American Committee for East-West Accord

Appointment hearings for Jon M. Huntsman and A. Wess Mitchell were wholly in line with the beltway consensus on Russia.

They might have saved everyone a lot of time if they had simply said, “Kissinger, si, Kennan, no.”

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 as a kind of paradox for tonight’s discussion…

There’s a lot to unpack about the newly formed Committee to Investigate Russia, which aims to “help Americans recognize and understand the gravity of Russia’s continuing attacks on our democracy.” Perhaps its most striking feature is that no Russia experts are involved; that’s a sign of the times.

When alarms began to ring and a control panel flashed in front of Stanislav Petrov, a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel seated in a secret bunker south of Moscow, it appeared that the world was less than 30 minutes from nuclear war.

In this wide ranging interview, Stephen Kinzer wonders, “How would we react if the Russians had military maneuvers in Tijuana, or the Chinese opened a base in Montreal?…under international law and the principles of Westphalian independence, they have every right to do that. But in reality we would never tolerate that.

Then as now, arguments for arming Ukraine are based on disingenuous interpretations of past agreements and an equally reckless disregard for the present circumstances.

When it is said that civil society must be recognized as a new force in international politics, what is meant is a certain kind of civil society–in other words, a certain kind of political movement. But why should this be the case?