Daniel Larison: Pompeo’s Petty Despotism
It is unacceptable for the Secretary of State to retaliate against a news organization because he happens to dislike the questions from one of their reporters.
Shorenstein Center: How Russian Media Reported the Coronavirus Pandemic
In a new Shorenstein Center report, “Conveying Truth: Independent Media in Putin’s Russia,” Ann Cooper, a Spring 2020 Joan Shorenstein fellow, describes the origins and evolution of independent media in Russia from the late Soviet era to the coronavirus crisis of 2020. While Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin holds “a Soviet-like grip on Russian TV,” Cooper writes, “today’s Russian media is not a Soviet-style monolith.”