What can we do to prevent a nuclear catastrophe?
Eric Felten: The Labyrinthine Ways and Wages of Stefan Halper
Stefan Halper, the shadowy Cambridge academic who may have helped the FBI spy on the Trump campaign, was paid more than $1 million by a U.S. agency for research papers of dubious value, according to a new government report.
Al Jazeera: Erdogan says Turkey aims to produce S-400s jointly with Russia
President says S-400s will be ready in April 2020, making Turkey the first NATO nation with Russian missile system.
Paul Robinson: On the ‘Ilyin = fascist, ergo Putin = fascist, ergo Russia = fascist’ thesis…
Yale University professor Timothy Snyder has been making mild waves again this week with an interview in which he pontificated about linguistic policy in Ukraine.
Joshua Cho: ‘Hypersonic Missiles’ Aren’t Starting an Arms Race—Washington Is
Following the usual alarmist formula used to sell military upgrades to the public, the Times then made the predictable pivot to uncritically transmitting false claims about the need to “act quickly” lest the US “fall behind” the Russian and Chinese menaces.
Nicolai N. Petro: Will Nationalism Poison Ukraine’s New President?
Volodymr Zelensky’s election win was a result of Ukraine’s pent-up demand for normalcy with Russia. But now it looks like Ukraine’s new president is succumbing to nationalist pressure.
Poll: Arms Sales Make the U.S. Less Secure
The survey found that a large majority of Americans (70%) believes that arms sales to other governments makes the U.S. less safe…
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Pentagon report: Russian leaders believe they are already at war with the United States—in the gray zone
A group of governmental, military, and outside experts published a white paper urging the US government to jump fully into the so-called gray zone—the conceptual space in which countries take action that lies somewhere on the continuum between warfare and peaceable relations.
Lyle Goldstein: Europe Is Stuck between the United States and Russia
Is America using the Nord Stream-2 Gas Pipeline as a target for its hostility toward Russia?
VIDEO: Tucker Carlson: Ross Perot was right about US foreign policy
‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ looks back at Ross Perot’s contribution to politics.
Dimitri Trenin: Post-Putin Russia will be different from what it is now, but hardly too different.
The current confrontation is caused by Moscow rejecting Washington’s dominance and insisting on defining its own security interests and ways to defend/promote them itself.
Ray McGovern: Ex-Intel Officials Draw Withering Fire on Russiagate
The Deep State almost always wins. But if Attorney General Barr leans hard on Trump to unfetter investigators, all hell may break lose, says Ray McGovern.
Fred Weir: Putin flexes as ‘good czar,’ but can he remake Russia?
It is easy to get caught up in the smoke and mirrors of Vladimir Putin’s rule. But it hides a debate over whether Russia is stuck in a Soviet mindset, or if it should benefit as much as it can from top-down governance.
Andrey Sushentsov: A Crisis in Russian-Georgian Relations: An Expiring Fire
Russian-Georgian relations are chronically and predictably bad. There is no reason for an improvement in the relationship, but there’s ample justification for spontaneous crises like the current one.
Paul Robinson: Funny Old World
The Brits aren’t the only ones getting deeper into the counter-disinformation game. The US Development Agency (USAID) is to invest millions of dollars into a new ‘Countering Malign Kremlin Influence Development Framework’.
Breaking Defense: US Upgrades Ukrainian Ports To Fit American Warships
WASHINGTON – As tensions rise between Russia and Ukraine on the Black Sea, the US is upgrading several Ukrainian naval bases to give American and NATO warships the ability to dock just miles from Russia-controlled Crimea.
NY Times: NATO Considers Missile Defense Upgrade, Risking Further Tensions With Russia
BRUSSELS – NATO military officials are exploring whether to upgrade their defenses to make them capable of shooting down newly deployed Russian intermediate-range nuclear missiles after a landmark arms treaty dissolves next month, according to three European officials.
On July 4, 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams gave the following Independence Day speech…
…Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.
But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
Fred Weir: The tempest over Putin’s remarks on “liberalism”
This passionate tempest over “liberalism” strikes me as utterly beside the point. I doubt that Putin has spent any time reading Locke, or Hume, or even cares to. I am absolutely certain that Trump never has so much as thought about it. And I also have my doubts about some of the journalists and commentators who are indignantly stepping up to defend “liberalism” against that sneering autocrat Putin, as if this were some kind of ideological war shaping up against a new Red Menace.
It is true that Russia has never been a liberal society; it missed the whole Enlightenment and most of what followed in Europe. And yet, if you ask most educated Russians, including Putin, if they aspire to move forward according to the core principles of liberalism — individual freedom, equality before the law and consent of the governed — I am pretty sure they will all shout “yes!” in cheerful unison. Indeed, Russia under Putin has made at least some progress in this direction [compared with predecessor Russian states, definitely].
What Putin means by “liberalism” is the new, scary and increasingly dysfunctional things he sees happening in the West. When they say “liberal world order,” Putin hears US hegemony. Putin would only need to read the NYT to perceive the galloping effects of globalization, unfettered mass migration, growing income inequality and profound political polarization afflicting many Western countries. The US in particular no longer seems to be an orderly middle-class-consensus-based society. Putin’s negative reactions to changing gender roles and gay pride, etc, may be obnoxious to me and you, but they do not differ significantly from those of any garden variety American conservative. Hell, even Joe Biden shared those opinions not so very long ago.
So, instead of hastening to take up the shining shield of liberalism to oppose the supposedly despotic cudgel of Putinism, why doesn’t everyone just lighten up? What if Western politicians, journalists and intellectuals prioritize their own disastrously mounting problems, and leave Putin and the Russians to wrestle with theirs?
John Batchelor: Where in the world is Joseph Mifsud?
National Review’s Andrew McCarthy and Thaddeus McCotter talk to John Batchelor on the recent interest by the Washington Post in the whereabouts of RussiaGate figure Joseph Mifsud.