Far from expressing any ambition to conquer, occupy, and annex Ukraine (an impossible goal for the 190,000 troops that Russia eventually deployed in its initial attack on the country), all of Moscow’s demarches and demands during the run-up to the invasion made clear that “the key to everything is the guarantee that NATO will not expand eastward,” as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov put it in a press conference on January 14, 2022. “
ACURA’s Jack F. Matlock: The Biden-Stalin Doctrine
Stalin once remarked that a single death is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic. Apparently, President Biden shares that view.
ACURA Announcement: Two Years Since The Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Saturday, February 24th will mark two years since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a significant escalation of a war that began in 2014. Today we are publishing a number of new and previously written pieces on the conflict by our contributors. We hope these add to the general understanding of the war and its consequences. – ACURA
ACURA’s Krishen Mehta: Learning from Seneca…in the context of the Russia Ukraine War
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC–65 AD) was a Stoic philosopher of ancient Rome and tutor to emperors. Known for his philosophic works and essays dealing with thorny moral and political issues, Seneca used philosophy as a compass to navigate the challenging terrain of life. Recently, as I was reading a new translation of Sentences from Seneca, it struck me that some of Seneca’s teachings may apply to the tragic conflict that is still unfolding in Ukraine. In the spirit of bringing the wisdom of the past to bear on the present, I offer four of Seneca’s sentences as ways of illuminating the problems of the war. [Read more…] about ACURA’s Krishen Mehta: Learning from Seneca…in the context of the Russia Ukraine War
ACURA’s Anatol Lieven: To Seek Peace in Ukraine, Remember the End of the Cold War
An honest accounting with history in both Russia and the United States is essential if we are to bring about a lasting peace in Ukraine and escape from the past generation’s spiral of hostility, which could in the worst case become a death spiral for the whole of humanity.
ACURA’s James W. Carden: Post-Soviet Failures, Present-Day Realities
Two years since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine – and fully 10 years since the war actually began – the US political-media establishment seems as far away from learning any lessons from the failure of its post-Soviet Russia policy as it has ever been. [Read more…] about ACURA’s James W. Carden: Post-Soviet Failures, Present-Day Realities
ACURA’s Anatol Lieven and George Beebe: The Diplomatic Path to a Secure Ukraine
Conventional wisdom holds that a negotiated end to the Ukraine war is neither possible nor desirable. This belief is false.
VIDEO: ACURA’s Jack F. Matlock on the Neutrality Studies Podcast: On American Hegemony
The US has “inherited” the Brezhnev-Doctrine, says Ronald Reagan’s Ambassador to Soviet Union, Jack Matlock. As one of the men who negotiated the Cold War to an end, Ambassador Matlock talks in a candid interview with Pascal Lottaz about how the US has been using regime-change operations systematically and without remorse ever since the USSR has officially stopped doing so.
Ambassador Matlock was born in 1929, educated at Duke and Columbia Universities, he entered the Foreign Service in 1956 and went all the way to become US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987–91 with his duties in Moscow ending only months before the dissolution of the country itself. He was famously working with President Reagan and Bush Senior to end the Cold War which he keeps emphasizing happened due to mutual agreement and good diplomacy, not because of the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Robert Skidelsky: The Lost Peace?
ACURA’s Stephen F. Cohen: Four Years of Ukraine and the Myths of Maidan (Jan. 3, 2018)
Cohen argued that the Ukrainian crisis, which unfolded in late 2013 and early 2014 and which led to Crimea’s annexation by (or “reunification with”) Russia and to the still ongoing US-Russian proxy war in eastern Ukraine, was a seminal event of the 21st century
Flashback: Taking Aim At Maidan Myths: Stephen F. Cohen Challenges Fictional Narratives
ACURA Founder and Princeton University Professor Stephen F. Cohen wrote that , “The events of 2014 also led to NATO’s ongoing buildup on Russia’s western border, in the Baltic region, yet another new Cold War front fraught with the possibility of hot war. Making things only worse, in late 2017, the Trump administration announced it would supply the Kiev government with more, and more sophisticated, weapons, a step even the Obama administration, which played a large detrimental role in the 2014 crisis, declined to take.”
Flashback: Branko Marcetic: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War (Feb. 2022)
ACURA’s James W. Carden: The Ukraine War Runs on Prevarication
We citizens have been serially lied to by the Biden administration and the media about the war’s causes, its stakes, and its progress. The question that should, but of course will not, be addressed in the aftermath of this latest American misadventure abroad is: Will we ever learn?
VIDEO: Col. Douglas Macgregor: Does the US Have a Coherent Foreign Policy?
Judge Napolitano talks with Colonel Macgregor on the latest developments in Ukraine.
Stephen F. Cohen: Russiagate or Intelgate? (February 8, 2018)
In light of last week’s reporting by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag on the CIA’s alleged role in fomenting the Russiagate scandal, we are reposting Professor Cohen’s prescient article from 6 years ago on the likely origins of Russiagate.
Quincy Institute and Harris Poll: Nearly 70% of Americans want talks to end war in Ukraine
The new data suggests that U.S. government policy toward the Ukraine war is increasingly out of step with public opinion on the eve of the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
John Mearsheimer: The Ukraine War Today
An interview with the Munk Debates Podcast on the present situation in Ukraine.
Ed Lozansky: Indispensable Nation or One Obsessed with Hegemony?
Let us sober up and admit that although the United States is exceptional, this is true for any other country on this planet with all its good or bad features.
Jeffrey Sachs: The Biden-Schumer Plan to Kill More Ukrainians
Andrew Cockburn: Admiral Fabuloso Thumps His Tub
From Ukraine to Syria, “Stav” is in the front lines, figuratively speaking, urging escalation against Russia. The Ukrainians should have “lethal aid” from the U.S., he announced in 2015, and when asked if that might not lead the Russians to escalate in turn, he conceded blithely, “when you release ordnance, everything changes.”