US policy towards Russia
jeudi 19 janvier 2017 à 01:00Historian Stephen Cohen, who has studied Russia for decades, criticized in 2015 the confrontational and domineering policy that the US has taken towards Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Here's the second half.
I think we can have some confidence in Cohen's judgment, because he is not one of the Putin pets you find so many of nowadays. He doesn't start from the assumption that Putin is good and the US is bad. He regards the US government and the Russian government both as playing the same kind of power game, but Putin's aims are more modest and his strategy more coherent.
One point in the articles requires correction. The referendum in the Crimea was imposed by "pro-Russian gunmen" who had captured the parliament building and ordered the vote at gunpoint. We now know that they were capable of mounting a "well co-ordinated military operation" because they were Russian soldiers not wearing their usual uniforms.
But this is a small error and I still trust the articles overall.