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War with Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate
Is America in a new Cold War with Russia? How does a new Cold War affect the safety and security of the United States? Does Vladimir Putin really want to destabilize the West? What should Donald Trump and America’s allies do?
America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s war-like demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril.
In War With Russia? , Stephen F. Cohen—the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia—gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations. Topics include:
Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create.
War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves who is right: are we living, as Cohen argues, in a time of unprecedented perils at home and abroad?
America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s war-like demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril.
In War With Russia? , Stephen F. Cohen—the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia—gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations. Topics include:
Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create.
War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves who is right: are we living, as Cohen argues, in a time of unprecedented perils at home and abroad?
240 pages, Paperback
First published November 27, 2018
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670 people want to read
About the author
Stephen F. Cohen
24 books74 followersStephen F. Cohen was Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University, where for many years he served as director of the Russian Studies Program, and Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and History at New York University. He grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky, received his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Indiana University, and his Ph.D. at Columbia University.
Cohen’s other books include Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917; Sovieticus: American Perceptions and Soviet Realities; (with Katrina vanden Heuvel) Voices of Glasnost: Interviews With Gorbachev’s Reformers; Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War; and The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin.
For his scholarly work, Cohen received several honors, including two Guggenheim fellowships and a National Book Award nomination.
Over the years, he was also a frequent contributor to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. His “Sovieticus” column for The Nation won a 1985 Newspaper Guild Page One Award and for another Nation article a 1989 Olive Branch Award. For many years, Cohen was a consultant and on-air commentator on Russian affairs for CBS News. With the producer Rosemary Reed, he was also project adviser and correspondent for three PBS documentary films about Russia: Conversations With Gorbachev; Russia Betrayed?; and Widow of the Revolution.
Cohen visited and lived in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia regularly for more than forty years.
(source: Amazon)
Cohen’s other books include Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917; Sovieticus: American Perceptions and Soviet Realities; (with Katrina vanden Heuvel) Voices of Glasnost: Interviews With Gorbachev’s Reformers; Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War; and The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin.
For his scholarly work, Cohen received several honors, including two Guggenheim fellowships and a National Book Award nomination.
Over the years, he was also a frequent contributor to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. His “Sovieticus” column for The Nation won a 1985 Newspaper Guild Page One Award and for another Nation article a 1989 Olive Branch Award. For many years, Cohen was a consultant and on-air commentator on Russian affairs for CBS News. With the producer Rosemary Reed, he was also project adviser and correspondent for three PBS documentary films about Russia: Conversations With Gorbachev; Russia Betrayed?; and Widow of the Revolution.
Cohen visited and lived in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia regularly for more than forty years.
(source: Amazon)
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April 10, 2024
Beginning in 2002, the Bush Jr. left the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM treaty), a very important treaty because it prevents the deployment of missile defense. Suddenly vulnerable, to protect itself, Russia developed, tested and showed nuclear missiles that could evade and elude any missile defense system, so we are now in a new and much more perilous point in our fifty-year nuclear arms race. Putin says to us, “Guys, we’ve developed these because of what you did, now we can destroy each other, now let’s have a serious arms-control agreement.” What do we get? Russiagate instead.
I read this book to get the truth about Putin from the top U.S. Russia scholar, Princeton’s Stephen F. Cohen. In it he says, “The new US-Russian Cold War is more dangerous than was its 40-year predecessor.” Where are the “countervailing forces in Washington? No pro-détente wing of the Democratic or Republican, no real public debate.” It’s funny how when U.S. Presidents historically have shaken hands with Communist leaders, Americans applauded. But here is Putin shaking hands, an obviously ANTI-communist Russian leader, and the U.S. Media turns on him. Why? One humorous result, is that all U.S. Putin demonization has been reported in Moscow to have “sanctified him, turned him into the Patron Saint of Russia.” Behind the elite U.S. demonization of Putin is that, of all the world leaders, he is most opposed to U.S. neo-cons, neoliberals, a US dominated interventionist world order. Putin has said “many times” that he wants détente. As Stephen says, “No issue is now more important than the state of US-Russia relations.” Imagine our media bothering to tell us ANY of this. Where were we told that Putin’s intelligence services gave info to us to stop the Boston Marathon bombing of 2012? – too bad our intelligence didn’t have the intelligence to use the intelligence.
We are still told the canard that we saved the world from WWII. The reality is that “some 75 to 80 percent of all German casualties were suffered on the Eastern Front.” Which means that that WWII was primarily won by the Russian Army – at a cost of 27.5 million dead Russians on the Eastern front. You remember, the 27.5 million, that no American ever talks about? And don’t forget to forget the 1700 Russian cities and towns that were destroyed during WWII and that only “three out of one hundred (Russian) boys who graduated from high school in 1941-42 returned from the war”. So, when news hit Russians in 1990 that Germany was going to reunite and be in NATO – that was of course a bit of a red flag to the Russians. They remember well the joys of Germany’s last invasion (Ostkrieg). The Western leaders promised Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch east (Jim Baker’s formulation) if Germany reunited. Gorbachev believed the West’s clear oral assurances, but since the Western leaders were lying sacks of shit, NATO moved east anyway, completely betraying Russia.
So now, NATO is all along Russia’s borders, a total provocation. Russia refers to this as ‘the Betrayal’, the West had totally lied to Russia about NATO and had re-started the Cold War. Educated Russians today say, we worry that you will betray us again. They also notice and say, “Never has so much Western military power been amassed on our borders since the Nazi invasion of 1941”? This is no idle concern: imagine Russian military power amassed on our Canadian and Mexican border. NATO’s presence on Russia’s border has been justified as a response to Putin’s “lies and deceit” but as Stephen wryly states, the “Kremlin complaints about American ‘lies and deceit’ can hardly be challenged”. We may enjoy historical Amnesia, but the Russians don’t. We promised not to move NATO east one inch and lied. Obama’s administration in 2011 pledged to not remove Russia’s ally Gaddafi and then lied and he was not only removed but was bayoneted up the ass, an act Hillary sadistically laughed about on national TV. After seeing the bayonet video, Putin rightfully got angry at the United States for its role in the killing of Gaddafi and asked "They showed to the whole world how he (Gaddafi) was killed; there was blood all over. Is that what they call a democracy?”
Bush Senior saying, “we won the Cold War” to the world was a huge betrayal to Russia and implied that Russia should be treated as a defeated adversary. Stephen says this is a story of Washington’s errors, not Moscow’s. “It is through this 25-year history of ‘American Aggression’ that many Russians perceive the meaning of Russiagate.” Russians see Putin as merely responding to 25 years of American arrogant posturing. This book explains why, and shows how “much of what is decried as ‘Putin’s aggression’ abroad has been the Kremlin’s predictable responses to US and NATO expansionist policies.”
Now let’s deal with U.S./Russia election tampering. First, no one mentions that Biden had the balls to tell both the Russian public and Putin that he shouldn’t return to the Presidency. No election tampering there, ha ha. With Biden’s non-endorsement, Putin gets elected with “nearly 77 percent endorsement.” Then Stephen mentions something bigger than Russiagate: “Israel has of course meddled in US Elections for decades.” JFK anyone? Lyndon Johnson anyone? Of course, Noam Chomsky says the biggest election problem bar none is, corporate influence of US elections, yet name one Russiagate advocate who mentions concern about that? Nor will Russiagate advocates mention that according to the NYT, “the US government ran eighty-one ‘overt and covert election influence operations’ in foreign countries from 1946 to 2000”. In Putin’s 18 years of power, has he done anything “akin to fascism”? No. US media implies God is dead in Russia, yet facts show “the Orthodox Church is flourishing and Jews are freer than they have ever been in Russian history.” And “a respected retired Russian general tells [a] Washington think tank that any military confrontation ‘will end up with the use of nuclear weapons between the United States and Russia’.” So, “Cold War without diplomacy is a recipe for actual war.” How do you have effective U.S. diplomacy with everyone in the media and on the social media on some fact-free walk-a-about, both demonizing Putin and chronically posting about the Russiagate? Luckily for those who still read, the Nation, Black Agenda Report, Glenn Greenwald, Robert Sheer, and Stephen J. Cohen all got the Russiagate story right.
Nor will the Media tell you that it’s not just Trump with Russia. Lots of US businesses rightfully want to do business with Russia, so demonizing Russia, for them, is not too smart a move. And these aren’t small players: “Delta Airlines, McDonalds, Wendy’s, KFC, Starbucks, Ford, Proctor & Gamble” – they do have clout. Many Facebook posts whined that Trump communicated with foreign heads of state before his taking office and that’s so terrible! No one noted that Nixon also did exactly that to prevent a Vietnam peace agreement and Reagan also did exactly that with Iran to release hostages. Meanwhile, Chris Matthews (America’s grown-up Ralph Wiggum) says on MSNBC that loyal “Americans don’t go to Moscow.” Who needs FOX News, or even Joe McCarthy, when liberal Chris is on the job? The perpetually uncool McCain once accused Rand Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin”; that’s how you shut down any serious talk of détente or diplomacy. While the rest of us were enjoying the harmonies of the Beach Boys singing “Barbara Ann”, John McCain was thinking, “wow, what a great lyric to use for making fun of bombing a sovereign nation, especially after we gave it the Shah, and the SAVAK.” And if, as Zionist hate peddler Nikki Haley says, “we should never trust Russia”, how did we ever manage to successfully have “decades of US nuclear arms control with Moscow”?
Five U.S. lies about Russia. First, Washington has treated Russia well since of the fall of Russian Communism. Second, the Ukrainian people are united and want to join the West and leave Russia. Third, Putin bullied the Ukrainian leader. Fourth, Putin caused the problems in the Ukraine. Fifth, the only solution in the Ukraine is Putin has to call off his dogs and then the Ukraine will somehow flourish.
While Americans blather on about the terrible Putin, they ignore that his approval ratings in Russia stay around 65%. If they researched, they’d find that Putin is a moderate. So, you could do so much worse. Remove Putin and you’d remove a restraining force, and how beyond stupid and dangerous would that be? For Stephen, the fourteen years of Putin’s rule has been almost entirely reactive. Blaming Putin for the Ukraine’s internal subdivisions, as though he alone is reason number one, yeah, that’s the ticket. Putin blamers ignore the “Wall of Sorrow” Putin inaugurated to victims of Soviet repression and Putin going against hardliners to create the Gulag Museum in Moscow. Imagine Obama creating a Jim Crow, a Slavery or Native Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC – well, Mr. Hope and Change did nothing of the kind, so let’s all bash Putin. US leadership preferred the drunkard Yeltsin, because he was “our” drunkard and his yummy brutal wars in Chechnya, don’t forget “the rigging of his reelection of 1996.” Yeltsin did so much more damage to Russia than Putin, but he is lauded by the US. for toeing our line.
“Beginning with the Clinton administration, and supported by every subsequent Republican and Democratic President and Congress, the U.S. led West has unrelentingly moved its military, political, and economic power ever closer to post-Soviet Russia.” Americans are never told that it was the U.S. that nullified the parity principle, and bipartisan anti-parity thinking has led directly to the Ukrainian crisis. The solution of course is détente, not demonizing Putin ad nauseam and risking nuclear war or ignoring that Trump is one of the few who have been critical of bipartisan foreign policy (unlike Hillary who says yes to every war). Rather than agree with Trump’s critique, the Democrats have consistently shown their true warmongering self. When you look at the history of who is provoking who, you will never see Russia the same way again. When Samantha Power says Russia needs to return the Crimea to the Ukraine, you can say, “Bitch say what? The Crimea isn’t even mentioned in the Minsk agreement.” Americans simply aren’t taught the other side: the history of the U.S. provoking Russia. In 2014, the West turns what is essentially a Ukrainian Civil War, into a “US/NATO-Russian proxy war”. The West’s annexation of Kosovo, was the precedent listed for Russian annexing of Crimea.
This book is not pro-American or pro-Russian, it is pro-avoiding a catastrophe. The Council of Foreign Relations has said we are now in a second Cold War with Russia. In 2017, Putin said, “Our most serious mistake with the West is that we trusted you too much (NATO not moving west). And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it.” Leaders don’t have illusions, yet Putin went on record saying he realized he “had illusions about the West” when he came to power. We get pissed when Russia wants their own sphere of influence forgetting we’ve got NATO poised at its balls and have 800 military bases around the world inspecting everyone else’s. And of course, we’d go nuts if Russia encircled us in Canada or Mexico.
The US immorally forced Kiev to choose between the West and Russia – such US meddling fostered a Civil War and Stephen thinks you maybe could say “precipitated”. “The Ukrainian civil and proxy war has become a disaster for Washington.” Meanwhile, don’t forget Putin’s actions in Donbass and Crimea only happened because of NATO trying to bring the Ukraine aboard. Fact: The Syrian agreement was killed, not by Russia, but by our own DOD. The Kremlin thinks the U.S. goal of overthrowing of Assad would drastically undermine their own security by increasing terrorist activity, and placing ISIS “or another terrorist army in Damascus.” In this book, Rachel Maddow is referred to as “unabashedly Russophobic.” Everything changed in the West for Putin in 2014 with the Ukrainian crisis. The U.S. press ignores that Putin’s annexing of the Crimea was to protect a Russian naval base, and any other Russian leader would have done the same thing.
The Russians see their history realistically both as the positive achievements in “industrialization and modernization in the 1930’s” that allowed the Soviets to push back the Nazis, and the negative achievements of Stalin’s brutality and the Gulag’s. Stalin ruled from 1929 to 1953, and “imposed aspects of Western modernization on the country, such as literacy, industrialization and urbanization” but of course at terrible human cost.
Trump was the only pro-détente candidate in the 2016 elections. Lest that mark him as a commie, remember that it has been the Republicans that have historically sought détente (Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan) and not the Democrats. This should not be surprising because the Republican Party has been the Party of business, even now when Ornstein and Mann refer to it as reduced to being a “radical insurgency.” Princeton University’s Cohen makes a compelling case that most Americans don’t understand or don’t want to understand how they are being duped into a new Cold War with potentially horrific consequences - a deadly nuclear game.
Hillary brands Trump as “Putin’s puppet” at a televised debate. Centrist Robert Reich said Russia committed an unprecedented attack on our democracy” while Morgan Freeman lies to the camera with a straight face, “We are at War.” Paul Krugman, economic shill for centrists, stated, “there really is no question about Trump/Putin collusion” even though he had no proof. Forgetting Putin has a long list of helping the US (Iran, Afghanistan, allowing NATO troops there, etc.) the Post’s Dana Milbank says stuff like, the “red menace of Vladimir Putin’s Russia” about clearly anti-communist Putin. The Washington Post is such a known Russia hater, it is called ‘Pravda on the Potomac’. This Russia hating is totally bi-partisan, threatening our national safety, and of course un-Christian - just like our endless wars. These days Stephen says even the NYT can sound like the John Birch Society, when it advocates against détente. Even Bernie Sanders got on the fact-less band wagon saying that Russia “was engaged in a massive effort to undermine… the integrity of our elections”. As Stephen stresses to the reader, Bernie didn’t “know” that. So, with people on the Left and Right blithely and happily saying shit that has no truth, can we recognize that kind of talk only brings the planet closer to nuclear war? So, it’s great that Professor Cohen brings us the truth in this book that apparently neither party wants any American to hear. With the Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and even Maxine Waters delivering the same fact-free opinions, it has been easy to hoodwink the average American. Delightfully, Stephen ends this book with “Why, after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, US elites ultimately chose Cold War rather than partnership with Russia is a question beyond the limits of this book.”
I read this book to get the truth about Putin from the top U.S. Russia scholar, Princeton’s Stephen F. Cohen. In it he says, “The new US-Russian Cold War is more dangerous than was its 40-year predecessor.” Where are the “countervailing forces in Washington? No pro-détente wing of the Democratic or Republican, no real public debate.” It’s funny how when U.S. Presidents historically have shaken hands with Communist leaders, Americans applauded. But here is Putin shaking hands, an obviously ANTI-communist Russian leader, and the U.S. Media turns on him. Why? One humorous result, is that all U.S. Putin demonization has been reported in Moscow to have “sanctified him, turned him into the Patron Saint of Russia.” Behind the elite U.S. demonization of Putin is that, of all the world leaders, he is most opposed to U.S. neo-cons, neoliberals, a US dominated interventionist world order. Putin has said “many times” that he wants détente. As Stephen says, “No issue is now more important than the state of US-Russia relations.” Imagine our media bothering to tell us ANY of this. Where were we told that Putin’s intelligence services gave info to us to stop the Boston Marathon bombing of 2012? – too bad our intelligence didn’t have the intelligence to use the intelligence.
We are still told the canard that we saved the world from WWII. The reality is that “some 75 to 80 percent of all German casualties were suffered on the Eastern Front.” Which means that that WWII was primarily won by the Russian Army – at a cost of 27.5 million dead Russians on the Eastern front. You remember, the 27.5 million, that no American ever talks about? And don’t forget to forget the 1700 Russian cities and towns that were destroyed during WWII and that only “three out of one hundred (Russian) boys who graduated from high school in 1941-42 returned from the war”. So, when news hit Russians in 1990 that Germany was going to reunite and be in NATO – that was of course a bit of a red flag to the Russians. They remember well the joys of Germany’s last invasion (Ostkrieg). The Western leaders promised Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch east (Jim Baker’s formulation) if Germany reunited. Gorbachev believed the West’s clear oral assurances, but since the Western leaders were lying sacks of shit, NATO moved east anyway, completely betraying Russia.
So now, NATO is all along Russia’s borders, a total provocation. Russia refers to this as ‘the Betrayal’, the West had totally lied to Russia about NATO and had re-started the Cold War. Educated Russians today say, we worry that you will betray us again. They also notice and say, “Never has so much Western military power been amassed on our borders since the Nazi invasion of 1941”? This is no idle concern: imagine Russian military power amassed on our Canadian and Mexican border. NATO’s presence on Russia’s border has been justified as a response to Putin’s “lies and deceit” but as Stephen wryly states, the “Kremlin complaints about American ‘lies and deceit’ can hardly be challenged”. We may enjoy historical Amnesia, but the Russians don’t. We promised not to move NATO east one inch and lied. Obama’s administration in 2011 pledged to not remove Russia’s ally Gaddafi and then lied and he was not only removed but was bayoneted up the ass, an act Hillary sadistically laughed about on national TV. After seeing the bayonet video, Putin rightfully got angry at the United States for its role in the killing of Gaddafi and asked "They showed to the whole world how he (Gaddafi) was killed; there was blood all over. Is that what they call a democracy?”
Bush Senior saying, “we won the Cold War” to the world was a huge betrayal to Russia and implied that Russia should be treated as a defeated adversary. Stephen says this is a story of Washington’s errors, not Moscow’s. “It is through this 25-year history of ‘American Aggression’ that many Russians perceive the meaning of Russiagate.” Russians see Putin as merely responding to 25 years of American arrogant posturing. This book explains why, and shows how “much of what is decried as ‘Putin’s aggression’ abroad has been the Kremlin’s predictable responses to US and NATO expansionist policies.”
Now let’s deal with U.S./Russia election tampering. First, no one mentions that Biden had the balls to tell both the Russian public and Putin that he shouldn’t return to the Presidency. No election tampering there, ha ha. With Biden’s non-endorsement, Putin gets elected with “nearly 77 percent endorsement.” Then Stephen mentions something bigger than Russiagate: “Israel has of course meddled in US Elections for decades.” JFK anyone? Lyndon Johnson anyone? Of course, Noam Chomsky says the biggest election problem bar none is, corporate influence of US elections, yet name one Russiagate advocate who mentions concern about that? Nor will Russiagate advocates mention that according to the NYT, “the US government ran eighty-one ‘overt and covert election influence operations’ in foreign countries from 1946 to 2000”. In Putin’s 18 years of power, has he done anything “akin to fascism”? No. US media implies God is dead in Russia, yet facts show “the Orthodox Church is flourishing and Jews are freer than they have ever been in Russian history.” And “a respected retired Russian general tells [a] Washington think tank that any military confrontation ‘will end up with the use of nuclear weapons between the United States and Russia’.” So, “Cold War without diplomacy is a recipe for actual war.” How do you have effective U.S. diplomacy with everyone in the media and on the social media on some fact-free walk-a-about, both demonizing Putin and chronically posting about the Russiagate? Luckily for those who still read, the Nation, Black Agenda Report, Glenn Greenwald, Robert Sheer, and Stephen J. Cohen all got the Russiagate story right.
Nor will the Media tell you that it’s not just Trump with Russia. Lots of US businesses rightfully want to do business with Russia, so demonizing Russia, for them, is not too smart a move. And these aren’t small players: “Delta Airlines, McDonalds, Wendy’s, KFC, Starbucks, Ford, Proctor & Gamble” – they do have clout. Many Facebook posts whined that Trump communicated with foreign heads of state before his taking office and that’s so terrible! No one noted that Nixon also did exactly that to prevent a Vietnam peace agreement and Reagan also did exactly that with Iran to release hostages. Meanwhile, Chris Matthews (America’s grown-up Ralph Wiggum) says on MSNBC that loyal “Americans don’t go to Moscow.” Who needs FOX News, or even Joe McCarthy, when liberal Chris is on the job? The perpetually uncool McCain once accused Rand Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin”; that’s how you shut down any serious talk of détente or diplomacy. While the rest of us were enjoying the harmonies of the Beach Boys singing “Barbara Ann”, John McCain was thinking, “wow, what a great lyric to use for making fun of bombing a sovereign nation, especially after we gave it the Shah, and the SAVAK.” And if, as Zionist hate peddler Nikki Haley says, “we should never trust Russia”, how did we ever manage to successfully have “decades of US nuclear arms control with Moscow”?
Five U.S. lies about Russia. First, Washington has treated Russia well since of the fall of Russian Communism. Second, the Ukrainian people are united and want to join the West and leave Russia. Third, Putin bullied the Ukrainian leader. Fourth, Putin caused the problems in the Ukraine. Fifth, the only solution in the Ukraine is Putin has to call off his dogs and then the Ukraine will somehow flourish.
While Americans blather on about the terrible Putin, they ignore that his approval ratings in Russia stay around 65%. If they researched, they’d find that Putin is a moderate. So, you could do so much worse. Remove Putin and you’d remove a restraining force, and how beyond stupid and dangerous would that be? For Stephen, the fourteen years of Putin’s rule has been almost entirely reactive. Blaming Putin for the Ukraine’s internal subdivisions, as though he alone is reason number one, yeah, that’s the ticket. Putin blamers ignore the “Wall of Sorrow” Putin inaugurated to victims of Soviet repression and Putin going against hardliners to create the Gulag Museum in Moscow. Imagine Obama creating a Jim Crow, a Slavery or Native Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC – well, Mr. Hope and Change did nothing of the kind, so let’s all bash Putin. US leadership preferred the drunkard Yeltsin, because he was “our” drunkard and his yummy brutal wars in Chechnya, don’t forget “the rigging of his reelection of 1996.” Yeltsin did so much more damage to Russia than Putin, but he is lauded by the US. for toeing our line.
“Beginning with the Clinton administration, and supported by every subsequent Republican and Democratic President and Congress, the U.S. led West has unrelentingly moved its military, political, and economic power ever closer to post-Soviet Russia.” Americans are never told that it was the U.S. that nullified the parity principle, and bipartisan anti-parity thinking has led directly to the Ukrainian crisis. The solution of course is détente, not demonizing Putin ad nauseam and risking nuclear war or ignoring that Trump is one of the few who have been critical of bipartisan foreign policy (unlike Hillary who says yes to every war). Rather than agree with Trump’s critique, the Democrats have consistently shown their true warmongering self. When you look at the history of who is provoking who, you will never see Russia the same way again. When Samantha Power says Russia needs to return the Crimea to the Ukraine, you can say, “Bitch say what? The Crimea isn’t even mentioned in the Minsk agreement.” Americans simply aren’t taught the other side: the history of the U.S. provoking Russia. In 2014, the West turns what is essentially a Ukrainian Civil War, into a “US/NATO-Russian proxy war”. The West’s annexation of Kosovo, was the precedent listed for Russian annexing of Crimea.
This book is not pro-American or pro-Russian, it is pro-avoiding a catastrophe. The Council of Foreign Relations has said we are now in a second Cold War with Russia. In 2017, Putin said, “Our most serious mistake with the West is that we trusted you too much (NATO not moving west). And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it.” Leaders don’t have illusions, yet Putin went on record saying he realized he “had illusions about the West” when he came to power. We get pissed when Russia wants their own sphere of influence forgetting we’ve got NATO poised at its balls and have 800 military bases around the world inspecting everyone else’s. And of course, we’d go nuts if Russia encircled us in Canada or Mexico.
The US immorally forced Kiev to choose between the West and Russia – such US meddling fostered a Civil War and Stephen thinks you maybe could say “precipitated”. “The Ukrainian civil and proxy war has become a disaster for Washington.” Meanwhile, don’t forget Putin’s actions in Donbass and Crimea only happened because of NATO trying to bring the Ukraine aboard. Fact: The Syrian agreement was killed, not by Russia, but by our own DOD. The Kremlin thinks the U.S. goal of overthrowing of Assad would drastically undermine their own security by increasing terrorist activity, and placing ISIS “or another terrorist army in Damascus.” In this book, Rachel Maddow is referred to as “unabashedly Russophobic.” Everything changed in the West for Putin in 2014 with the Ukrainian crisis. The U.S. press ignores that Putin’s annexing of the Crimea was to protect a Russian naval base, and any other Russian leader would have done the same thing.
The Russians see their history realistically both as the positive achievements in “industrialization and modernization in the 1930’s” that allowed the Soviets to push back the Nazis, and the negative achievements of Stalin’s brutality and the Gulag’s. Stalin ruled from 1929 to 1953, and “imposed aspects of Western modernization on the country, such as literacy, industrialization and urbanization” but of course at terrible human cost.
Trump was the only pro-détente candidate in the 2016 elections. Lest that mark him as a commie, remember that it has been the Republicans that have historically sought détente (Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan) and not the Democrats. This should not be surprising because the Republican Party has been the Party of business, even now when Ornstein and Mann refer to it as reduced to being a “radical insurgency.” Princeton University’s Cohen makes a compelling case that most Americans don’t understand or don’t want to understand how they are being duped into a new Cold War with potentially horrific consequences - a deadly nuclear game.
Hillary brands Trump as “Putin’s puppet” at a televised debate. Centrist Robert Reich said Russia committed an unprecedented attack on our democracy” while Morgan Freeman lies to the camera with a straight face, “We are at War.” Paul Krugman, economic shill for centrists, stated, “there really is no question about Trump/Putin collusion” even though he had no proof. Forgetting Putin has a long list of helping the US (Iran, Afghanistan, allowing NATO troops there, etc.) the Post’s Dana Milbank says stuff like, the “red menace of Vladimir Putin’s Russia” about clearly anti-communist Putin. The Washington Post is such a known Russia hater, it is called ‘Pravda on the Potomac’. This Russia hating is totally bi-partisan, threatening our national safety, and of course un-Christian - just like our endless wars. These days Stephen says even the NYT can sound like the John Birch Society, when it advocates against détente. Even Bernie Sanders got on the fact-less band wagon saying that Russia “was engaged in a massive effort to undermine… the integrity of our elections”. As Stephen stresses to the reader, Bernie didn’t “know” that. So, with people on the Left and Right blithely and happily saying shit that has no truth, can we recognize that kind of talk only brings the planet closer to nuclear war? So, it’s great that Professor Cohen brings us the truth in this book that apparently neither party wants any American to hear. With the Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and even Maxine Waters delivering the same fact-free opinions, it has been easy to hoodwink the average American. Delightfully, Stephen ends this book with “Why, after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, US elites ultimately chose Cold War rather than partnership with Russia is a question beyond the limits of this book.”
April 13, 2022
I have always been of the opinion that it is good to hear both sides of a story in order to be able to make a critical assessment. That is why I enjoy reading the books of Noam Chomsky so much, I don't always agree with him, but at least his arguments are well thought out and worth listening to. That is what I was expecting when I started reading War with Russia by Stephen F. Cohen. Oh how wrong I was!
It is interesting and at the same time sad reading this book in 2022, at a time when Russia is invading Ukraine and mercilessly killing civilians and committing World War II level atrocities. Especially since the book is all about how Russia and Vladimir Putin are being unfairly painted as boogeymen by Western media and politicians. Sadly, the author passed away in 2020 and so he isn't able to see the true horror of the Putinist regime. Although, I would be worried that even today he would find some excuse for Putin.
To say that the author is a Putin apologist is actually an understatement. He is pretty much Putin's greatest fan, a true 'useful idiot' if there is ever one (the author acknowledges he has been called that many times). Initially I thought that surely this book must be some sort of Russian propaganda piece. But no, it isn't or at least not directly. Stephen F Cohen was a well respected professor and historian of Russia. He spent time in the Soviet Union and wrote about the Soviet dissidents and Stalinist crimes as well as Gorbachev's reforms. He appears to be a left-leaning intellectual as he wrote the biography of the old Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin where he argued that the Soviet Union could have taken a different turn if not for Stalin.
It boggles the mind how a leftist intellectual can be such an embittered enemy of the current political establishment that he favours an authoritarian right-wing dictator of Russia.
The author believes that Vladimir Putin was unfairly demonised by the American mainstream media and political establishment. He is in fact an intelligent and capable ruler that has reduced corruption and brought prosperity to Russia. He claims that it was not Putin but Yeltsin that initiated the de-democratisation of Russia as he reverted many of the reforms of Gorbachov.
He also claims that Yeltsin presided over 2 Russian wars in Chechnya. This is factually incorrect, the second Chechen war was organised and plotted by the then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at a time when Yeltsin was pretty much an incapacitated alcoholic.
Of course, the assassinations of Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Alexander Litvinenko are not Putin's fault. There is no evidence to implicate him. In fact, according to Cohen, Russia has a very free press and there is no danger for anyone speaking ill against the regime.
The parts of the book that deal with Russiagate are basically just a love letter to Donald Trump and his acolytes such as Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort. According to the author there is no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump team and also Russia would never try to interfere in the US election because they would have no reason to do that. The author believes that Trump is the only US President in recent memory that wanted a detente with Russia and even tried to achieve that but was thwarted by his own party and political establishment in the US.
The parts of the book that deal with Syria are more interesting as they highlight the dangerous situation where US and Russian forces were in close proximity. It is probably also the only part of the book where the Russian talking points have some validity. At the time, there were some attempts to coordinate and work together against ISIS and other Islamic groups, negotiations were being held but eventually they fell through due to the US' insistence that Assad is removed from power. However, even here the author manages to go off the rails by denying the chemical attacks and other crimes of the Assad regime.
If the parts of the book that deal with Russiagate and Syria may have some interesting bits of information the parts about Ukraine are the most blatantly subjective, infuriating and plain false as they just parrot the current talking points of the Kremlin.
The author claims it is a fallacy to say that there exists a Ukrainian people that long to be free from Russia. He claims that in fact the Western and Eastern Ukrainians are not a single people and neither was the country a united nation. There are indeed historical differences between the Western and Eastern Ukrainians but they are still the same nation and the events of the 2022 war confirm this as even Russian speaking Ukrainians fight against Russia and identify as Ukrainians.
According to the author the EU proposal for a Ukraine-EU agreement was a provocation and forced the Ukrainians to choose between Russian and EU. The EU should have accepted Russia's proposal for a 3 way agreement between Ukraine, EU and Russia.
The author brings the completely fake and unsubstantiated allegation that the snipers that shot the euro maidan protesters were not really part of Yanukovich's special forces but rather were part of the right-wing militias. He presents the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine as a civil war, completely dismissing the fact that the separatists were mostly Russian mercenaries. I read in an article that at the time he even claimed that the little green men in Crimea were not Russian.
He writes at length about Neo-Nazism and fascism in Ukraine, about how the Ukrainian government is being held hostage by right-wing politicians and that as such it is forced to turn further nationalist. He talks about various alleged fascist politicians such as the speaker of the parliament who even went to the US and talked to American politicians. He also covers the Azov battalion that is a well known extreme right group that was integrated into the Ukrainian army. Indeed, it is true that there are some extremists in Ukrainian politics and some of them even held ministerial portfolios. That is not something that can be denied. However, what the author fails to mention is that the the extremist politicians were very few and generally were very unpopular. In fact in the 2019 elections all of the extremist parties united in a single party only got 2% of the vote and did not even make the 5% threshold to enter parliament. This shows at length the unbelievable exaggeration and outright falsification of the whole Nazi Ukraine argument.
I can not in good conscience give this book any more than 1 star. It is biased and pretty much just reiterates all of the Kremlin talking points. I suppose it is an interesting read for anyone wanting to see the delusional motivations of Vladimir Putin.
It is interesting and at the same time sad reading this book in 2022, at a time when Russia is invading Ukraine and mercilessly killing civilians and committing World War II level atrocities. Especially since the book is all about how Russia and Vladimir Putin are being unfairly painted as boogeymen by Western media and politicians. Sadly, the author passed away in 2020 and so he isn't able to see the true horror of the Putinist regime. Although, I would be worried that even today he would find some excuse for Putin.
To say that the author is a Putin apologist is actually an understatement. He is pretty much Putin's greatest fan, a true 'useful idiot' if there is ever one (the author acknowledges he has been called that many times). Initially I thought that surely this book must be some sort of Russian propaganda piece. But no, it isn't or at least not directly. Stephen F Cohen was a well respected professor and historian of Russia. He spent time in the Soviet Union and wrote about the Soviet dissidents and Stalinist crimes as well as Gorbachev's reforms. He appears to be a left-leaning intellectual as he wrote the biography of the old Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin where he argued that the Soviet Union could have taken a different turn if not for Stalin.
It boggles the mind how a leftist intellectual can be such an embittered enemy of the current political establishment that he favours an authoritarian right-wing dictator of Russia.
The author believes that Vladimir Putin was unfairly demonised by the American mainstream media and political establishment. He is in fact an intelligent and capable ruler that has reduced corruption and brought prosperity to Russia. He claims that it was not Putin but Yeltsin that initiated the de-democratisation of Russia as he reverted many of the reforms of Gorbachov.
He also claims that Yeltsin presided over 2 Russian wars in Chechnya. This is factually incorrect, the second Chechen war was organised and plotted by the then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at a time when Yeltsin was pretty much an incapacitated alcoholic.
Of course, the assassinations of Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov or Alexander Litvinenko are not Putin's fault. There is no evidence to implicate him. In fact, according to Cohen, Russia has a very free press and there is no danger for anyone speaking ill against the regime.
The parts of the book that deal with Russiagate are basically just a love letter to Donald Trump and his acolytes such as Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort. According to the author there is no evidence of collusion between Russia and the Trump team and also Russia would never try to interfere in the US election because they would have no reason to do that. The author believes that Trump is the only US President in recent memory that wanted a detente with Russia and even tried to achieve that but was thwarted by his own party and political establishment in the US.
The parts of the book that deal with Syria are more interesting as they highlight the dangerous situation where US and Russian forces were in close proximity. It is probably also the only part of the book where the Russian talking points have some validity. At the time, there were some attempts to coordinate and work together against ISIS and other Islamic groups, negotiations were being held but eventually they fell through due to the US' insistence that Assad is removed from power. However, even here the author manages to go off the rails by denying the chemical attacks and other crimes of the Assad regime.
If the parts of the book that deal with Russiagate and Syria may have some interesting bits of information the parts about Ukraine are the most blatantly subjective, infuriating and plain false as they just parrot the current talking points of the Kremlin.
The author claims it is a fallacy to say that there exists a Ukrainian people that long to be free from Russia. He claims that in fact the Western and Eastern Ukrainians are not a single people and neither was the country a united nation. There are indeed historical differences between the Western and Eastern Ukrainians but they are still the same nation and the events of the 2022 war confirm this as even Russian speaking Ukrainians fight against Russia and identify as Ukrainians.
According to the author the EU proposal for a Ukraine-EU agreement was a provocation and forced the Ukrainians to choose between Russian and EU. The EU should have accepted Russia's proposal for a 3 way agreement between Ukraine, EU and Russia.
The author brings the completely fake and unsubstantiated allegation that the snipers that shot the euro maidan protesters were not really part of Yanukovich's special forces but rather were part of the right-wing militias. He presents the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine as a civil war, completely dismissing the fact that the separatists were mostly Russian mercenaries. I read in an article that at the time he even claimed that the little green men in Crimea were not Russian.
He writes at length about Neo-Nazism and fascism in Ukraine, about how the Ukrainian government is being held hostage by right-wing politicians and that as such it is forced to turn further nationalist. He talks about various alleged fascist politicians such as the speaker of the parliament who even went to the US and talked to American politicians. He also covers the Azov battalion that is a well known extreme right group that was integrated into the Ukrainian army. Indeed, it is true that there are some extremists in Ukrainian politics and some of them even held ministerial portfolios. That is not something that can be denied. However, what the author fails to mention is that the the extremist politicians were very few and generally were very unpopular. In fact in the 2019 elections all of the extremist parties united in a single party only got 2% of the vote and did not even make the 5% threshold to enter parliament. This shows at length the unbelievable exaggeration and outright falsification of the whole Nazi Ukraine argument.
I can not in good conscience give this book any more than 1 star. It is biased and pretty much just reiterates all of the Kremlin talking points. I suppose it is an interesting read for anyone wanting to see the delusional motivations of Vladimir Putin.
March 1, 2019
Essential level headed, no nonsense analysis into the New Cold War, Mr. Cohen manages gives you all that has been left out of mainstream media since the beginning of Russia Gate hoax (but if you are only watching CNN or even BBC) you may not know it.
If you are slightly interested, do yourself a favour and read this, well written, excellent and exhaustive referencing, about 500 pages, a joy to read, if you get my meaning.
If you are slightly interested, do yourself a favour and read this, well written, excellent and exhaustive referencing, about 500 pages, a joy to read, if you get my meaning.
June 26, 2019
The author starts out by claiming that he is not a pro-Kremlin or Putin apologist. This is followed by 200+ pages of pro-Kremlin and pro-Putin narration. While it could of course be a laudable ambition to see both sides on the issues discussed in the book, this is not done here. Cohen rants against the unfair and unbalanced treatment of anything related to Russia in mainstream media and then goes on to present unbalanced "alternative facts" and populist rhetoric. In order to achieve his agenda he relies on every trick in the Cold-War-toolbox, from what-aboutisms to deluting issues so much that reality itself has to be doubted. If you are interested in the official line of Russian policy, this book is a perfect showcase. If you expect an unbiased analysis, this book is nothing akin to that.
April 10, 2021
I wanted an audiobook that would inform and remind me of the reality of NATO and American relations with Russia and the events leading up to what looks like the upcoming outbreak of renewed fighting in Ukraine and this book did an excellent job. Exactly what I was looking for.
I was not familiar with the author although I understand he may have been well known in the USA. Unfortunately he died before the recent US Presidential elections, I would certainly have valued his commentary on that matter.
I don't watch 'The News' on the telly or read MSM anymore, or watch the televised pronouncements of Bojo the clown or any of his bought and paid for minions. I suspected the British Government was using dubious techniques to brainwash the public over the Covid-19 bullsh*t and the revelations of the activities of SPI-B showed I was right. I try to avoid radio propaganda, but unfortunately, the nature of my job means that is not always possible. Instead I keep up-to-date by reading blogs written by interesting and informed commentators. I do have a colleague I work with from time to time who is a self-confessed 'news addict' who endlessly repeats whatever nonsense the BBC and the likes of The Guardian have been spouting this week, so I am frequently reminded that Putler and the Putin-Nazis are responsible for Brexit and Trump was a Russian agent etc. Sadly, this gives me a good feel for what the British public are bombarded with.
This book is an excellent antidote to all that and I highly recommend it.
I have an unread book on my shelves entitled "Nuclear War Survival Skills'. Perhaps its time to take a look at that.
I was not familiar with the author although I understand he may have been well known in the USA. Unfortunately he died before the recent US Presidential elections, I would certainly have valued his commentary on that matter.
I don't watch 'The News' on the telly or read MSM anymore, or watch the televised pronouncements of Bojo the clown or any of his bought and paid for minions. I suspected the British Government was using dubious techniques to brainwash the public over the Covid-19 bullsh*t and the revelations of the activities of SPI-B showed I was right. I try to avoid radio propaganda, but unfortunately, the nature of my job means that is not always possible. Instead I keep up-to-date by reading blogs written by interesting and informed commentators. I do have a colleague I work with from time to time who is a self-confessed 'news addict' who endlessly repeats whatever nonsense the BBC and the likes of The Guardian have been spouting this week, so I am frequently reminded that Putler and the Putin-Nazis are responsible for Brexit and Trump was a Russian agent etc. Sadly, this gives me a good feel for what the British public are bombarded with.
This book is an excellent antidote to all that and I highly recommend it.
I have an unread book on my shelves entitled "Nuclear War Survival Skills'. Perhaps its time to take a look at that.
April 10, 2022
If you want to read something that goes against the grain of the current trend in analyzing US-Russia relations, this is the one for you. It is worth reading just to get a different perspective than the vast majority of the literature and reporting that is out there today. While the author ignores some fairly significant contrary arguments and evidence offered by other writers and observers, his points are not all without merit. Cohen questions the commonly-accepted basic assumption about Vladimir Putin's power - Specifically, he contends that Putin is not an autocrat; that he is beholden to a group of interests (oligarchs and others) that he must placate and appease. For me, that is still something that is not yet known, and it may not be for many years to come. In any event, it is healthy to at least consider that the fundamental assumptions that are almost universally accepted MIGHT be wrong.
Much less controversial in my mind is Cohen's criticism of the McCarthy-like hysteria that raises its head whenever anyone seems to propose an approach to Moscow that is short of confrontational. He is right on this point. Sadly, US foreign policy toward Russia has become hyper-politicizied, making it impossible to practice statesmanship in the classic sense, even if there were leaders capable and in a position to do so. None of this means being a Putin apolgist, but it does severely limit our strategic and diplomatic flexibility.
EDIT/UPDATE (April 10, 2022): Wow. I am going on record here in saying that Putin’s Russia has shown it’s true colors. Although I once thought there was at least the possibility of finding some way to deal constructively with Moscow, the invasion of Ukraine and the associated atrocities by the Russian Army have disabused me of any such illusion. Putin has earned the status of international pariah.
Much less controversial in my mind is Cohen's criticism of the McCarthy-like hysteria that raises its head whenever anyone seems to propose an approach to Moscow that is short of confrontational. He is right on this point. Sadly, US foreign policy toward Russia has become hyper-politicizied, making it impossible to practice statesmanship in the classic sense, even if there were leaders capable and in a position to do so. None of this means being a Putin apolgist, but it does severely limit our strategic and diplomatic flexibility.
EDIT/UPDATE (April 10, 2022): Wow. I am going on record here in saying that Putin’s Russia has shown it’s true colors. Although I once thought there was at least the possibility of finding some way to deal constructively with Moscow, the invasion of Ukraine and the associated atrocities by the Russian Army have disabused me of any such illusion. Putin has earned the status of international pariah.
October 2, 2022
Reading some of the one star review, it is obvious that some have been written by people who clearly haven't bothered to read the book. It's just like Cohen himself writes in the introduction:
This book should be mandatory reading as it displays the magnificent hypocrisy of the imperialist US regime and its cheerleaders in mainstream media which is stumbling towards World War III simply because Hillary Clinton is a sore loser. American bots love using words like whataboutism since it's their only way of not having to deal with their hypocrisy and the fact that actions have consequences, sometimes unintended.
Like the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia in support of Kosovo independence, which Russia is now using as a precedent in its campaign in southeast Ukraine where more than 14 000 people have been killed by their own Kiev government or one of the neo-Nazi gangs in its employ.
Like the choice to expand NATO right up to Russia's borders despite repeated promises from American and European leaders like President George H. Bush, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and NATO secretary-general Manfred Woerner that would never happen:
The implication is this: Western leaders are either lying or can't be trusted. You choose. The documents are available for anyone to read at National Security Archives at George Washington University.
As for meddling in elections, Cohen rightfully points out that the US loves meddling in other countries' elections, pointing out that "according to a study reported by the New York Times, on February 17, 2018, the US government ran 81 'overt and covert election influence operations' in foreign countries from 1946 to 2000" (p. 161). Rarely has that been as obvious as the case of the Brexit referendum in the UK where President Obama apparently saw fit to weigh in on, i.e. meddle in, the election.
But somewhat amazing, no one dares to mention the elephant in the room. Cohen does so only in passing:
If meddling in US elections truly is inherently wrong, one can only wonder why media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN etc. and their moronic propagandist cheerleaders like Dana Milbank and Rachel Maddow aren't calling out the Jewish state for its nefarious influence on American politics. Not to mention the US politicians themselves who spend more time and effort pledging their allegiance to Israel than representing their own voters, which is made abundantly clear in books like They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby by Paul Findley and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt.
Not to mention the fantastic documentary series The Lobby by Al Jazeera, which didn't dare to air the second season due to American pressure. Luckily, both seasons are available on Youtube if you're truly interested in seeing what meddling actually looks like.
The Lobby season 1: The UK
Episode 1: Young Friends of Israel
Episode 2: The Training Session
Episode 3: An Anti-Semitic Trope
Episode 4: The Takedown
The Lobby season 2: The United States
Episode 1: The Covert War
Episode 2: Managing Elites
Episode 3: The Witch Hunt
Episode 4: Marketing Occupation
Cohen ends his book with a quote by American journalist Walter Lippmann: "When all think alike, no one is thinking."
I'd like to end this review with a longer excerpt of the book from which the quote above is taken, The Stakes of Diplomacy published in 1915, as the similarities with the Russiagate hysteria is palpable. The following is from chapter IV, The Line of Least Resistance pages 50-52, my emphases:
In short a great book which should be mandatory reading.
But the “controversy” surrounding me since 2014, mostly in reaction to the contents of this book, has been different—inspired by usually vacuous, defamatory assaults on me as “Putin’s No. 1 American Apologist,” “Best Friend,” and the like. I never respond specifically to these slurs because they offer no truly substantive criticism of my arguments, only ad hominem attacks.
p. xxvii
This book should be mandatory reading as it displays the magnificent hypocrisy of the imperialist US regime and its cheerleaders in mainstream media which is stumbling towards World War III simply because Hillary Clinton is a sore loser. American bots love using words like whataboutism since it's their only way of not having to deal with their hypocrisy and the fact that actions have consequences, sometimes unintended.
Like the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Serbia in support of Kosovo independence, which Russia is now using as a precedent in its campaign in southeast Ukraine where more than 14 000 people have been killed by their own Kiev government or one of the neo-Nazi gangs in its employ.
Like the choice to expand NATO right up to Russia's borders despite repeated promises from American and European leaders like President George H. Bush, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and NATO secretary-general Manfred Woerner that would never happen:
As readers already know, in 1990, in return for Gorbachev’s agreement that a reunited Germany would be a NATO member, all of the major powers involved, particularly the first Bush administration, promised that NATO “would not expand one inch to the east.” Many US participants later denied that such a promise had been made, or claimed that Gorbachev misunderstood. But documents just published by the National Security Archive in Washington, on December 17, prove that the assurance was given on many occasions by many Western leaders, including the Americans. The only answer they can now give is that “Gorbachev should have gotten it in writing,” implying that American promises to Russia are nothing more than deceit in pursuit of domination.
p. 138
The implication is this: Western leaders are either lying or can't be trusted. You choose. The documents are available for anyone to read at National Security Archives at George Washington University.
As for meddling in elections, Cohen rightfully points out that the US loves meddling in other countries' elections, pointing out that "according to a study reported by the New York Times, on February 17, 2018, the US government ran 81 'overt and covert election influence operations' in foreign countries from 1946 to 2000" (p. 161). Rarely has that been as obvious as the case of the Brexit referendum in the UK where President Obama apparently saw fit to weigh in on, i.e. meddle in, the election.
But somewhat amazing, no one dares to mention the elephant in the room. Cohen does so only in passing:
Israel has, of course, meddled in US elections for decades.
p. 161
If meddling in US elections truly is inherently wrong, one can only wonder why media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN etc. and their moronic propagandist cheerleaders like Dana Milbank and Rachel Maddow aren't calling out the Jewish state for its nefarious influence on American politics. Not to mention the US politicians themselves who spend more time and effort pledging their allegiance to Israel than representing their own voters, which is made abundantly clear in books like They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby by Paul Findley and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt.
Not to mention the fantastic documentary series The Lobby by Al Jazeera, which didn't dare to air the second season due to American pressure. Luckily, both seasons are available on Youtube if you're truly interested in seeing what meddling actually looks like.
The Lobby season 1: The UK
Episode 1: Young Friends of Israel
Episode 2: The Training Session
Episode 3: An Anti-Semitic Trope
Episode 4: The Takedown
The Lobby season 2: The United States
Episode 1: The Covert War
Episode 2: Managing Elites
Episode 3: The Witch Hunt
Episode 4: Marketing Occupation
Cohen ends his book with a quote by American journalist Walter Lippmann: "When all think alike, no one is thinking."
I'd like to end this review with a longer excerpt of the book from which the quote above is taken, The Stakes of Diplomacy published in 1915, as the similarities with the Russiagate hysteria is palpable. The following is from chapter IV, The Line of Least Resistance pages 50-52, my emphases:
Now in a consideration of the differences between the psychology of domestic and of foreign politics, the most striking difference appears to be this: In domestic affairs we live with and know the men who disagree with us; in foreign affairs the opposition lives behind a frontier, and probably speaks a different language. Simple and obvious as this sounds, the consequences are enormous. Thus when a nation crystallizes its feelings, it does so practically unopposed. The average man meets almost nobody who disagrees with him. It is like being in the old solid South where men lived and died without ever having met anyone who wasn't a Democrat. The people all know what their government permits them to know, and the habit of imitation is uncorrected the state of feeling grows by its sheer unanimity until disagreement becomes positively dangerous. All the people we know think alike people who disagree about everything else agree about our relation to the foreigner. Of course, such an opinion acquires sanctity, seems supreme, and takes on the airs of a sovereign. It is like the opinion of an only child being the only opinion in his universe, he defies anyone to thwart it. And the person who does thwart it seems very wicked indeed. All our passion runs freely into our demands, is "let loose" because it is not civilized by opposition.
In fact, opposition is about the only incentive we have to practice reason and tolerance. Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity. It is only by incessant criticism, by constant rubbing in of differences, that any of our ideas remain human and decent. The easy way is when we are not opposed. That enables us to be dogmatic, and to regard whatever we happen to believe as of sovereign value.
To keep a faith pure, man had better retire to monastery. Where all think alike, no one thinks very much. But whatever he does think, he can think with all his soul. It is at the cross-roads that skepticism is born, not in a hermitage. Without contact and friction, without experience, in short, our animal loyalties are supreme. Thought is not made in a vacuum, nor created out of likeness. It requires travel and shipping and the coming and going of strangers to impregnate a civilization. That is why thought has flourished in cities which lie along the paths of communication. Nineveh, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, Venice, the Hansa towns, London, Paris they have made ideas out of the movement and contact of many people. Men are jostled into thought. Left alone they spin the same thread from the same dream. A community which is self-contained and homogeneous and secluded is intellectually deaf, dumb, and blind. It can cultivate robust virtue and simple dogmatism, but it will not invent or throw out a profusion of ideas.
In short a great book which should be mandatory reading.
December 19, 2022
Find another book to read
I will update this review once I am further along in the book, however; I find this book to be so appallingly wrong and misleading that I had to stop and put my thoughts down.
Mr. Cohen constantly takes quotes out of context from authors, journalists, etc who believe that Putin is a dangerous leader. He insists - without any actual facts to back up his assertions - that Putin is a good leader and, since he isn't as bad as Stalin, he is a better leader.
This book, in Mr. Cohen's defense, is from 2018, so he does not have all of the facts about Putin and his regime. However; he does show a certain love for Putin.
Maybe, the book will get better, although I doubt it. If it does, I will change my one star review.
If you really want to know how Russia has faired under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, read Red Notice by Bill Browder or Spymaster's Prisim by Jack Devine. Certainly, in the midst of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, leave this love letter to Putin behind.
Update: the book doesn't get any better.
I will update this review once I am further along in the book, however; I find this book to be so appallingly wrong and misleading that I had to stop and put my thoughts down.
Mr. Cohen constantly takes quotes out of context from authors, journalists, etc who believe that Putin is a dangerous leader. He insists - without any actual facts to back up his assertions - that Putin is a good leader and, since he isn't as bad as Stalin, he is a better leader.
This book, in Mr. Cohen's defense, is from 2018, so he does not have all of the facts about Putin and his regime. However; he does show a certain love for Putin.
Maybe, the book will get better, although I doubt it. If it does, I will change my one star review.
If you really want to know how Russia has faired under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, read Red Notice by Bill Browder or Spymaster's Prisim by Jack Devine. Certainly, in the midst of Putin's invasion of Ukraine, leave this love letter to Putin behind.
Update: the book doesn't get any better.
December 25, 2022
This is a collection of opinion pieces by a huge fan of Putin and a Trump supporter who dislikes USA, Democrats, NATO, and Ukraine. It's pretty much what you expect, but his argument style is lazy and forced. Also, prepare for a lot of repetition. There are a lot of historical arguments he repeats again and again here.
It's hard to rate. It's obviously good writing and he knows a lot about Putin and Trump. But it's so extremely biased that it's quite pointless to listen to the audiobook unless you just plan to read everything there is on the topic and need to listen to the other side. But frankly even this lousy goal is not achieved here. Stephen F. Cohen was a giant fan of Putin not Russia overall. He often criticizes communist leaders and Yeltsin. Stalin is evil, Yeltsin was terrible. Russia overall is not featured as a prominent character here. We don't learn anything about Russian culture, history, the people. The book is an ode to Putin and Putin's claims about Russia and Russian history. I'm eager to understand Russian culture to understand why they are praising the Russian army destroying power plants and towns in Ukraine to "punish USA and neo-Nazis". Obviously this is important to understand no matter how silly it may sound. But a book praising every action Putin took is not explaining this. The book was also written 2 years before Russia attacked all of Ukraine. So overall it's already very dated. The author often claims that Putin is just protecting Russia against NATO and that Putin has zero plans whatsoever to invade any country or start a war - it's all protection. Putin is a liberal at heart and only wants peace according to Cohen. The Ukraine war disproves most assumptions by the author in the book. His predictions failed horribly which made the book pointless after just 2 years. If he was alive he could have apologized for the book now or admitted his mistakes and adjusted some of his points, but unfortunately history now makes him look foolish without him being able to change a single line of text. Similarly to how the giant Putin supporters all over the world stopped even mentioning Putin after the war started.
Everything Putin did was to better Russia according to Cohen. There is a single line slightly critical of a statement Putin made, but besides this it's all praise. Keep in mind it's a book about Putin and Trump not Russia and USA. The imperialist West is of course evil and pushes Putin to do everything bad he has ever done - his hands are tied. He was forced to annex Crimea and start a war in Donbas. Forced to conquer part of Georgia. Forced into Syria. Besides this Putin is very democratic and fair. And by the way Ukraine is full of neo-Nazis and far-right extremists who Putin is fighting. Just like he was fighting ISIS in Syria while the West just made this glorious job difficult for him. Yet everything NATO and USA does is bad even in very similar battles. When USA battles ISIS in the Middle East it's "needlessly killing civilians" while when Putin does it's "geopolitics" and Cohen doesn't bring up the civilian deaths. The author never tries to make logical points. He just argues his pro Putin points no matter what evidence he needs to use. Even when NATO and Russia do the very same thing one is evil while the other is good. That's just cognitive laziness.
He claims Azov are Nazis. That Sergei Skripal and his daughter were not poisoned by Putin. That the various journalists who got murdered in Russia were not murdered by Putin or the Russian state. That Crimea was taken back by Russia not illegally annexed. All the evil deeds Putin did are just ignored or claimed to be fake news. Even deeds Russian Putin supporters accept as facts by now. Because the author is not trying to argue for Putin. He is trying to ignore facts to present Putin as a liberal leader.
When Putin is accused of killing a journalist or former Russian spy it's just nasty MSM rumors. While the author takes any anti-Hillary and anti-Biden accusation very seriously and even assumes it's basic logic and facts. These various accusations have an equal amount of evidence. Yet the anti-USA ones are given full faith. It's just not arguing in good faith no matter what the author tries to say. It's lazy logic. Putin may be a glorious, handsome, and strong leader like the author thinks, but bad logic is bad logic and makes his claims moot no matter what Putin actually is. You need to explain why Putin killing the journalists/spies was a good thing to make a point not just claim Putin never killed them. First thing Putin did when becoming president were the FSB apartment building bomb cases and shutting down free media in Russia critical of him. This shouldn't be denied it should be the center of any pro-Putin argument in such a book. The author claims that these people were killed by another country or that we just can't know what happened. But all what Putin has done so far does illustrate that Putin would have more to gain from this than any other country leader. If the author was logical about this he would at least admit it's likely Putin did this and then try to defend Putin in such a hypothetical scenario.
The blind biased ode to Putin also means that we seldom learn facts about Russia or geopolitics. Most Russians themselves are less apologetic about Putin's deeds. For example during the Ukraine war many Russians claim that killing Ukrainian civilians is fine because Ukrainians overall are neo-Nazis or just evil NATO slaves. Many pundits in Russian state media praise Putin after every journalist killing. They don't dislike this side of Putin or Russia. The author meanwhile is very much NOT Russian. For him killing journalists is supposedly a horrible thing. Killing former spies is horrible, war is terrible, Russia before Putin was terrible. He does understand basic liberal Western values and therefore just argues that Putin doesn't do any of this stuff and is not a fascist leader. This book won't tell you how actual Russian fascists think about Putin. Which is the view any smart reader should be after. Instead we get a liberal Westerner just claiming Putin is basically a Western semi-democratic leader who never did a single bad thing. Which many pro-Putin Russians themselves will claim he is not.
At the end of the day it's not just an extremely biased book. Much of it is misinformation and lazy logic. Which is what lets it down. According to the author Putin is anti-Stalin and allows free attacks on Stalin and this part of USSR history. Which again is not just a subjective pro Putin statement it's factually wrong and pretty much the opposite of reality. Stalin features prominently in Russian school textbooks as a heroic figure. Something the government has planned top-down. Similarly many of the researchers who were allowed to dig into Soviet and Stalin crimes in the 1990's were later fined, banned, imprisoned. Anyone reading the book would get a wrong picture of reality. Sure Putin allows some critical views and history, but he's not anti-Stalin or anti-Soviet. The author is mistaken on this in my opinion. According to the author Putin is semi-democratic leader fighting ISIS, fascism, and the far-right in Europe and the Middle East - the groups liberals hate. Again, not really what Russians themselves think. For many Russian fascists and Putin supporters the far-right is a great thing. Ergo fighting it would be a BAD thing not a GOOD thing like the author claims. The new anti-gay laws in Russia supported by Putin supporters show how the author is misguided about how Russians think. They are not just pro Russia geopolitically and culturally. They are anti-West and anti liberal values in many ways. They don't have the same views of good and evil as the author does and that's the main issue with this book. It presents an image of reality only seen by liberal Western Putin supporters. But how the hell do Russians and fascists think about all of this?
Finally the author defends Trump. It's not as much as Putin. But Trump is said to be a good guy working for a peaceful world as he tries to work with Putin. Of course the author doesn't care too much about Trump. He does point out when Trump is too harsh on Russia as he knows that criticising Trump is fully legal everywhere in the world. So these arguments are at least logically consistent even though they are a bit outdated and pointless now. I would rather read a proper critique of USA from a Russian point-of-view. Trump is old news. The whole book is old news.
It's hard to rate. It's obviously good writing and he knows a lot about Putin and Trump. But it's so extremely biased that it's quite pointless to listen to the audiobook unless you just plan to read everything there is on the topic and need to listen to the other side. But frankly even this lousy goal is not achieved here. Stephen F. Cohen was a giant fan of Putin not Russia overall. He often criticizes communist leaders and Yeltsin. Stalin is evil, Yeltsin was terrible. Russia overall is not featured as a prominent character here. We don't learn anything about Russian culture, history, the people. The book is an ode to Putin and Putin's claims about Russia and Russian history. I'm eager to understand Russian culture to understand why they are praising the Russian army destroying power plants and towns in Ukraine to "punish USA and neo-Nazis". Obviously this is important to understand no matter how silly it may sound. But a book praising every action Putin took is not explaining this. The book was also written 2 years before Russia attacked all of Ukraine. So overall it's already very dated. The author often claims that Putin is just protecting Russia against NATO and that Putin has zero plans whatsoever to invade any country or start a war - it's all protection. Putin is a liberal at heart and only wants peace according to Cohen. The Ukraine war disproves most assumptions by the author in the book. His predictions failed horribly which made the book pointless after just 2 years. If he was alive he could have apologized for the book now or admitted his mistakes and adjusted some of his points, but unfortunately history now makes him look foolish without him being able to change a single line of text. Similarly to how the giant Putin supporters all over the world stopped even mentioning Putin after the war started.
Everything Putin did was to better Russia according to Cohen. There is a single line slightly critical of a statement Putin made, but besides this it's all praise. Keep in mind it's a book about Putin and Trump not Russia and USA. The imperialist West is of course evil and pushes Putin to do everything bad he has ever done - his hands are tied. He was forced to annex Crimea and start a war in Donbas. Forced to conquer part of Georgia. Forced into Syria. Besides this Putin is very democratic and fair. And by the way Ukraine is full of neo-Nazis and far-right extremists who Putin is fighting. Just like he was fighting ISIS in Syria while the West just made this glorious job difficult for him. Yet everything NATO and USA does is bad even in very similar battles. When USA battles ISIS in the Middle East it's "needlessly killing civilians" while when Putin does it's "geopolitics" and Cohen doesn't bring up the civilian deaths. The author never tries to make logical points. He just argues his pro Putin points no matter what evidence he needs to use. Even when NATO and Russia do the very same thing one is evil while the other is good. That's just cognitive laziness.
He claims Azov are Nazis. That Sergei Skripal and his daughter were not poisoned by Putin. That the various journalists who got murdered in Russia were not murdered by Putin or the Russian state. That Crimea was taken back by Russia not illegally annexed. All the evil deeds Putin did are just ignored or claimed to be fake news. Even deeds Russian Putin supporters accept as facts by now. Because the author is not trying to argue for Putin. He is trying to ignore facts to present Putin as a liberal leader.
When Putin is accused of killing a journalist or former Russian spy it's just nasty MSM rumors. While the author takes any anti-Hillary and anti-Biden accusation very seriously and even assumes it's basic logic and facts. These various accusations have an equal amount of evidence. Yet the anti-USA ones are given full faith. It's just not arguing in good faith no matter what the author tries to say. It's lazy logic. Putin may be a glorious, handsome, and strong leader like the author thinks, but bad logic is bad logic and makes his claims moot no matter what Putin actually is. You need to explain why Putin killing the journalists/spies was a good thing to make a point not just claim Putin never killed them. First thing Putin did when becoming president were the FSB apartment building bomb cases and shutting down free media in Russia critical of him. This shouldn't be denied it should be the center of any pro-Putin argument in such a book. The author claims that these people were killed by another country or that we just can't know what happened. But all what Putin has done so far does illustrate that Putin would have more to gain from this than any other country leader. If the author was logical about this he would at least admit it's likely Putin did this and then try to defend Putin in such a hypothetical scenario.
The blind biased ode to Putin also means that we seldom learn facts about Russia or geopolitics. Most Russians themselves are less apologetic about Putin's deeds. For example during the Ukraine war many Russians claim that killing Ukrainian civilians is fine because Ukrainians overall are neo-Nazis or just evil NATO slaves. Many pundits in Russian state media praise Putin after every journalist killing. They don't dislike this side of Putin or Russia. The author meanwhile is very much NOT Russian. For him killing journalists is supposedly a horrible thing. Killing former spies is horrible, war is terrible, Russia before Putin was terrible. He does understand basic liberal Western values and therefore just argues that Putin doesn't do any of this stuff and is not a fascist leader. This book won't tell you how actual Russian fascists think about Putin. Which is the view any smart reader should be after. Instead we get a liberal Westerner just claiming Putin is basically a Western semi-democratic leader who never did a single bad thing. Which many pro-Putin Russians themselves will claim he is not.
At the end of the day it's not just an extremely biased book. Much of it is misinformation and lazy logic. Which is what lets it down. According to the author Putin is anti-Stalin and allows free attacks on Stalin and this part of USSR history. Which again is not just a subjective pro Putin statement it's factually wrong and pretty much the opposite of reality. Stalin features prominently in Russian school textbooks as a heroic figure. Something the government has planned top-down. Similarly many of the researchers who were allowed to dig into Soviet and Stalin crimes in the 1990's were later fined, banned, imprisoned. Anyone reading the book would get a wrong picture of reality. Sure Putin allows some critical views and history, but he's not anti-Stalin or anti-Soviet. The author is mistaken on this in my opinion. According to the author Putin is semi-democratic leader fighting ISIS, fascism, and the far-right in Europe and the Middle East - the groups liberals hate. Again, not really what Russians themselves think. For many Russian fascists and Putin supporters the far-right is a great thing. Ergo fighting it would be a BAD thing not a GOOD thing like the author claims. The new anti-gay laws in Russia supported by Putin supporters show how the author is misguided about how Russians think. They are not just pro Russia geopolitically and culturally. They are anti-West and anti liberal values in many ways. They don't have the same views of good and evil as the author does and that's the main issue with this book. It presents an image of reality only seen by liberal Western Putin supporters. But how the hell do Russians and fascists think about all of this?
Finally the author defends Trump. It's not as much as Putin. But Trump is said to be a good guy working for a peaceful world as he tries to work with Putin. Of course the author doesn't care too much about Trump. He does point out when Trump is too harsh on Russia as he knows that criticising Trump is fully legal everywhere in the world. So these arguments are at least logically consistent even though they are a bit outdated and pointless now. I would rather read a proper critique of USA from a Russian point-of-view. Trump is old news. The whole book is old news.
April 5, 2020
Listen to the Professor.
March 2, 2022
Whilst Stephen does a great job in bringing to light a lot of the hypocrisy of the US' actions when it comes to Russia, their history of misinformation campaigns/election meddling and antagonistic behaviours, he offers some pretty flimsy evidence at times whilst making some big claims and just expects you to take them as fact.
It seems that a lot of the broader talking points made by Cohen are mostly based in reality or at least are based in half truths but they deserve a far more deeper look than Cohen offers here, leaving you to wonder if you've read a half finished work or a piece of PR.
It seems that a lot of the broader talking points made by Cohen are mostly based in reality or at least are based in half truths but they deserve a far more deeper look than Cohen offers here, leaving you to wonder if you've read a half finished work or a piece of PR.
July 18, 2022
From the git go, it wasn't that difficult to discern that RussiaGate was a device used to undermine Trump and justify why he won the national. (Don't look at reasons why people voted for him, just make up brazen stories that half the population will buy into.) I remember distinctly watching post-election news in 2016 where former Pres. Obama claimed "there were no discrepancies found in the election" the following day, and that the results were legitimate: Trump was the next US president. Yet the die had already been cast over the previous summer with Clinton campaign advisor, Robby Mook's consistent and ludicrous statements about the election being fondled by the "hand of the Kremlin". In those absurd, highly inflammatory comments, Russiagate was born.(He recently admitted to Congress there was no evidence at all of election interference. It had all been made up.) That along with the release of Clinton's emails and her eventual loss in the national election fed the flames of Russophobic zeal picked up by all the corporate millionaire media personalities, most specifically the serial fictionalizing of RG on the Rachel Maddow Show. Additionally, the media hosted a range of intelligence agency personalities who were treated with kid gloves by the media despite them making reckless, foolhardy statements that had no footing in reality.
I first started reading Dr. Cohen's op-eds in The Nation and watching his talks on YT at this time, talks that dated back to the Maidan revolution that provoked the current crisis in UKR. I was struck by his incisive commentary on how all of the above was leading to a decaying, acrimonious relationship with Russia that very well could lead to a hot war. Along with Dr. Cohen's writings and talks about the folly of RussiaGate and its dangers for inciting a conflict, I read articles in the prestige press with the most outrageous headlines only to find that most of the information relied on anonymous sources and suggestive rather than definitive verbs. In other words, it was all spin, very little evidence but who needs that when it comes to D Trump? Sadly, Stephen Cohen was jettisoned from his occasional appearances on cable acting as a counterpoint to all the Russophobia (once again hoping for a war) and died several years ago, never being vindicated that all he said and wrote in this book and his columns have come to pass. I get the feeling he would be more distressed by this news of war than vindicated. It seemed in his last years he wanted nothing more than for Russia and the US to have positive relations rather than a proxy war. since the UKR conflict began, myself and many others who have tried to understand the context of the Russian invasion, bemoan his loss at the same time soh how right he really was not only about RussiaGate and some of its more nefarious and spurious claims such as the Steele dossier (Mook recently owned up to its complete fabrication) but more important the frightening aspects of a Russian-UKR/Nato conflict.
For those who think being open to another point of view or being able to balance conflicting or ostensibly opposed positions, what the Greeks called dissoi logoi, is impossible when it comes to the UKR/Rus conflict, and that in fact if one is not anti-Putin and pro-UKR/NATO, they are a Russian spy, an apologist, a tankie, a shill (all of these Cohen unfortunately tolerated being called in order to publicly provide another point of view that warned of potential nuclear conflict), I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. Cohen very adeptly provides important context to the expansion of NATO since the Soviet Union dissolved as well as the US influence in Ukraine during and since the coup in 2014. He also explains the rise of nationalism and Nazi ideology in UKR, something well reported pre-invasion but now nowhere to be found other than on social media and in the alternative press and attempts to portray Putin as a moderate. He is unlike most braying for war and a no fly zone a Soviet Russian scholar who spent a large portion of his adult life in Russia. While Putin's denazification of UKR is not a justification for invading, it becomes quite clear reading this book that the US both domestically and globally (via NATO) has contributed to the conflict through provocation by NATO expansion, supporting a coup that led to an 8 year civil war and false accusations of collusion that have foreclosed any kind of productive post Soviet relations through harsh sanctions and lack of dialogue.
I agree that this book feels a bit rushed to publication and could have been edited for repetition and overlapping ideas, however what we do get and what is needed so desperately is context to the current conflict along with a a range of topics related to contemporary US/Russian relations starting with the Soviet Union's dissolution in the late 1990s. What Cohen argues throughout this book is there are enough commonalities in economic and political policies between the US/Russia that could potentially forge an alliance (not a chummy friendship, mind you) rather than continue on the path to irresolvable differences that could potentially end with nuclear war.
I first started reading Dr. Cohen's op-eds in The Nation and watching his talks on YT at this time, talks that dated back to the Maidan revolution that provoked the current crisis in UKR. I was struck by his incisive commentary on how all of the above was leading to a decaying, acrimonious relationship with Russia that very well could lead to a hot war. Along with Dr. Cohen's writings and talks about the folly of RussiaGate and its dangers for inciting a conflict, I read articles in the prestige press with the most outrageous headlines only to find that most of the information relied on anonymous sources and suggestive rather than definitive verbs. In other words, it was all spin, very little evidence but who needs that when it comes to D Trump? Sadly, Stephen Cohen was jettisoned from his occasional appearances on cable acting as a counterpoint to all the Russophobia (once again hoping for a war) and died several years ago, never being vindicated that all he said and wrote in this book and his columns have come to pass. I get the feeling he would be more distressed by this news of war than vindicated. It seemed in his last years he wanted nothing more than for Russia and the US to have positive relations rather than a proxy war. since the UKR conflict began, myself and many others who have tried to understand the context of the Russian invasion, bemoan his loss at the same time soh how right he really was not only about RussiaGate and some of its more nefarious and spurious claims such as the Steele dossier (Mook recently owned up to its complete fabrication) but more important the frightening aspects of a Russian-UKR/Nato conflict.
For those who think being open to another point of view or being able to balance conflicting or ostensibly opposed positions, what the Greeks called dissoi logoi, is impossible when it comes to the UKR/Rus conflict, and that in fact if one is not anti-Putin and pro-UKR/NATO, they are a Russian spy, an apologist, a tankie, a shill (all of these Cohen unfortunately tolerated being called in order to publicly provide another point of view that warned of potential nuclear conflict), I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. Cohen very adeptly provides important context to the expansion of NATO since the Soviet Union dissolved as well as the US influence in Ukraine during and since the coup in 2014. He also explains the rise of nationalism and Nazi ideology in UKR, something well reported pre-invasion but now nowhere to be found other than on social media and in the alternative press and attempts to portray Putin as a moderate. He is unlike most braying for war and a no fly zone a Soviet Russian scholar who spent a large portion of his adult life in Russia. While Putin's denazification of UKR is not a justification for invading, it becomes quite clear reading this book that the US both domestically and globally (via NATO) has contributed to the conflict through provocation by NATO expansion, supporting a coup that led to an 8 year civil war and false accusations of collusion that have foreclosed any kind of productive post Soviet relations through harsh sanctions and lack of dialogue.
I agree that this book feels a bit rushed to publication and could have been edited for repetition and overlapping ideas, however what we do get and what is needed so desperately is context to the current conflict along with a a range of topics related to contemporary US/Russian relations starting with the Soviet Union's dissolution in the late 1990s. What Cohen argues throughout this book is there are enough commonalities in economic and political policies between the US/Russia that could potentially forge an alliance (not a chummy friendship, mind you) rather than continue on the path to irresolvable differences that could potentially end with nuclear war.
May 5, 2024
T rash
February 3, 2022
Repetitive and one-sided.
October 23, 2020
This is Professor Stephen F. Cohen's final book and stands as a tribute to his outstanding career as an eminent historian and critical thinker on East-West politics. One of the very last anti-cold war public figures, his presence will be missed as the neo-con hawks led by Mrs. Clinton and Co. descend on the prostrate carcass of US foreign policy.
The book is actually a collection of his articles and columns, appearing in "The Nation" and other venues over the last decade. He took on the Obama reneging of "reset," NATO expansion, the exploitation of the Ukraine crisis as rationales thereof. And of course "Russiagate": a 9/10ths-manufactured scapegoating of Russia for the Democratic loss of the presidency in 2016, concocted by Mrs. Clinton to put her enemies all in one basket for "sabotaging our democracy."
Nowhere in this standard narrative are concrete facts prevented. As in the days of Tail-Gunner Joe, it's all about blasting the target and any reason will do. As Professor Cohen writes, no one bothers to review the US record at real election-rigging around the world or American meddling in Russia's elections in 1996. Nor did anyone else ask if NATO expansion to Russia's borders might be seen as a provocation; that US power games in the Balkans might be re-enacted by Russia in Crimea or Ukraine with the American examples as precedent; that all this might put us at graver risk of real military showdown with Moscow than all the nuclear saber-rattling of duck-and-cover days.
All the detente and engagement of the 1970s and 1980s seems to have vanished, reversing the US consensus back to the most frigid days of the late '40s and 1950s. Cohen asked, why and how did this neo-McCarthyism regain ascendancy so completely? I think he provided the answer himself in the book's introductory essay. 1990s' triumphalism sought to justify the hard line as right after all; we made the USSR back down and crumble. Forgotten is all the years of detente and negotiation that made a Gorbachev possible, whose own detente truly ended the cold war - not out of fear but hope for something better. One must wonder if the West was all along merely taking advantage of his naivite, pretending to want a restart but only offering the Red Man another new treaty for dishonoring, while boasting of beating the savages afterward.
Professor Cohen's clear thinking and wisdom, sharp to the end, will be missed. Now the dark night comes, when the voices of fear and passion, ambition and power will shout out the still voice of reason.
The book is actually a collection of his articles and columns, appearing in "The Nation" and other venues over the last decade. He took on the Obama reneging of "reset," NATO expansion, the exploitation of the Ukraine crisis as rationales thereof. And of course "Russiagate": a 9/10ths-manufactured scapegoating of Russia for the Democratic loss of the presidency in 2016, concocted by Mrs. Clinton to put her enemies all in one basket for "sabotaging our democracy."
Nowhere in this standard narrative are concrete facts prevented. As in the days of Tail-Gunner Joe, it's all about blasting the target and any reason will do. As Professor Cohen writes, no one bothers to review the US record at real election-rigging around the world or American meddling in Russia's elections in 1996. Nor did anyone else ask if NATO expansion to Russia's borders might be seen as a provocation; that US power games in the Balkans might be re-enacted by Russia in Crimea or Ukraine with the American examples as precedent; that all this might put us at graver risk of real military showdown with Moscow than all the nuclear saber-rattling of duck-and-cover days.
All the detente and engagement of the 1970s and 1980s seems to have vanished, reversing the US consensus back to the most frigid days of the late '40s and 1950s. Cohen asked, why and how did this neo-McCarthyism regain ascendancy so completely? I think he provided the answer himself in the book's introductory essay. 1990s' triumphalism sought to justify the hard line as right after all; we made the USSR back down and crumble. Forgotten is all the years of detente and negotiation that made a Gorbachev possible, whose own detente truly ended the cold war - not out of fear but hope for something better. One must wonder if the West was all along merely taking advantage of his naivite, pretending to want a restart but only offering the Red Man another new treaty for dishonoring, while boasting of beating the savages afterward.
Professor Cohen's clear thinking and wisdom, sharp to the end, will be missed. Now the dark night comes, when the voices of fear and passion, ambition and power will shout out the still voice of reason.
September 20, 2020
Through his columns, Cohen charts the negative relationship we have with Russia from the Obama administration's intensification of the Ukraine crisis in 2014 to the "war of words" that Trump surrogates like Nikki Haley were waging at the United Nations in 2018. It's unfortunate how the "Russian collusion" narrative ruined the possibility of improving relations between the two countries. Instead, thanks to House Democrats, the mainstream media, and Republicans like Haley and McCain, Trump has been forced to increase tensions and go along with NATO expansionism to not look the role of a dupe of Moscow. Putin and his government in response, have drawn away from the West, which will make future attempts of diplomacy much harder to pursue.
Overall, regardless of where you land on the political spectrum, I suggest you read this book. Most current titles regarding Western-Russo relations fall in either the Neoliberal or Neocon camp, so having a contrarian work such as Cohen's is well worth the read.
Overall, regardless of where you land on the political spectrum, I suggest you read this book. Most current titles regarding Western-Russo relations fall in either the Neoliberal or Neocon camp, so having a contrarian work such as Cohen's is well worth the read.
March 29, 2022
A very interesting and thought-provoking book by a Russian historian. It provides a clear analysis of US and NATO policy toward Russia since the fall of the Soviet empire. It also provides an answer to the important question of why we are now and have been sitting on the brink of World War III for the last four weeks of the Ukrainian invasion by Russia.
The author is clearly not the sort of pro-Ukraine cheerleader that so dominates the western media right now. Instead, he provides a thoughtful account of the history of relations between the US-led NATO countries and "Putin's Russia", and explains the origin of the new cold war and why it is far more dangerous than the old one. This includes the way in which American political elites and the intelligence community used the Russiagate allegations to attempt to delegitimize President Trump and derail his efforts at detente with Putin.
The author is clearly not the sort of pro-Ukraine cheerleader that so dominates the western media right now. Instead, he provides a thoughtful account of the history of relations between the US-led NATO countries and "Putin's Russia", and explains the origin of the new cold war and why it is far more dangerous than the old one. This includes the way in which American political elites and the intelligence community used the Russiagate allegations to attempt to delegitimize President Trump and derail his efforts at detente with Putin.
Read
March 10, 2022asks who has a sphere of influence & who is entitled to it, whether our policy of NATO expansion is worth war w/ great powers
i think the events in the past few days are vindicating a lot of what cohen has to say even if he explicitly wants detente between russia/nato
i think the events in the past few days are vindicating a lot of what cohen has to say even if he explicitly wants detente between russia/nato
December 28, 2022
Wow! It is a book from the future. While the author has not been alive for several years, it is like he was able to predict the future with so many details.
Definitely controversial perspective, not conventional view of things.
This book is a reminder to seek answers and not only consume digests from popular media resources.
Definitely controversial perspective, not conventional view of things.
This book is a reminder to seek answers and not only consume digests from popular media resources.
March 30, 2022
A1 class journalism - can be viewed as a chronicle of the progressive russophobic sentiment brewing within American media, popular culture and the political establishment - in an all encompassing fashion which is terrifyingly similar to racist, imperialist propaganda used to justify mass injustice
March 25, 2022
[3.5]
‘The once-venerated American journalist Walter Lippmann observed, “When all think alike, no one is thinking.” This book is my modest attempt to inspire more thinking.’
The book certainly inspires thinking, presenting as it does significant historical and contextual information regarding the decades-long and ongoing US-Russian conflict rarely discussed in the West. While the information itself is deeply valuable, the format is what weakened the book for me. As it was compiled from a series of articles Cohen wrote over an extended period of time, the content itself often feels repetitive. A shorter, more focused compilation of the ideas captured here would have been more effective, but I understand why the simpler, more expedient “anthology” format of short essays/articles was chosen instead.
(Below the spoiler cut, I’ve compiled quotes highlighting what I think give a good (albeit abbreviated) overview of some of the issues contributing to the current “Cold” War between the US and Russia today. The book addresses a lot more than this, but these are some of the sections I found most interesting.)
‘The once-venerated American journalist Walter Lippmann observed, “When all think alike, no one is thinking.” This book is my modest attempt to inspire more thinking.’
The book certainly inspires thinking, presenting as it does significant historical and contextual information regarding the decades-long and ongoing US-Russian conflict rarely discussed in the West. While the information itself is deeply valuable, the format is what weakened the book for me. As it was compiled from a series of articles Cohen wrote over an extended period of time, the content itself often feels repetitive. A shorter, more focused compilation of the ideas captured here would have been more effective, but I understand why the simpler, more expedient “anthology” format of short essays/articles was chosen instead.
(Below the spoiler cut, I’ve compiled quotes highlighting what I think give a good (albeit abbreviated) overview of some of the issues contributing to the current “Cold” War between the US and Russia today. The book addresses a lot more than this, but these are some of the sections I found most interesting.)
November 7, 2022
The military-industrial-intelligence-congressional-media complex has been successful in creating a new, prohibitively expensive new cold war against The Russian Federation. After promising NATO would not expand, the USA has done everything to expand NATO. Broken promises. Already, new nuclear weapons are being manufactured and proposed. Truly pathetic that in 2022 that the USA is the antagonist in fomenting a new cold war and new McCarthyism at home.
The USA was instrumental in the undemocratic coup in Ukraine. Now, there are many neo-Nazis in Ukraine's government. The racist, antisemitic Azov Battalion has been incorporated into Ukraine's Army. Antisemitic attacks in Ukraine have exploded, as well as antisemitic rhetoric. Antisemitic Ukraine political and military leaders are now being "heroized" in Ukraine. Yet America supports this country.
Prof. Cohen tried to prevent the War with Russia. Now, thanks to the American administration and the Ukrainian dictatorship, tens of thousands of innocent Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are dead and many are wounded. When I say innocent, I am not referring to the Ukrainian Nazi militias. I am referring to the tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainian men and women who are not aligned with the hateful ideology. Like Russian soldiers, they are citizens of their country and must do their duty. It is very sad to see a World War I-type slaughter, complete with trench warfare. 108 years after the outbreak of WWI, humanity is now engaged in another world war, whether it is called that or not. Extremely frustrating. Is peaceful coexistence so difficult?
The era from 2002 to 20022 and how much longer nobody knows will be regarded as the new McCarthyism, when government, intelligence agencies, the military, major media sources like MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post have peddled the new McCarthyism and falsely labeled Americans concerned about the New McCarthyism and anti-Russia propaganda as treasonous traitors. (Former CIA director John Brennan and James Clapper may be the biggest cheerleaders of this undemocratic movement.) History will not be kind to them.
Neither should journalism schools be kind to these war-mongering Americans, where you are taught to offer both sides to any debate and let your readers decide, rather than the vastly biased news Americans receive about Ukraine and Russia; or the lack of news that tells Americans the truth about Ukraine's genocidal war against its own citizens in Eastern Ukraine.
The late Stephen Cohen provides a viewpoint that is nuanced, unlike the dishonorable and anti-Americans John Brennan, James Clapper and other members of the CIA who dream of a new cold war. Well, it looks like they've got it ~ but possibly at the expense of world peace. I hope they are happy.
No one says The Russian Federation is perfect, but I don't recall them invading Iraq or Afghanistan (the USSR did).
I don't recall The Russian Federation lying that it would not support regime change in Libya only to bomb parts of Libya to the extent that regime changed occurred.
I also don't seem to recall The Russian Federation transferring arms from Libya to ISIS and other jihadist groups in Syria, in an effort to overthrow the Assad government.
I don't recall The Russian Federation supporting Saudi Arabia in its horrific war in Yemen.
Nor do I recall The Russian Federation sending special ops into Yemen and killing many innocent people in a village, all because their well-digging machine looked like a missile or something. Yeah, that happened. U.S. special ops killed many people in a Yemeni village over a well rig. This crime against humanity and war crime was documented in The New York Times.
The USA was instrumental in the undemocratic coup in Ukraine. Now, there are many neo-Nazis in Ukraine's government. The racist, antisemitic Azov Battalion has been incorporated into Ukraine's Army. Antisemitic attacks in Ukraine have exploded, as well as antisemitic rhetoric. Antisemitic Ukraine political and military leaders are now being "heroized" in Ukraine. Yet America supports this country.
Prof. Cohen tried to prevent the War with Russia. Now, thanks to the American administration and the Ukrainian dictatorship, tens of thousands of innocent Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are dead and many are wounded. When I say innocent, I am not referring to the Ukrainian Nazi militias. I am referring to the tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainian men and women who are not aligned with the hateful ideology. Like Russian soldiers, they are citizens of their country and must do their duty. It is very sad to see a World War I-type slaughter, complete with trench warfare. 108 years after the outbreak of WWI, humanity is now engaged in another world war, whether it is called that or not. Extremely frustrating. Is peaceful coexistence so difficult?
The era from 2002 to 20022 and how much longer nobody knows will be regarded as the new McCarthyism, when government, intelligence agencies, the military, major media sources like MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post have peddled the new McCarthyism and falsely labeled Americans concerned about the New McCarthyism and anti-Russia propaganda as treasonous traitors. (Former CIA director John Brennan and James Clapper may be the biggest cheerleaders of this undemocratic movement.) History will not be kind to them.
Neither should journalism schools be kind to these war-mongering Americans, where you are taught to offer both sides to any debate and let your readers decide, rather than the vastly biased news Americans receive about Ukraine and Russia; or the lack of news that tells Americans the truth about Ukraine's genocidal war against its own citizens in Eastern Ukraine.
The late Stephen Cohen provides a viewpoint that is nuanced, unlike the dishonorable and anti-Americans John Brennan, James Clapper and other members of the CIA who dream of a new cold war. Well, it looks like they've got it ~ but possibly at the expense of world peace. I hope they are happy.
No one says The Russian Federation is perfect, but I don't recall them invading Iraq or Afghanistan (the USSR did).
I don't recall The Russian Federation lying that it would not support regime change in Libya only to bomb parts of Libya to the extent that regime changed occurred.
I also don't seem to recall The Russian Federation transferring arms from Libya to ISIS and other jihadist groups in Syria, in an effort to overthrow the Assad government.
I don't recall The Russian Federation supporting Saudi Arabia in its horrific war in Yemen.
Nor do I recall The Russian Federation sending special ops into Yemen and killing many innocent people in a village, all because their well-digging machine looked like a missile or something. Yeah, that happened. U.S. special ops killed many people in a Yemeni village over a well rig. This crime against humanity and war crime was documented in The New York Times.
January 25, 2022
Initially, I was cringing while reading. It felt like it was a book written with one purpose - to justify Putin and his actions. I persevered to get the balanced view. It is true, that we are presented with one side of the story and that history is written by the winners. Sometimes it pays to try to understand the motivation of the other side. And so it became my objective to get through to the end.
It is a convoluted history with no balanced, objective presentations and the views poles apart. Makes you think though.
It is a convoluted history with no balanced, objective presentations and the views poles apart. Makes you think though.
April 11, 2022
This is not a good book, and its difficult to know where to start with it. The primary problem with it is that it asserts that most things regarding Russian foreign policy are a reaction to internal American divisions, and the bad policies of "left progressive" (read, Democrats). The book whitewashes Putin's responsibility of anything internal, or external aggression against neighbors, and asserts they are all natural responses to American decision-making. There is no serious discussion or analysis of internal Russian politics, and any potential crime, human rights abuse or act of aggression by Putin is ignored by saying that others do worse. The author repeatedly asserts the Russian campaign in Syria was a purely anti-terrorist one (even though it was the YPG, not the Russians, that actually fought ISIS). The civilians killed by the Russians intervention are forgiven because the US has also killed civilians, a pretty tenuous moral logic that obviously ignores that just because one country commits a crime, it doesn't forgive others from doing so. The only American politician who is taking active measures towards détente and peace is, unsurprisingly, Donald Trump, something that would have seemed silly when the book was published and absurd in 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The worst part of the book is that it is really just the transcripts of a number of radio broadcasts, so are very repetitive, poorly thought out, reactive, and not well planned. Avoid this book, read something else if you want to better understand the situation in Ukraine and Russian politics more broadly.
The worst part of the book is that it is really just the transcripts of a number of radio broadcasts, so are very repetitive, poorly thought out, reactive, and not well planned. Avoid this book, read something else if you want to better understand the situation in Ukraine and Russian politics more broadly.
November 9, 2020
"When all think alike, no one is thinking." American journalist Walter Lippmann. "This book is my modest attempt to inspire more thinking." Stephen F. Cohen, author War with Russia? When newspapers formerly thought of as serious, and rolling news channels compete to see who can shout the loudest, Cohen's book is a refreshing collection of essays stemming from a lifetime of primary research.Gone to soon, one can only hope that he inspired many to follow in his footsteps.
April 20, 2020
I didn't agree with much Mr. Cohen said, however, it was interesting and informative to hear another take on Russian-American relations. I would warn that because this book is a series of short writings taken from Mr. Cohen's "web columns", it can get quite repetitive.
Read
June 11, 2019Essential minority view on Russiagate and the New Cold War. Repetitive, so one can read a few essays and get the idea.
June 22, 2023
"Our most serious mistake in relations with the West is that we trusted you too much. And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it." - Putin (quoted in Cohen)
Originally published in 2019 this "Memorial Edition" published in 2022 to mark the death of the author appeared as full scale war with Russia had become a horrific reality for Ukraine with Putin's invasion of the country. On the face of it the premise of this book - that Russia and Putin are not the demons they appear to be - might be considered to have been sunk as comprehensively as the Moskva. However, after the event cause and effect can be difficult to determine. Says Cohen "If Putin had left office in 2014, he would have done so having been, certainly in the Russian context, a 'pro-Western' leader - a course he generally pursued despite NATO's expansion toward Russia's borders, US regime-change policies in neighbouring countries, and criticism in high-level Russian circles that he had 'illusions about the West' and was 'soft' in his dealings with it especially the United States".
The book consists of a series of pieces written by Cohen over a five year period looking at the West's, primarily the US, relations with Russia from an overtly Russian standpoint but, as he states, as an American patriot arguing that the "... road to American national security runs through Moscow." An expert with decades of experience of Russia and the USSR (who started out his career living in Moscow hobnobbing with dissidents in 1980's USSR and be coming a firm friend with Gorbachev in more recent decades) Cohen argues that the reluctance and failure in the West to view the world through Russian eyes and history has resulted in the adoption of policies and practices that have created antagonism and which were inevitably making the world a more dangerous place than during the Cold War and would probably result in direct superpower conflict.In doing so he essentially lays much of the blame for where we are now on the West for its treatment of Russia as a defeated enemy rather than embracing the country and bringing it as an equal partner into the world system. The idea of there being a premeditated Russian plot to restore Imperial Russia and regain lost territories (as Beltons' convincingly presented and well referenced "Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West" argues) is rejected by Cohen. Cohen also fails to really acknowledge the Russian states historic imperial ambitions which were embraced by the Soviet regime as by the previous Tsarist system.
Arguably, in order to pull off the sort of coup that Belton accuses Putin of, the conditions to make that possible were necessary and this is what the 1990s provided, a situation encouraged and facilitated by Western policy towards Russia and this is probably where Cohen is at his strongest. Emerging as a much needed saviour at the turn of the century Putin recieved pretty much universal acclaim for saving Russia. The question is, was what followed premeditated, or was it a reaction to circumstance and perceived circumstance. Cohen was certainly of the opinion that a different approach by the West towards Russia could have produced a different outcome. I am inclined to think that by the early 2000s the groundwork was probably laid for where we are now where an embattled and increasingly brutal authoritarian regime in Moscow saw itself as having nothing to lose by cutting itself loose from the West, although I still believe that the invasion of Ukraine was expected to be a swift and easy conquest the consequences of which Putin was prepared to live with and believed would in time have little impact in terms of international trade and relations where Realpolitik does not see crimes and dead bodies it does not want too. In these pieces Cohen is highly sceptical of the whole Russiagate episode and presents a surprisingly positive view of Trump's contribution to Russia-USA relations seeing him as making up for what he sees as the self censorship of the liberal wing of American politics in foreign affairs, this is an interesting alternative to the view point that Trump recognises Putin simply as a fellow authoritarian power man. The book highlights nicely how traditional political positions have become increasingly confused, contradictory and fragmented.
It is a shame that Cohen is no longer around as it would be interesting to see how he would have reacted to the last couple of years. Retrospectively reading his book is bound to anger those who rightly support Ukraines resistance to Russian aggression. However, even if Cohen may appear wrong in at least some of his positions and arguments he highlights a lot of Western policy and action that deserves to be exposed and criticised and can reasonably be seen as having contributed to where we are now. This volume is still worth reading as a contribution to how we got to where we are now.
Originally published in 2019 this "Memorial Edition" published in 2022 to mark the death of the author appeared as full scale war with Russia had become a horrific reality for Ukraine with Putin's invasion of the country. On the face of it the premise of this book - that Russia and Putin are not the demons they appear to be - might be considered to have been sunk as comprehensively as the Moskva. However, after the event cause and effect can be difficult to determine. Says Cohen "If Putin had left office in 2014, he would have done so having been, certainly in the Russian context, a 'pro-Western' leader - a course he generally pursued despite NATO's expansion toward Russia's borders, US regime-change policies in neighbouring countries, and criticism in high-level Russian circles that he had 'illusions about the West' and was 'soft' in his dealings with it especially the United States".
The book consists of a series of pieces written by Cohen over a five year period looking at the West's, primarily the US, relations with Russia from an overtly Russian standpoint but, as he states, as an American patriot arguing that the "... road to American national security runs through Moscow." An expert with decades of experience of Russia and the USSR (who started out his career living in Moscow hobnobbing with dissidents in 1980's USSR and be coming a firm friend with Gorbachev in more recent decades) Cohen argues that the reluctance and failure in the West to view the world through Russian eyes and history has resulted in the adoption of policies and practices that have created antagonism and which were inevitably making the world a more dangerous place than during the Cold War and would probably result in direct superpower conflict.In doing so he essentially lays much of the blame for where we are now on the West for its treatment of Russia as a defeated enemy rather than embracing the country and bringing it as an equal partner into the world system. The idea of there being a premeditated Russian plot to restore Imperial Russia and regain lost territories (as Beltons' convincingly presented and well referenced "Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and then Took on the West" argues) is rejected by Cohen. Cohen also fails to really acknowledge the Russian states historic imperial ambitions which were embraced by the Soviet regime as by the previous Tsarist system.
Arguably, in order to pull off the sort of coup that Belton accuses Putin of, the conditions to make that possible were necessary and this is what the 1990s provided, a situation encouraged and facilitated by Western policy towards Russia and this is probably where Cohen is at his strongest. Emerging as a much needed saviour at the turn of the century Putin recieved pretty much universal acclaim for saving Russia. The question is, was what followed premeditated, or was it a reaction to circumstance and perceived circumstance. Cohen was certainly of the opinion that a different approach by the West towards Russia could have produced a different outcome. I am inclined to think that by the early 2000s the groundwork was probably laid for where we are now where an embattled and increasingly brutal authoritarian regime in Moscow saw itself as having nothing to lose by cutting itself loose from the West, although I still believe that the invasion of Ukraine was expected to be a swift and easy conquest the consequences of which Putin was prepared to live with and believed would in time have little impact in terms of international trade and relations where Realpolitik does not see crimes and dead bodies it does not want too. In these pieces Cohen is highly sceptical of the whole Russiagate episode and presents a surprisingly positive view of Trump's contribution to Russia-USA relations seeing him as making up for what he sees as the self censorship of the liberal wing of American politics in foreign affairs, this is an interesting alternative to the view point that Trump recognises Putin simply as a fellow authoritarian power man. The book highlights nicely how traditional political positions have become increasingly confused, contradictory and fragmented.
It is a shame that Cohen is no longer around as it would be interesting to see how he would have reacted to the last couple of years. Retrospectively reading his book is bound to anger those who rightly support Ukraines resistance to Russian aggression. However, even if Cohen may appear wrong in at least some of his positions and arguments he highlights a lot of Western policy and action that deserves to be exposed and criticised and can reasonably be seen as having contributed to where we are now. This volume is still worth reading as a contribution to how we got to where we are now.
January 30, 2024
While I had some hopes that current war will end without further effects on the rest of the world, after reading this book I am no longer so sure.
Book reads as a journal - collection of author's monthly based politic commentaries on events from 2014 'til late 2018 with focus set to relations between US and Russia. As pages go by and as events roll on, it is visible [from the retrospective] that what culminated in 2022 was not unexpected but was craved, unfortunately by those that are the most liberal and progressive, in a ways that are so horrifying and chilling that I just do not see how this can end up in diplomatic way.
I wont go into details of either side but it is unfortunate that West made the choice to go to war no matter what. I have to admit that if it weren't same propaganda machine aggressively attacking and [lets be honest] destroying anyone disagreeing with official line during the epidemic I would definitely experience this book differently. But with that knowledge of total discrediting of mainstream media and governments (where every mayor became a mini dictator) during epidemic, it is visible that same methods were used years before to heat the relations between US and Russia. To what goal, I do not know. Holland and Merkel's confessions that Minsk agreements weren't worth the ink used - although they might be confessions of weak people (as almost all of the post 1980's politicians in the West seem to be, not state-creators but simple bureaucrats and managers) to gain political points - prove that something truly essential, at the core, went wrong and only solution found was war.
Just notion of media demonization of first one person, then moving to the entire nation is something that should put cold fear into everyone's heart. With such dehumanization current status of affairs is not surprising. But unfortunately while it is very easy to roll on hate of this scope, stopping it is something completely different. I just dont think Western politicians are capable of it (even if they want it), because it would mean jumping into their own mouths.
With that being said I am no longer sure that high intensity war can be stopped. Because of idiots who do not risk anything but their own political proclamations (that they will change as easily tomorrow) we all risk something terrible. After 14 years from war in Georgia, 11 years from escalation in Syria and 8 years since events in Ukraine [do note ever shortening period between crisis] West aims towards something that only 40 years ago would be worked full force to be prevented. I do not blame high ranking military personnel that support this craziness, because they are also not people with anything to risk- they are military bureaucrats same as their civilian counterparts, living their lives in theory and dreaming some idiotic grandeur and they need the enemy. So, hey, Russia, right? It wont be them dying on battlefields or ending mauled and without limbs. And actors and media persons ...... I can only say....... person can look smart and act smart but lest be honest, court jesters of old had a purpose which was picked up by media, news and entertainment in our days. And for current media personas, these court jesters were PhD's in diplomatic affairs and public relations, serious people with serious tasks at hand. Current one's? Utter disgrace and idiots.
Lets be straight - every nation mentioned in the book fights for its interests. This is as natural as it gets. But to allow years to pass just to press and press and year after year demonize everything and everyone on the other side, dehumanize them as constant tricksters, liars and to constantly break agreements with them and then to bring it to the [initial] break-point [of 2022] and keep on with the ugliest possible narrative that turns even Western institutions to risk of dehumanization if they ask any questions or try anything? Only one word - disgusting.
We live in the world of adult-children led by some very serious people with, for me, unfathomable goals, using nothing but emotions and intellectual illiteracy. People have forgotten what actual war is, not chasing terrorists in some far away country, but actual war, tanks and artillery rolling and leveling everything. And let me not start on nuclear weapons because I think politicians truly think they can use them and live........
Terrifying book. Lets just hope there will be something left to start anew.
Highly recommended read.
Book reads as a journal - collection of author's monthly based politic commentaries on events from 2014 'til late 2018 with focus set to relations between US and Russia. As pages go by and as events roll on, it is visible [from the retrospective] that what culminated in 2022 was not unexpected but was craved, unfortunately by those that are the most liberal and progressive, in a ways that are so horrifying and chilling that I just do not see how this can end up in diplomatic way.
I wont go into details of either side but it is unfortunate that West made the choice to go to war no matter what. I have to admit that if it weren't same propaganda machine aggressively attacking and [lets be honest] destroying anyone disagreeing with official line during the epidemic I would definitely experience this book differently. But with that knowledge of total discrediting of mainstream media and governments (where every mayor became a mini dictator) during epidemic, it is visible that same methods were used years before to heat the relations between US and Russia. To what goal, I do not know. Holland and Merkel's confessions that Minsk agreements weren't worth the ink used - although they might be confessions of weak people (as almost all of the post 1980's politicians in the West seem to be, not state-creators but simple bureaucrats and managers) to gain political points - prove that something truly essential, at the core, went wrong and only solution found was war.
Just notion of media demonization of first one person, then moving to the entire nation is something that should put cold fear into everyone's heart. With such dehumanization current status of affairs is not surprising. But unfortunately while it is very easy to roll on hate of this scope, stopping it is something completely different. I just dont think Western politicians are capable of it (even if they want it), because it would mean jumping into their own mouths.
With that being said I am no longer sure that high intensity war can be stopped. Because of idiots who do not risk anything but their own political proclamations (that they will change as easily tomorrow) we all risk something terrible. After 14 years from war in Georgia, 11 years from escalation in Syria and 8 years since events in Ukraine [do note ever shortening period between crisis] West aims towards something that only 40 years ago would be worked full force to be prevented. I do not blame high ranking military personnel that support this craziness, because they are also not people with anything to risk- they are military bureaucrats same as their civilian counterparts, living their lives in theory and dreaming some idiotic grandeur and they need the enemy. So, hey, Russia, right? It wont be them dying on battlefields or ending mauled and without limbs. And actors and media persons ...... I can only say....... person can look smart and act smart but lest be honest, court jesters of old had a purpose which was picked up by media, news and entertainment in our days. And for current media personas, these court jesters were PhD's in diplomatic affairs and public relations, serious people with serious tasks at hand. Current one's? Utter disgrace and idiots.
Lets be straight - every nation mentioned in the book fights for its interests. This is as natural as it gets. But to allow years to pass just to press and press and year after year demonize everything and everyone on the other side, dehumanize them as constant tricksters, liars and to constantly break agreements with them and then to bring it to the [initial] break-point [of 2022] and keep on with the ugliest possible narrative that turns even Western institutions to risk of dehumanization if they ask any questions or try anything? Only one word - disgusting.
We live in the world of adult-children led by some very serious people with, for me, unfathomable goals, using nothing but emotions and intellectual illiteracy. People have forgotten what actual war is, not chasing terrorists in some far away country, but actual war, tanks and artillery rolling and leveling everything. And let me not start on nuclear weapons because I think politicians truly think they can use them and live........
Terrifying book. Lets just hope there will be something left to start anew.
Highly recommended read.
August 28, 2024
This is the late Stephen Cohen's last book, published in late 2018. Cohen was one of our finest Russia experts, with many contacts and much first-hand experience in Moscow -- in other words, he knew what he was talking about. As a journalist of integrity, he aimed to look at things objectively.
This book is a compilation of the articles he wrote in 2016-2018 in The Nation, which, as everyone knows, is certainly no fan of Donald Trump! But Cohen shows that the "Russiagate" hoax against Trump -- the absurd and by now thoroughly debunked allegation that Putin got Trump elected president of the U.S. -- should really be called "Intelgate," for it was cooked up by the intelligence services and propagated by their allies in the "mainstream" media.
Most importantly, Cohen argues that the Russiagate hoax, not Russia itself, is the biggest threat to U.S. security. That's because this hoax has resulted in the total abandonment of what for decades was considered the top national-security priority for every U.S. president: avoiding war with the planet's other great nuclear superpower.
For people like Cohen, who was a lifelong liberal and, like Jeffrey Sachs and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had always thought that liberals -- and specifically Democrats -- were supposed to stand against censorship and "black ops," it has all been very surreal to find that their former colleagues on the left have gone along with a CIA disinformation project to drum up U.S. hostility toward Russia to levels not ever seen before, not even in the chilliest days of the Cold War.
Cohen, like Sachs and Kennedy (I am writing this in late-August 2024), was appalled to find that, even as the danger of nuclear war is now greater than even during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, there is virtually no public debate on this topic. As I myself have said many times, where the hell did the peace movement go?
But we know the answer, don't we? Trump Derangement Syndrome is truly a derangement, causing even those who were once the most ardent in their calls for peace and for dialogue between the two big nuclear superpowers, to go completely silent.
To read Cohen's book is to be reminded of things we once all knew, but have forgotten -- basic historical facts that have been swept under the rug by our media -- and to learn new things that the "mainstream media" have never told us. Cohen writes clearly and rationally, making his case in a compelling but careful way, with hundreds of references you can look up if you wish.
Although this book was published in 2018, I was continually amazed, as I was reading, at how utterly timely it is today, six years later. Cohen was prophetic. Or perhaps, it's just that the malignant blob that some call "the intelligence community" and others call "the deep state" is all too predictable; their mindset has not changed one iota in six years. What's truly horrifying is that Cohen was sounding the alarm about the danger of nuclear war all the way back in 2018 -- and it has only gotten worse since then.
Read this book -- please! -- to learn all the historical facts that the "mainstream media" has either blocked or buried. The fact that each chapter of the book was first published in The Nation -- long one of the flagship publications of the left -- and the fact that Cohen considered himself a liberal all his life, only make his writings that much more compelling, and a rebuke to those who persist in their puerile dismissal of anyone who stands for truth, peace, and sanity as a "Trumper."
This book is a compilation of the articles he wrote in 2016-2018 in The Nation, which, as everyone knows, is certainly no fan of Donald Trump! But Cohen shows that the "Russiagate" hoax against Trump -- the absurd and by now thoroughly debunked allegation that Putin got Trump elected president of the U.S. -- should really be called "Intelgate," for it was cooked up by the intelligence services and propagated by their allies in the "mainstream" media.
Most importantly, Cohen argues that the Russiagate hoax, not Russia itself, is the biggest threat to U.S. security. That's because this hoax has resulted in the total abandonment of what for decades was considered the top national-security priority for every U.S. president: avoiding war with the planet's other great nuclear superpower.
For people like Cohen, who was a lifelong liberal and, like Jeffrey Sachs and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had always thought that liberals -- and specifically Democrats -- were supposed to stand against censorship and "black ops," it has all been very surreal to find that their former colleagues on the left have gone along with a CIA disinformation project to drum up U.S. hostility toward Russia to levels not ever seen before, not even in the chilliest days of the Cold War.
Cohen, like Sachs and Kennedy (I am writing this in late-August 2024), was appalled to find that, even as the danger of nuclear war is now greater than even during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, there is virtually no public debate on this topic. As I myself have said many times, where the hell did the peace movement go?
But we know the answer, don't we? Trump Derangement Syndrome is truly a derangement, causing even those who were once the most ardent in their calls for peace and for dialogue between the two big nuclear superpowers, to go completely silent.
To read Cohen's book is to be reminded of things we once all knew, but have forgotten -- basic historical facts that have been swept under the rug by our media -- and to learn new things that the "mainstream media" have never told us. Cohen writes clearly and rationally, making his case in a compelling but careful way, with hundreds of references you can look up if you wish.
Although this book was published in 2018, I was continually amazed, as I was reading, at how utterly timely it is today, six years later. Cohen was prophetic. Or perhaps, it's just that the malignant blob that some call "the intelligence community" and others call "the deep state" is all too predictable; their mindset has not changed one iota in six years. What's truly horrifying is that Cohen was sounding the alarm about the danger of nuclear war all the way back in 2018 -- and it has only gotten worse since then.
Read this book -- please! -- to learn all the historical facts that the "mainstream media" has either blocked or buried. The fact that each chapter of the book was first published in The Nation -- long one of the flagship publications of the left -- and the fact that Cohen considered himself a liberal all his life, only make his writings that much more compelling, and a rebuke to those who persist in their puerile dismissal of anyone who stands for truth, peace, and sanity as a "Trumper."
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