A Review of Andrew Lobaczewski’s Political Ponerology
We are living at a fateful juncture in history. Various scholars, including the late Stephen F. Cohen[1], professor emeritus at NYU and Princeton, and Edward Lozansky[2], president of the American University in Moscow, have compared it to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev were able to step back from the...
Read MoreIf one had been reading America’s leading newspapers and magazines over the past several weeks the series of featured stories suggesting that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is some kind of latter day Lucrezia Borgia would have been impossible to avoid. Putin, who was simultaneously being branded as some kind of totalitarian monster, apparently does not...
Read MoreThe contours of China's long-term strategy for the new Cold War are quickly coming into view
Let's start with the story of an incredibly disappearing summit. Every August, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) converges to the town of Beidaihe, a seaside resort some two hours away from Beijing, to discuss serious policies that then coalesce into key planning strategies to be approved at the CCP Central Committee plenary...
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William “Bill” Browder has been a figure of some prominence on the world scene for the past decade. A few months back, Der Spiegel published a major exposé on him and the case of Sergei Magnitsky but the mainstream media completely ignored this report and so aside from Germany few people are aware of Browder’s...
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Podcast of John Batchelor Show
By now Russians must wonder if the better relations they desire with the US are ever to be. US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat from Hawaii is the latest peacemaker to be declared “a Russian asset” by Hillary, the DNC, and the presstitutes. The way the Democrats, the presstitutes, and their Puppet Master—the military/security complex—have it...
Read MoreHow 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 MoreThe ongoing role of false narratives and historical fallacies
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 been warning about the danger of an American–post–Soviet Cold War for nearly 20 years. During...
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...
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-Will he sign, or won't he? – Moscow's John Bull pub customers tried to second-guess the US President. The pub on the Nikitsky Boulevard in the centre of Moscow is a good watering hole that is frequented by the Foreign Office minor officials and sundry intelligentsia. – He won't sign his own surrender, fervently said...
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 MoreIn the end, there was hardly a reset; rather a sort of tentative pause on Cold War 2.0. Interminable days of sound and fury were trudging along when President Trump finally decided NATO is “no longer obsolete”; still, he wants to “get along” with Russia. Just ahead of meeting US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson...
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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