The road to Pyongyang may well run through Moscow.
“Soft Power”: The Values that Shape Russian Foreign Policy (David Speedie)
In the increasingly frigid environment of U.S.-Russia relations, much attention is given to what may be seen as Russia’s strategic “interests.” (Of course, much of the policymaking class in the West seems to suggest that Russia is entitled to no “interests” whatsoever.) Of at least equal significance for understanding Russian attitudes, however, is a grasp of the values, the moral framework for Russia’s foreign policy.
Patrick Lawrence: Seeing the unseen in Ukraine: Why is America sending arms?
It is difficult to see into the running Ukraine crisis, just as it is in the Syrian case. This has long been so and is entirely by design — an impressive collaboration between the policy cliques in Washington and their clerks in the press.
Work with the Russians on Syria (Paul Pillar)
There is no shortage of certitude in American commentary about what Russia is trying to do in Syria. For example, the Washington Post editorial page, unrelentingly hawkish on everything involving Syria, declares that “it has long been obvious to almost everyone that the regime of Vladimir Putin is seeking a military victory over Western-backed rebels, not a truce.”
Andrew McCarthy: The New York Times Struggles to Save Its Collusion Tale
The evidence undermines the collusion narrative: If the Trump campaign had to learn, through Papadopoulos, that Russia supposedly had thousands of emails damaging to Clinton, that would necessarily mean the Trump campaign had nothing to do with Russia’s acquisition of the emails.
SYRIAN KURDS OPEN OFFICE IN MOSCOW, AS RUSSIA-TURKEY ROW CONTINUES (Newsweek)
Kurdish groups in Syria have opened a representative office in Moscow, as the Kremlin continues to push for Syrian Kurds to be part of peace talks in Geneva, Russian state news agency Itar-Tass reported on Wednesday.
Andrey Sushentsov: COMBATING FUTURE UNCERTAINTIES: GOALS FOR 2018
Russian leaders are often inclined to consider events unfolding in the post-Soviet space through the prism of negative influence coming in from the West and underestimate the importance of internal motives in the politics of the former Soviet republics. Such perception gives rise to distorted pictures and distrust, which repels our friends much more than the West attracts them.
U.S., Russia and other powers agree on ‘cessation of hostilities’ in Syria (WaPo)
MUNICH – The United States, Russia and other powers agreed to a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria’s civil war, to take place within the next week, and immediate humanitarian access to besieged areas, Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced here early Friday.
Stephen F. Cohen Talks With The Cats Roundtable AM 970
NYU and Princeton University Professor Emeritus Stephen F. Cohen discusses the upcoming Russian presidential election, whether arming Ukraine is a good idea, and more with New York radio personality John Catsimatidis.
Escalating the Political Propaganda War v. Cooperation with Russia (Stephen F. Cohen)
TheNation.com.) Recalling last week’s reckless decision by the Obama administration to quadruple the budget for US/NATO forces on or near Russia’s borders, Cohen points out that Moscow has already begun to build up its own forces in its Western territories, further militarizing the new Cold War and its inherent dangers.
Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are atIndeed, Cohen emphasizes, the Obama administration has officially declared Russia to be the No. 1 threat to—enemy of—the United States, inexplicably more so than China, North Korea, and international terrorism. All this threatens to terminate promising negotiations to reduce conflict on several Cold War fronts, as evidenced by US-backed Kiev’s abrupt announcement that it will not implement the Minsk Accords to end the Ukrainian civil (and proxy) war; Washington-inspired media charges that Russia’s air war in Syria against ISIS and its terrorist allies has disrupted the Geneva negotiations in search of a political solution in that war-torn country; and NATO member Turkey’s stepped-up efforts to embroil NATO in a war against Russia. Cohen notes that all these alarming developments are accompanied by perhaps unprecedented anti-Russian, particularly anti-Putin, propaganda, much of it in the American mainstream stream, and much of it distortions of events and other facts. (Yes, he adds, there is also Russian propaganda, but the US/NATO version today is especially virulent.) He wonders if U.S. policy has become a kind of jihad against the demonized Putin personally instead of a pursuit of actual American national interests.
The discussion then turns to the impact of these developments—political and economic—on Putin’s leadership position at home. The topics include: Is Putin’s power really “autocratic”; criticism of him in the Russian mainstream media; and whether economic hardships caused by falling world oil prices and Western economic sanctions will cause the Kremlin to bend to Western demands, and the Russian tradition in this regard.
Robert Parry: How Trump-Russia Erodes Journalistic Standards
The U.S. media’s approach to Russia is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. Does any sentient human being read the New York Times’ or the Washington Post’s coverage of Russia and think that he or she is getting a neutral or unbiased treatment of the facts?
Sanders should challenge the foreign policy status quo (Katrina vanden Heuvel)
…the United States has a great interest in cooperation with Russia — on enforcing the Iran deal, on settling the Syrian civil war, on dealing with loose nukes and continuing to dismantle the nuclear arsenals left from the Cold War.
Gordon Hahn: America’s Russia Games: Pre-History and Implications
Not only are today’s Clintons, Trumps, Democrats and Republicans implicated in American corruption hand-in-hand with Russians, but the Clinton administration and American elite and Russia-policy community are deeply implicated in the emergence of Russian corruption and oligarchs going back to the early 1990s…
VIDEO: Could a NATO build-up in Europe reignite the Cold War? (Featuring Amb. Jack Matlock)
It’s been a generation since the Cold War ended, a standoff that dominated much of the 20th century.But now echoes of that conflict are sounding again, as the U.S. and its allies encounter a resurgent Russia.
Chief foreign affairs correspondent for the PBS Newshour Margaret Warner reports.
Paul Robinson: Taking the Offensive
I won’t make any predictions for 2018. In the meantime, all of us who care about making the world a safer place should all do our own tiny little bit to calm people down and restore a bit of sanity.
The Right Way to Think About the Syria Talks (Samuel Charap, Jeremy Shapiro)
The Geneva talks may be formally described as an effort to bring together the Syrian parties, but the most they can actually accomplish is getting key external actors involved in the civil war, namely the United States and Russia, on the same page.
Holman W. Jenkins: A Year in Trump-Russia Hysteria
The Obama Administration Recklessly Escalates Confrontation With Russia (Stephen F. Cohen)
The Obama administration has just recklessly escalated its military confrontation with Russia. The Pentagon’s announcement that it will more than quadruple military spending on the US-NATO forces in countries on or near Russia’s borders pushes the new Cold War toward actual war—possibly even a nuclear one.
The move is unprecedented in modern times.
Stephen F. Cohen: As Russian Election Begins, Will Russiagate End?
Russian politician Alexi Navalny is calling for a boycott of next year’s presidential election after being barred from running over corruption charges. The Real News Network speaks to Professor Stephen F. Cohen about Navalny, the Russian election, and how Russians are viewing the never-ending Russiagate controversy in the US
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: 4 Distinguished Americans Join The American Committee for East-West Accord’s Board of Directors
The American Committee for East-West Accord is pleased to announce that former United States Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel; former United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Donald McHenry; Board Chair of the Roosevelt Institute, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt; and the Director for US Global Engagement at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, David Speedie, have joined the Committee’s Board of Directors.
Chuck Hagel was the 24th U.S. secretary of defense and a two-term Republican U.S. senator from Nebraska. Secretary Hagel was elected U.S. senator from Nebraska in the 1996 and 2002 elections and served from 1997 to 2009. While in the Senate, Hagel served on the Committee on Foreign Relations; the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; the Selection Committee on Intelligence; and the Committee on Rules and Administration. Hagel served as a U.S. Army infantry squad leader during the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1968 and was awarded two Purple Hearts
Donald F. McHenry served as Ambassador and United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1979 to 1981. Ambassador McHenry was Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University from 1981 to 2014. Prior to his appointment as UN Ambassador, Amb. McHenry served as United States Deputy Representative to the United Nations Security Council and also served as a member of President Carter’s transition staff at the Department of State before joining the United States Mission to the United Nations.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt is the President and CEO of Goodwill Industries of Northern New England and chairs The Roosevelt Institute in New York. Prior to joining Goodwill, Ms. Roosevelt held the position of Vice President, Global Corporate Citizenship for The Boeing Company. Previously, she served as the director of the Mayor’s Office of Program Development for the City of Chicago, as executive director of The Brain Research Foundation, an affiliate of The University of Chicago, and as State Director and then campaign manager for Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois.
David C. Speedie is Director for U.S. Global Engagement at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. In 2007–2008, Speedie was a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. David Speedie joined the Carnegie Corporation as a program officer in the cooperative security program and was appointed program chair in March 1993, a position he held for almost 12 years.