American Committee for US-Russia Accord

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something,” Upton Sinclair observed, “when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Between the late 1990s and the 2010s, it was prudent for Americans who wanted a career in public policy, politics, or prestige journalism in Washington and New York to pretend to be persuaded by illogical, unsupported, and often openly preposterous arguments, because those were the arguments of the bipartisan establishment.

Brimming with overconfidence after Putin’s serial failures, Washington, London and Kyiv are now in the process of switching places with Moscow when it comes to expectations of military victory, though nobody seems to know what would constitute a victory. Would this mean Russia returning to pre-February lines, its total eviction from Ukraine or regime change in Moscow?

Jeffrey Sachs on the West’s “proxy war” in Ukraine and America’s failure to support post-soviet Russia. He thinks America forgot Keynes’s lesson on the long-term costs of humiliating a defeated enemy.

They don’t need the protection, but it will be the nail in the coffin of European autonomy and any future relations with Russia.

It is vital to step back from the emotions stirred by this conflict and assess our real security priorities.

Painting neo-Nazi paramilitaries with an extensive record of war crimes as patriots helping refugees, all while working with a “disinformation” group that turned out to run interference for violent neo-Nazi formations—that’s the experience Biden’s new disinformation czar brings to the table.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has defended his invasion of Ukraine, saying it was a necessary blow against NATO. His remarks came during Russia’s annual Victory Day celebrations on May 9 marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. U.S. lawmakers, meanwhile, are increasingly describing the fighting in Ukraine as a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia. ACURA and the Quincy Institute’s Anatol Lieven, says the war can only end through negotiations, and aggressive U.S. rhetoric risks prolonging the fighting. “That is a recipe for this war going on essentially forever, with colossal suffering for Ukraine,” says Lieven.

The discourse of peace – in media, politics and research – has been disappeared.

The Russian war on Ukraine has seen ‘the Blob’ reassert itself with a vengeance in the 11 weeks since Russia announced the commencement of hostilities on February 24.

Like the public boasting of U.S. intel agents over our role in the sinking of the Moskva and killing of the Russian generals, the effect is to disqualify the U.S. president from any role in negotiating a truce or an end to this war.

But if we have any chance at staying out of the conflict for much longer, diplomacy will at some point have to figure into the mix of policy options available to the President.

The Biden administration has shown little interest in knocking heads together to bring an end to the war.

Neocons more or less invented Cancel Culture in America, so it was amusing to see them briefly whinge about censorship and pose as friends to the free exchange of ideas when they worried about being caught in their own mousetrap. Then came the thuggish Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, whereupon they reverted to form, casting aspersions on the patriotism of those who resisted the call for U.S. military intervention…

David Barsamian interviews Katrina vanden Heuvel about current issues in the world and history.

As the US moves toward a proxy war against Russia, reporters aren’t asking tough questions about what that actually means.

During the past few months the Biden administration’s rhetoric about its ultimate goals for Ukraine appears to have shifted, with more talk about winning the war against Russia. Evelyn Farkas, executive director of the McCain Institute at Arizona State University, and John Mearsheimer, political science professor at the University of Chicago, join Judy Woodruff to discuss.

The economic war is most unlikely to affect the outcome of the Ukraine War, but it does seem likely to produce outcomes that will prejudice energy security and the climate agenda, while falling hardest on the world’s poor.

Declaring someone irrational leads to a place in which no one wants to negotiate, because, no one wants to talk to crazy people.