Putin’s approval rating is high, but it has declined over the past year. The decline is mainly related to domestic policy. Apparently, the public perceives recent Kremlin economic policy as a continuation of the disastrous policies that Washington imposed on Russia in the 1990s when Russia was loaded up with foreign debt while state assets... Read More

  The article below by Gilbert Doctorow echos my own expressed apprehensions about Putin’s extraordinary restraint in the face of extraordinary provocations. I admire Putin for his restraint, which is totally missing among his Western counterparts. Nevertheless, I have expressed concern that the same restraint that is preventing war might be leading to war. Many... Read More

Manichaean Cold War myopia and ludicrous Russiagate allegations have produced one of the worst periods of American “geopolitical” thinking in recent decades. Consider President Trump’s recently announced withdrawals of US forces from Syria and Afghanistan. Instead of applauding these long-overdue steps, the bipartisan US political-media establishment has denounced them as “Trump’s gifts to Putin.” But... Read More

One of the reasons that truth is on the decline is that truth is becoming emotion-based, not evidence-based. It is all about feelings. This seems to have begun with feminists, but teaching women to trust their feelings, that feelings are truth, couldn’t be kept just in the women’s locker room. It has spread into the... Read More

The provocations that Putin invites are now escalating. Peter Ford, former British ambassador to Syria, points out that Washington has quickly taken advantage of Putin’s hesitancy in Syria to escalate the pretexts on which Washington will launch a military attack on the Syrian forces. Formerly Washington’s pretext was to be a false flag “chemical attack”... Read More

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.) This post is different. The conversation was based on Cohen’s article below, completed the day of the... Read More

Since posting my remarks — — other comments on President Putin’s response to the loss of Russian lives have appeared. I am providing links to two of them as examples of the negative consequences for Putin: Understand that I am not denigrating President Putin. I understand his strategy and consider his strategy to be moral... Read More

In an act of intentional deception, Israel used a Russian airplane to cloak an Israeli attack on a Syrian ground position, with the consequence that Syrian air defense missiles downed the Russian airplane with the lost of 15 Russian military lives. In the words of the Russian Ministry of Defense: “The Israeli pilots used the... Read More

Andrei Martyanov has answered my question . I agree with everything Martyanov says. But I believe my question remains unanswered. Probably it is my fault. Perhaps I framed the question so sharply that it came across as an attack on Putin’s level-headed policy. Also, my use of the phrase “turning the other cheek” could have... Read More

The Russian Government and President Putin are coming under pressure not from US sanctions, which are very good for Russia as they force Russia into independence, but from Russian patriots who are tiring of Putin’s non-confrontational responses to Washington’s never-ending insults and military provocations. Russian patriots don’t want war, but they do want their country’s... Read More

American post-WW 2 supremacy, writes Andrei Martyanov in his book, Losing Military Supremacy just published by Clarity Press, has been destroyed by America’s narcissism. The arrogant hubris of American exceptionalism and the myths that sustain it are subjected to devastating analysis in this long overdue book. Martyanov has no patience with American strategic thinkers, Russian... Read More

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 Cohen pointed out in previous discussions, US-Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) summits are a long... Read More

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.) Discussing the apparent decision to hold a prepared Trump-Putin meeting in July, Cohen points out... Read More

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.) Recent reports suggest that a formal meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is... Read More

If reports coming out of Russia are true, Vladimir Putin is considering appointing Washington’s agent, Alexei Kudrin, to negotiate Russia’s surrender to Washington. and In checking out this story with well-informed and connected experts, I am advised that John Helmer in his report might have put too much credence in the story planted on the... Read More