Whether they are doing so consciously or not, our critics, more often than not, are doing something worse than Russia could ever accomplish with its interference in American elections. They are sowing doubt about what constitutes legitimate debate and patriotism in America.
Jon Wolfsthal: A US-Russia-China Arms Treaty? Extend New START First
The New START Treaty is the only remaining strategic nuclear arms control agreement in place between the United States and the Russian Federation.
Werner Herzog Brings a Soviet Leader to Tears in the Humanizing Meeting Gorbachev
Confessional and sincere, Meeting Gorbachev humanizes both its creator and its subject.
Gordon Hahn: Ukrainian Spring or Maidan Constitutional Crisis?
The victory of television comedic actor and producer, President-elect Volodomyr Zelenskii, over the increasingly ultra-nationalist oligarch, outgoing President Petro Poroshenko, marked a rejection by a slim Ukrainian majority in the western regions of the oligarchic element in the Weimar Maidan oligarchic-ultranationalist hybrid regime.
Brian Milakovsky: How Ukraine’s new language law will affect Donbas
On April 26, the Verkhovna Rada passed a strict new law mandating the use of the Ukrainian language in public places, businesses, the media, education and a range of other institutions.
Stephen F. Cohen: Mueller’s Own Mysteries
Little-noted aspects of the first volume of the Mueller report.
Gil Barndollar: The Kosovo War at 20
How this oft-forgotten conflict unleashed our hyper-powered American exceptionalism and birthed an era of forever war.
Defense News: Here’s how much global military spending rose in 2018
Overall military expenditures rose 2.6 percent between 2017 and 2018, to hit a total of $1.82 trillion, according to new research from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
BBC: A Whale of a Story…
Norway finds ‘Russian spy whale’ off Arctic coast.
Lyle Goldstein: The Russian Navy Is Facing Tough Decisions
An unsigned Russian naval analysis demonstrates acute stress points in Moscow’s naval development program. Decrying corruption and waste, this insider critique aims squarely at the Kremlin.
Stephen F. Cohen: From Jim Crow Kentucky to Red Square
Prof. Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of politics at Princeton University and of Russian studies and history at New York University, his recent book is titled ‘War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate’; Cohen discusses how his boyhood in Kentucky and student years at Indiana University and University of Birmingham, in England, led him to Russia.
Paul Robinson: Spot the Difference
Remember this story, which appeared on the BBC in September 2016?….
Sharon Tennison: Be the Diplomatic Link Between the Superpowers…
Become a Citizen Diplomat, learn for yourself, converse with Russian counterparts, hear what Russian experts have to say about a dozen different critical issues: Gorbachev on Cold War I and II, Russian experts’ understanding of national and international politics, Russia’s financial system, the impact of U.S. sanctions, rebuilding Russia’s healthcare and educational systems….
David Bromwich: Short Cuts
Democrats, held captive by their theory of the stolen election, combined with neoconservative opinion-makers and the right wing of Trump’s cabinet to lead a revival of the Cold War; in this way, they have helped to set in motion an ugly international process with wide reverberations…
Former Senator Lugar, nuclear nonproliferation champion, dies at 87
As a senator, Lugar sought to curb the spread of nuclear weapons globally. His greatest achievement, forged alongside centrist Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, was a law under which the United States paid for the dismantling and elimination of the nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union as well as chemical and biological arms.
Sarah Lindemann-Komarova: Russiagate, There are No Winners
I would like to suggest we go beyond the nuclear threat and promote something more comprehensive, a real, global peace movement. We can no longer be scared into thinking this is an impossible dream, a fantasy by naïve people. The reality, the one certainty is there are no winners in war.
Doug Bandow: Should Trump Worry About the Putin-Xi Meeting?
The Chinese-Russian bilateral relationship is better than at many points in the past, but it remains superficial.
The Hill: How Obama engaged Ukraine to give Russia collusion a boost
The Ukrainian embassy in Washington on Thursday confirmed the Obama administration requested the meetings in January 2016, but embassy representatives attended only some of the sessions.
Kenneth Rapoza: No, Ukraine’s New President Zelenksiy Is Not Putin’s Puppet
Contrary to the opinion of one or two loud-mouthed Russian conspiracy theorists — the kind that sees FSB spooks and lackeys hiding in closets and in newsrooms throughout the Western world — newly elected Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy is not a tool of the Kremlin.
Paul Pillar: The Mueller Report Exposes U.S. Election Weaknesses
It behooves the United States to spend more effort and attention on repairing democracy in the homeland than it has done in recent years—and more than any effort to impose democracy in someone else’s country.