American Committee for US-Russia Accord

The road to Pyongyang may well run through Moscow.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.) 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.

Indeed, 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.

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?

…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.

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…

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.

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 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.

Not all writers on the left succumbed to Trump-Russia panic in 2017. [Jenkins misses a few. -ed.]

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.

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