The Cold War says more about how U.S. elites imagined their “freedom” than it does about enabling other people to be free.
Churchill, Stalin and the Legacy of the Grand Alliance: An Interview with Professor Geoffrey Roberts
Geoffrey Roberts, Martin Folly and Oleg Rzheshevsky have recently published Churchill and Stalin: Comrades-in-Arms During the Second World War. The book offers an overview —based on material, including never before released documents, from the Russian archives — of the relationship between the two leaders in the period surrounding the Grand Alliance of the US, UK and USSR, which defeated Nazi Germany. Aaron Leonard recently exchanged emails with Professor Roberts about his research.
Salt Lake Tribune: Jon Huntsman resigns as U.S. ambassador to Russia
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman is returning home to Utah, where he is reportedly weighing another run for governor.
National Security Archive: False Warnings of Soviet Missile Attacks Put U.S. Forces on Alert
During the Cold War, false alarms of missile attacks were closely held matters although news of them inevitably leaked. Today the National Security Archive revisits the false alerts of the Jimmy Carter administration when on four occasions warning screens showed hundreds and hundreds of Soviet ballistic missiles heading toward North America.
David Neese: The man who asks too many questions
Questions, questions, questions.
Stephen F. Cohen keeps raising them. And he seems dismayed that his fellow lefties decline to join him in doing so — indeed, that they instead attack him in the customary McCarthyite manner.
Fred Weir: Why coronavirus crisis may keep Putin in office until 2036
As the huge package of amendments that will completely overhaul Russia’s constitution worked its way through parliament this week, authorities unveiled a last-minute change that will allow Mr. Putin to run again for president.
Lyle J. Goldstein: Head-To-Head: Russia, Japan, South Korea, and China Face-Off in the Skies over the Pacific
The South China Sea cauldron has been at a full boil now for nearly a dozen years…
George Beebe: What Are Putin’s Real Presidential Plans?
Vladimir Putin openly acceded to the Duma’s “request” that it pass a law enabling him to remain president until 2036 if voters approve. Many observers believe that this had been his plan all along, that his earlier coyness was simply a clever means of testing how much support he might have for end-running constitutional restrictions on his time in office.
Barbara Boland: Media: Tulsi is New Darling of ‘Russia’s Propaganda Machine’
The establishment loathes any candidate who seeks an end to U.S. military adventurism abroad.
Gordon Hahn: Putin 2024-2030
It is likely that Putin made his final decision earlier than he expected and that it was informed by the Coronavirus crisis impinging world markets and Russia’s key strategic partner China, the potential of a larger war in Syria, and the general collapse of Russian-Western relations. He still has room to maneuver, as he can always choose not to run in 2024 or 2030
VIDEO: Pushback w/ Aaron Mate: Mueller time is over, Russia-hate is here to stay
Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus at Princeton and NYU, says that while Robert Mueller has closed up shop, dangerous U.S. fear-mongering about Russia remains.
Tony Kevin: The latest political news out of Moscow
Events in Moscow have moved on dramatically since the introduction of the new Russian constitutional proposals in January. [Read more…] about Tony Kevin: The latest political news out of Moscow
Lucy Komisar: Story on Politico repeats Browder fakery
More Browder fakery, this one on Politico in a story today about the new national intelligence director nominee, John Ratcliffe. William Browder, ever ready to feed clueless reporters his fabrications, finds a willing one in NatashaBertrand.
Stephen Wertheim: Why Joe Biden’s foreign policy vision isn’t so visionary
Biden offers a proudly restorationist foreign policy. His main pitch is to bring back U.S. global “leadership” after its supposed Trumpian aberration, rather than to deliver what the American people need and increasingly demand: a clean break from decades of policy failure, to which Biden himself has contributed
Reuters: U.N. chief says world will lose brake on nuclear war with end of INF treaty
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is concerned by rising tensions between nuclear-armed states, warning “the world will lose an invaluable brake on nuclear war” with the expiration of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) on Friday.
Ted Galen Carpenter: Bernie Sanders Is a Foreign Policy Disappointment
A widespread impression exists that Bernie Sanders is the ideological successor to such antiwar Democratic Party stalwarts as Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. But Sanders’ performance regarding issues of war and peace is more murky and complex.
Daniel Larison: New START Is On the Chopping Block
Nikolas K. Gvosdev: The Great Oil War of 2020 Has Begun. Can Russia Win?
Russia enters this oil price war with two overarching objectives: drive U.S. producers out of business, and expose Riyadh to the limits of American support. Will Putin prevail?
VIDEO: Elaine Scarry, “Presidential First Use of Nuclear Weapons: Is It Legal, Constitutional or Just?”
Elaine Scarry is Cabot Professor of Aesthetics at Harvard and the author of Thermonuclear Monarchy. She was co-organizer of the “Presidential First Use” conference in Nov. 2017.
Marco Carnelos: Biden sticks to the notion of the US as an ‘indispensable nation’
Biden promises to “impose real costs on Russia for its violations of international norms and stand with Russian civil society … against President Vladimir Putin’s kleptocratic authoritarian system”. In other words, a policy bordering on regime change in Moscow.