War With Russia?: From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate

by Stephen F. Cohen

Overview

Prescient and even more relevant than when originally released in 2019, this Memorial Edition of War With Russia provides keen perspective to help readers understand the current Ukraine crisis. Are we in a new Cold War with Russia? Does Vladimir Putin really want to destabilize the West? War With Russia? answers these questions and more.

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 warlike 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.

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?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781510755468
Publisher:	Hot Books
Publication date:	04/19/2022
Edition description:	2nd Edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	270,544
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Stephen F. Cohen passed away on September 18, 2020, at the age of 81. He was 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, and 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 eceived several honors, including two Guggenheim fellowships and a National Book Award nomination.

Over the years, he had 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 visited and lived in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia regularly for more than forty years.

Table of Contents

Preface to Memorial Edition Katrina vanden Heuvel ix

Condolences, Tributes, and Appreciation xi

Mikhail Gorbachev

Archie Brown

Bill Bradley: The Man Who Knew Russia-A Tribute to Stephen F. Cohen

Yanni Kotsonis: National Figure

Jonathan Steele: Stephen Cohen Obituary

Caitlin Johnstone: Stephen Cohen has died. Remember His Urgent Warnings Against the New Cold War

To My Readers xxv

Prologue: The Putin Specter-Who He Is Not 1

Part I The New Cold War Erupts 2014-2015

Patriotic Heresy vs. Cold War 13

Distorting Russia 19

Why Cold War Again? 23

The Detente Imperative and Parity Principle 25

Part II US Follies and Media Malpractices 2016

Secret Diplomacy on Ukraine 33

The Obama Administration Escalates Military Confrontation With Russia 34

Another Turning Point in the New Cold War 35

The Obama Administration Attacks Its Own Syrian Ceasefire 37

Was Putin's Syria Withdrawal Really A "Surprise"? 38

Trump vs. Triumphalism 39

A Fragile Mini-Détente In Syria 40

"Information War" vs. Embryonic Detente 41

The Crisis of the US "Ukrainian Project" 43

Is War With Russia Possible? 45

Stalin Resurgent, Again 46

Has Washington Gone Rogue? 48

Blaming Brexit on Putin and Voters 50

The Imperative of a US-Russian Alliance vs. Terrorism 51

The Friends and Foes of Detente 53

Neo-McCarthyism 54

Cold-War Casualties From Kiev to the New York Times 56

More Lost Opportunities 58

Another Endangered Chance to Diminish the New Cold War 60

Who's Making US Foreign Policy? 62

Slouching Toward War? 64

Washington Warmongers, Moscow Prepares 66

Did the White House Declare War on Russia? 67

Trump Could End the New Cold War 69

The Friends and Foes of Detente, II 71

False Narratives, Not "Fake News," Are the Danger 73

Cold War Hysteria vs. National Security 74

Part III Unprecedented Dangers 2017

Did Putin Really Order a "Cyber-Pearl Harbor"? 79

The Real Enemies of US Security 80

Ukraine Revisited 83

Kremlin-Baiting President Trump 84

Putin's Own Opponents of Détente? 89

The "Fog of Suspicion" 90

Neo-McCarthyism Is Now Politically Correct 92

Yevtushenko's Civic Courage 94

"Words Are Also Deeds" 96

Wartime "Tears" in Moscow, Cold War Inquisition in Washington 98

Terrorism and Russiagate 100

"Details After the Sports" 102

Cold-War News Not "Fit to Print" 104

Historical Monuments, from Charlottesville to Moscow 107

The Lost Alternatives of Mikhail Gorbachev 110

Does Putin Really Want to "Destabilize the West"? 112

Will Russia Leave the West? 115

The Silence of the Doves 118

Has NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer? 122

More Double Standards 125

The Unheralded Putin-Official Anti-Stalinist No. 1 127

Russiagate Zealots vs. National Security 131

Russia Is Not the "No. 1 Threat" 134

Why Russians Think America Is Attacking Them 136

Part IV War With Russia? 2018

Four Years of Maidan Myths 143

Russia "Betrayed" Not "News That's Fit to Print" 146

US Establishment Finally Declares "Second Cold War" 149

Russiagate or Intelgate? 152

What Russiagate Reveals About America's Elites 157

Russiagate Amnesia or Denialism 160

How Washington Provoked-and Perhaps Lost-a New Nuclear-Arms Race 163

Russia Endorses Putin, The US and UK Condemn Him (Again) 167

Russophobia 171

Russiagate and the Risk of Nuclear War 174

Criminalizing Russia 176

America's Collusion with Neo-Nazis 179

"Informant" Echoes of Dark Pasts 183

Why This Cold War Is More Dangerous Than the One We Survived 186

Summitgate vs. "Peace" 191

Trump as Cold War Heretic 194

Sanction Mania 197

What the Brennan Affair Reveals 201

"Vital" US Moles in the Kremlin 204

Afterword 207

Endnotes 213

Index 218

About the Author 226

Editorial Reviews

Praise for War With Russia?

“A fantastic new book, which you should read.” —Tucker Carlson

“Cohen sees himself as a balancer, getting readers to see the other side. He laments what he terms ‘Russophobia’ among much of the American political class as well as high-profile journalists and academics. ... At times, Cohen is a provocateur, but if he compels us to sharpen our analysis by examining a contrarian position, this is not such a bad thing. He often brings to light questions that others have neglected. He is especially adept at taking sometimes unfocused or ideologically eccentric views emanating from Russia and turning them into succinct, declarative statements. This alone is helpful. In our current volatile climate, dissenting voices are necessary to the conversation.”—Military Review journal, review essay by Robert F. Baumann, PhD

“The title of Cohen’s book is intended not as a prophecy but a warning. In the overexcited debate about Putin and Trump, Cohen chooses to eschew moderation because he believes that in practice that results in conformity with an anti-Russia narrative that is not only wrong but dangerous. This book will delight his supporters and enrage his opponents, while readers of a moderate persuasion will be able to admire the passion and tenacity of his resistance to the trend towards provoking war with Russia.” —Irish Times, reviewed by Geoffrey Roberts, emeritus professor of history at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy

"It’s a page-turner."—Consortium News, reviewed by Ann Garrison

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

From the Publisher