You have it backwards. The demonization of Russia started in 2007 after Putin's speech at the Munich Security Conference when Putin complained about "almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations" and offered Bush at the time an alternative to building missile bases in Poland (access to a radar base maintained by Russia on the Caspian Sea), which if you'll remember were said by the Bush administration to be there to intercept missile from Iran. US - Russian relations deteriorated since, because from the Russian point of view, the US was not honoring their own post-Cold War commitments since the 90s, and they saw no reason to continue playing along. The US press started really spreading the "Putin is Hitler" mantra in the buildup to the US-backed coup on Ukraine in 2014. This song started getting heavy rotation since the 2016 election. Suddenly there were "Russia! Russia!" stories all over mainstream media where only moments before all focus was on Islamist terrorism. It's the same narrative: "Crazy World Leader won't do as he's told. Let's support regime change to protect our sacred democracy! And if you don't cheer it on, you're obviously a traitor!" From manufactured stories about incubator babies in Kuwait, to yellow cake, to the assassination of Gadafi, your tax dollars pay for collusion between the CIA and the plutocratic press. It's not just Putin -- now the same people that brought you two decades of endless war financed by loans from China are now working on regime change stories on Iran. Suddenly the American press is really concerned about Iranian women who are dancing in public and want to take their veils off. If you support American hegemony from the barrel of a gun, that's your business, but understand it makes you absolutely no different than Dick Cheney or the rest of the neo-cons that saw the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as an opportunity to take out every world leader that doesn't agree to play along with it. The strange rehabilitation of the most warmongering neo-cons by the "left" and the plutocratic press along with the "Suddenly We've Always Been at War With Russia and If You Question It You Are A Traitorous Misogynist, Racist Trump Supporter, and If You Don't Laugh At These Puerile, Homophobic Illustrations of Trump and Putin, You are Literally Hitler" narrative is the most bizarre mob behavior I've ever seen in my life.
I am willing to have better relations with Russia. But Russia did invade Ukraine. Putin does murder members of the press and political opponents. Putin did attack the United States elections and democratic process. Putin doing that and continuing to do that isn't acceptable and until that stops at the least there shouldn't be any concessions to Russia. It doesn't have to be at the barrel of a gun. I'm not in favor of military action, but I am in favor of stepping up the pressure with sanctions and doing what is necessary to protect our democracy.
This is pretty much every Likud politician since 1993 whenever there is even talk of Israel leaders having a dialogue with the Palestinian Authority.
Only after the US supported an overthrow of the government there. How would you feel if Russia or China overthrew the government of a neighboring country and discussed putting missiles there? Unless you have the position that no one should be murdering anyone, anywhere, you are arguing for hegemony by right of superior firepower. You are arguing that it is ok for the United States to do it, but that it is a grave evil if others do it. If you support the meddling into the internal affairs of other countries with deception and force, you can expect the same to be done to you. The best way to stop that is to formally agree to stop ****ing doing it and honor the agreement. So your proposal for negotiations is to refuse to address any of Russia's insecurities or grievances? Concessions are how trust is built, and how tensions get de-escalated. That's how diplomacy works. Anything else is threatening the other party with force if they don't concede to your demands. "Stepping up the pressure with sanctions and doing what is necessary to protect our democracy" is Benjamin Netanyahu 101. Again, if that's what you believe, that's your business, but if you insist the US maintain an anachronistic, brittle, and bellicose Cold War-era game theory approach to world affairs, you should accept what the consequences will be.
I don't understand what it is you are trying to communicate, other than to signal that you don't like Trump, which has little to do with anything I said.
American meanies forced them into Crimea, into Brexit campaign and into the DNC, forced the deaths of journalists and political opponents. Your view is an important one but, even as devil's advocate, a little too oblivious to who the devil has shown himself to be.
I have no romantic or naive notions about world leaders that don't subscribe to subservience to a unipolar world -- only that their interests are no more or less legitimate than anyone else's, especially when forced with threats of violence. I have no more interest in serenading foreign despots any more than I do my own. It is a luxury to think that anyone in this world with any power or influence isn't self-interested. If there is anything that counts as virtue, it is to be humanistic enough to recognize the grievances of others, especially the historical grievances of other tribes, and even more so to not allow oneself to be swayed by the historical grievances of one's own tribe to create new grievances. It is that weakness in the human character to feel compelled to appease one's own tribe's misplaced thirst for justice that is the source of the majority of the world's misery. History is littered with more leaders like this than all the world's diseases. If there is anything truly exceptional about the United States, it is that some of its founders understood that and tried to form a government based on Enlightenment principles of reason, restraint, and universal human values rather than ethnic or religious or tribal identity. And yet, here we are, governed by two parties that from the point of view of outsiders, are best differentiated by whether they harbor irrational hatred towards Mexicans or Russians, and are most alike in having complete amnesia of more than a century of interference in both countries, sometimes, in both cases, with military force.
Summitgate and the Campaign vs. ‘Peace’ Not surprisingly, Trump’s meetings with NATO and Putin are being portrayed as ominous events by Russiagaters. By Stephen F. Cohen JULY 11, 2018 Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (You can find previous installments, now in their fifth year, at TheNation.com.) As Cohen pointed out in previous discussions, US-Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) summits are a long tradition going back to FDR’s wartime meeting with Stalin in Yalta in 1943. Every American president since FDR met with a Kremlin leader in a summit-style format at least once, several doing so multiple times. The purpose was always to resolve conflicts and enhance cooperation in relations between the two countries. Some summits succeeded, some did not, but all were thought to be an essential aspect of White House-Kremlin relations. As a rule, American presidents have departed for summits with bipartisan support and well-wishes. Trump’s upcoming meeting with Russian President Putin, in Helsinki on July 16, is profoundly different in two respects. US-Russian relations have rarely, if ever, been more dangerous. And never before has a president’s departure—in Trump’s case, first for a NATO summit and then the one with Putin—been accompanied by allegations that he is disloyal to the United States and thus cannot be trusted, defamations once issued only by extremist fringe elements in American politics. Now, however, we are told this daily by mainstream publications, broadcasts, and “think tanks.” According to a representative of the Clintons’ Center for American Progress, “Trump is going to sell out America and its allies.” The New York Times and The Washington Post also feature “experts”—they are chosen accordingly—who “worry” and “fear”that Trump and Putin “will get along.” The Times of London, a bastion of Russophobic Cold War advocacy, captures the mainstream perspective in a single headline: “Fears Grow Over Prospect of Trump ‘Peace Deal’ with Putin.” An anti-“peace” Washington establishment is, of course, what still-unproven Russiagate allegations have wrought, as summed up by a New York magazine writer who advises us that the Trump-Putin summit may well be “less a negotiation between two heads of state than a meeting between a Russian-intelligence asset and his handler.” The charge is hardly original, having been made for months at MSNBC by the questionably credentialed “intelligence expert” Malcolm Nance and the, it seems, selectively informed Rachel Maddow, among many other “experts.” Considering today’s perilous geopolitical situation, it is hard not to conclude that much of the American political establishment, particularly the Democratic Party, would prefer trying to impeach Trump to averting war with Russia, the other nuclear superpower. For this too, there is no precedent in American history. Not surprisingly, Trump’s dreaded visit to the NATO summit has only inflated the uncritical cult of that organization, which has been in search of a purpose and ever more funding since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. The New York Times declares that NATO is “the core of an American-led liberal world order,” an assertion that might startle many of the non-military institutions involved and even some liberals. No less puzzling is the ritualistic characterization of NATO as “the greatest military alliance in history.” It has never—thankfully—gone to war as an alliance, only a few “willing” member (and would-be member) states under US leadership. Even then, what counts as “great victories”? The police action in the Balkans in the 1990s? The disasters in the aftermath of Iraq and Libya? The longest, still-ongoing American war in history, in Afghanistan? NATO’s only real mission since the 1990s has been expanding to Russia’s borders, and that has resulted in less, not more, security for all concerned, as is evident today. The only “Russian threat” since the end of the Soviet Union is one provoked by the US-led NATO itself, from Georgia and Ukraine to the Baltic states. And only NATO’s vast corporate bureaucracy, its some 4,000 employees housed in its new $1.2 billion headquarters in Brussels, and US and other weapons manufacturers who gain from each new member state, have profited. But none of this can be discussed in the mainstream, because Trump uttered a few words questioning NATO’s role and funding, even though the subject has been on the agenda of several think tanks since the 1990s. Also not surprisingly, and unlike in the past, mainstream media have found little place for serious discussion of today’s dangerous conflicts between Washington and Moscow: regarding nuclear-weapons-imitation treaties, cyber-warfare, Syria, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, the Black Sea region, even Afghanistan. It’s easy to imagine how Trump and Putin could agree on conflict-reduction and cooperation in all of these realms. But considering the traducing by the Post, Times, and Maddow of a group of senators who visited Moscow around July 4, it’s much harder to see how the defamed Trump could implement such “peace deals.” (There is a long history of sabotaging or attempting to sabotage summits and other détente-like initiatives. Indeed, a few such attempts have been evident in recent months and more may lie ahead.) Nor is the unreasonably demonized Putin without constraints at home, though none like those that may cripple Trump. The Kremlin’s long-postponed decision to raise the pension age for Russian men and women has caused his popular ratings, though still high, to drop some 8 to 10 percent in recent weeks. More significantly, segments of the Russian military-security establishment do not trust Putin’s admitted “illusions” about negotiating with Washington in the past. And like their American counterparts, they do not trust Trump, whom they too view as unreliable, if not capricious. These Russian “hard-liners” have made their concerns known publicly, and Putin must take them into account. As has been a function of summits over the decades, he is seeking in Trump a reliable national-security partner. Given the constraints on Trump and his proclivities, Putin too is taking a risk, and he knows it. Even if nothing more specific is achieved, everyone who cares about American and international security should hope that the Trump-Putin summit results at least in a restoration of the diplomatic process, the longstanding “contacts,” between Washington and Moscow that have been greatly diminished, if not destroyed, by the new Cold War and by Russiagate allegations. Cold War without diplomacy is a recipe for actual war. We should also hope that the Democratic Party’s reaction to the summit, in its pursuit of Trump, does not make it the party of unrelenting Cold War, as it may be already becoming. Stephen F. Cohen Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University and a contributing editor of The Nation.
Out of curiosity, what makes you think that Mr Trump is harbinger of peace? Which of his personal qualities lend him the tools to be a great diplomat? Also, what would be your preferred response to 9/11 attacks - perpetrated by people who had qualms with our country over our military's involvement into their own tribes' affairs? Can you be a little more succinct in your point while at it? You use a lot of words but few facts/references that address arguments against your point of view. Which is what propaganda tend to sound like.
"the unreasonably demonized Putin" What a bizarre comment, with all due respect. The man hasn't been "demonized" enough, certainly not by this White House.
The election ended in early November. He was president for another two and half months. What Obama did or didn’t do has merit: all of this happened while he was president.
He ordered a full review of the hacking during that has few months. Clearly, prior to the full review, he didn't have a complete picture. And even after the full review, we have a better picture but not a complete one. And we still do not have a complete one. More data with time give you more data to work with. If Obama is still president, he wouldn't for example be doing this:
I don't recall saying that -- can you find where I did? I don't recall calling him a great diplomat either. My response wouldn't be a psy-op to convince the world Iraq was responsible in a pretense to regime change . It also probably wouldn't involve squandering world support with public scandals of torture or extrajudicial trials, or supporting Saudi Arabia in a Shiite-Sunni proxy war with a blockade on Yemen, or the Patriot Act and warrantless surveillance of American citizens, or creating a new department and calling it something dystopian like "Homeland Security." Ok. 1. War is one of the most unpleasant things a person can experience. 2. People that start wars have to convince the people that fight in them or pay for them that things will be worse if they don't support it. 3. That is usually accomplished by scaring the **** out of people, using simplistic black and white morality, and lying to them. 4. Wars always involve civilian deaths and the media loves dead babies. Dead babies get clicks you can't believe. While dead babies are great at selling wars to people that have never experienced one, you rarely see the dead babies your country kills on your own nation's TV. It's always the other guy that kills the babies. 5. War has far-reaching unintended consequences unless it's in the defense of one's own home from invaders. 6. Peace is usually preferable and better for the economy unless you are heavily invested in the defense industry, like the six US corporations that own almost all commercial media since the Telecommunications Act of 1996. 7. And if you are invested in weapons, you need to find someone to use them against to get return on investment. 8. Which is why you almost never see anyone questioning war on US corporate media anymore, and guests or pundits who advocate anti-war opinions or talk about things the US did to soon-to-be-invaded nations in recent history in an effort to put things into perspective (like overthrowing democratically elected governments) are never invited back.
Outside the Anglo-American bubble, Putin isn't constantly vilified as a Bond villain and scapegoat for all the world's problems. For journalists who live outside of that bubble, it's very strange interacting with their anglophone colleagues in covering world events who tend to make every story about Trump and Russia.
You attempt to make light of his actions, even tossing in a "Bond" reference for some bizarre reason, while Putin murders, or jails, or disqualifies his opponents, making a sham of Russia's "elections," invades his neighbors, attacks our democracy through the GRU, as well as using the same methods in attacking the democratic countries that are our allies and friends. It is you who appears to exist in a bubble, one of your own design, where excusing Putin's outrageous and dangerous behavior is the order of the day. Enjoy yourself, but I'm not buying what you're selling. With all due respect.
