American Committee for US-Russia Accord

The Democrats’ demagogic use of Russia-gate to “resist” President Trump is putting progressives in league with warmongers and war contractors while postponing a serious assessment of the party’s political problems, warns Norman Solomon.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), pressed twice by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer for evidence, said she still has seen none that would show collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

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.

Russia has succeeded, at a cost acceptable to it, in achieving its objectives of shoring up its only client regime in the Middle East, securing its modest naval and air presence in the country, and demonstrating that it still is a player to be reckoned with in that part of the world.

The Aug. 9 editorial “An untenable position” recommended Kiev continue isolating the rebel-controlled provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine. The majority of those left inside the blockade are the old, the infirm and the financially destitute — the ones who can’t leave.

These people are not terrorists or Russian collaborators

Jared Kushner is not the first member of a presidential family to try to open a back channel with the Kremlin. John F. Kennedy’s brother Robert met secretly with a Soviet intelligence agent named Georgi Bolshakov many times during the Kennedy administration. Their dealings illustrate the shortcomings and dangers of informal high-level diplomacy — but also the potential for breakthrough in a crisis.

Major U.S. media outlets insinuate that President Trump’s advisers are traitors for secretly talking to Russians, but they ignore the history of Henry Kissinger doing the same thing for Richard Nixon, writes Gareth Porter.

The use of back channels, such as special emissaries and personal intermediaries, is almost as old as diplomacy itself.

Advocates of Western-style democracy frequently assert that Russia has built a neo-Soviet ‘autocratic’ political system with elements of totalitarianism. Struggling to understand the country’s transition from the USSR, Western media commonly describe Russia in terms of its fitting with the old pattern

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.