American Committee for US-Russia Accord

Western politicians, “experts” and journalists are going to have to reboot their stories over the next few days now that Bashar al-Assad’s army has retaken control of eastern Aleppo.

Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com.) This installment focuses on charges that Russian cyber-invasions of the DNC and dissemination of materials damaging to the Clinton campaign contributed to Trump’s victory.

Despite conflicting accounts about who leaked the Democratic emails, the frenzy over an alleged Russian role is driving the U.S. deeper into a costly and dangerous New Cold War, writes Robert Parry.

In Eastern Ukraine, the Orthodox Church finds itself in the crossfire of an ideological conflict.

Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at NYU and Princeton and contributing editor to The Nation, discusses what we know about Russia’s use of cyber-attacks to disrupt stability in democratic institutions from Kiev to Washington, and how this was going on during the 2016 presidential election.

Trump can hardly do worse if he completely discards the kind of advice Obama has been getting on Russia and relies on a different kind of expertise — the kind Tillerson has.

The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, three American officials said on Monday.

There is no basis for any claims about a “stolen” presidential election. Nobody stole anything. No Russian operatives altered ballots or tampered with election machines, which is why the Obama administration itself has declared that state-by-state election results “reflect the will of the people.”

President-elect Trump’s State Department selections have managed to trigger opposition from two distinct and opposed camps. The neocons and anti-Russians oppose Exxon chief Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state designate, as too inclined to accommodate Putin.

The allegations about Moscow’s involvement in the election derive from a still-secret report prepared by the CIA that represents the intelligence community’s consensus on the issue, though the use of the word “consensus” implies that there was dissent over the conclusions, and there is even a suggestion that not all of the community signed off on the final draft.

Dear Presidents Putin and Obama, Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers and Secretary General of NATO: We are writing to you concerning the all-too-real, all-too-current, risk of global thermonuclear war.

As the president-elect now discovers his friends and enemies in Washington, D.C., so he will soon discover them abroad. As Donald Trump is now the focus of domestic hopes and fears amongst those who would use his power for their own ends, so he will soon be the object of foreign ambition.

The incoming U.S. administration and its new foreign policy approach will impact Russia on multiple fronts. Indirectly, both Russia’s relations with China towards its east and Europe towards its west will be affected by the U.S.’ own economic and foreign relations with these regions, respectivel

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.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to talk to North Korea and improve relations with Russia—the two countries which currently present the greatest challenges on nuclear security. If Trump is serious about pursuing these worthy goals, he must keep the Iran nuclear agreement.

Historically countries made alliances to improve their defense or otherwise advance important security interests.

We should see the interest of the post-communist states in their “near abroad” as natural, opportunities for bargaining instead of fruitless confrontation. Russia and China, though hardly the states we would like them to be, have the same interests in their security perimeters as we do in ours.

Professor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new Cold War. This week they look at the new McCarthyism in the US political-media establishment, with Batchelor reporting on attempts in Congress to recreate a version of the McCarthy-era House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which conducted a witch-hunt that ruined many lives and chilled public discourse for years.

Working together in Syria should be only the beginning of broader cooperation in stabilizing the Middle East. Both Russia and the new US administration have proclaimed that fighting “jihadist terrorism” is their top priority. But there is a long way to go to reach a minimal common understanding of the targets in this fight.

When the Soviet Union came apart at the end of 1991, the nuclear arms race between the United States and the USSR had ended, a negotiated peace that benefited all parties had replaced the Cold War, and the Iron Curtain that divided Europe had vanished. We seemed to be on the threshold of a new Europe.