American Committee for US-Russia Accord

Whatever happens in Ukraine, America and Russia are now set for a lengthy period of intense confrontation.

Professor John Mearsheimer’s closing statement at the Munk debate with Stephen Walt, Michael McFaul and Radosław Sikorski.

After decades of relative peace, the world suddenly finds itself on the edge of global war and nuclear conflict.

The celebrated realist Hans J. Morgenthau wrote, in his rules for effective diplomacy, that you should never let a weak ally make your decisions for you. The Washington establishment rises every morning seemingly determined to violate that injunction.

Almost all knowledgeable observers believe the war in Ukraine will have to end with a negotiated agreement. Yet the US, Ukraine’s leading patron, has signaled it has no patience for diplomatic efforts that cut against its hope for Moscow’s “strategic defeat.”
 

The alliance has been revived – but it can’t save the West.

 

The stance taken on Ukraine by many of the governments of the world is outside acceptable debate in the United States.

What we have seen in the last 10 years, intensified in the last five, and raised to a fever pitch in the last two, is the ascent of mob psychology and hysteria on an exorbitant scale. It shows in our lazy, frightened acceptance of censorship—lately elevated to the point where Facebook and Twitter could jointly announce a ban on all messages, news, and communications that “undermine trust in the Ukrainian government.” This kind of blackout was considered beneath our dignity in the fight against Hitler and the Cold War.

Talk of NATO as past its sell-by date began thirty years ago, with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of NATO’s fifty-year adversary, the Warsaw Pact.  Strong U.S. advocates of the western alliance agreed with the summary view of the late republican Senator Richard Lugar: NATO—”Out of area or out of business”.  And NATO did, indeed, move decisively “out of area”: Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria are a far cry from the north Atlantic, and few if any of these posed an immediate threat to NATO’s historic territory. [Read more…] about ACURA ViewPoint: David C. Speedie: NATO: A Superannuated Anachronism?

Below is a lightly edited transcript of a panel ACURA hosted on May 19th featuring  Marlene Laruelle, Anatol Lieven, Pietro Shakarian and moderated by Katrina vanden Heuvel and  James W. Carden on the subject of how the war is affecting Russia politically. [Read more…] about ACURA ViewPoint: Anatol Lieven, Marlene Laruelle, Pietro Shakarian on Russia’s Future

The decision on whether to expand NATO to Finland and Sweden must take into account a fundamental consideration: is it in America’s interest to bind itself into a commitment to go to war with a nuclear power over the structural integrity of these two nations? Should the American people be willing to send their servicemen and women for such a national security interest?

 

As the world is moving slowly but surely to the edge of the abyss, there is a parallel crisis going within the nations that claim to exemplify the best of “western values” while undermining and violating them at every point.

Of course, the West blames all the problems of the world on the East, particularly Russia and China but there are some “dissident” voices that need to be heard at least for the sake of those who are interested in searching for ideas that might avoid Armageddon. [Read more…] about ACURA ViewPoint: Matthew Ehret and Edward Lozansky: Western Civilization at a Crossroads: Mythical Hegemony or Win-Win Paradigm?

If Moscow believes it is confronted by an “existential threat,” it could possibly use nuclear weapons against NATO members, while threatening the U.S. territory itself with strategic nuclear weapons.

Misguided American and NATO policies created the Ukraine crisis. Now they risk nuclear war.

It’s time to challenge the orthodox view on the war in Ukraine.

Western pundits and governments are wrongly using the war in Ukraine for goals (and distractions) that go far beyond the conflict there.

 

Today humanity’s existence is threatened by the danger of nuclear war and the destruction of our natural environment, which is resulting in “climate chaos” and widespread pollution.  The purpose of this essay is to clarify the implications of this reality, what humanity must do to preserve itself, and in particular the role that the people of the United States must play, because we are  writing from the United States. [Read more…] about ACURA ViewPoint: Dr. Eli Schotz and Krishen Mehta: Partners in Survival: Reviving the “McCloy-Zorin Agreement”

On May 3, University of Ottawa Professor Paul Robinson testified before the Subcommittee on International Human Rights of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development on the human rights situation in Russia and Ukraine. A transcript of his remarks are below. [Read more…] about Paul Robinson’s Testimony Before the Canadian Parliament on Human Rights Violations in Ukraine

On May 19, ACURA hosted a panel discussion with Katrina vanden Heuvel (The Nation), Anatol Lieven (Quincy Institute), Marlene Laruelle (George Washington University) , Pietro Shakarian (American University of Armenia) and James W. Carden (Asia Times) sponsored by the American Committee for US-Russia Accord. Russia experts vanden Heuvel, Lieven, Laruelle and Shakarian discuss the effect Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine is having on Russia’s political trajectory. How do Russians view the war? What has been the extent of Putin’s crackdown on dissent? What does the war mean for the future of Russian politics?