How the long-anticipated report addresses—or ignores—Russiagate allegations will be vital for US-Russian relations
Amajor theme of my recently published book War with Russia? is twofold: The United States is in a new Cold War with Russia, but one more dangerous, more fraught with possibilities of actual war, than was the 40-year Cold War the world survived. I began arguing the first proposition nearly 20 years ago, long before...
Read MoreUS Cold Warriors escalate toward actual war with Russia
Heedless of the consequences, or perhaps welcoming them, America’s Cold Warriors and their media platforms have recently escalated their rhetoric against Russia, especially in March. Anyone who has lived through or studied the preceding 40-year Cold War will recognize the ominous echoes of its most dangerous periods, when actual war was on the horizon or...
Read MoreThe Russian-Ukrainian military conflict in the Kerch Strait illustrates again how this Cold War is more dangerous that...
Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of politics and Russian studies at Princeton and NYU, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com.) A major theme of Cohen’s recently published book, War With Russia? From Putin and Ukraine To Trump...
Read MoreWashington’s attempt to “isolate Putin’s Russia” has failed and had the opposite effect
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. (Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com.) On the fifth anniversary of the onset of the Ukrainian crisis, in November 2013, and of Washington...
Read MoreIntelligence agencies, Nikki Haley, sanctions, and public opinion
Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian Studies and politics at Princeton and NYU, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com). Cohen comments on the following subjects currently in the news: 1. National intelligence agencies have long played...
Read MoreOvershadowed by the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, US-Russian relations grow ever more perilous
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. (Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com.) Emphasizing growing Cold War extremism in Washington and war-like crises in US-Russian relations elsewhere, Cohen comments on...
Read MoreThe president has broken with the nearly 20-year orthodoxy of blaming Russia alone for today’s post-Soviet confrontations
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, now in their fifth year, at TheNation.com.) As has every American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1943, President Trump held a...
Read MoreSeveral factors make this US-Russian Cold War more dangerous than its predecessor—is “Russo-madness” one of them?
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. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com.) Cohen has previously explained why the new Cold War is potentially even more dangerous than was its...
Read MoreRussiagaters allege, with no evidence, that “Russia attacked America” in 2016, but many Russians believe—with...
Professor Emeritus of Politics and Russian Studies (at Princeton and NYU) Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com.) Cohen’s subject is both contemporary and historical. The most central, ramifying, and dangerous allegation of Russiagate is...
Read MoreThe mainstream American political-media narrative, which powerfully influences the possibility of war or peace with...
Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com.) Moscow and Washington have conflicting narratives, expressed in their respective mass media and periodic “diplomacy,” regarding the history, causes, and nature of the new Cold War....
Read MoreToday’s American-Russian confrontation is developing in unprecedented ways—and the US political-media establishment...
Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com.) For several years, Cohen has argued that the new Cold War is more dangerous than its 45-year predecessor, which, it is often said, “we barely survived.”...
Read MoreWhy is there no mainstream opposition to the new Cold War?
Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com.) Why, unlike during the preceding 45-year Cold War, is there no significant American mainstream opposition to the new (and more dangerous) one? Cohen poses this question...
Read MoreOn May 9, while Russia was commemorating the 27 million Soviet citizens who died fighting Nazi Germany, the US...
Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com.) Cohen emphasizes that while V-E (Victory in Europe) Day—a major American holiday, on May 8, when he was growing up in Kentucky—is no longer observed, Victory...
Read MoreQuestionable but orthodox Cold War narratives make actual war with Russia more likely than during its 40-year predecessor.
Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and radio-show host John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US–Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, can be found here.) Cohen recalls that in 2014, when the Ukrainian crisis erupted, he warned that the new Cold War might be more dangerous than was...
Read MoreYevgeny Yevtushenko, who died last week, challenged Soviet authorities for decades while Americans at far less risk...
Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and radio host John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US–Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, may be found here.) Cohen begins by reflecting on the public life of Yevtushenko, whom he knew well for many years—so well that the poet was the...
Read MoreAmong the reasons Donald Trump is president is that he read the nation and the world better than his rivals. He saw the surging power of American nationalism at home, and of ethnonationalism in Europe. And he embraced Brexit. While our bipartisan establishment worships diversity, Trump saw Middle America recoiling from the demographic change brought...
Read MoreStephen F. Cohen speaks with David Barsamian about the increasingly dangerous tensions between the US and Russia.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, there was a brief opportunity to usher in an era of peace and cooperation between the United States and Russia. Instead, tensions between the two countries have only gotten worse over the intervening years. Listen to Stephen F. Cohen speak with...
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In retaliation for the hacking of John Podesta and the DNC, Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats and ordered closure of their country houses on Long Island and Maryland's Eastern shore. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that 35 U.S. diplomats would be expelled. But Vladimir Putin stepped in, declined to retaliate at all, and invited...
Read MoreThe preceding Cold War generated a prolonged slurring and suppression of dissenting American voices, and it may be...
Whatever Americans think of the next president’s other policies, exceedingly dangerous US-Russian conflicts have...
The record shows Hillary “We Came, We Saw, He Died” Clinton is the ‘Queen of War’. She is fully supported by virtually the whole US establishment; a bipartisan, neocon/neoliberalcon, regime change/”humanitarian” imperialist axis. On the opposite side, for all his personal pathology problems and incoherent twitter-mouth ramblings, Donald Trump seemed to be on the money...
Read MoreThe narrative concerning BRICS in the Beltway/Wall Street axis predictably spans two vectors; the five-member emerging power group – over 22 percent of global GDP, over 40 percent of global population – is either 'in crisis' or dismissed as irrelevant. This is the Goa Declaration, summarizing the results of the annual BRICS meeting held this...
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Pundits have declared a “New Cold War.” If only! The Cold War was a time when leaders focused on reducing tensions between nuclear powers. What we have today is much more dangerous: Washington’s reckless and irresponsible aggression toward the other major nuclear powers, Russia and China. During my lifetime American presidents worked to defuse tensions...
Read MoreThe enemies of détente with Russia sabotaged Obama’s proposed alliance with Russia in Syria while the American...
Pro-détente diplomacy is being fiercely opposed by detractors from Washington to Kiev.
Obama rejects a partnership with Russia against ISIS in Syria and reneges on his own proposals to reduce nuclear dangers...
Finland may become yet another front, the war party may have defeated Obama on Syria policy, and dangerous desperation...
We should listen to what Trump says about Russia policy instead of Putin-baiting him.
Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen tells CNN that Donald Trump is being wrongly linked to Putin and criticized because he’s trying to end the new Cold War.
McCarthyism was a characteristic feature of the preceding Cold War, but now it is coming from liberals, even from the...
While NATO continues its provocative buildup on Russia’s borders, Washington continues to reject Moscow’s proposals...
The large-scale US-NATO amassing of military force on Russia’s Western borders, NATO’s “Eastern Front,” is...
A struggle is under way over the Syrian cease-fire agreement, while the political crisis in Ukraine deepens.
Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com.) Cohen reminds listeners that Ukraine remains the political epicenter of the new Cold War, but Syria is where it may now become a hot war. The Syrian cease-fire agreement—brokered by Secretary...
Read More«Sometimes I wonder if it’s 2016 or if we live in 1962». What Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told 60 foreign and defense ministers at the 52nd Munich Security Conference this past Saturday was hardly news. What some of us have been qualifying, for quite a while, as Cold War 2.0, was branded «New Cold...
Read MoreToday it threatens to destroy Ukraine, undermine the European Union, and result in nuclear war.

Heavy darkness befalls the North; the sun rarely emerges from between the clouds. This year, Russia has noticeably less street illumination, and the spirits are anything but festive. Only the whiteness of the snow and Christmas trees break the gloom and remind us of the forthcoming low point of the cosmic wheel, Yuletide, when days...
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In the light of the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, there has been much talk about the clouding of US-Russian relations. Some voices in the Internet’s alternative media sections have conjured the possibility that these conflicts might lead to a new major war, while social networks like Twitter saw the usage of the hashtags #WorldWarIII...
Read MoreIn the aftermath of the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, Washington and Brussels still reject a coalition with Moscow...
American policy-makers and presidential candidates must now make a fateful decision—join Moscow in an alliance against...
The 130 people murdered in Paris on November 13 and the 224 Russians aboard a jetliner on October 31 confront America’s current and would-be policy-makers, Democratic and Republicans alike, with a fateful decision: whether to join Moscow in a military, political, diplomatic, and economic coalition against the Islamic State and other terrorist movements, especially in...
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