American Committee for US-Russia Accord

What would happen if a nuclear war were to be sparked between Russia and the United States today? Who would survive? Scientists from Future of Life Institute  show what a nuclear war between Russia and the United States might look like today. It is based on detailed modeling of nuclear targets, missile trajectories, and the effects of blasts, EMPs, and smoke on the climate and food resources.

The latest full-length study of the life of US diplomat and historian George F. Kennan (1904–2005) attempts to rectify what its author, Professor Frank Costigliola, believes to be the shortcomings of John Lewis Gaddis’s authorised biography, published in 2011. As a treatment of Kennan’s early life and career, of his post-State Department role as a commentator and ‘sage’, and in particular of its subject’s personal life and character, the book is unlikely to be matched. For all its virtues, however, it has a striking and rather surprising deficiency: readers must look elsewhere for a full account of its protagonist’s role as a policymaker in the years 1946–50. One need not agree with Costigliola’s assessment of Kennan’s historical stature to believe there is profit to be had in imagining what his message would be today on a range of subjects: the environment, the future of Ukraine and US–Russia relations, European strategic autonomy and the fragility of American democracy.

Ed Lozansky writes, “I think I was the first one to recognize the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union back in December 1976, i.e., 15 years before Ukraine got its actual independence after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. This happened at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria during my application for an entrance visa. Vienna was my first stop after expulsion from the Soviet Union for dissident activities…”

The anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki present an opportunity to demolish a cornerstone myth of American history — that those twin acts of mass civilian slaughter were necessary to bring about Japan’s surrender, and spare a half-million US soldiers who’d have otherwise died in a military conquest of the empire’s home islands.

“What will Putin do? We don’t think that far,” the US official said. “Our national strategy is that Zelensky can do whatever he wants to do. There’s no adult supervision.”

In the nearly ten years since the Maidan Revolution, a handful of us have been sounding the alarm over the possibility of war breaking out between Russia and the West. For nearly ten years, a small minority of writers and thinkers have relentlessly advocated for a peaceful solution to the Ukraine crisis, and in the process have, at various times, been smeared, mocked, marginalized, denied employment opportunities, branded “terrorist” sympathizers, and placed on a Ukrainian kill-lists for the crime of telling the truth about what has been happening in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

The majority of Americans polled do not want to supply more U.S. aid for the war in Ukraine, according to a new survey by CNN/SSRS released today.

According to the data, 55 percent of Americans do not think Congress “should authorize additional funding to support Ukraine in the war with Russia,” while 45 percent said Congress should approve more.

Another 51 percent say the U.S. has “done enough” to “stop Russian actions in Ukraine,” while 48 said Washington has not done enough.

Legendary University of Chicago IR theorist John Mearsheimer joins Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald for a discussion of the war in Ukraine.

Giving money away in large quantities tends to produce perverse incentives that cause people to behave in ways that engender negative results.

In February, Ruslana Danilkina, a 19-year-old Ukrainian soldier, came under fire near the front line around Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine. Shrapnel tore her left leg off above the knee. She clutched her severed thigh bone and watched medics place her severed leg into the vehicle that took her to a hospital.

Each has been using the other’s civilians as pawns in an espionage blame game—and the FBI has consistently managed to make things worse.

Today, Ukraine’s supporters continue to claim victory is possible, even if it is no longer just around the corner. But post-Bakhmut, and in the midst of Ukraine’s ailing counteroffensive, Kyiv’s situation does not look so rosy. The Ukrainians’ recapture of large tracts of territory in Kharkiv and Kherson did not change the strategic situation in their favor. In a sense, it may even have benefited the Russians by forcing Moscow to shorten its defensive lines.

Ret. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor speaks with former Air Force pilot L Todd Wood on the current situation in Ukraine.

William Burns is far and away the best CIA director in recent memory,  perhaps in the 75 years of its history, and clearly the national security heavyweight in the Biden administration.  Burns repeatedly denies that he is engaged in the diplomacy of the Biden administration, but he has taken on a substantive and significant policy role.  His numerous trips to key capitals belie his denials regarding diplomatic activism.  It is difficult to believe that he has not taken part in policy discussions, particularly in view of the limited experience and knowledge of the Biden national security team (Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is traveling to Tonga this week to open the U.S. embassy there).

In view of Burns’ extensive experience in sensitive diplomatic matters, it is reasonable to assume that he will be asked to contribute to discussions on sensitive policy issues.

There has yet to be an acknowledgement of the most relevant fact on the ground, namely the deep divide in Ukraine between the Galician Party, rooted in the west of the country and now dominant in Kiev, which is committed to expunging any Russian cultural and spiritual presence in Ukraine, and the Muscovite Party, which sees Russia and Ukraine not as enemies but as spiritual, if not exactly political, brothers.

Professor John Mearsheimer, the eminent political scientist who has warned for years that NATO’s Ukraine policy would lead to disaster, joins Aaron Maté to assess the state of the Ukraine proxy war and the dangers ahead.

The fog of war over much of the last 18 months has skewed press coverage and our understanding of what is happening in Ukraine. Yet media opacity can no longer mask the facts on the ground.

Bird gives his take on the man in this interview with the Bulletin’s Dan Drollette Jr and describes what he and his co-author, Martin Sherwin, discovered in their journey to make their 721-page biography. Bird delves into Oppenheimer’s personality, his leadership as the head of the scientific end of the Manhattan Project, his climb to the heights of fame, and his fall from grace.