John Chuckman
POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY CAITLIN JOHNSTONE IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“Stephen Cohen Has Died; Remember His Urgent Warnings Against The New Cold War”
I was long an admirer of Stephen Cohen.
Apart from his clear expertise and first-hand knowledge of Russian leaders, the power of what he had to say came from the fact of how rare it was to read or to hear an American expert who spoke about Russia as though it contained human society. The favorite experts selected by most American corporate broadcasting and press sounded as though they were giving a briefing in the Pentagon.
And I do agree with Cohen that the times we’ve entered are more dangerous than the old Cold War. I believe far more dangerous.
First, we have some of the most inadequate and ideologically-motivated men in high places I can recall, and I lived through the Cold War.
And they owe their positions to the fact that America’s power establishment is so fearful now of losing its post-WWII privileged place in a changing world. Such men in high places are potentially a serious source of instability through poor judgment.
America is now running tanks right up against the Russian border everywhere that it can, having packed NATO (against earlier commitments to Russian leaders) with militarily and economically insignificant states. like the Baltics, only because they give direct access to the Russian border and increase the blindly pro-American voting population inside the organization.
America has conducted a coup in Ukraine, greatly hurting that country’s economy and civil society, just to intimidate Russia along a lengthy border. It has even supported neo-Nazi outfits, like the Azov Battalion or the Right Front, to assure internal restrictions on elected governments making any concessions.
America now sends regular naval flotillas into the Black Sea, Russia’s back yard, as it were.
Most dangerous of all, perhaps, recently, America has had B-52 nuclear-capable bombers flying near the Russian border in Europe and they were practicing missile-launch and bombing runs in the direction of Russia. They did this from more than one location, including from Ukraine. Absolutely frightening stuff. The slightest miscalculation or misunderstanding could launch Armageddon.
America has greatly increased NATO’s large-scale exercises, on land and on sea, exercises large enough to resemble invading forces.
It is placing “defensive” missiles in launch complexes in a couple of European countries, the trouble being these launch complexes can just as easily accommodate medium-range cruise missiles to strike Russian territory as defensive missiles. A dangerous Jack-in-the-box situation.
Russia of course watches such events with great attention, and all of these actions raise fears and tensions which can affect judgment.
America has ripped up a number of important nuclear treaties, hard-won efforts from the Cold War. It has launched a new costly project to improve the flexibility and usefulness of nuclear weapons, and it is weaponizing space.
Western leaders, under the supervision of Washington, have publicly accused Russia of murderous behavior without any effort to provide proof.
And that kind of hostile behavior comes against a background of public displays by America of assassination (Iran, Iraq) and attempted assassination (Venezuela), open speech by an American President about assassination (Syria), and theft of national resources (Syria, Venezuela, Iran, Palestine, and other places).
It is indeed a more fearsome time we have entered.
And we just learned from Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s brilliant Foreign Minister, that under Obama, John Kerry secretly made an offer to accept the legitimacy of Crimea being part of Russia – they have a history together going back to Catherine the Great – if only a new referendum were held. Since the Crimean people, almost entirely Russian-speaking, had already voted openly, effectively twice, to secede from Ukraine and to re-join Russia, Lavrov thought it was an unnecessary additional gesture and expense.
So much for all the shrill claims at the time, still sometimes echoed, about Russian aggression. In private, America was quite ready to accept reality, given a public-relations concession.
