American Committee for US-Russia Accord

Probably the most influential weekly political magazines in the United Kingdom are The Economist, The Spectator, and The New Statesman. All have published their latest editions in the last couple of days. Here are the results.

ACEWA Board Member and Princeton and NYU Professor Emeritus Stephen F. Cohen,  The Brookings Institution’s Fiona Hill and Columbia University Professor Emeritus Robert Legvold discuss the current state of relations between the United States and Russia, including cooperation on strategic initiatives in Syria, tensions surrounding the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the post–Cold War expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and recent allegations of Russian-sponsored cyberattacks.

Confident in a Hillary Clinton victory, Washington’s foreign policy elite is readying plans for more warfare in Syria and more confrontations with nuclear-armed Russia, an across-the-spectrum “group think” that risks life on the planet, says Robert Parry.

Destruction in Aleppo by Russian air strikes is compared to the destruction of Grozny in Chechnya sixteen years ago, but, curiously, no analogy is made with Ramadi, a city of 350,000 on the Euphrates in Iraq, that was 80 per cent destroyed by US-led air strikes in 2015.

The Telegraph understands the Kremlin has already made a decision to cut off diplomacy at least until after the Nov 8 US elections, in the hope of striking up a more “sincere” relationship with Barack Obama’s successor.

The Nation has long argued that “no modern precedent exists for the shameful complicity of the American political-media elite” in the rush to a new Cold War. As German Foreign Minister Frank-
Walter Steinmeier recently observed, “It is an illusion to believe this is the old Cold War. The new times are different; they are more dangerous.”

I have been wondering these last few weeks whether it would be cheaper to excavate a basement and buy a Geiger counter and iodine tablets, or emigrate to New Zealand. Call me frit, but I don’t like the way things are heading

We already have enough real problems with Russia in Syria and Ukraine. Someone, maybe Russian, has embarrassed the Democrats but there’s no hard proof as to who’s responsible. And the bottom line is that the DNC bears at least some of that responsibility no matter who attacked them.

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.) Cohen reports that a statement by Vice President Joe Biden on NBC’s Meet the Press on October 16, released on October 14, stunned Moscow (though it was scarcely noted in the American media).

Given the hyperbolic hysteria which characterizes so much analysis of Russia, it is good to come across a book which studiously avoids all that and instead calls for ‘a sophisticated, empathetic understanding of Russia and how it works.’

The New York Times is so determined to generate hate against Russia that it has lost all journalistic perspective, even portraying Russia’s military decoys – like those used in World War II – as uniquely evil, writes Robert Parry.