Seven writers and experts survey the current nuclear landscape. Our hope is to call attention to the bomb’s ever-present menace and point our way toward a world in which it finally ceases to exist.
Oil price slide may force new Russian budget, Medvedev says (BBC)
Tumbling oil prices could force Russia to revise its 2016 budget, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has warned. He said that the country must be prepared for a “worst-case” economic scenario if the price continued to fall.
Oil was trading at less than $32 a barrel on Wednesday and has fallen by 70% in the past 15 months.
Elaine Scarry: In the United States, Just 1 Person Has the Power to Kill Millions of People
Our nuclear-weapons strategy enables one man, the president, to kill and maim an unthinkable number of people in a single afternoon.
BILD Interview with Vladimir Putin, Part 2
BILD: And what did you think when the president of the superpower USA, Barack Obama, mocked Russia as a “regional power“?
Putin: To be honest, I did not take that seriously. Of course, every head of state and government in the world is allowed to have his opinion and to voice it. Barack Obama also says America is the “chosen nation.” I do not take that seriously, either.
James Carden: William Perry Sounds the Alarm Over the Present Nuclear Danger
What will the consequences be if the bipartisan consensus on Russia continues to be almost completely untethered from reality?
BILD interviews Vladimir Putin: “For me, it is not borders that matter“
BILD: Mr President, 25 years ago, we celebrated the end of the Cold War. Now we have just had a year of more crises and wars than ever before. What went so horribly wrong in the relationship between Russia and the West?
Vladimir Putin: That is the big question. We have done everything wrong.
Adam Shatz: The President and the Bomb
Of course the threat of nuclear war never vanished. All that went away was the bipolar conflict with the Soviet Union, the theatre in which we feared the war would erupt.
How the oil collapse stole Russia’s Christmas (Reuters)
A plunge in the oil price to 12-year lows during Russia’s New Year and Orthodox Christmas break means the country returns to work on Monday with its economic recovery and once-mighty savings war chest on the line.
The equity and currency turmoil in China that rippled through world markets during Russians’ 10-day festive holiday pushed Brent crude futures to around $32 a barrel, down from $45 at the start of December…
Samuel Rubenfeld: U.S. Tightens Russia-Debt Sanctions
The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday further tightened its restrictions on certain short-term Russian corporate debt, in line with a law signed by President Donald Trump.
Donetsk Republic opposes visit of UN representatives to Donbass discussing ‘peacekeeping’ soldiers (NewColdWar.org)
The Donetsk People’s Republic is opposed to plans by political leaders in Kyiv to invite to the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine representatives of the United Nations to discuss a possible ‘peacekeeping’ mission to the region, says Denis Pushilin, the representative of the DPR to the all-party Contact Group of the Minsk-2 ceasefire process.
Pepe Escobar: Syria war, Sochi peace
Diplomatic sources confirmed to Asia Times much of the discussions in Sochi involved Russian President Vladimir Putin laying out to Iran President Hassan Rouhani and Turkey President Recep Erdogan how a new configuration may play out in a constantly evolving chessboard.
Nuclear weapons risk greater than in cold war, says ex-Pentagon chief (Guardian)
The risks of a nuclear catastrophe – in a regional war, terrorist attack, by accident or miscalculation – is greater than it was during the cold war and rising, a former US defence secretary has said.
William Perry, who served at the Pentagon from 1994 to 1997, made his comments a few hours before North Korea’s nuclear test on Wednesday, and listed Pyongyang’s aggressive atomic weapons programme as one of the global risk factors.
Ted Galen Carpenter: The Duplicitous Superpower
How Washington’s chronic deceit-especially towards Russia-has sabotaged U.S. foreign policy.
What Would a Realist World Have Looked Like? (Stephen Walt)
Here’s a puzzle for all you students of U.S. foreign policy: Why is a distinguished and well-known approach to foreign policy confined to the margins of public discourse, especially in the pages of our leading newspapers, when its recent track record is arguably superior to the main alternatives?
I refer, of course, to realism.
Reuters: Google seeks to defuse row with Russia over website rankings
Google does not change its search algorithm to re-rank individual websites, it said in a letter to Russia’s communications watchdog, after Moscow expressed concerns the search engine might discriminate against Russian media.
Reality Peeks Through in Ukraine (Robert Parry)
With corruption rampant and living standards falling, Ukraine may become the next failed state that “benefited” from a neoconservative-driven “regime change,” though the blame will always be placed elsewhere – in this case, on the demonized Russian President Putin, writes Robert Parry.
Stephen F. Cohen: Russia Is Not the ‘No. 1 Threat’—or Even Among the Top 5
By declaring Putin’s Russia to be the greatest danger to America, the political-media establishment itself is endangering US national security.
Poland’s Plans to Stick Washington With a Bigger NATO Bill (Doug Bandow)
Of course, the “Russian threat” is not so great as the Poles would have others believe. For all of Warsaw’s concern for “central and eastern Europe,” there have been no real Russian threats against those states. Nor has Vladimir Putin done anything to suggest his interest in an aggressive war to conquer the region. No one imagines a revived Red Army heading toward Montenegro, recently invited to join NATO.
Alexander Baunov and Thomas De Waal: Red Scares, Then and Now
By treating Russian President Vladimir Putin and his cronies as an existential threat, Western leaders are playing directly into the Kremlin’s hands, and validating its false narrative about Russia’s place in the world.
Watchdog: Syria’s Declared Chemical Arms ‘100% Destroyed’ (Defense News)
Syria’s declared chemical weapons arsenal has been completely destroyed, capping more than two years of work, a global arms watchdog said Tuesday amid concern sarin gas is still being unleashed in the country’s complex civil war…
After years of denials, the regime caved to international pressure in September 2013 and agreed under a US-Russia deal to hand over its toxic stockpile to the OPCW for destruction.