Given the ever closer alliance between Russia and China, founders of the BRICS, which also includes Brazil, India and South Africa (and probably soon to include Turkey if Erdogan is to be believed ((https://www.dailysabah.com/economy/2018/07/26/south-africa-summit-to-strengthen-turkeys-ties-with-brics-countries ), the shrill tone of American policy-makers and its media have reached fever pitch.
Stephen Cohen's step by step recapitulation of the US's 'phoney war' with Russia is an indispensable read for anyone seeking to put the current scary situation in perspective, starting with NATO's steady advance from East Germany to Russia's Western borders, in defiance of documented promises to Gorbatchev and later, Yeltsin, that this would never happen (see the National Archives website). I hope Cohen's next project will be to trace the specific influence of the 1992 Security Doctrine, which remains the Neo-Conservative Bible, on an American foreign policy that stands in contrast to Pastor Winthrop's hopes for the 'shining city upon a hill'
It's not because Russia is 'a rogue state' seeking to recreate a former empire that the US is preparing for war, but to prevent it from ever challenging us as world hegemon (commonly referred to as 'the indispensable nation'). Hillary Clinton's vociferous commitment to that policy justifies Russia's (non-violent!) interference in the 2016 election: Any responsible leader would want to make sure that she never came to power, even if it meant giving Americans their worst president in history.
Stephen Cohen's War with Russia? should be required reading for progressives, whose support for good causes could come to naught in the absence of decisive anti-war and especially, anti-nuclear campaigns. Washington's armchair strategists claim that the US could survive a nuclear war. The fact is that it is Russia, with its eleven time zones and melting Arctic Ice, that would have a greater chance of 'survival', and the media reaches its nadir when it fails to point that out.
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