In a discussion with Dialogue Works, Professor Petro discusses the tensions between NATO and Russia and the ongoing risks of escalation.
Martin Seiff: Diplomacy Matters
The current president of Latvia, Edgars Rinkēvičs, Sachs noted, recently tweeted, “Russia must be destroyed.”
Latvia is a tiny postage stamp country of less than 1.9 million people. It would not make more than a tiny proportion of New York City, Washington, London, Los Angeles or Paris. It could not maintain its prosperity and security for five seconds without enormous inputs every year from the European Union, the United States and NATO. Yet there it is, with its president and diplomats eagerly – even enthusiastically – fanning the flames for thermonuclear war between America and Russia. This is no mere joke: It is an obscenity.
VIDEO: Part II of Katrina vanden Heuvel’s Interview with Pascal Lottaz of Neutrality Studies
The dynamic of mass-psychology in the West has reached a perverse level at which not only advocacy for deescalation is blamed as an act of treason, but the decrepit state of domestic economies is pinned on the enemy, which only reinforces calls for the ‘necessity of fighting’ the imaginary devil at the gates of the shining city on the hill. But the obsession goes even further than that… this is part 2 of an interview with Katrina vanden Heuvel.
Ed Lozansky: Inside Washington Blob
At a recent seminar sponsored by the two primary Washington think tanks, one American and another European, the subject of the war in Ukraine was discussed, as was how two upcoming significant elections in the European Parliament in June and the U.S. President in November might affect Western support for Ukraine and thus the course of the war.
James W. Carden: Leading Armenia Down the Primrose Path
Washington may not like it, but if Armenia has any chance at a happy future—and a magnificent, ancient Christian civilization like Armenia certainly deserves one—we need to stop meddling in the Caucasus and limit the damage we have already done in the post-Soviet space.
Christopher Caldwell: Everyone Wants to Seize Russia’s Money. It’s a Terrible Idea.
Bradley Devlin: BIG SCOOP: The Biden Administration Just Admitted It Has Massively Undercounted Ukraine Aid
When Sen. JD Vance and other conservatives in Congress started pressing the Biden administration to provide the real cost of the Ukraine war in January 2023, the lawmakers estimated the U.S. had spent “a minimum of $114 billion.” Now, with added information from the OMB, Vance and company estimate the current total of aid to Ukraine amounts to at least $125 billion—$14 billion over what the OMB had previously claimed.
YouGov Poll: Most Americans think there will be another world war within the next decade
A new YouGov survey asked Americans about the possibility of another world war, the role that other countries might play, the roles they themselves might play, and how the U.S. should respond to hypothetical nuclear attacks abroad and at home. The majority of Americans believe that another world war is at least somewhat likely to happen in the next five to 10 years, but most don’t think they would volunteer to serve in military roles or non-combatant roles if the U.S. were to be involved.
John Zavales: Congress needs answers before sending more aid to Ukraine
VIDEO: The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel: How Neocons, Neolibs, and their Media Collude for War
This is the first part of a discussion between Katrina vanden Heuvel and Neutrality Studies’ Pascal Lottaz. For a quarter of a century, vanden Heuvel was the editor in chief of the progressive magazine The Nation; she is currently The Nation’s publisher and editorial director, a widely read columnist as well as president of ACURA. As such, she has been and remains pivotal in giving alternative voices a place to speak, especially when it came to US involvements in wars.
James W. Carden: Legendary US Diplomat Pans Latest NATO Money Grab
Critics, such as the legendary American diplomat Chas Freeman say that the plan is simply “a case of throwing good money—in this case, borrowed money—after bad.”
Freeman sees this as a case of NATO clutching at straws, after all, as he tells Responsible Statecraft, “NATO has run out of Ukrainians to sacrifice on the battlefield as well as the armaments production needed to equip the existing, greatly depleted Ukrainian armed forces. A bond fund will neither create more Ukrainians nor produce more weapons to arm those who have so far survived.”
Paul Robinson: If History is any Guide, ‘Containment 2.0’ May Become Another Bloody Debacle for the West
There is an interesting line in Bergman, Kimmage, Mankoff, and Snegovaya’s article ‘America’s New Twilight Struggle with Russia,’ in which the authors talk of ‘checking Russian influence in Central Asia and Africa.’ The distance between the United States and Kazakhstan is about 6,500 miles. The distance between Russia and Kazakhstan is zero, as the two are neighbours. Yet for some strange reason, it is considered quite natural that the United States should seek to dominate a region 6,500 miles from its shores, whereas ‘Russian influence’ right on its own borders is deemed a threat that must somehow be contained.
James W. Carden: The New Cold War’s Second Wind
Having been debased by the decade-long editorship of Gideon Rose, the once august journal Foreign Affairs staggers along – a zombie from another time. But it maintains its uses to the established order. And one of its principle uses is to provide intellectual justification for the unjustifiable. It wouldn’t be the first time…
James W. Carden: At 75, Has NATO Outlived Its Use?
The show has been on the road for far too long. Surely, 75 years of NATO is enough.
The Nation and Sherle R. Schwenninger: Hate To Say We Told You So: NATO Expansion Edition
Neutrality Studies and ACURA Mark The 75th Anniversary of NATO’s Founding with Distinguished Panel
Today we mark the 75th anniversary of NATO. In March, we convened a panel of experts, graciously hosted by the popular YouTube channel Neutrality Studies, featuring John Mearsheimer, Jack Matlock, and Anatol Lieven. It was moderated by Pascal Lottaz, with an introduction by ACURA president Katrina vanden Heuvel.
The Simone Weil Center’s Symposium on ‘Containment 2.0’
In response to a March 6, 2024 article in Foreign Affairs titled “America’s New Twilight Struggle with Russia: To Prevail, Washington Must Revive Containment” The Simone Weil Center will be publishing a series of responses from several Russia experts and foreign policy thinkers. The series begins with a contribution by Dr. Gordon Hahn.
Daniel Larison: More Militarism Puts America on the Road to Ruin
Whatever is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, it isn’t going to be fixed by giving more funds to the Pentagon and killing “crows.”
George Beebe: Connecting dots: What Russia can learn from the US after 9/11
The sense of failure and frustration that Russian security officials must be feeling should be all too familiar for Americans whose job it had been to detect and prevent the September 11 attacks by al-Qaida radicals on the United States. A shocked American public wondered why the CIA and FBI had failed to “connect the dots” that could have revealed the plot. Russian President Vladimir Putin had even telephoned President Bush a few days before the attacks to warn that Russian intelligence had detected signs of an incipient terrorist campaign, “something long in preparation,” coming out of Afghanistan.
Doug Bandow: U.S. Officials Believe That ‘We’ Are at War With Russia
Nothing Putin has said or done since suggests he is interested in European conquest. His military assaults, while lawless, have been limited to Georgia and Ukraine, and do not make him Hitler reincarnated. Even now President George W. Bush is responsible for far more civilian deaths.