“This
new Cold War [is] more dangerous than the preceding Cold War,”
professor Stephen Cohen tells Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert
Scheer in the latest installment of “Scheer Intelligence.”
Cohen, a
professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New
York University, has a new book out that addresses the possibility of
a U.S.-Russia armed conflict in the near future.
Part of
the current rejection of the Kremlin that has brought the two nations
to this dangerous brink, according to Cohen, is rooted in the U.S.
political elites’ desire to maintain their ability to determine the
world order. When Vladimir Putin was first elected, the professor
explains, it became immediately obvious that he wanted Russia to take
part in shaping “how the world is structured.”
“Since
then, [there’s a] sense that America doesn’t have a free hand any
longer … but I don’t think our establishment has ever gotten used
to this reality,” says Cohen. “And a lot of the
catastrophes we see, including the wars, is a kind of Don Quixote
tilting at these windmills with war, because the world’s not
conforming to what Washington thinks it ought to be. Nor will it
ever, any longer.”
Joining
the two is Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, to
discuss the neo-McCarthyism that has been unleashed by Russiagate and
what the journalist calls “Trump derangement syndrome”
that leads liberals to buy into hysteria surrounding Russia so long
as it serves an anti-Trump agenda. While Vanden Heuvel argues that
the American left is making significant progress on domestic issues,
even progressive leaders such as Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth
Warren “have to some extent bought into this new Cold War.”
Highlighting
the dangers of the current anti-Kremlin hysteria, the journalist
posits that in the upcoming general election, however, “you’re
going to see people moving ideas forward on the foreign policy front
that will not be Trumpian, but will be first principle of restraint,
realism, anti-intervention, not policing the world and understanding
that endless war is a disaster.”
Listen
to Cohen, Vanden Heuvel and Scheer discuss in depth both the
dangerous as well as hopeful paths the U.S. is headed down as it
grapples with its domestic and foreign policy under the shadow of a
new Cold War, and “new [progressive] insurgencies”
continue to make headway despite the American establishment’s firm
grip on power and a wave of neo-McCarthyism that threatens to censor
dissent:
Full
transcript:
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