American Committee for US-Russia Accord

The narrative Clinton constructs conveniently sets things up in his favour: if NATO expands and Russia peacefully acquiesces, then it will be seen as a success and expansion is justified. If NATO expands and Russia reacts in a threatening way (as it is now), NATO expansion can also be justified.

Heads I win, tails you lose.

Experts who made the case that Washington’s meddling to help demonstrators unseat Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russia president in 2014 led to Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea found themselves targets of that alliance’s vitriol.

Princeton University Professor Stephen F. Cohen, a longtime distinguished scholar of the Soviet Union and its successor states, was a prominent early target. Critics impugned Cohen’s motives and sullied his reputation. Epithets such as “Putin’s American apologist” and “Putin’s Pal” were among the routine labels they applied.

Those tactics became even more flagrant as the crisis between Russia and Ukraine (and between Russia and NATO) deepened in the years after 2014.

The problem is not so much to know who is right in this conflict, but to question the way our leaders make their decisions.

Over the past decades, the need to take into account Russia’s interests has steadily declined in the West. “Gas station pretending to be a country” and “a regional power” are just some examples of the Western approach to Moscow’s politics. In other words, the image of Russia as a “paper soldier” — a country that is in systemic decline — was gaining popularity.

The time ABC, CBS, and NBC spent reporting on the conflict in Eastern Europe has exceeded or equaled coverage of all other wars in the last 31 years.

Professor Nicolai N. Petro talks to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown on the prospects for peace in Ukraine.

Our record for improving conditions with military intervention is, while well-intentioned, riddled by failure. There’s a better way.

On April 7, ACURA hosted John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago in conversation  with American Committee for US-Russia Accord Board members Katrina vanden Heuvel, Ambassador Jack Matlock, Professor Nicolai Petro, and Professor Marlene Laruelle.

From the Associated Press account of Gorbachev’s visit to Capitol Hill in April 1997:

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev on Tuesday cautioned the US Congress against the planned expansion of NATO. He claimed that it would be a mistake to expand the alliance without an agreement not to deploy nuclear weapons and combat troops in new member countries.

Gorbachev told Congress that the inclusion in NATO of former Soviet bloc nations Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic could strengthen conservative sentiment in Russia.

Without naming China, he said a new power was emerging in the Pacific that needs to be balanced by the US and by a Europe that includes Russia.

Hollywood loves a sequel, but the Russia-Ukraine crisis has made the possibility real, and no one should want to see it.

The failure to take Russia seriously as a determined, risk-acceptant adversary, or to recognize that even liberal Europe could plunge into nuclear crisis, was long in the making.

Under the superficial display of unity, across the Euro-Atlantic, severe differences remain within. Wartime hypothesis is always tricky, but so far, at the risk of generalization, three distinct subsets among the NATO and the EU states are visible.

Washington’s ruling class has a long record of misjudging strategic reality. Seeking to advance NATO through Ukraine to Russia’s western border may well be the worst blunder in American foreign policy since the end of World War II, but Washington learns nothing and remembers nothing. After the defeat of Anglo-French military power in June 1940, the combined power of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Imperial Japan was unassailable. Had the three remained in alliance, neither Washington, nor any combination of powers, could have challenged them for decades.

Rapprochement between Russia and China has grown to entente.

Neutrality is not just as an essential and unavoidable part of any agreement to end the present Russian invasion but one that may have prevented the invasion happening (since it was first on Russia’s list of demands).

An expert panel convened by the Quincy Institute to discuss possibilities of a peace agreement to end the war featured Gabrielle Rifkind, conflict mediator and director of Oxford Process; former US Ambassador to Russia, Thomas Pickering; and RAND political scientist Dr. Samuel Charap.

Peace and Conflict Resolution scholars and foreign affairs practitioners convened at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School’s Point of View research and retreat facility in Mason Neck, Virginia on March 22, 2022 issued the following appeal to the conflicting parties in Ukraine:

All parties to this conflict are now hurting.  The costs in human life and suffering are mounting and the damaging effects of the conflict are rippling around the world.  It is high time for the parties to agree to an immediate and complete cessation of hostilities.  Continuing the struggle inevitably multiplies the damage and poses increasing risks that nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction may be used. [Read more…] about Peace and Conflict Resolution scholars: NEGOTIATE PEACE NOW  

To be able to put a stop to this war, we must understand the background that has made it possible. The war in Donbass has been going on for eight years and has left 13,000 dead, and has left as many injured, including children. I regret the political and media silence that surrounds it, the indifference to the dead when they are Russian-speaking.

To say that does not mean justifying Vladimir Putin’s policy. Just as questioning the warmongering role of the United States, present at all levels of Ukrainian governance both before and during the “Maidan Revolution,” does not amount to clearing Putin of his share of responsibility. Finally, we must keep in mind the precedent set by the bombing of Belgrade and the destruction of Serbia by NATO in 1999 without obtaining the approval of the United Nations Security Council. For Russia, this has been experienced as a humiliation and an example to remember. The Kosovo war marked the Russian national memory and its leaders.

In Russia, sanctions have taken a bite out of the Russian economy, but interviews and data suggest they cannot fulfill the West’s strategic motives for imposing them.