The Quiet Americans
Can Washington’s “Russia hands” help explain why the post-Cold War relationship has gone off the rails? By KEITH GESSEN The strangest Russian political scandal so far this year — a year that hasn’t lacked for them — revolves around a Belarusian escort named Anastasia Vashukevich, who goes by the name Nastya Rybka. Rybka, whose pseudonym […]
US and Russian Military Leaders Are Meeting Again, Breaking a Long and Dangerous Drought
Over three years had passed without direct senior-level contact between the world’s preeminent nuclear powers. The military leaders of the world’s most lethal nuclear-tipped states met in February, the first such meeting in three years. The two generals got together again earlier this month, once more in relative obscurity that belied their meetings’ tremendous importance. […]
New York Times Quote
Brig. Gen. Peter Zwack, a retired Army officer who was the American military attaché in Moscow at the time of the visit, said Mr. Flynn was not blind to the pitfalls of forging closer ties to Russia. He saw areas of mutual interest, as did many others in the United States at the time, but […]
Charting a Course: Strategic Choices for a New Administration
Chapter 11 | Russia By Peter B. Zwack, From Charting a Course / Published Dec. 12, 2016 U.S. and Western relations with Russia continue to deteriorate as Russia increasingly reasserts itself on the global stage. Driven by a worldview based on existential threats—real, perceived, and contrived—Russia, as a vast 11–time zone Eurasian nation with major demographic […]
Russia Seen Moving New Missiles To Eastern Europe
By Geoff Brumfield, NPR In what could mark an escalation of tensions with the West, commercial satellite images suggest that Russia is moving a new generation of nuclear-capable missiles into Eastern Europe. Russia appears to be preparing to permanently base its Iskander missile system in Kaliningrad, a sliver of territory it controls along the Baltic coast between Lithuania and […]
Breaking Down US-Russian Distrust With Time, Talk, and Meals
A recent session of the long-running Dartmouth Conference shows how non-governmental dialogue can ease tense relations. I was a recent participant in the Dartmouth Conference, one of the few remaining Track 2 — that is, non-governmental — dialogues between the U.S. and Russia. Its results may be especially interesting in the wake of the recent victory of President-elect […]
A Bright Spot in U.S.-Russian Relations
With the Trump administration soon entering office, it is important to highlight increasingly rare U.S.-Russian non governmental engagements. I recently participated in the Carnegie Endowment-supported “Task Force on Regional Conflicts.” The topic was Syria, the Middle East and Afghanistan. Its goal was to develop several joint recommendations to forward to each government for consideration. Delegations […]
A Reawakening Nuclear Nightmare
When lecturing, I often ask students and young officers if they have seen the movie “Dr. Strangelove.” About a third typically raise their hands. I then ask them what is the essence of good satire, and someone will eventually offer, “The truth?” As crazy as Stanley Kubrick’s atomic-age cautionary tale was, that was the tension-edged […]
In Aleppo, Echoes of Guernica and Global Disorder
Nearly 80 years ago, a shattered town rang a death knell for international order. We must not let it happen again. In 1937, the Third Reich’s expeditionary Condor Legion obliterated the Spanish town of Guernica. This cynical proxy bombing, immortalized in Picasso’s iconic painting, was an early death knell of the League of Nations, and […]
General: The next president must work on US-Russia ties
Missing Link http://themercury.com/articles/general-next-president-must-work-on-us-russia-ties Publication Date: Friday, October 7, 2016 – 20:15