Stephen Cohen: Do Russiagate promoters prefer impeaching Trump to avoiding war with Russia?

"The new Cold War is not a mere replica of its 40-year predecessor, which the world survived. In vital ways, it is more dangerous, more fraught with actual war, as illustrated by events in 2018"

Excerpt:

"In large part due to such media malpractice, and despite the escalating dangers in US-Russian relations, in 2018 there continued to be no significant anti–Cold War opposition anywhere in mainstream American political life—not in Congress, the major political parties, think tanks, or on college campuses, only a very few individual dissenters. Accordingly, the policy of détente with Russia, or what Trump has repeatedly called “cooperation with Russia,” still found no significant supporters in mainstream politics, even though it was the policy of other Republican presidents, notably Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan. Trump has tried, but he has been thwarted, repeatedly again in 2018.

Meanwhile, the charge that Russia “attacked American democracy” and continues to do so might best be applied to Russiagate promoters themselves. Their allegations have undermined the America presidency as an institution and cast doubt on US elections. By criminalizing both “contacts with Russia” and proposals for “better relations,” and by threatening to weed out a capacious and nebulous body of “disinformation” in US media, they have considerably diminished the vaunted American marketplace of free speech and ideas. Also under growing assault are traditional concepts of US political justice, which, at least based on what is known in regard to Russia, have been abused in the cases of Gen. Michael Flynn and, in Soviet-like fashion, of Maria Butina. At worst, this young Russian woman seems to have been an undeclared (but candidly open) advocate of “better relations” and an ardent proponent of her own country. For this, something long pursued by young Americans in Russia as well, she was held for months in solitary confinement until she confessed—that is, entered a plea. And this in a nation that has long officially “promoted” democracy abroad.

Finally, while US political and media elites remained obsessed with the fictions of Russiagate—which increasingly appears to be Russiagate without Russia and instead mostly tax-fraud-gate and sex-gate—post–Soviet Russia continued its remarkable rise as a diplomatic great power, primarily, though not only, in the East, as documented recently in three highlyinformed publications far from and scarcely noted by the US political-media establishment. Meanwhile, Washington’s primary base of allies in world affairs, the European Union, continued its slide into self-inflicted, ever-deepening crisis."

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Link 1:  Do Russiagate Promoters Prefer Impeaching Trump to Avoiding War With Russia? | The Nation

Link 2:  Do Russiagate promoters prefer impeaching Trump to avoiding war with Russia? - Stephen Cohen — RT Op-ed