American Committee for US-Russia Accord

Democrats and liberals have climbed into bed with the neocons to push the “Russia-did-it” conspiracy theory as a way to “get Trump,” but this New McCarthyism has grave dangers, writes Robert Parry.

According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine.

What’s surprising is how far back America’s evangelizing approach to Russia goes — and how it continues to distort our thinking today.

MSNBC hosts continue to lead their TV shows with overwrought, BREAKING NEWS about Russia, instilling in their viewership the notion that this is the most acutely important issue facing the country. MSNBC viewers and Democratic stalwarts have repeated to me over and over again that so long as the “Trump/Russia connection” matter remains unresolved, no real legislative or policy work can be done.

Macleans magazine, which, roughly speaking, is Canada’s equivalent of Time or Newsweek, has published a couple of articles this week on the topic of the day – Russia.

Defense hawks argue that new, small nuclear weapons deployed in Europe would further deter Russian aggression in the region — and that they are critical for “winning” a nuclear war. This is a profoundly flawed argument.

The Real News talks to Lawrence Wilkerson, retired United States Army soldier and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, on the state of US-Russia relations. Col. Wilkerson says that from the expansion of NATO to the Western-led plundering of the former USSR, the US has given Russia enough reason to feel threatened

Let’s never forget a simple fact about nearly all of these Russia-related stories: they’re based on unverifiable information from unseen sources with unknown goals. Anyone who takes this and runs with it in order to depose Trump is at risk not just of getting things way wrong, but also in creating a host of unintended consequences.

Official Washington’s anti-Russian hysteria has distorted U.S. politics while also escalating risks of a nuclear war as U.S. war planners dream of “winning” a first-strike attack on Russia, reports Jonathan Marshall.

From the upholstered libraries and plush dining rooms of the foreign-policy establishment, Trump’s antics elicit gasps of alarm, murmurs of disbelief, complaints of indigestion and dyspepsia.

The newly-created Global Engagement Center’s “focus and intent” is foreign audiences, but officials won’t rule out propagandizing Americans and funding American journalists.

These days the word “influence” to analyze RT (the Russian international news and discussion program at the heart of Western concerns about its “weaponized information”)  in U.S. and European press and policy-making circles is, you might notice, replacing other terms, such as “effects” and “persuasion.” [Read more…] about Influence, Persuasion, and Effects of RT (Prof. Ellen Mickiewicz)

The main reason that advocates for continued expansion want Montenegro in the alliance is that it keeps the idea of expanding NATO alive, and the other reason is that it irks Moscow. Neither of these is a good reason.

Princeton and NYU Professor Emeritus Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Now in their fourth year, previous installments are at TheNation.com.) Discussion begins with the new McCarthyism, driven primarily by Democrats, other cold warriors, and their media alleging, without any real evidence, that President Trump has been “compromised” or is otherwise controlled by the Kremlin.

The Reconsidering Russia podcast is back. The fifth and latest installment features Caucasus analyst Sergey Markedonov. The discussion covers topics as diverse as the Don Cossacks, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, Syria, NATO, Mikheil Saakashvili, Russo-Georgian relations, US-Russian relations, and Markedonov’s personal experience with the Caucasus region.

Much of the Western media has consistently portrayed Russia as the bad actor in the Ukraine conflict. Are there different ways to understand Russia’s motives? Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at Princeton University and New York University discusses Russia’s role with Bloomberg North’s Rudyard Griffiths.