American Committee for US-Russia Accord

bit by bit, as a result of the Ukrainian blockade and the Russian and rebel responses to it, the DPR and LPR are turning into de facto independent states without any substantial economic ties to Ukraine. The longer this goes on and the deeper the process the goes, the harder it will be to reverse it.

Washington’s use of the “established deconfliction channel” to warn Moscow that it was readying its missiles might have, for now, reduced the risk of escalation. But the risk is still substantial. That the bombing came on the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entrance into World War I underscores the oft-made point that war is unpredictable.

Russia and the United States, who have favored opposite sides in the Syria conflict…are beginning to see eye to eye on one key point: the current path in Syria leads nowhere.

I lived most of my adult life during the Cold War, and, throughout, I never lost sight of one overwhelming reality — at any time, the Cold War could turn hot, resulting in the extinction of our civilization. Now, inexplicably, we are recreating many of the conditions of the Cold War.

When a prominent Washington peace activist was asked recently to name the leading anti-interventionists in the Senate, he responded, “Rand Paul and Mike Lee,” both Republicans. Democrats are in the midst of a furious struggle over what they stand for and who is included in their coalition, yet on foreign policy questions, their silence is deafening.

Back in the Cold War, the Soviets used to refer to the United States as the ‘glavnyi protivnik’ (‘main enemy’). When presidential candidate Mitt Romney declared in 2012 that Russia was America’s ‘number one geopolitical foe’, he was roundly condemned for hyperbole. Now, his point of view seems mainstream.

What grates on many realists is that Wolfowitz, twelve years removed from the U.S. government and over fourteen years since Operation Iraqi Freedom commenced, still refuses to admit that the Iraq War was a mistake.

America’s grand strategy, its long-term blueprint for advancing national interests and countering major adversaries, is in total disarray. Top officials lurch from crisis to crisis, improvising strategies as they go, but rarely pursuing a consistent set of policies. Some blame this indecisiveness on a lack of resolve at the White House, but the real reason lies deeper. It lurks in a disagreement among foreign policy elites over whether Russia or China constitutes America’s principal great-power adversary.

Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics at Princeton and NYU Stephen F. Cohen talks to Tucker Carlson in the aftermath of the US airstrikes on Syria in which they discuss the dismal state of US-Russian relations. [Note: Start of Prof. Cohen at the 10:30 mark.]

Kennan Institute Director Matthew Rojansky writes “At the present moment of obvious tension between Moscow and Washington, it may be tempting to dismiss the likelihood of progress on any diplomatic front, let alone in the complex multilateral format of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Yet the 1972–75 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (csce) itself took place against a backdrop of intense rivalry between the u.s. and Soviet-led blocs, suggesting that reasoned dialogue and consensus on core issues of shared security in the osce space is possible…”

The current approach to European missile defenses emerged prior to the conclusion of the agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program (JCPOA) at a time when missile threats from beyond the European theater dominated the European Security landscape.

On a recent trip through Russia, longtime Russia-watcher Sharon Tennison writes: “the most startling fact for me is how well Russian people are withstanding being cut off from their normal long-standing markets and trading partners in Europe––and how they are faring since their ruble lost about half of its value in the past year. They were concerned about how long this period might last, but none registered serious fear or diffuse apprehension.  Unlike us, Russians have gone through so much worse in their past. This is apparently rather small by comparison.”

For me and many others on the right, Russia is not the main focus, but a component of years of effort to advance a more realistic and restrained U.S. foreign policy. Someone who is interested in such a foreign policy would naturally conclude that it is in the best interests of our country to have a good relationship, if possible, with any country that possesses the world’s second-largest nuclear arsenal.

Clashes between the Ukrainian government and Russia-backed separatists have occurred regularly along the Line of Contact (LoC) in southeastern Ukraine since the February ceasefire agreement was signed in Minsk. Both sides seemingly lack the will to fully implement the agreement, so the conflict looks likely to remain unresolved for the foreseeable future.