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War with Russia?: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate by [Stephen F. Cohen]

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Stephen F. Cohen

War with Russia?: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate Kindle Edition

by Stephen F. Cohen (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Is America in a new Cold War with Russia? How does a new Cold War affect the safety and security of the United States? Does Vladimir Putin really want to destabilize the West? What should Donald Trump and America’s allies do?

America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s war-like demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril.

In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohen—the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia—gives 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 unprecedented Russiagate allegations. Topics include:

Distorting Russia
US Follies and Media Malpractices 2016
The Obama Administration Escalates Military Confrontation With Russia
Was Putin’s Syria Withdrawal Really A “Surprise”?
Trump vs. Triumphalism
Has Washington Gone Rogue?
Blaming Brexit on Putin and Voters
Washington Warmongers, Moscow Prepares
Trump Could End the New Cold War
The Real Enemies of US Security
Kremlin-Baiting President Trump
Neo-McCarthyism Is Now Politically Correct
Terrorism and Russiagate
Cold-War News Not “Fit to Print”
Has NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer?
Why Russians Think America Is Attacking Them
How Washington Provoked—and Perhaps Lost—a New Nuclear-Arms Race
Russia Endorses Putin, The US and UK Condemn Him (Again)
Russophobia
Sanction Mania

Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create.

War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves who is right: are we living, as Cohen argues, in a time of unprecedented perils at home and abroad?

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281 pages
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English
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Hot Books
Publication date

27 Nov. 2018
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708 KB
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Praise for Stephen F. Cohen’s Books

Bukharin and The Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography
“This magnificent book will come to be regarded … as one of the two or three really outstanding studies in the history of the Soviet Union of the past 25 years.”―The New York Review of Books

Rethinking the Soviet Experience
“[Cohen] clarifies Russian issues better than anyone has in the past decade.”―Cleveland Plain Dealer

Sovieticus: American Perceptions and Soviet Realities
“A model of scholarly journalism, sound and wonderfully readable.”―Publishers Weekly

Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia
“A blistering, brilliant, and deeply felt critique of America’s decade-long daydream of a Russia in transition.”―Kirkus Reviews

The Victims Return
“A striking memoir … Russians today are inheritors of an unspeakably immense crime, and Cohen engages fully ― and personally ― with the debate on the way they continue to grapple with their Stalinist legacy.”―The New Yorker

Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives
“An extraordinarily rich book …an absolutely vital beginning point for anyone interested in a serious study of political and foreign policy developments involving Russia.”―Slavic Review

“Cohen’s ideas about Russia, which once got him invited to Camp David to advise a sitting president, now make him the most controversial expert in the field.”―The Chronicle Review --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Stephen F. Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University, where for many years he was also director of the Russian Studies Program, and Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and History at New York University. He grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky, received his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Indiana University, and his Ph.D. at Columbia University.

Cohen’s other books include Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917; Sovieticus: American Perceptions and Soviet Realities; (with Katrina vanden Heuvel) Voices of Glasnost: Interviews With Gorbachev’s Reformers; Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War; and The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin.

For his scholarly work, Cohen has received several honors, including two Guggenheim fellowships and a National Book Award nomination.

Over the years, he has also been a frequent contributor to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. His “Sovieticus” column for The Nation won a 1985 Newspaper Guild Page One Award and for another Nation article a 1989 Olive Branch Award. For many years, Cohen was a consultant and on-air commentator on Russian affairs for CBS News. With the producer Rosemary Reed, he was also project adviser and correspondent for three PBS documentary films about Russia: Conversations With Gorbachev; Russia Betrayed?; and Widow of the Revolution.

Cohen has visited and lived in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia regularly for more than forty years. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07JD4PBWW
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hot Books; 1st edition (27 Nov. 2018)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 708 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 281 pages

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Benjamin King

Slightly misleading but good for new perspective.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 September 2020

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I think this book is slightly misleading in how it is advertised. As Cohen himself addresses in the preface addressed to the reader, this is is not a traditional book but more of a compilation of radio broadcasts and contemporary reports from the 2014 crisis in Ukraine up to 2018. The book is also without a traditional conclusion, with Cohen himself noting that the book "like a biography of a living person" is without an end".

As for what is written, I think it's good to have voices such as Cohens to offer a dissenting point of view to the masses. The author's views may challenge your own pre-established world views, and whether or not you put the book down agreeing with him isnt entirely the point. What is important, to me, is looking at events from a different lens.

Did I disagree with a lot that was written? Yes, to an extent. In the opening prologue about Vladimir Putin, Cohen takes apart criticisms of the Russian president, blaming the vast majority of Russia's woes on the Yeltzin administration, the oligarchs that appeared in the 1990s and the United States, a lot of which I agree with. But what does strike me as a tad bit hypocritical is Cohen's willingness to criticise those with anti-Putin and anti-Russian views (be they rational or Russophobic), but rather than adress the issues himself he instead prefers 'to leave it to historians'.

Whilst I would hardly say I enjoyed this book, I am glad to have read it as I was looking for an opposing viewpoint than that of the vast majority of books published about contemporary Russian politics.

As for the physical copy I received, I was disappointed by the quality. It almost looks and feels used.

One person found this helpful

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Sapphire Asta

Excellent read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 April 2019

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Excellent purchase. Good book. Would recommend.

One person found this helpful

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Emil

Very informative

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 October 2019

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Excellent and very informative book from a very reputable journalist.

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P Moon

Interesting views

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 May 2019

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Hmmm. Curious interpretation of events.

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Amazon Customer

Great read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 August 2019

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Different outlook

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William Podmore

Fine advocacy of international cooperation

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 June 2019

Stephen Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University. In this excellent book, he promotes US-Russian cooperation.

As a supporter of détente, he has often been attacked by liberals and conservatives as a ‘Putin apologist’ and a ‘useful idiot’. But, as he observes, “None of these character assassins present any factual refutations of anything I have written or said. They indulge instead in ad hominem slurs based on distortions and on the general premise that any American who seeks to understand Moscow’s perspectives is a ‘Putin apologist’ and thus unpatriotic. Such a premise only abets the possibility of war.” This may remind us of some of the abuse levelled at leave voters in Britain.

Professor Cohen analyses the origins of the crisis in Ukraine. He notes that in September 2013, Carl Gershman, the head of the official US regime-change body, the National Endowment for Democracy, wrote that Ukraine was ‘the biggest prize’ in NATO’s march eastwards.

Professor Cohen writes that the EU’s 2013 proposal to Ukraine was “a reckless provocation compelling the democratically elected president of a deeply divided country to choose between Russia and the West. So too was the EU’s rejection of Putin’s counterproposal for a Russian-European-American plan to save Ukraine from financial collapse. On its own, the EU proposal was not economically feasible. Offering little financial assistance, it required the Ukrainian government to enact harsh austerity measures and would have sharply curtailed its longstanding and essential economic relations with Russia.” It also required Ukraine to adhere to Europe’s ‘military and security’ policies.

In February 2014, the French, German and Polish foreign ministers brokered an agreement between Ukraine’s President Yanukovych and the opposition leaders. Yanukovych agreed to hold an early presidential election and to form an interim coalition government with the opposition. President Obama told President Putin that he would back the agreement. But when extreme nationalist forces rejected this agreement, neither Obama nor the EU made any effort to save the agreement. Instead, the extreme nationalists ousted the elected government through a violent street coup aided by the openly neo-Nazi forces of the Azov Battalion and then formed a new, anti-Russian government.

Obama and the EU backed this new government. Professor Cohen notes that “Washington and Brussels endorsed the coup and have supported the outcome ever since. Everything that followed, from Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the spread of rebellion in southeastern Ukraine to the civil war and Kiev’s ‘anti-terrorist operation’, was triggered by the February coup. Putin’s actions were mostly reactive.”

This new government “seemed to threaten, not only vocally, ethnic Russians and other native Russian-speakers in Eastern Ukraine as well as the historical and still vital Russian naval base at Sevastopol, in Crimea, and that province’s own ethnic Russian majority.” Crimea was part of Russia for more than 200 years and was only given to Ukraine by the Ukraine-born Khrushchev in 1954.

The US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, claimed that the Minsk Accords require Russia to return Crimea to Ukraine. In fact, the Accords do not even mention Crimea.

Turning to Brexit, Professor Cohen demolishes the conspiracy theory that President Putin influenced our vote to leave the EU: “the US political-media establishment is blaming Brexit on Putin for ‘ruthlessly playing a weak hand’, as did a New York Times editorial on June 26, and on ‘imbecilic’ British voters, as did Times columnist Roger Cohen on June 28. In fact, Putin took a determinedly neutral stand on Brexit throughout, partly because Moscow, unlike Washington, is hesitant to meddle so directly in elections in distant countries. But also because the Kremlin was – and remains – unsure as to whether Brexit might be on balance a ‘plus or minus’ for Russia. … Therefore, contrary to the legion of American cold warriors, Brexit evoked no ‘celebration in the Kremlin’, only wait-and-see concern.”

Professor Cohen notes that “the UK establishment, with US encouragement, is desperately seeking a way to reverse the Brexit referendum.” He also points out that, in a similar fashion, “in 1991, the Soviet nomenklatura, in pursuit of state property, disregarded a national referendum that by a much larger majority than in the Brexit case favored preserving the Soviet Union.”

He remarks that conspiracy theorists are contemptuous of democracy, explaining that “A foundational principle of theories of representative government is that voters make rational and legitimate decisions. But Russiagate advocates strongly imply – even state outright – that American voters are easily duped by ‘Russian disinformation’, zombie-like responding to signals as how to act and vote. … According to Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, Russia’s social-media intrusions ‘manipulated American thought … The minds of social media users are likely becoming more, not less, malleable.’ This, she goes on, is especially true of ‘older, non-white, less-educated people’. New York Times columnist Charles Blow adds that this was true of ‘black folks’.”

Professor Cohen adds, “Even if true, there is no evidence that this purported campaign had any meaningful impact on how Americans voted in the presidential election.”

The CIA and the FBI have been engaged in covert operations to try to link Trump to Putin. Their Assessment that was supposed to prove that Putin put Trump in the White House was, as even the anti-Trump, anti-Putin New York Times reported, ‘missing … hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims’: there was an ‘absence of any proof’. The Assessment itself concluded, “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.”

When the New York Times rehashed the same old lies in September 2018, it had to admit that, “No public evidence has emerged showing that [Trump’s] campaign conspired with Russia.” Famed reporter Bob Woodard stated that after two years of research he had found ‘no evidence of collusion’ between Trump and Russia.

In November 2017 Trump met Putin several times in Vietnam and had talks about cooperating on the crises in Ukraine and North Korea. They issued a joint statement urging cooperation in Syria. Trump said later, “having a relationship with Russia would be a great thing – not a good thing – it would be a great thing.” As President Trump’s ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, stated, “My president has said repeatedly that he wants a better relationship with Russia … with Putin … You can call it a desire for détente.”
Professor Cohen asks, “Why has the relationship since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 evolved into a new and more dangerous Cold War? For 15 years, the virtually unanimous answer has been that Putin, or ‘Putin’s Russia’, is solely to blame. Washington’s decision to expand NATO to Russia’s border, bomb Moscow’s traditional ally Serbia, withdraw unilaterally from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, carry out military regime change in Iraq and Libya, instigate the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and back the coup against the country’s legitimate president, and considerably more – none of these US policies, only ‘Putin’s aggression’, led to the new Cold War.”

Trump challenged this orthodoxy. On 15 July 2018 he tweeted, “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity.”

Professor Cohen writes, “Whatever else we may think of the president – I did not vote for him and I oppose many of his other policies – Trump has demonstrated consistency and determination on one existential issue: Putin’s Russia is not America’s enemy but a national-security partner our nation vitally needs. The president made this clear again following the scurrilous attacks on his negotiations with Putin: “When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing.”

The New York Times, for example, carried an article alleging that these negotiations were ‘treasonous’. Professor Paul Krugman wrote, “There’s really no question about Trump/Putin collusion, and Trump in fact continues to act like Putin’s puppet.” This is to criminalise any cooperation with Russia, any détente.

Before the US/Russia summit in Helsinki on 16 July 2018, “The Times of London, a transatlantic bastion of Russophobic Cold War advocacy, captures this bizarre mainstream perspective in a single headline: ‘Fears Grow Over Prospect of Trump ‘Peace Deal’ with Putin’.” At the summit, Presidents Trump and Putin agreed to reduce and regulate nuclear weapons and thus to avert a new arms race. They suggested a joint effort to prevent Iran threatening Israel’s security. They agreed on the need to relieve the humanitarian crisis in Syria.

What was the US media response? Before the summit’s results were even known, Charles Blow of the New York Times denounced ‘Trump, Treasonous Traitor’. Michelle Goldberg wrote, “Trump Shows the World He’s Putin’s Lackey.” Senator John McCain said, “No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.” Former CIA director John Brennan said the President’s behaviour in Helsinki ‘was nothing short of treasonous’.

Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia, tweeted, “To advance almost all of our core national security and economic interests, the US does not need Russia.” Professor Cohen responds, “US ‘core’ interests ‘need’ Russia’s cooperation in many vital ways. They include avoiding nuclear war; preventing a new and more dangerous arms race; guarding against the proliferation of weapons and materials of mass destruction; coping with international terrorists; achieving lasting peace in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East; fostering prosperity and stability in Europe, of which Russia is a part; promoting better relations with the Islamic world, of which Russia is also a part; and avoiding a generation-long confrontation with a formidable new alliance that already includes Russia, China, Iran, and other non-NATO countries.” As a crucial example of the need for cooperation, Professor Cohen reminds us that “Moscow informed Washington about the Boston Marathon bombers months before they struck, but the warning was disregarded.”

In August 2018 Gallup asked Americans what policy towards Russia they favoured. 58 per cent wanted ‘to improve relations with Russia’. Just 36 per cent preferred ‘strong diplomatic and economic steps against Russia’. Cohen comments, “This reminds us that the new Cold War, from NATO’s eastward expansion and the Ukrainian crisis to Russiagate, has been an elite project.”

10 people found this helpful

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Baba Jaga

Time to wake up

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 February 2019

In contrast to the absolute majority of what you read about Russia and Vladimir Putin these days, this book is written by a person who really knows what he is talking about. The author knows Russia since the days in was Soviet Union and was close to many prominent figures including Gorbachev and many dissidents. He exposes propaganda and shows where its roots are, pointing repeatedly at the lies spread by mass media. His views are very balanced and arguments are convincing. A must-read book.

5 people found this helpful

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Nicholas Winstanley

The most important book you will read this year

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 January 2019

This is an essential book for anyone interested in Russia, the West and current situation in world affairs. Here the record is set straight and the true position laid bare for all to see. A must purchase book for anyone interested in the terrible situation that the West has put us into.

5 people found this helpful

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