TheNation
May 23, 2018

McCarthyism and firsthand recollections of Soviet surveillance practices.

(Audio available here.)

By Stephen F. Cohen

Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (You can find previous installments of these conversations, now in their fifth year, at TheNation.com.)

Cohen has several reactions to the recent revelation that a longtime CIA-FBI “informant,” professor emeritus Stefan Halper, had been dispatched to “interact” with several members of Donald Trump’s campaign organization in 2016. He discusses each of them:

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Friends,

A more apt and honest statement regarding how we have ended up so close to World War III hasn’t surfaced until now.

Many of us onlookers watched in horror as seemingly unrelated events were taking place––it was near impossible to make sense of these happenings. Even now looking back, it’s hard to put the details together in a cohesive framework. Yet James Carden has done this work for us.

My self-appointed task was to try to provide business education for the class of Russians who seemed to be most capable of building the “New Russia”. They were the well-educated and desperate young men and women who were reinventing themselves while trying to build small businesses to feed their families.

I am deeply grateful that Carden has put this history together. Read … and marvel at how and why the situation turned out like it has!

All the best,

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

American Affairs
May, 2018

The Cold War Culture War

by James Carden

How to explain the current nadir in U.S.-Russia relations?

The litany of oft-cited causes is by now familiar and includes, but is certainly not limited to, the expansion of NATO, the dispute over Kosovo, the American abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Russo-Georgian War, and the war in Ukraine, as well as allegations (by both governments1) of election meddling. Over the course of the past decade and a half, U.S.-Russia relations have also been shaped—and not for the better—by the disparate foreign policy approaches taken by American and Russian governments.

Less well known, however, is that America’s growing animus towards all things Russia is also characterized by the hostility borne of a frustrated project of liberal cultural imperialism. In the years following the end of the Soviet Union, the idea that Russia was “ours to lose” gained wide currency in American foreign policy circles. The Clinton administration sought to dismantle the remaining state apparatus of Soviet-era Russia and replace it with a new liberal civil society that took its cues from Washington. In that way, it was believed, Russia could never again pose a challenge to the West.2 Of course, such efforts did not succeed, but our “culture war” approach to foreign policy has only intensified since then. The failure of this project has contributed significantly to the present animus towards Russia and continues to hinder more reasonable diplomatic relations.

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Friends of CCI,  please get this excellent article by Ambassador Jack Matlock to as many of your friends, colleagues and families as is possible.

Ambassador Matlock is respected as America’s greatest living Ambassador.  Our nation must listen to his respected voice … even though he is locked out of the New York Times and other mainstream media.

This is the state of affairs that we have come to.  Those with the most credibility in our nation cannot be heard in mainstream media, but those who promote ungrounded rumors get national headlines.

Into what is it leading us? WWIII? Are we like lemmings going to the sea, or do we have the courage to speak out?

Please call your Congress members, tell them your urgency, send them emails.  Ask your friends to pass this information to their e lists. It’s the only way sanity can be regained in our country.  It will not be done from top down, it must be bottom up from us citizens!

writing from St.Petersburg

TheNation
June 1, 2018

Amid “Russiagate” Hysteria, What Are the Facts?

We must end this Russophobic insanity.

By Jack F. Matlock Jr.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

That saying—often misattributed to Euripides—comes to mind most mornings when I pick up The New York Times and read the latest “Russiagate” headlines, which are frequently featured across two or three columns on the front page above the fold. This is an almost daily reminder of the hysteria that dominates our Congress and much of our media.

A glaring example, just one of many from recent months, arrived at my door on February 17. My outrage spiked when I opened to the Times’ lead editorial: “Stop Letting the Russians Get Away With It, Mr. Trump.” I had to ask myself: “Did the Times’ editors perform even the rudiments of due diligence before they climbed on their high horse in this long editorial, which excoriated ‘Russia’ (not individual Russians) for ‘interference’ in the election and demanded increased sanctions against Russia ‘to protect American democracy’?”

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Christian Science Monitor
May 8, 2018

To pay for a ‘Russia first’ agenda, Putin takes ax to military spending

By Fred Weir, Correspondent

MOSCOW

Inaugurated for his fourth official term as Russia’s president Monday, Vladimir Putin surprised many by declaring what sounds like a “Russia first” program: a relentless focus on domestic development, to be partially paid for by sharp cuts in defense spending.

It may sound contrary to Western perceptions of Russia’s global intentions. But the priorities listed in the new Kremlin strategic program suggest that Mr. Putin has decided to use what seems likely to be his final term in office to cement his already substantial legacy as a nation-builder.

The projected surge in spending on roads, education, and health care will have to be paid for. A key source of that funding will be the military budget, which had been growing by around 10 percent annually for much of the Putin era.

“The times when the external threat was used to make cuts in social expenditures palatable has passed. We can’t go on like that any longer,” says Pavel Zolotaryov, deputy director of the Institute of USA-Canada Studies (ISKRAN), which is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “A lot of the goals of military modernization have already been accomplished, so we can afford to slow it down, make selective cuts to fund social goals, while continuing the basic path.”

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Dear CCI Friends,

Seldom do we have the opportunity to see two experts, from two quite different positions, debate the topic of “Who is to Blame” for the new Cold War.

Watch Professor Stephen F. Cohen, America’s greatest living historian on all things Russian and former American Ambassador to Russia for two years, Professor Michael McFaul from Stanford University as they addressed the topic for public consumption on May 15, 2018. This debate occurred at the prestigious Harriman Institute at Columbia University.

Please put the following link in your browser and witness the passion and depth to which Professor Cohen expresses his deep concern for the current situation that jeopardizes our entire planet and Professor McFaul as he relates to the same set of facts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4dJcdM2Dkg

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives