Would Ukraine become a nuclear-armed state? Its a thing that can be smuggled into NATO because its desire or non-desire to be in NATO is automatically less important than how that smuggling would make Russia feel. Even after the years of escalating conflict between Kiev and Moscow since 2014, many Russians and Ukrainians still think of themselves in familial ways. After the end of the Cold War, NATOs raison dtre no longer existed, but instead of disbanding, its mission shifted to democracy promotion. The American ambassador to Ukraine, Victoria Nuland was famously caught on tape opining whom she believed should and should not be part of the new Ukrainian government, and later vulgarly dismissed the concerns of Angela Merkel about the inappropriateness of her comments. Ukraine Seeks Arrest of Ousted President Following Deadly Street Protests | Democracy Now! This whole thing with Crimea and Donetsk, you see, is all about the West and Russia. His most recent book, "Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From. "There are experts, and I put myself in this group, that understand why Putin did this and what his goals are, but I think most of those people would also not justify them, Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies at Georgetown University, told The Huffington Post last year. The choice that we faced in Ukraine and I'm using the past tense there intentionally was whether Russia exercised a veto over NATO involvement in Ukraine on the negotiating table or on the battlefield, said George Beebe, a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA and special adviser on Russia to former Vice President Dick Cheney. His most recent book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the. So what it did was gamble. Instead, if I said there are two sides to every story and Russia cant be 100 percent to blame for this crisis, the answer would be: Putin is Hitler, and Cohen is a Putin apologist.. Ever since, both Democrats and Republicans have insisted that Ukraine is a vital US national interest. Those of us who opposed that folly warned it would lead to dangerous conflicts with Moscow, conceivably even war. Please check your inbox to confirm. I think I and the others who speak out like me are the patriots of American national security. Sponsor the work of leading economists and academics as they advance the study of the economic principles that underwrite human prosperity and progress via AIER.org. Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian Studies at New York University and of politics at Princeton University joins Hari Sreenivasan for more. Subscribe to Here's the Deal, our politics newsletter. Stephen Cohen, Preeminent Scholar, Now Seen As Putin Apologist, If I said there are two sides to every story and Russia cant be 100 percent to blame for this crisis, the answer would be: Putin is Hitler, and Cohen is a Putin apologist.. The U.S. refused to reconsider Ukraine's NATO status as Putin threatened war. PBS NewsHour. Because American national security is so fundamentally involved, I think I and the others who speak out like me are the patriots of American national security, and those who slur us and do not engage the issue seriously are not being patriots of American national security, he told RFE/RL. Of particular concern to the Russians have been NATOs operations outside of NATO countries. Heres Why. His weekly conversations with the host of The John Batchelor Show, now in their seventh year, are available at www.thenation.com. He has led investigations into corruption, cronyism, and disinformation campaigns in Russia and Central Asia, as well as on poisoning attacks against Kremlin opponents and assassinations of Iranian exiles in the West. 250 Division Street | PO Box 1000Great Barrington, MA 01230-1000, Press and other media outlets contact888-528-1216[emailprotected]. Russia read this as a sign that Kyiv was throwing its lot in with the U.S. and the prospect of an agreement ensuring autonomy for the separatist-held Donbas region, crucial to Russias plan to thwart Ukraines NATO entry, might be dead. Cohen says that he watches the network, which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has called a propaganda bullhorn for the Kremlin, in order to get the Russian perspective on world events. These assurances were not honored, and NATO has expanded eastward over the years to include many more countries, all the way up to Russias borders. Still, all thoughtful members of that organization are hesitant to bring a member into the alliance while it is entangled in an intractable conflict with Russia. American rhetoric has been so intense about the imminence of a Russian invasion of Ukraine that the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has called for President Biden to tone down his rhetoric. Stephen F. Cohen June 30, 2014 Members of the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party rally in Kiev (ReutersMaxim Zmeyev) For weeks, the US-backed regime in Kiev has been committing atrocities against its own citizens in southeastern Ukraine, regions heavily populated by Russian-speaking Ukrainians and ethnic Russians. If there's a. NATO was originally formed as a military and political alliance between the U.S., Canada and several Western European nations in 1949. But some scholars questioned any claims of censorship. Even respected Russia specialists who, like Cohen, advocate for a U.S.-Russian relationship based on realism say Cohen is essentially defending the Kremlins agenda in the West. We haven't recognized it as yet, but we're acting as if it is legitimate. For more about that, we are joined now by Stephen Cohen. ); Future historians will note that in April 2014, nearly a quarter-century after the end of the Soviet Union, the White House declared a new Cold War on Russia, he writes. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where copyright is otherwise reserved. The uncertainty of Russias eventual path led many to seek strategic gains where they might. Historically and even today, Russia has much in common with Ukrainethe United States, almost nothing. stephen cohen: That's a terrific question, after all, as much of the Ukrainian army, such as it is, 130,000 troops, is ethnically Russian. window.mc4wp = window.mc4wp || { "In recent decades, the open door has instead come to entail dangling the possibility of membership to other states, never foreclosing that possibility, and sometimes speaking as though states have a right to join NATO if they so choose (when in fact they have a right merely to ask to join)," he wrote. Zero. The scholar of Russian history and politics Stephen Cohen, who has died aged 81 of lung cancer, challenged the orthodox western analysis of the Soviet . He is even worse on the actual conflict itself. On a recent Friday evening, the prominent Russia historian Stephen Cohen took the mic before an audience of 3,000 in Toronto to debate Western policy toward Russia in light of the Ukraine conflict . You may have heard of it, its been in the news a bunch recently, and its a country of 46 million people, each of whom thinks and wants and may even want some say in this. } A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book, War With Russia? It doesnt matter to Cohen that both issues were matters of great debate inside that insignificant detail named Ukraine, and that the fact of their potential smuggling into this or that union might be something to be decided inside Ukraine, a sovereign and independent country trying in vain to regain its own territory captured by masked Russian gunmen. As tension between the United States and Russia escalates, and Secretary of State John Kerry announced plans to visit Kiev on Tuesday, analysts are looking to history for clues for what may happen next. Ms. vanden Heuvels Kat Charitable Foundation had previously funded a dissertation prize named jointly for Mr. Cohen and his mentor, the eminent political scientist Robert C. Tucker, who died in 2010. But he said that proceeding would have risked serious splits within the group. He holds the political cards because a very large portion of Ukraine supports Putin, not the West. Future historians will certainly find some merit in Moscows arguments, and wonder why they are being widely debated in, for example, Germany, but not in America, writes Cohen. Russia views Ukraine, a large country to which it has long-running cultural and historical ties, as a particularly critical buffer state for protecting its capital. But whats more cruel is that Ukrainians might be paying with their lives for the United States reckless flirtation with Ukraine as a future NATO member without ever committing to its defense. Per Newsweek, Cohen and his younger brother Bryan, who is also married to a Ukrainian, were directors of the International Ethanol of Ukraine, and also have their names on two financial companies based in the country incorporated in 1998.. So can the weird juxtaposition of the super-lefty Cohen defending a revanchist, nationalist, imperialist, conservative Putin who has established an oligarchy in Russia. The BBC's Paul Wood also reported that Cohen was paid via intermediaries acting on presidentPoroshenko's behalf. Before joining academia, Dr. Myers worked in economic development, publishing, state government, and educational and national security consulting. Shifting some 150,000 troops along Ukraines border for weeks was a real cost, and it placed pressure on him to not back down without extracting a major concession and risk losing face in front of Russias political elite. From. Stephen Cohen Is Wrong on Russia Ukraine America | The New Republic Julia Ioffe / May 1, 2014 Putin's American Toady at 'The Nation' Gets Even Toadier Youtube/Democracy Now! Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has announced a series of steps to reinforce its presence in eastern Europe. I think we now have seen the descent of a new Cold War divide this time not in Berlin but on Russia's borders. In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohenthe widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russiagives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump's election and today's . 1.2K 175K views 9 years ago CNN's Christiane Amanpour and New York University Professor Stephen Cohen's discussion on Ukraine and Russia in 2014, including the Kremlin's position on alleged. NATO is a defensive organization; I don't think it had any plans on Russia, Thomas Graham, a former special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff from 2004 to 2007, said regarding NATOs expansion of territory and widening scope of operations. In an interview recorded one year before his death, Stephen F. Cohen discusses local elections and protests in Russia; opposition leader Alexei Navalny; as well as the state of Russia's post-Soviet democratization and how . We don't know whether they would follow Kiev's orders. Now, he has a choice of what he will do next, but that will depend on us, I think. "The difference is what Steve Cohen does is not only understand him, but he says Putin is right.". What has happened is really unfortunate.. Anyone concerned about the immediate well-being of the people of Ukraine would have put a brake on the political transformation initiated by the Euromaidan movement. But the abundance of evidence that NATO was a sustained source of anxiety for Moscow raises the question of whether the United States strategic posture was not just imprudent but negligent. This Is Not the End of the Supreme Courts War on Labor. Yoshiko M. Herrera, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said while she would have voted to support the gift, submitting it to board review was part of a necessary democratic process. Putin's mission as he sees it, and as the Russian political elite sees it, is to restore Russian stability, greatness at home and that includes to secure Russia's traditiona, historical security zones around Russia. Cohen, author of the groundbreaking and definitive biography of Bolshevik revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin, retains many admirers in the academic world, even among those who say he has distorted the events in Ukraine. Cohen, the anti-Americanist, somehow becomes the perverse inverse of an American patriot, ascribing far too much agency to the very power he despises, giving it all kinds of powers it doesnt actually have, like the ability to solve this thing. There are also always unprovable and unfalsifiable explanations for his behavior including, but not limited to, a concern with securing his legacy, paranoia and a lack of access to accurate information due to his accumulation of power within the Kremlin. Whether or not opening up on the question of Ukraines NATO status or neutrality in some way wouldve been enough to stop Putin from pursuing war is unknowable, every expert I spoke to stressed. Cohen writes: Both sides in the confrontation, the West and Russia, have legitimate grievances. Cohen says he tries to avoid segments where they have me with people whom I consider to be a little batty., I dont want to be considered batty, Cohen told RFE/RL. Recognizing this possibility does not excuse Moscows actions, which are heinous. It will be a civil war and ancient hatreds tombstones will be kicked over as they say and all sorts of ancient hatreds will roam the land for years and years. I would say it is. All Rights Reserved. NATOs expansion was hugely controversial in policy circles in the 1990s. placementName: "thenation_right_rail", First and foremost, that is Ukraine. Does proud, resurgent Russia embody any kind of inherent traitsor people, or actors, or political, historical, processesthat arent simply the anti-mirror to the Wests? Today, nobody fired a shot and if nobody fires a shot there is a way out. It may sound cruel to suggest that Ukraine could be barred, either temporarily or permanently, from entering a military alliance it wants to be in. Second, the founding of the modern state of Ukraine posed some difficult security problems for Ukraine and Russia. Learn more about Friends of the NewsHour. }); Which is also to say that Ukraine is not a vital US national interest, as most leaders of both parties, Republican and Democrat alike, and much of the US media now declare. He's something fundamentally different. That it was imposed on the West by Putins aggression, and this because of his desire to re-create as much of the old Soviet empire as he can or merely to maintain Putins domestic rating. Does it mean there is nothing credible enough to discuss in Moscows side of the story? : From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate Paperback - February 1, 2019 by Stephen F. Cohen (Author) 4.5 286 ratings See all formats and editions Kindle $13.99 Read with Our Free App Audiobook $0.00 Free with your Audible trial Paperback $9.98 13 Used from $4.58 Audio CD US NATO Ukraine Russia: The Untold Story Pt1: Stephen Cohen: Understanding the Situation in Ukraine - YouTube Stephen F Cohen: Understanding the Situation in #Ukraine Crimea Donbass. } forms: { But toward the end of his debate with two strident Putin critics -- former world chess champion Garry Kasparov and journalist Anne Applebaum -- Cohen delivered a preemptive aside tailored for those who dismiss him as a dupe for the Russian leader. In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohenthe widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russiagives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump's election and today's . The takeaway of this very quick survey is not to convince you to agree with Russias assessment that NATO posed an existential threat to it or that it is justified in its great power politicking. It was a caveat unlikely to convince critics of Cohen, 76, whose fierce condemnation of the Wests role in the Ukraine conflict and more forgiving assessment of the Kremlins have made him arguably the most divisive American public intellectual commenting on the crisis today. The Ukrainian economy is still 15% below its 2013 numbers. Experts say that was a huge mistake. Review of Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond, Media Independence Does Not Really Mean Media Independence, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The late Stephen Cohen, one of our leading luminaries on Russia, warned us against overly simplistic thinking in our dealings with Russia and reminded us of the humanity of the people on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine. The heavy hand of Yanukovychs government failed to end opposition to his policies, and the Euromaidan movement, as it would later be called, succeeded in pushing him out of Western Ukraine and establishing a new government dedicated to cultivating better relations with the West at the expense of ties with Russia. And politically at home, and given the pro-Russian forces and sentiments in Eastern and Southern Ukraine bordering Russia, I don't see that he had a choice. Stephen F. Cohen, an eminent historian whose books and commentaries on Russia examined the rise and fall of Communism, Kremlin dictatorships and the emergence of a post-Soviet nation still. We hear the American view that Putin is a neo-imperialist and a Soviet leader and he's trying to recreate the Soviet Union. For Reprints and Permissions, click here. Cohen says he has no problem with criticism of his arguments. The issue now is to think clearly about how to end a conflict that could spiral into World War III. Click here to log inor subscribe. tn_loc:'atf' And why is Ukraine so deeply involved in Washington, in a different way, that it has become a pretext for attempts to impeach President Donald Trump? The heating up of rhetoric surrounding the situation in Ukraine does little good to get the country back on track to have a positive relationship with the Russian Federation. Ethnic groups sympathetic to the Russian Federation were heavily concentrated in the Southern and Eastern parts of Ukraine. Also the fact that the government in Kiev is an explicitly provisional one, and that, as a first order of business, it set up elections to remedy thiselections that Russia is now doing its very best to upend. Harvey, Burning Man co-founder. The Russians were shocked by NATOs bombing campaign in Yugoslavia, where NATO not only intervened in the affairs of a non-NATO country, but took sides against the Serbs, allies of the Russians, and did so without United Nations Security Council approval. He began his career as a Ronald Reagan Fellow serving a mentorship under the direction of the Honorable Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr. Something that Cohen, once a renowned academic, should know all about. The West didn't want to set limits on NATO's enlargement and influence or lose face. Its precisely because he is in a minority that this is an especially important case., A version of this article appears in print on, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/arts/scholars-at-odds-on-ukraine.html. It is hard not to wish the people of Ukraine well, but they should have no illusions about the support they will receive from the United States. Now, in America there's a different view that he has to back off first. In an open letter to Cohen in February, historian Joshua Sanborn accused him of deploying straw men and portraying the ouster of the Kremlins ally, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, in February 2014 as primarily the work of semi-fascist protesters on Kyivs Independence Square -- the Maidan -- while giving Yanukovychs riot police a free pass. According to CBS News, it was also reported back in May 2018 that Cohen was allegedly paid around$400,000 in secret to arrange talks between the Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and former president Trump. } The carrot of membership in NATO was used to encourage countries to adopt liberalization and good governance and align with U.S. political, economic and military interests. But it was also the moral cowardice of so many Western commentators and officials and ex-officials who would not come out in public and admit that this was no longer a viable project.. tn_subject: ['armed-conf', 'arms-spend', 'democrats', 'election-2', 'election-2', 'elections', 'europe', 'executive-', 'foreign-po', 'global-org', 'government', 'journalist', 'media', 'media-anal', 'national-s', 'north-amer', 'political-', 'political-', 'politics', 'regions-an', 'republican', 'us-wars-an', 'war-and-pe', 'world', 'world-lead'], Copyright (c) 2023 The Nation Company LLC, By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 and, agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support. Were Giving Away $20,000 to Create a New One. Russian intransigence about Ukraines modest moves toward the West contributed to anti-Russian sentiments. Russia was Ukraines most important trading partner. You may unsubscribe or adjust your preferences at any time. It is imperative that America develops a clearer understanding of its adversaries and behaves more judiciously in an increasingly multipolar world. Jan. 28, 2015. We were not wrong: An estimated 13,000 souls have already died in the Ukrainian-Russian war in the Donbass and some 2 million people have been displaced. For example, the consensus that Vladimir Putin is, at best, a problematic leader. He frames his unyielding criticism of Western policy toward Russia and Ukraine as a matter of patriotic duty. The Ukrainian government of Crimea was deposed by local separatists with significant help from Russia. He holds the economic cards because Ukraine is part of the Russian economy. Hes a subject -- as a historian, to me -- of study.". Aid from the West has not come close to compensating for the economic harm caused by the break with the Russian Federation, and politics has not become noticeably less corrupt. "I will continue providing testimony, documents and cooperation on all investigations to ensure that others are held responsibly for their dirty deeds and that no one is 'ever' believed to be above the law," Cohen said in a statement following his release. The concerns are not so much about politics per se, as about the partisan nature of his interventions, the way he just blames one side.. Tucker Carlson has ruthlessly mocked President Joe Biden, neocon intellectuals, war-mongering politicians, and liberal media elites who have been beating the drum for conflict with Russia over Ukraine. Widely seen as one of the preeminent scholars in the generation of Sovietologists who rose to prominence in the 1970s, Cohen these days is routinely derided as Putins toady and useful idiot.. Historical Amnesia About Slavery Is a Tool of White Supremacy. The great and brave Stephen F. Cohen disagrees. But whatever. Only the stupidest of blunders could bring the Americans fully on to team Ukraine, and the Ukrainians suffering from the aftermath of Euromaidan understand the fruits of impassioned political positioning without the capabilities to back up political posturing. However, questions about who Cohen really is and who he was connected to still linger especially when it comes to his connections to Ukraine. Escalating rhetoric about Ukraine and trying to fashion negotiations about its future through an analogy to Munich intensifies the conflict while offering no capabilities to resolve it in favor of a hardline Ukrainian position against Russia. Why bother with Mitch McConnells call to arm the Ukrainians, or Dana Rohrbachers strange paeans to the Kremlin? What about the fact that the anti-Americanism in Russia flared not because of NATO expansion? It doesnt matter. What is the capability of capacity of the Ukrainian army? But there is a worse scenario and that is if the Russians think they have to move their troops not only into Crimea, this peninsula where their naval base is and historically part of Russia, but also into eastern and southern Ukraine as well. Can it end there? But, shhhh, why? It is the broken promise to Gorbachev that lingers as Americas original sin, Cohen said then. Last modified on Tue 13 Oct 2020 15.44 EDT. It doesnt seem to matter that NATO accession was not really on the table for Ukraine (just look at its military performance in recent weeks) and neither was EU accession becausewarning: another meaningless detail!Ukraine is a financial basket case, even worse than the basket cases the EU is already dealing with. Most of the published input supported accepting the gift and naming it after Cohen. As with so many hopeful and simple visions, reality challenged Ukraines exodus to the West. on: function(evt, cb) { By signing up, you confirm that you are over the age of 16 andagree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nations journalism. Russia is no longer at the helm of a global superpower, but it is still, at the very least, a regional great power, and as such it devotes considerable resources to exerting its influence beyond its borders and using the states around it as buffers. It remains unclear who objected to the gift as proposed. We speak to Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. Putin holds all the cards for better or worse. But by dangling the possibility of Ukraines NATO membership for years but never fulfilling it, NATO created a scenario that emboldened Ukraine to act tough and buck Russia without any intention of directly defending Ukraine with its firepower if Moscow decided Ukraine had gone too far. Future historians, whoever they are, are obviously going to be a monolith, a kind of Sanhedrin that will think unanimously and by consensus, unlike, say, present historians who make careers out of disagreeing with other historians. He leaves open the possibility -- often suggested by Russian media -- that Ukrainian forces were responsible. In an email to the association on Jan. 13, Ms. vanden Heuvel rejected what she characterized as the demand to drop Mr. Cohens name, calling it a political act that violated free journalistic and scholarly inquiry., The letter signed by the 60-plus scholars said that the treatment of Mr. Cohen reeks of a censuring of public discourse.. AsThe Sunreported, Cohen's wife,Laura Shusterman, is originally from Ukraine and her father,Fima Shusterman, is believed to have first introduced Cohen to Donald Trump, according to the book "Trump / Russia: A Definitive History,"penned by the Associated Press reporter Seth Hettena. Putins American Toady at 'The Nation' Gets Even Toadier, same pro-Putin argument youve been making for years. There are notable exceptions, the disinterested couple writes, including this magazine, but none close enough to the mainstream to be 'authoritative' inside the Beltway.. First it was of much lesser importance to Russia than Ukraine because of its location and its size. Where essentially this escalated into an all-out war for a few days? Intensifying economic warfare against the Russians and adding a few thousand troops in Poland and Romania does little . Per Newsweek, Cohenand his younger brother Bryan, who is also married to a Ukrainian, weredirectors of the International Ethanol of Ukraine, and also have their names on two financial companies based in the countryincorporated in 1998. His academic work concentrated on modern Russian history since the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia 's relationship with the United States . Anyone can read what you share. Bent on restoring the might of the Soviet empire, this narrative goes, the Russian autocrat audaciously invaded Ukraine to fulfill a revanchist desire for some combination of land, power and glory. World Foreign Policy Ukraine Stephen F. Cohen Kept the Faith Steve's insistence on speaking the truth about Ukraine and US-Russia relations cost himbut he never gave up. NATO has also been involved in regime change and nation-building projects in places like Libya and Afghanistan. The idea behind a moratorium of, say, 20 years is to provide a way for the West to propose to Russia that the issue can be taken up by a future generation of leaders, at a time when Russia's political class has changed and geopolitics may have shifted. Its an obscenity, Mr. Cohen said in an interview. "And since the analysis and narrative I wanted to present was entirely absent in mainstream America, I focused on that.". In order to comment, you must be logged in as a paid subscriber. In 2021, Trump'sformer personal lawyer completed his criminal home confinement sentence and vowed to assist law enforcement to investigate the former president, the Trump Organization, and others within the Trump circle. When things looked dicey, it was worth trying. Over the next 90 minutes, the man renowned for his pioneering scholarship on the Soviet Union accused the West of provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin with NATO expansion, stoking potential war with Moscow, and failing to acknowledge its responsibility for what has happened in Ukraine in the last 15 months. The U.S. must do everything it can do to end this war which is already brutalizing Ukraine, rattling the global economy, and could quite easily spiral into a nuclear-armed confrontation between the U.S. and Russia, if things get out of hand as swiftly as possible, including negotiating on Ukraine's NATO status and possible neutrality with an open mind. But as Biden has already made clear, the U.S. is not willing to wage war with Russia, and it certainly isn't going to allow Ukraine into NATO when Russia is attacking it, since that would require all of NATO to go to war with Russia. But whatever. The U.S. may want to be the only great power in the world, free to expand its hegemony with impunity, but it is not. John Batchelor's regular segments with the late Stephen Cohen, were a positive offset to the predominating anti-Russian biases in Western mass media. On Aug. 11, Ms. vanden Heuvel signed a memorandum of agreement on the planned gift, and received an email describing the boards reaction as unanimously positive.. Breaking relations with the Russian Federation and pursuing greater integration into the West would not be an easy path and has proved to be costly for Ukraine. Why, then, is Washington so deeply involved in Ukraine? But that's where we stand. It agreed to give Russia over eighty percent of the Black Sea Fleet and rent the Crimean naval bases to Russia for initially twenty years, renewing the lease for 32 more years in 2010 in exchange for discount pricing of Russian natural gas. And sometimes, when you go out with batties, everyone thinks youre batty.. The ASEEES board has called a "special meeting" to discuss the controversy on May 11 in Pittsburgh and on May 4 published dozens of comments from members on the matter. Remember he came to power 14 years ago and he inherited a collapsed state. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. After all, maybe by this point changing Ukraines NATO status would not have allayed Putins concern that Ukraine was irrevocably slipping out of Russias sphere of influence and overcome his conception of Ukraine as Russias lost property. Of course, not all protesters on Maidan were peaceful, but is there really no space to mention that police fired into the crowds, killing many, and that these killings made Yanukovychs further tenure as president deeply problematic, perhaps even impossible? wrote Sandborn, head of the history department at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Lists all of Stephen Cohen's appearances on the Charlie Rose program on CharlieRose.com. If there's a war, Ukrainians who support Kiev and the West will become partisan fighters. This implementation will be no easy feat, but the future of Ukraine is not in the Western alliance, but as a neutral border state, neither East nor West. And they argue that Russias willingness to go to war over Ukraines NATO status, which it perceived as an existential national security threat and listed as a fundamental part of its rationale for the invasion, was so clear for so long that dropping support for its eventual entry could have averted the invasion. That the Ukraine crisis was instigated by the Wests attempt, last November, to smuggle the former Soviet republic into NATO. Ukrainian officials said the pro-Russian separatists had attempted to storm a military base. "Stephen Cohen has been a mouthpiece for a mass murderer -- Lynn Lubamersky, Boise State University. These sanctions have been estimated to cost the Russian Federation around $50 billion per year since 2014. Sanborn is among the more than 130 members of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), who signed a letter supporting Cohen in a scandal that erupted over a dissertation prize that was to bear Cohens name. From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate, is available in paperback and in an ebook edition. Serhii Plokhii, the director of Harvards Ukrainian Research Center, said he had been unaware of the incident until last week, but that the association leadership was right to worry about splits in the group. callback: cb window.mc4wp.listeners.push( But according to a line of widely overlooked scholarship, forgotten warnings from Western statesmen and interviews with several experts including high-level former government officials who oversaw Russia strategy for decades this narrative is wrong. We don't know whether they would follow Kiev's orders. (How, I wonder, does Cohen feel about invasions if they involve certain North American powers and certain Middle Eastern countries?). But in whose hands, we do not know.. Except, of course, The Nation. Stephen F. Cohens view, on the other hand, is that U.S. policy since the 1990s is largely responsible, and that unless this is acknowledged at least in part by Washington, no successful negotiated end to the crisis will be possible.Professor Cohens Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War and his The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin are now in paperback. tn_author: ['stephen-f'], Intensifying economic warfare against the Russians and adding a few thousand troops in Poland and Romania does little good in bolstering Ukraine or improving relations with Russia. The expansion of NATO proceeded, and the alienation of Russia from the West followed suit. What's happened has happened, and theres no going back. "I am not pro-Putin," Cohen, a professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University, told the crowd. What matters is history. Western officials say evidence suggests the passenger jet was struck by a BUK missile fired from separatist-controlled territory. The current Ukrainian government is seeking shelter in NATO. And while he has said Russia is involved militarily in Ukraine and abetting separatist forces in eastern Ukraine -- claims that Moscow continues to deny despite mounting evidence of such involvement -- Cohen said he believes unwise American policies bear about 80 percent of the blame for the crisis. I dont agree with many of Cohens recent positions on Ukraine, said Michael David-Fox, a professor at Georgetown, who signed the letter. That the Wests jettisoning in February of its own agreement with then-President Viktor Yanukovych brought to power in Kiev an unelected regime so anti-Russian and so uncritically embraced by Washington that the Kremlin felt an urgent need to annex predominantly Russian Crimea, the home of its most cherished naval base. If I didnt withdraw, this would fester and get worse., At the November meeting, the board voted to approach the couple about reinstating the gift offer, under what Mr. Hanson called a compromise name. To some, that proposal smacks of censorship. Cold War Why Are We in Ukraine? Zero, unless we want to go to war. Stephen F. CohenStephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. Meanwhile, as I have reported before, Russian leader Vladimir Putin continues to be accused by hard-liners in Moscow of passivity in the face of American aggression in Ukraine. Is it irony or tragedy that the often-maligned Trump and Putin may stand between us and something much worsebetween a fragile Cold War peace and the war parties in their respective countries? A Nation contributing editor, his most recent book, War With Russia? All this brings us to the crisis at hand. freestar.config.enabled_slots.push({ There will be enormous pressure for NATO to move into western Ukraine and then all bets are off. If theres a popular consensus out there, you can be sure that Stephen F. Cohen is going to disagree with it, because thats the kind of original thinker Stephen F. Cohen is. These people were doing something very, very wrong. Critics will say this constitutes appeasement of Putin. As with so many issues in politics, justice is circumscribed by practical matters that require us to contemplate the possibility of making things worse through imprudent action. That twenty years of NATOs eastward expansion has caused Russia to feel cornered. Pushback rounds out 2020 by airing an unpublished interview with Stephen F. Cohen, the eminent Russia historian and scholar who passed away in September at the age of 81. In response to these political actions of Russian ethnic groups in coordination with support from the Russian Federation, the United States and Western Europe imposed sanctions on the Russian Federation. In that context, consulting with a wider community of scholars was the prudent thing to do.. Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily. Since the crisis in Ukraine began, the Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen has cast himself in the role of the unbowed dissenter, whose sharp criticisms of Americas foreign policy in the region have earned him denunciations as Putins American toady, as The New Republic put it, and worse. Mr. Cohen rejected that characterization, saying his intent has been to give a balanced picture by offering a factually, historically correct account of the Russian perspective on Ukraine. IE 11 is not supported. RT has also allotted considerable airtime to conspiracy theorists. As negotiations over the crisis in Ukraine begin in Geneva, tension is rising in the Ukrainian east after security forces killed three pro-Russian protesters, wounded 13 and took 63 captive in. Of course, the cost of the Russian/Ukrainian conflict has been devastating to Ukraine, shrinking the economy from $183 billion in 2013 to a low of $91 billion in 2016. Putin just raised the stakes a significant amount, why? The accusations of being a Kremlin water carrier, however, clearly irritate him. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. By Jennifer Schuessler. Are we following the same path of 2008 in Russia and Georgia? And, most recently, that Kievs sending of military units to suppress protests in pro-Russian eastern Ukraine is itself a violation of the April 17 agreement to de-escalate the crisis. That dangling is incredibly dangerous, and it's possible that it just caused Ukraine to experience the worst of all worlds: not receiving NATO protection while also enduring one of the most aggressive forms of Russian domination possible. The issue that Russia saw in NATO was not just an expanding military alliance, but one that had shifted gears to transforming and proactively intervening in global affairs. We are joined by Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. Ukraine, you see, is just "a former Soviet republic" and a catalyst for feelings between Russia and the West. Russia didnt sign it because Russia thought it was a pretty terrible agreement. VIDEO: People in Denmark Are a Lot Happier Than People in the United States. Theres a whole tome to be written about the self-aggrandizing martyr complex on display here: Only the great and brave Stephen F. Cohen dares defy this Washington stampede to cold waror, you know, any consensus out there. . Now, his largess and his divisive reputation have collided, opening a rift in the main scholarly association covering the post-Soviet world and spurring charges that the polarizing politics of the Ukraine crisis are stifling free speech and compromising the groups scholarly mission. As Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me, NATOs oft-touted open door policy is supposed to be based on Article 10 of the treaty, but the meaning is often misunderstood. Stephen Cohen has been embraced by state-owned Russian media like the global news network RT, where he is frequently brought on to pillory Washington and Brussels. By Stephen F. Cohen November 14, 2019 Print A tattered. Refusing to see this is dangerous for us all. Up until the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, most Ukrainians held favorable attitudes toward Russia. . Hi there, If you think Democracy Now!'s reporting is a critical line of defense against war, climate. 2021 American Institute for Economic ResearchPrivacy Policy, AIER is a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit registered in the US under EIN: 04-2121305. Most famously, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker once assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that the NATO alliance would move not one inch eastward in exchange for this agreement, but as the late Princeton University scholar Stephen Cohen pointed out in 2018, this pledge was in fact made multiple times by several Western countries. Also, that broken February 21 agreement that Cohen and the Kremlin love to talk about so much? The best part is the fact that lefty scholar Stephen F. Cohen, chronicler of Bukharin and champion of the workingman, scathing critic of American imperialism, turns out to be a straight-up great-man, great-game American imperialist. Crisis in Ukraine; Larry Harvey World, Politics, Art and design Air Date 03/20/2014 On the ongoing conflict between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine, and the recent escalation in bilateral sanctions. Thanks for joining us. There are other factors including, but not limited to, Putin's general anger over Kyiv drifting away from Russian influence and domination and his isolation as a decision-maker that may have been sufficient to drive the invasion. By signing up to receive emails, you agree to receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation's journalism. In another sign of Russias intolerance of losing out to Western influence in those countries, Putin annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014 in the wake of the protest-spurred ouster of Ukraines Russia-friendly president, which the West favored. Ukrainians might be paying with their lives for the United States reckless flirtation with Ukraine as a future NATO member without ever committing to its defense. Ukraine denuclearized in exchange for Russias recognition of its borders. But it still matters. newsletter for analysis you wont find anywhereelse. Stephen Cohen on Russia Ukraine Crisis geo_admin 03/02/2022 Uncategorized 0 Comments As negotiations over the crisis in Ukraine begin in Geneva, tension is rising in the Ukrainian east after security forces killed three pro-Russian protesters, wounded 13 and took 63 captive in the city of Mariupol. She added: Whats happening is that people who disagree have essentially voted against him.. Michael Cohen's deep connections to Ukraine start with his family. According to CBS News, it was also reported back in May 2018 that Cohen was allegedly paid around $400,000 in secret to arrange talks between the Ukrainian . The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is Ukraine is going to get wrecked, he said in a lecture. But the Ukraine crisis, scholars say, has prompted especially intense divisions. He holds the military cards because it's his territory. But Mr. Cohen is also a man of means, whose wifes charitable foundation has donated large amounts of money to support Russian studies, which have been hard hit by declining government funding. Dr. Myers has research interests in international political economy and political thought. My analysis may have been wrong, but I can only think of one or two people [in the United States] who made an effort to engage me on that level, he said. It was soon followed by a letter in support of Mr. Cohen, signed by more than 60 scholars and sent to the associations leaders on Monday, calling the apparent politicization of the group a profound embarrassment., This thing has really snowballed, said David Ransel, a retired historian at Indiana University, who drafted the letter of protest. Briefly, you've studied American-Russian relations how bad is this point now? What of the fact that anti-Western sentiment in Russia erupted first in the Kremlin and its television stations; that its lava then oozed down the countrys slope in response to internal Russian political events, namely, the pro-democracy, anti-Putin protests that broke out in the winter of 2011-2012? And we elected to make sure that the veto was exercised on the battlefield, hoping that either Putin would stay his hand or that the military operation would fail.. But a week later, the couple received another message lamenting that every action is being viewed through an ideological lens, given the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, and saying approval would be postponed until the boards annual meeting in November. Things turned up a notch in 2008, when NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia will become members of NATO. tn_ptype: 'article', And standing at the center is Mr. Cohen, 76, a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University who regularly airs his views in the pages of The Nation Distorting Russia, read one headline and in television and radio interviews. The U.S. refused to reconsider Ukraine's NATO status as Putin threatened war. A handful of scholars voiced their objections to Cohens ties to the gift, however. Yanukovych responded to the riots with police, and over 100 people were killed. Stephen F. Cohen's view, on the other hand, is that U.S. policy since the 1990s is largely responsible, and that . Cohen told RFE/RL that depending on the outcome of the May 11 meeting, he may reexamine his association with an existing ASEEES-administered dissertation prize bearing his name and that of his late mentor, historian Robert C. Tucker, that vanden Heuvels Kat Charitable Foundation has sponsored for a decade. In 1990, the West led the Soviets to believe NATO would not expand further eastward across Europe in exchange for Germany reunification and the agreement that the new Germany would be a NATO member. The American strategy in Ukraine has severely underestimated Russian concerns, capabilities, and motivation, neglected the realistic interests of Ukraine, and can be counted among one of our numerous foreign policy failures in the post-Cold War world. The ghosts of the past obscure the problems of the present, and this is true for Americans, Ukrainians, and Russians. Moreover, Putin sent clear signals that he was serious about pulling the trigger if he didn't get something. But in September, the couple canceled the gift after some association members objected to having Mr. Cohens name on the fellowships. :From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate, is prophetic and more relevant than ever.If you have not read it, buy it asap and devour it. As one of the precious few western voices of. PBS NewsHour "When you write or broadcast, you get limited space or time, and you choose whats most important," he told RFE/RL in a recent interview. Graham, the former NSC official, also said the U.S. made a mistake in its approach. Michael Cohen used to have a reputation for being tough and was in the past referred to as the former president Donald Trump's political "pit bull,"perABC. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, prospects for cooperating with the West were bright. You can read our Privacy Policy here. It was the desire of Western governments not to lose face by compromising with Russia, Anatol Lieven, senior research fellow on Russia and Europe at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author of Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry, told me. } The gift would have almost entirely replaced key State Department grants that had ended in 2013, to broad dismay in the field. Many of the experts I spoke to said Ukraine's neutrality or some kind of altered NATO status should be part of the discussion in diplomatic backchannels. What We Really Know About Michael Cohen's Connection To Ukraine. Emma Ashford, resident senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, wrote in an email that it was a pity that NATOs open-door principle was not up for debate. Though she was skeptical about the political ability of the West to promise to close NATOs open door, particularly in a way that would have been credible to Moscow, she said there were potential ways to deal with Moscows concerns, such as a moratorium on NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia, conventional arms control agreements limiting the scope of NATO military integration and cooperation with Ukraine, or some form of negotiated Ukrainian neutrality..
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