The best informed, recently-become “nation-cryer,”  Professor Steve Cohen, America’s top US-Soviet/Russian historian of the past half century, once again amasses the facts available regarding the pseudo-fake news that blames Russia for every ill that Democrats and Republicans have leveled at Putin and his nation. All this in order to cover their own bad judgments and actions. If you have time only to scan the first five paragraphs, please do so. It’s vitally important that as many Americans as possible understand what is going on.

Sharon Tennison

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Consortium News
December 15, 2017

The Scary Void Inside Russia-gate

Despite a lack of evidence at its core – and the risk of nuclear conflagration as its by-product – Russia-gate remains the go-to accusation for “getting” the Trump administration, explains Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen.

By Stephen F. Cohen

The foundational accusation of Russia-gate was, and remains, charges that Russian President Putin ordered the hacking of Democratic National Committee e-mails and their public dissemination through WikiLeaks in order to benefit Donald Trump and undermine Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, and that Trump and/or his associates colluded with the Kremlin in this “attack on American democracy.”

As no actual evidence for these allegations has been produced after nearly a year and a half of media and government investigations, we are left with Russia-gate without Russia. (An apt formulation perhaps first coined in an e-mail exchange by Nation writer James Carden.) Special counsel Mueller has produced four indictments: against retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s short-lived national-security adviser, and George Papadopolous, a lowly and inconsequential Trump “adviser,” for lying to the FBI; and against Paul Manafort and his partner Rick Gates for financial improprieties. None of these charges has anything to do with improper collusion with Russia, except for the wrongful insinuations against Flynn.

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Dear CCI Friends,

The word “Realist” has a new connotation in our lexicon! It is now used to define the handful of youngish Democrat and Republican U.S. Congress members who claim that, “regime-change wars” have been devastatingly destructive to numerous other countries, and in addition, extremely destructive to American’s military budget and America’s image abroad. These wars have used up funds desperately needed at home for a slew of healthcare and educational needs in addition to infrastructure repair and natural disaster relief programs and more. What a drag on our entire society – plus millions of citizens killed, maimed or pushed into refugee status in these countries that have been reduced to rubble. Think about what’s happening on the other side of the world––it is unconscionable!

Let’s move forward into 2018 supporting and working with these congressional “realists.” Telephone them, email them, write them letters commending their positions and request that our Congress members become “realists” also.

Sharon

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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Asked how American policy would be different if realists were in charge on Capitol Hill, Congressman Massie says, “It would involve a much smaller global footprint for the United States.…We would leave Afghanistan. We would not be trying to engage in another war in Syria. I think we need to listen to South Korea on the issue of North Korea. They stand to have millions of casualties in the first few hours of a war with North Korea.”

“Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard attributes the nuclear-arms standoff on the Korean peninsula to “decades of U.S.-led regime change wars.” This history, she explains, has caused Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, to double down on his nuclear stockpile, hoping to avoid the fate of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Both lost their power and their lives once they gave up efforts to develop a nuclear arsenal.”

“Interventionism, declares Congresswoman Gabbard, has been “a destructive legacy.”

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The American Conservative
November 13, 2017

Congressional Realists ‘Could Caucus in a Phone Booth’

By Finlay Lewis

Meet the eight: They may be scarce, but they’re indomitable.

They could caucus in a phone booth. They are known as “realists,” and their default position on questions of foreign policy and national security is one of skepticism about the value of interventions abroad and of respect for privacy at home. In a debate largely being litigated within the ranks of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill, the realists don’t have a prayer of prevailing in an up-or-down vote against the neoconservative wing of the party, proponents of an interventionist ethos to embed American values in lands far removed from domestic shores and traditions.

And yet the realists soldier on. They consider restraint a virtue and argue that foreign military adventures inevitably entail unpleasant and unforeseeable consequences. To nobody’s surprise, the realists were trounced on September 13 when the Senate slammed the door on Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s challenge to the legal authority that administrations of both parties have embraced since 9/11 to wage war. Paul’s target was actually two laws, each known as an AUMF, or “authorization for the use of military force.” One AUMF, enacted in 2001, allowed the government to pursue terrorists in the wake of 9/11; the other, passed a year later, flashed a legal green light for the 2003 Iraq invasion.

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“I am making an appeal to the presidents of Russia and the United States. Relations between the two nations are in a severe crisis. A way out must be sought, and there is one well-tested means available for accomplishing this: a dialogue based on mutual respect.”

Washington Post
October 11, 2017

Mikhail Gorbachev was leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991.

This December will mark the 30th anniversary of the signing of the treaty between the Soviet Union and United States on the elimination of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles. This was the start of the process of radically cutting back nuclear arsenals, which was continued with the 1991 and 2010 strategic arms reduction treaties and the agreements reducing tactical nuclear weapons.

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