American Committee for US-Russia Accord

Today it might be worth thinking about creating a samizdat culture here at home as we scan the American communications landscape and solemnly realize how our media elites keep failing us over and over again.

Just as The Guardian had to do just two days ago regarding its claim about WikiLeaks and Putin, the Washington Post has now added an editor’s note to its story acknowledging that its key claim was false…

Who is more responsible for both great powers having reached this level of animosity and acrimony, 25 years after Ronald Reagan walked arm-in-arm with Mikhail Gorbachev through Red Square? And what are the causes of the emerging Cold War II?

The “Russian hacking” story in the U.S. has gone too far.

The problem with this story is that, like the Iraq-WMD mess, it takes place in the middle of a highly politicized environment during which the motives of all the relevant actors are suspect. Nothing quite adds up.

Dear Friends,

For the whole of 2016, we have been actively deliberating how best to use CCI’s 33-year experience in the US-Russia field––since Russia is increasingly being declared America’s enemy #1––which we totally reject.

We’ve concluded that our successful programs of the ’80s are precisely what is needed again in today’s baffling environment.

Talk about disappointments. The US government’s much-anticipated analysis of Russian-sponsored hacking operations provides almost none of the promised evidence linking them to breaches that the Obama administration claims were orchestrated in an attempt to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

NYU and Princeton Russian history and politics professor Professor Stephen Cohen reacts to the Obama administration’s sanctions on Russia.

Not all writers on the left succumbed to Trump-Russia panic in 2017.

During my days in Aleppo I did not see the leading international humanitarian organisations working in the field. On the road between Damascus and Aleppo, the only humanitarian transports I saw were Russian and Syrian; I did not see any of the large international convoys that Western governments have insisted on bringing in as part of various earlier ceasefire attempts. I ask myself why.

On Ukraine, the contours of a compromise are obvious. The United States can easily concede an agreement on Ukrainian neutrality, because NATO has shown again and again that it will, under no circumstance, fight to defend Ukraine—so the idea of NATO membership is vacuous.

Anyone too young to remember HUAC and the destruction the Cold War wrought should study up. We are a few short steps away from both.

Twenty-five years ago this month, the Soviet Union collapsed. Scholars are still debating the precise cause of death, but surely unsustainable communal anxiety played a role. Today, I’m stunned to see signs of similar neuroses tainting the United States, the country to which my family fled.

On the campaign trail and in his appointments, Donald Trump has been suggesting a very different U.S. policy toward Russia than his White House predecessors have had. Instead of attempts to contain Russia’s territorial ambitions, Trump has been suggesting much more accommodation, admiration and even possibly cooperation.

U.S.-Russia relations are in disarray, with talk of a new Cold War pervasive. Fortunately, framing the conflict in terms of national interests points to a way forward.

Russia’s military has found a mass grave of Syrians, allegedly killed by rebel groups ahead of last week’s evacuation. An independent monitoring group could not confirm how they died.