American Committee for US-Russia Accord

It’s interesting to witness somebody backtracking from a long-held opinion without actually admitting it. This thought came to mind when reading an article by Peter Pomerantsev…

Much is being made about the ostensibly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Russian propaganda machine.

Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US–Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com). While in Ukraine, the political epicenter of the new Cold War, the US-backed Kiev’s government’s crisis grows worse, Cohen emphasizes that the US–Russian brokered ceasefire in Syria presents an opportunity to deal a major blow to the Islamic State, greatly diminish the Syrian civil war and generate cooperation between the two proxy powers in Ukraine.

The agreement is, however, under fierce attack on many fronts. US “allies” Turkey and Saudi Arabia are threatening to disregard the ceasefire provisions by launching their own war in Syria. In Washington, Secretary of Defense Carter and his top generals informed the White House and Congress that Kerry’s agreement with Moscow is a “ruse” and that Putin’s Russia remains the “No. 1 existential threat” to the United States—charges amply echoed in the American mainstream press.

In this context, Cohen makes three additional points. The “Plan B” proposed by Carter apparently means a larger US military intervention in Syria to create an anti-Russian, anti-Assad “safe zone” that would in effect partition the country. This, Cohen adds, would continue the partitioning of political territories that began with the end of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the 1990s and now looms over Syria, Ukraine and even the European Union. Second, though today’s severe international crises get scant attention in the ongoing US presidential campaigns, Mrs. Clinton has a potentially large and highly vulnerable stake in the Syrian crisis. As documented by a two-part New York Times investigation, then Secretary of State Clinton played the leading role in the White House’s decision to topple Libyan leader Gaddafi in 2011, which led to a terrorist-ridden failed state and a growing bastion of the Islamic State today. Clinton’s campaign statements suggest that she does not support Kerry’s initiatives but instead a replication of the Libyan operation in order to remove Syrian President Assad—a version, it seems, of Carter’s “Plan B.” Third, Cohen, pointing to the familiar (and meaningless) accusation that Putin has “weaponized information,” wonders whether the coverage of these events by US mainstream media is more misleading than Russian media coverage or about the same. Or, as Russian political intellectuals like to say when presented with two bad alternatives, “Both are worst.”

A new Ukrainian law recognizes the demise of the Minsk agreements. This shouldn’t be the end of the road.

The terrifying incident in Hawaii proves that nuclear disarmament is as important as ever.

A year into Trump’s term, that improvement is nowhere in sight…Trump has given his go-ahead for the delivery of lethal weapons to Ukraine for use against ­Russian-backed separatists, a step Obama avoided. And the new U.S. National Security Strategy, which the White House released last month, names Russia alongside China as challenging “American power, influence, and interests.”

Known as a bastion of neo-Nazism, the Azov Battalion has received teams of American military advisors and high powered US-made weapons

When it comes to what the investigation was designed to focus on, Greenwald says he’s still waiting for hard evidence that the Trump campaign aided Russian operatives in hacking the Clinton-campaign emails – or struck some other corrupt bargain.

The Syrian war has lasted so long and diplomacy has proved so ineffective that the hope that it could end or at least be brought under some kind of control is hard to sustain. Yet the cessation of hostilities agreed by nearly all of the warring parties seemed to be holding this weekend.

Treating this event as a routine malfunction misses the broader implications, big time.

Paul Robinson, professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and former officer in both the British and Canadian armies, examines the arguments for and against NATO’s continued existence, and challenges whether the organization continues to serve a useful purpose.

ACEWA Board Member and Carnegie Council Senior Fellow David Speedie discusses the situation in Ukraine with Nicolai Petro, including the political crisis for the governing party in Kiev, the situation in Eastern Ukraine, and the state of the Minsk accords.