Join us Wednesday, February 27 for a discussion with Stephen Cohen, one of America’s most influential and controversial Russia experts, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, on the new Cold War and how it has been exacerbated by both Washington and the US mainstream media. The discussion will be moderated by UCLA professor of political science and Russia expert Daniel Treisman.
Los Angeles EVENT: Loyola Marymount: The Doshi Family Bridge-builder Award
Honoring Stephen F. Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel, for their continued contributions to cross-cultural understanding and willingness to engage issues from new perspectives across a variety of media platforms. Award Ceremony and Discussion Thursday, Feb. 28, 2019 | 7 p.m. Loyola Marymount, Roski Dining Room, University Hall.
Paul Robinson: Censors for Democracy
This blog was listed as a ‘pro-Kremlin, conspiracy theory, extremist website’. According to its recommendations, therefore, Irrussianality would be censored, tagged red, and hidden by search engines. If a moderate academic website like this can be labelled in this way, who can possibly consider themselves safe? Anybody who’s not marching in lockstep with the guardians’ narrative is liable to find themselves a target.
Patrick Armstrong: Russia Observer
How much better off we’d be if Trump had never uttered the words “Russia” or “Putin”…
Gareth Porter: The Real Motive Behind the FBI Plan to Investigate Trump as a Russian Agent
The idea that American citizens were somehow at risk of being led by an agent of the Russian government “wittingly or unwittingly” did not appear spontaneously. It had been pushed aggressively by former CIA Director John O. Brennan both during and after his role in pressing for the original investigation.
James Carroll: The Most Dangerous Weapon Ever Rolls Off the Nuclear Assembly Line
Last month, the National Nuclear Security Administration (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission) announced that the first of a new generation of strategic nuclear weapons had rolled off the assembly line at its Pantex nuclear weapons plant in the panhandle of Texas.
Mary Dejevsky: Trump’s summit with Kim Jong-un is it shows what could have been with Russia
The change that has come about in Asia has been welcome. Similar things could have been achieved in Europe, had we allowed Trump to treat Putin the way he treated his North Korean counterpart.
PODCAST: Retropod: The Soviet officer who stopped World War III
In 1983, Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Union’s Air Defense Forces, trusted his gut and averted a global nuclear catastrophe.
Paul Robinson: Three Russias
This week, the American press, and in particular the New York Times, has provided us with three contrasting images of Russia. Let’s take a look at each in turn.
PODCAST: Aaron Mate: “The Russians Are Coming!”
Aaron is gong to break down “Russiagate,” taking a sober look at the media frenzy of “bombshell” stories asserting a Russian conspiracy behind the 2016 election. Maté explains why he thinks this narrative ultimately aligns with the longstanding interests of U.S. establishment power. For more, follow Aaron’s coverage of RussiaGate on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1095409176862429184
James Bamford: The Spy Who Wasn’t
The U.S. government went looking for someone to blame for Russia’s interference in the 2016 election—and found the perfect scapegoat.
Center for Public Integrity: Americans Overwhelmingly Support INF Treaty
American voters overwhelmingly reject the prospect of withdrawing from a 32-year-old arms-control accord with Russia that forbids either nation from fielding intermediate-range nuclear weapons, according to an in-depth University of Maryland survey scheduled for release today.
Leonid Bershidsky: Trump Doesn’t Need North Macedonia in NATO
Letting a small country with a puny defense budget join the military alliance serves no purpose.
Walter Jones, congressman who worked to atone for his Iraq war vote, is dead at 76
Rep. Walter B. Jones Jr., an Eastern North Carolina congressman who made it his mission to atone for his vote sending U.S. troops into Iraq in the early 2000s, died Sunday on his 76th birthday. Jones, like his father, served his district for nearly a quarter-century.
Paul Robinson: The Putin I Knew
…personalizing Russia’s problems while simultaneously blaming them on innate national characteristics serves only to confuse and to reinforce simplistic prejudices which suggest that whatever differences we may have with the Russians are entirely their fault. But maybe that’s the point.
Lyle J. Goldstein: The Second Caribbean Crisis?
A Russian defense analyst conjures a U.S. military intervention scenario in Venezuela. It is not a pretty picture.
Actual questions posed to Tulsi Gabbard on Morning Joe:
“Is Assad a good person?”
“There have been reports the Russian apparatus that interfered in 2016 is potentially trying to help your campaign. Why do you think that is?”
“Have you met with any Russians over the past several years?” [Read more…] about Actual questions posed to Tulsi Gabbard on Morning Joe:
Professor Ellen Mickiewicz: The first step to persuasion…
Name-calling is ramping up in preparation for the 2020 U.S. presidential election. But there is a new dimension: because Russia puts out broadcast and digital material for consumption in the United States (so-called weaponized information), then Russia’s positive coverage is quite enough to define that candidate in the U.S. as foreign pawn. NBC, in a flawed report, seemed to have bought in to this unprofessional brand of journalism. There is powerful evidence to nullify it. Is anyone listening, viewing, reading the output of the Russia-linked entities? That, after all, is the first step to persuasion. [Read more…] about Professor Ellen Mickiewicz: The first step to persuasion…
Doug Bandow: Ignore the Free-Riding International Peanut Gallery
Imagine if Georgia, which helped provoke war with Russia in 2008, and Ukraine, which ended up in conflict with Moscow after a street putsch backed by the West ousted their elected president, joined NATO. Tbilisi and Kiev would push to borrow the U.S. military to fight their wars. Who would blame them? But it certainly would not be in America’s interest to let them.
Paul Robinson: Russia: Both Malevolent and Super-Efficient
… there’s no clear connection between regime type and aggression, either in Russia’s case or more generally; current East-West tensions owe much to clashing interests and the structure of the European security system, factors which won’t change no matter who rules in the Kremlin.