... to handle world affairs. In essence, Democrats always have to defend against the accusation of being foreign policy weaklings. This accusation is never leveled against... ... security. It was a major part of the lead-up to the 2004 election, when some analysts warned, ‘if Democrats are to have any hope of returning to power in 2004, or even... ... military, foreign policy, and security establishment that chronically view Russia with Cold War attitudes, regardless of evidence.[6] • During the Crimea crisis in 2014...
... supports the Russian side: it is more accurate to describe Putin’s hostility toward America as one far more deeply rooted in frustration. But instead, America characterizes... ... This perfectly matches what Stephen Cohen astutely called several years back as ‘Cold War Triumphalism.’ In basic terms, since Russia lost the Cold War it was... ... state. In reality no such explicit initiatives can be found backing up such radical accusations. More calm analyses find Russia simply not accepting being told what to do...
... initially placed on the so-called Obama ‘reset’ in American relations with Russia in 2008, the reality is that enthusiasm quickly faded and subsequently placed the Democratic Party as squarely pessimistic and adversarial in its attitude toward Russia as the Republicans. Indeed, in today’s environment of divided government having a problem with Russia seems to be one of the few happy consensus points in Washington. The only problem, of course, is how that consensus is built more upon ...
Anyone who has worked through post-mortems on the Iraq war is familiar with the pitfalls associated with ‘groupthink’ and preconceptions. Indeed, it is perhaps one of the ... ...
Experts, whether academic or practitioner, need to move beyond ‘factor wars’ designed to show that one favorite causal factor is more important than another, concentrating instead on the combined and interactive effects of multiple factors....
... maneuvers against Ukraine and demanding that Russia stop inviting further sanctions and pressure against itself, as British Prime Minister David Cameron emphasized at the summit. All of this is well and good, of course, part of the pomp and circumstance of international organizations that believe more strongly in microphones than M-16s, but it does seem to beg the question from either impartial or disinterested observers: what reality does this address and what end is really trying to be achieved?
To ...
... border.’ Of course, for those of us who have followed this conflict for the past half year, we have had heard this accusation at least half a dozen times. Sometimes there has been evidence to partially support the claim. Sometimes the claim has ... ... show pro-Russian rebel forces weakening, the concern in the West is that they will try to hunker down for ‘extended urban warfare.’ The irony of course is that the force in Eastern Ukraine so far responsible for hitting civilian buildings, incurring ...
... do this in the modern era is by killing people. And unfortunately, these casualties cannot be universally declared as enemy combatants or unlawful separatists, despite authorities in Kyiv wishing to push that very scenario to their own people and outward to the rest of us in the West. There have been many civilian casualties in eastern Ukraine over the past two months. These people simply had the unfortunate circumstance of being born and living in eastern Ukraine while having no connection whatsoever ...
