Archived GAC Evening Events

U.S. Department of State Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Fact Sheet (December 20, 2016)

Today’s American-Russian confrontation is developing in unprecedented ways—and the US political-media establishment seems not to care. 'Nation' Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at https://www.thenation.com/authors/stephen-f-cohen/

The author discusses Joe Biden's "A Strategic Vision: Mapping a Future for US-Russian Relations" in the context of current events. Also available at https://www.thefreelibrary.com/US-Russian+relations+in+a+post-cold+war+world.-a0411013836

Twenty-five years have passed since the Berlin Wall was torn down. NATO identifies Russia as the principal security threat to the West, alongside the Islamic State and Ebola, and prepares to deploy a rapid response force close to Russian borders to deter possible aggression from the East, while the EU and the US tighten the noose of economic sanctions on Russia. Moscow is engaged in nuclear saber-rattling to remind the West of the possible costs of military action against Russia, while making efforts to form a grand anti-US alliance with China. And the parties to a new Cold War are clinched in an intense ideological fight, though this time it centers not on communism versus capitalism, but rather democracy versus autocracy and human rights versus traditional values...

This article examines the openly adversarial neoconservative foundation under George Bush to the supposedly more ‘engaged’diplomatic interaction under Barack Obama. What will be exposed is a fairly uninspired and non-innovative American policy that not only fails to consider Russian initiatives from Russia’s own national security perspectives, but aims to contain it within a continued Cold War box that not only sours opportunities for collaboration but guarantees the absence of partnership in areas of global security. This piece examines the consequences of imagining Russia only as nemesis.

This paper argues that the "New Cold War" is a symbolic concept used to strengthen Russia's great power narrative. Using constructivists' arguments of the international relations theory, we will examine this idea and will observe how this social construct helps Russia to strengthen its great power and offers a new interpretation to the international environment.

Hillary Clinton's comparison of President Putin to Adolf Hitler in a speech in California in March is the most striking example of this willingness to adopt the most extreme possible language, even by senior figures in government. Diplomats and media follow the same course, squawking about a "New Cold War" and seeking the most alarmist possible interpretation of every Russian action.

True, relations between Russia and the West have become severely strained, and the sources of that tension—principally the catastrophic situation in Ukraine—may not change any time soon. But we believe the “New Cold War” narrative misreads both Russia and the West, especially when it comes to the generation that has fully come of age after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the original Cold War.