American Committee for US-Russia Accord

It started back in 2017. Congressional Republicans were trying to trace the FBI, CIA, and other agencies’ activities in what is often known as the “Russia hoax.” One central focus was the Steele dossier, the collection of false and salacious accusations that Trump conspired with Russia to steal the 2016 election.

President Donald Trump’s October 29 announcement that the United States will restart nuclear weapons testing after more than 30 years marks a dangerous turning point in international security.

The decision lacks technical justification and appears solely driven by geopolitical posturing.

Trump’s impulsive and ignorant statement about resuming nuclear testing was truly terrifying. Not because it would blow up the CTBT, which the U.S. has never ratified but, like Russia and China, continues to adhere to but because it reflected how little understanding Trump has about nuclear weapons and their use and  because it shows how recklessly impetuous Trump is. The reality is that the U.S. is nowhere near ready to begin underground nuclear testing. It would probably take the U.S. three years to get ready to test and the U.S., with its stockpile stewardship program, has no need for such testing, which would only trigger similar moves by Russia and China and others, who actually would benefit from such testing far more than the U.S. would.

The fact that Trump doesn’t even understand that tests of new delivery systems is not the same thing as a nuclear weapons test, which only North Korea has undertaken this century, is also flabbergasting. The thought that this fool has the power to effectively end life on the planet is truly staggering and incomprehensible.

The timing and announcement of Russia’s recent tests of the Burevestnik missile and Poseidon torpedo were partly in response to Trump’s mockery of the Russian military as a “paper tiger” and partly in response to his cancellation of the Budapest meeting with President Putin, who has also proposed extending the New START treaty for another year while negotiations continue. They were also partly in response to Trump’s “Golden Dome” fantasy. As Putin emphasized, much like he did in his original announcement on March 1, 2018, these systems, like the Oreshnik, which Russia deployed last November, can all circumvent U.S. missile defense. Former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster said the U.S. wouldn’t have a counter to the Oreshnik for at least 15 years. That is probably true for all these systems. It is time for the U.S. and Russia to hold strategic security talks as the world has been demanding.

–Peter Kuznick, Professor of History at American University

The war in Ukraine needs to end. It has been out of control for three years, costing hundreds of billions of pounds and hundreds of thousands of lives. Further escalation risks confrontation with a nuclear power.

Opinions differ on how we got here. Some claim Vladimir Putin is intent on recreating a Russian empire. Others believe that no Russian leader would survive if they allowed Nato to expand to within 300 miles of Moscow. What matters is what we do now, starting from where we are with the available options.

The Pentagon has given the White House the green light to provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles after assessing that it would not negatively impact US stockpiles, leaving the final political decision in President Donald Trump’s hands, according to three US and European officials familiar with the matter.

In a Truth Social post, Trump touted progress made on nuclear weapons modernization during his first term. But he warned that China’s nuclear weapons buildup will place Beijing’s arsenal on equal footing with the United States and Russia “within 5 years.”

“Because of other countries [sic] testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump said. “That process will begin immediately.”

Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev’s Kremlin, by Pietro Shakarian (Indiana University Press, 2025) 350 pp. A review by Aleksandr V. Gevorkyan calls it “impeccable in its factual analysis and ease of prose.” Full review here.

Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff and right-hand man has become as powerful as the Ukrainian president, if not more so.

The future of Ukraine and Russia, of European security, and of US-Russian relations now all hang on a few small half-ruined towns in the northwestern part of Donetsk province. Indeed, given the continued risk of a radical escalation leading to actual conflict between NATO and Russia, the stakes may be higher even than that.

It is hard to believe that U.S. and other Western officials actually are surprised at the consequences of their habitually tone-deaf policies toward Russia.  Are they truly shocked that a major power, already humiliated by its defeat in the Cold War, resented having the most powerful military alliance in history steadily expand toward its borders?  One need only look at a current map and compare it to a map of Eastern Europe in 1990 at the time of Germany’s reunification to see the geographic extent of NATO’s expanded military power.  The encroachment on Russia’s core security zone is blatant.  Yet, U.S. leaders in five administrations ignored repeated, escalating admonitions and warnings from Moscow as those provocations took place.

While diplomats labored to produce the Dayton Accords in 1995, then-Secretary of Defense Bill Perry advised, “No agreement is better than a bad agreement.” Given that Washington’s allies in London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw are opposed to any outcome that might end the war in Ukraine, no agreement may be preferable. But for President Trump, there is no point in equating the illusion of peace in Ukraine with a meaningless ceasefire that settles nothing.

Today, Ukraine is mired in corruption, starting at the very highest levels of the administration in Kyiv. Sending $175 billion of borrowed money there “for however long it takes” has turned out to be worse than reckless. The U.S. national sovereign debt is surging to nearly $38 trillion and rising by $425 billion with each passing month. President Trump needs to turn his attention away from funding Joe Biden’s wars and instead focus on the faltering American economy.

Don’t expect these additional sanctions to end the war any time soon – unless they are combined with a more open negotiating position from the west. This may mean a deal somewhat more favourable to Russia than the west would prefer. If the war were to end, for example, with Russia occupying the Donbas, it would be an unfair outcome for Ukraine an

Ukraine, Russia and the United States are “quite close” to finding an agreement to put a stop to the war in Ukraine, according to a top Russian official.

The U.S. State Department said not to come here. They have a Level 4 warning against Russia travel, which is the fastest they can hyperventilate.

Historical determinism considers history a unilinear process. Some societies go more slowly than others; some take diversions. But all eventually end up in the same place. In the Russian context, a sense of backwardness compared to Europe has added a political twist, as historical determinism has tended to be associated with a rejection of nationalist discourses that maintain that Russia is a distinct civilization which should follow its own path of development.

After months of holding off, the Trump administration will announce new Russia sanctions late Wednesday or Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.

The result of growing Russian military frustration has been to increase demands by hardliners to bring the war to a victorious end by some act of radical escalation that would terrify the West into imposing Russian terms on Ukraine.

They seem however to have no clear idea of what this escalation should consist of; and so far Putin has consistently rejected a strategy that would be both immensely dangerous and would offer no sure prospect of success.

Since its birth in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been attached to the United States by a figurative umbilical cord which has sustained its life well into old age—76 years. As the Trump administration restructures the American armed forces by instituting a 10-point plan announced at the recent meeting of the generals and flag officers at Quantico, by renaming the Department of Defense the War Department, by reinvigorating our industrial plant to build more ships, planes, and other war platforms, by modernizing our nuclear forces, by pursuing Golden Dome defenses, and by redirecting the focus of our armed forces to protecting the homeland and securing the Western Hemisphere, the long-delayed need to emancipate our European allies into global adulthood is upon us. It is time for the United States to cut NATO’s umbilical cord.

A few days ago, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton replied to my question about Ukraine at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She and John Sullivan, who served as Ambassador to Russia under both Presidents Trump and Biden, revealed themselves to be either liars or so ignorant of reasons for the U.S. Ukraine war as to be utter fools. [The full video can be found here].

Last April, I was interviewed by a Russian television channel about Western Russophobia and I had an epiphany. I more or less replied: “It’s going to be unpleasant for you to hear this, but our Russophobia has nothing to do with you. It’s a fantasy, a pathology of Western societies, an endogenous need of ours to imagine a Russian monster.”