Whether or not to expand NATO is a question that deserves debate. Would it help or hurt U.S. national security?
Merkel, Hollande and Putin talk Ukraine clashes (Deutsche Welle)
The leaders of France and Germany urged Russian President Putin to help calm the tensions in Ukraine, during in a joint phone call. The three are set to discuss the latest spike in violence at a G20 summit in China.
VIDEO: Rand Paul: Russia isn’t going to admit to election interference (CNN)
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) says Russia isn’t ever going to admit to interfering in the 2016 US presidential election, while also stating NATO expansion stimulated nationalism in Russia and helped lead to the rise of Vladimir Putin.
Kremlin Killings? (Paul Robinson)
The front page of Sunday’s edition of The New York Times bears the headline ‘More of the Kremlin’s Critics are Ending Up Dead’. Professor Paul Robinson, writes that in his opinion, the lack of evidence produced by The New York Times in the majority of the cases this article lists makes its overall thesis very unconvincing.
Dimitri Alexander Simes: Trump-Putin Summit: The View from Moscow
Russian analysts understand that no meaningful progress in U.S.-Russian relations is possible until a certain level of closure surrounding Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election is achieved.
Top US commander warns Russia, Syria (CNN)
Longtime Pentagon stenographer Barbara Starr reports….
Statement from the American Committee for East-West Accord
At this time of dangerously crisis-ridden relations between the United States and Russia, the American Committee for East-West Accord urges President Trump and President Putin, at their meeting on July 16, to find ways to diminish the conflicts and increase cooperation between our two countries.
Understanding Putin’s Intentions and the Right Course of Action in Dealing with Russia (John E. Pepper)
ACEWA Board Member John E. Pepper writes, “The New Czar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin” by Steven Lee Myers was a deeply informing and mind-opening book for me in trying to understand President Putin’s true intentions and how we in the United States and the West should deal with Russia and him to advance our own and the world’s interests. Here are my perspectives….
Open Letter: Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security
Whatever the truth of varied charges that Russia interfered with the election, there should be no doubt that America’s digital-age infrastructure for the electoral process is in urgent need of protection.
U.S. Defense Contractors Tell Investors Russian Threat Is Great for Business (Lee Fang)
The escalating anti-Russian rhetoric in the U.S. presidential campaign comes in the midst of a major push by military contractors to position Moscow as a potent enemy that must be countered with a drastic increase in military spending by NATO countries.
Benjamin Schwarz: It’s Time to Disrupt NATO
To grasp the issues at stake, we have to have to look at the history of NATO’s somewhat hidden purposes.
Denmark Lectures America on NATO (Doug Bandow)
Even as the American people tire of paying the cost of solving other nations’ problems, shrimps are pushing the whale to stay the course. Politico recently interviewed Rasmussen, a former prime minister of Denmark. He sounded like an American neoconservative in promoting an “American-led world order”—at American expense, of course.
Katrina vanden Heuvel: NATO Military Spending & Avoiding Cold War Nuclear Catastrophe with Russia
“We need to keep our bearings, it seems to me, as progressives, as people of the left, as people opposed to militarism as a response to threats or challenges.”
Ukrainian anti-corruption office under pressure (Deutsche Welle)
In Ukraine, a conflict is brewing between the public prosecutor’s office and the anti-corruption authority. It could stall key reforms promised by Kyiv to the European Union.
Stephen F. Cohen: Summitgate and the Campaign vs. ‘Peace’
Not surprisingly, Trump’s dreaded visit to the NATO summit has only inflated the uncritical cult of that organization, which has been in search of a purpose and ever more funding since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Putin in Slovenia: An Analysis (Filip Kovacevic)
All in all, Putin’s visit to Slovenia, following on the heels of his recent visit to Greece, another Balkan EU and NATO member state, shows that Russia is far from being politically isolated in the Balkans. On the contrary, in fact, it seems as if its influence is slowly but surely taking on more and more weight.
Bruce Fein: At NATO, Trump Should Declare MAGA Doctrine of Self Defense
Mr. Trump has commendably chastised America’s NATO partners for their skimpy financial contributions to the joint enterprise. No other president has displayed such moxie. But the NATO flaw is deeper, and President Trump needs to go further.
Russian Realism in the Middle East (Paul Pillar)
A wiser United States would also think of Russia itself, which has the label of adversary firmly affixed to it, in realist terms in which that label would not prevent the United States from exploring and exploiting areas of parallel interest, writes former CIA official Paul Pillar.
John Dale Grover: Admitting Ukraine Into NATO Would Be a Fool’s Errand
The United States can’t be the world’s democracy crusader, especially when the stakes are nuclear.
PODCAST: Cold War Casualties from Ukraine and Syria to the New York Times’s ‘Standards’ (Stephen F. Cohen)
Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions about the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com.) Cohen begins by reminding listeners that the preceding 40-year Cold War was accompanied by factional, often behind-the-scenes politics for and against US-Soviet Cold War relations, and which often spilled over into the media. It is happening again, perhaps more dangerously and disgracefully.