American Committee for US-Russia Accord

The Ukrainian government has issued a new request for an Action Plan leading to NATO membership, even as the situation on the ground between Ukrainian and Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine has deteriorated badly. This panel featured Amb. Jack Matlock, former UK Amb. Sir Rodric Quentin Braithwaite, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. (ret.) Karen Kwiatkowski and was moderated by ACURA Board Member and Quincy Sr. Fellow Anatol Lieven.

Sean McMeekin’s contention that the second World War was more Stalin’s war than Hitler’s has a long and dubious pedigree reaching back to the war-revolution conspiracy theory of the interwar years. According to this myth, Stalin plotted to precipitate a new world war in order to foment global revolution.

The bottom-line case for adopting no-first-use policies or their sole-purpose functional equivalents is not that they will, by themselves, bring an end to the terrible existential risk to life on this planet that will continue so long as any nuclear weapons remain. It is that they are an extremely important contributor to immediate nuclear risk reduction, to the necessary ongoing progress of delegitimising nuclear weapons in policymakers’ thinking, and to maintaining a global commitment to non-proliferation.

The recent decision by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to suspend consular activities other than issuing immigration visas is deeply disappointing and concerning.

A new Alliance of Democracies Poll conducted around the world with 50,000 people in 53 countries earlier this year finds that“Nearly half (44%) of respondents in the 53 countries surveyed are concerned that the US threatens democracy in their country; fear of Chinese influence is 38%, and fear of Russian influence is lowest at 28%.”

In this piece, the Quincy Institute’s Joe Cirincione observes the suffocating consensus on display at a recent Senate hearing on nuclear weapons. We would add that there are groups in DC who oppose the bipartisan foreign policy orthodox – groups like ours, Quincy, the Committee for the Republic, Win Without War, Just Foreign Policy, WAND, Ploughshares, Center for International Policy and The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which Congress should call upon at such hearings, but rarely – if ever – does. What results are more in the way of “show hearings” than substantive policy discussions.

Part II of a documentary film by Rosemarie Reed examining Russia in the chaotic 1990s through interviews between Russian scholar Stephen F. Cohen and oppositionists Aleksandr Lebed, Aleksandr Rutskoi, Grigory Yavlinsky, and Gennady Zyuganov. From 22 November 1995.

Amid the clamour about the return of great power politics and the crisis of international order, there has been much talk about the establishment of some sort of new concert of powers. The idea is attractive for at least three reasons.