American Committee for US-Russia Accord

The U.S. and Russia are the world’s two mightiest nuclear powers, and yet over the years, they’ve made deals to reduce their respective arsenals.

Almost goofily, behind Official Washington’s latest warmongering “group think,” the U.S. has plunged into a New Cold War against Russia with no debate about the enormous costs and the extraordinary risks of nuclear annihilation, Gray Brechin observes.

According to Haaretz, “If tested in a showdown, Putin’s sole old smoky carrier is unlikely to prove as capable – it’s inferior, inexperienced and carries a history of mishaps. For now though, the Kremlin has one clear advantage.”

Beyond the government’s headline assertion that Russia is to blame, “it’s important to parse the public statement pretty closely,” said Susan Hennessey, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution. “They’re being really careful in their word choice.”

The European Union parliament often prides itself on being a model for international intergration on a global scale. Yet, the upcomong Boris Nemstov forum, billed as exemplifying EU-Russian dialogue, does not live up to the European parliament’s lofty reputation. Rather than EU-Russia dialogue, the forum is an example of Europeans talking to themselves and failing to engage in real politics. [Read more…] about The EU’s Amateur dialogue with Russia (Peter S. Rieth)

U.S.-Russian hostilities have the potential to impact the U.S.’ re-balance to the region to counter China. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, Japan has renewed its own outreach efforts to Russia. These efforts have lessons for the U.S. with respect to overcoming unproductive rhetoric and soberly recognizing shared security interests in arguably the most important geopolitical region of the future.

In post-Maidan Ukraine, temnyky, arrests and censorship have become commonplace. What’s more, repression against dissidents and even murder have become socially acceptable…To be fair, it should be noted that justifications of violence and murder of “enemies” have not been accepted by society as a whole – only by one segment of social media, the mass media and those who call themselves “Maidan activists”

Fareed Zakaria digs into heightened tensions between U.S. and Russia with ACEWA Board Member and NYU professor emeritus Stephen Cohen and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Oct. 8 that the situation between the U.S. and Russia today is more dangerous than it was during the Cold War. As he put it, “It’s a fallacy to think that this is like the Cold War. The current times are different and more dangerous.”

Scientists warn of the existential danger of nuclear war. Ten years ago, the world’s leading climatologists chose to reinvestigate the long-term environmental impacts of nuclear war. The peer-reviewed studies they produced are considered to be the most authoritative type of scientific research, which is subjected to criticism by the international scientific community before its final publication in scholarly journals. No serious errors were found in their studies. [Read more…] about Turning a Blind Eye towards Armageddon: US leaders reject the nuclear winter studies (Dr. Steven Starr)

Probably the most influential weekly political magazines in the United Kingdom are The Economist, The Spectator, and The New Statesman. All have published their latest editions in the last couple of days. Here are the results.

ACEWA Board Member and Princeton and NYU Professor Emeritus Stephen F. Cohen,  The Brookings Institution’s Fiona Hill and Columbia University Professor Emeritus Robert Legvold discuss the current state of relations between the United States and Russia, including cooperation on strategic initiatives in Syria, tensions surrounding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the post–Cold War expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and recent allegations of Russian-sponsored cyberattacks.

Confident in a Hillary Clinton victory, Washington’s foreign policy elite is readying plans for more warfare in Syria and more confrontations with nuclear-armed Russia, an across-the-spectrum “group think” that risks life on the planet, says Robert Parry.