American Committee for US-Russia Accord

Max Blumenthal talks to Congressman Jamie Raskin, who has suddenly become a champion of regime-change.

Arriving home from a recent trip to Ukraine, former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle reported his joy at witnessing “the Ukrainian people . . . coming together to rebuild their country from scratch.” Ukrainians had, he wrote, moved him with their dreams of joining the European Union, fighting corruption, and rebuilding their shattered economy, inspiring Daschle, now a highly paid lobbyist, to endorse the ominously strengthening Washington consensus on escalating the fighting with “$3 billion in lethal and nonlethal military assistance.”

The Iran deal is taking up most of the energy and attention of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. But Washington—along with America’s European allies—must be prepared for the likelihood that there could be a full-scale resumption of hostilities. If fighting resumes, there is no excuse for the West to be taken by surprise.

Strassel: Back channels are completely normal. They happen all the time. Reagan did them. Obama did them. Everyone did. So I’m not quite sure why supposedly having, at least the president’s now elected, setting up a back channel with the Russians is somehow out of bounds.

It’s not all about Russia…

The Ukraine crisis and the attendant confrontation with Russia assume a “phony war” feel these days. As in the perversely calm months between the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the Blitzkrieg into the Low Countries the following spring, nothing much seems to be happening.

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States at first seemed likely to rearrange the U.S.-Russia-China strategic triangle.

The U.S. government and mainstream media present Russia as a dangerous aggressor that must be resisted and punished, but American citizens who toured Russia in May found a very different reality, reports Rick Sterling.

As Trump and Putin strive for an essential US-Russia alliance against international terrorism, American media frenzy, fueled by anonymous leaks, continues to thwart it.

Since the Maidan Revolution, Right Sector has maintained only marginal public support. Currently, the party holds just one seat in the parliament of 422. Recently, however, as the group has become more outspoken against the current Petro Poroshenko administration, its numbers have risen.

The current course of denigrating those deemed insufficiently Ukrainian will only lead to a fracturing of the country.

Nation contributing editor and ACEWA Founding Board Member Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussion of the renewed US-Russian Cold War.

This week, the subjects include, among other things, why, after President Obama praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for his role in the agreement with Iran, is his administration escalating its rhetorical and military offensive against Russia?

A de facto directorate of several hundred managers sitting atop dozens of military, diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies, from the Department of Homeland Security to the National Reconnaissance Office, has come to dominate national security policy, displacing the authority not only of Congress but of the courts and the presidency as well.

Merry warns that Russians are referring to the political climate in the US as “schizophrenic.” Carlson observes that what Jared Kushner is accused of doing, in attempting to set up a ‘back-channel’ with the Russians, is perfectly legal, while Merry notes that every new US administration contacts foreign governments before taking office.