The Cold War could have ended that year with the Moscow success of the American concert pianist Van Cliburn. . An American performed Russian music better than the Russian pianists. The Russians could have sabotaged Van Cliburn by leaving some piano keys out of tune or by the conductor changing pace on him. But the... Read More

The “Soviet Threat” which became Washington’s foreign policy mindset was a self-serving creation of Allen and Foster Dulles. The consequences of their creation and its recreation by the US neoconservatives await us unaddressed. Some years ago I reviewed Stephen Kinzer’s book, The Brothers, an extraordinary account of two men long serving at the top of... Read More

I have several times reported the same. Nixon was removed because he was making arms limitation agreements with the Soviets and opening to China. This was normalizing the enemy that the military/security complex needed for its budget and power. It was for the same reason that President Kennedy was assassinated by the military/security complex. The... Read More

Henry Kissinger at 100 years of age left the world he temporarily altered for the better after watching the neoconservatives in the Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden regimes wipe out his accomplishments. Kissinger and President Nixon were men of peace. They inherited a disastrous war–Vietnam–that they had no hand in making. President... Read More

As a participant in the 20th century Cold War, I can tell you that the Cuban Missile Crisis had the effect of convincing the leaders of the US and the USSR that trust had to be created between the two nuclear superpowers in order resolve differences and prevent a reoccurrence of tensions at the level... Read More

My obituary of Gorbachev brought interview requests from three major Russian media organizations. At the risk of being labeled “a Russian agent” I accepted. It was an interesting experience. Russians tend to see NATO on Russia’s border’s as Gorbachev’s fault for not getting in writing the George H. W. Bush administration’s guarantee that NATO would... Read More

Mikhail Gorbachev was the first President of the Soviet Union and the last Soviet leader. He was the best of the younger generation of Communist Party members who understood, like US President Ronald Reagan, the futility of the Cold War and the needless threat of nuclear Armageddon. Gorbachev also understood that the repressions and hardships... Read More

During the 20th century Cold War with the Soviet Union, there were US Soviet experts who were concerned that the Cold War was partly contrived and, therefore, needlessly dangerous. Stephen Cohen at Princeton University, for example, believed that exaggerating the threat was as dangerous as underestimating it. On the other hand, Richard Pipes at Harvard... Read More

Throughout the long Cold War Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University was a voice of reason. He refused to allow his patriotism to blind him to Washington’s contribution to the conflict and to criticize only the Soviet contribution. Cohen’s interest was not to blame the enemy but to... Read More

Brzezinski’s death is being used to shift blame for terrorism from Bush/Blair/Neocons/Israel to Brzezinski. See for example, and The main effect of these articles is to create another hate figure. The Western world, like Big Brother’s world in Orwell’s book, 1984, cannot do without hate figures. In my account of Brzezinski, I noted the important... Read More

The Cold War could have ended in 1958 when Van Cliburn won the Piano Competition in Moscow. Van Cliburn was overwhelmed with Russian applause and his stage with the profusion of flowers. The judges asked Khrushchev if they were permitted to award the prize to the American. Khrushchev asked, “was he the best?” “Yes,” replied... Read More

The Cold War began during the Truman administration and lasted through the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations and was ended in Reagan’s second term when Reagan and Gorbachev came to an agreement that the conflict was dangerous, expensive, and pointless. The Cold War did not cease for long—only from the last of... Read More