Today’s American foreign policy “elite” rarely thinks through the dangerous consequences of its “tough-guy” actions, including its new plan to provoke economic and political chaos in nuclear-armed Russia, a “strategy” that is also spreading pain and disorder to Europe, as Jonathan Marshall explains.
Official Washington’s “group think” on Ukraine holds that the crisis is all about Russian “aggression” and “expansionism” even with comparisons to Hitler. But such a hyperbolic interpretation of intent can create its own dangerous dynamics, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.
Exclusive: Anti-Russian bias pervades the mainstream U.S. media in the Ukraine crisis, reflected in word choices – “pro-democracy” for U.S.-favored protesters in Kiev, “terrorists” for disfavored eastern Ukrainians – but also in how the narrative is shaped by false summaries, as Robert Parry explains.
Exclusive: When Ukrainian neo-Nazis – infuriated over the killing of an ultranationalist leader – surrounded the Parliament in Kiev, the incident presented a problem for the U.S. news media which has been trying to airbrush the neo-Nazis out of the Ukraine narrative, Robert Parry reports.
“Tough-guy/gal-ism” is rampant again in Official Washington with many New Cold Warriors lusting for a military confrontation with Russia. But few of these hawks have a clear idea how deterrence worked during the real Cold War, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
Exclusive: Like a decade ago with Iraq, Official Washington’s pundits and pols are locked shoulder-to-shoulder in a phalanx of misguided consensus on Ukraine, presenting a false narrative that is taking U.S. policy into dangerous directions, writes Robert Parry.
Exclusive: Despite pressure from President Obama to escalate the fight with Russian President Putin over Ukraine, the Europeans are reluctant to stoke the crisis any further because it could consume their fragile recovery and ignite more fires of political discontent, notes Andrés Cala.
U.S. politicians and pundits want the American people to get so upset about Crimea’s decision to split with Ukraine and rejoin Russia that they will support more U.S. military spending and more U.S. interventions around the world, a tragic misreading of the reality, writes Lorraine Barlett.
Exclusive: In a stunning display of “group think,” virtually the entire Washington Post editorial section was devoted to denunciations of Russian President Putin, especially his “crazy” belief that the U.S. government often ignores international law and applies “the rule of the gun,” reports Robert Parry.
Official Washington thinks “American exceptionalism” means the U.S. government can ignore international law when intervening in other countries. But that hypocrisy is now coming back to bite the U.S. with Russia’s annexation of Crimea, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.