If I hadn't gone to Consortium News to listen to their weekend discussion on
the Assange trial with John Pilger and Daniel Ellsberg, I wouldn't have been
hit by this shocking news, that Sstephen F. Cohen has died. I recently heard
him on Pushback with Aaron Mate. He was the husband of the publisher of The
Nation, and I read his new book last year. He was a Professor of Russian
Studies.
Miriam
Stephen Cohen Has Died; Remember His Urgent Warnings Against The New Cold
War
September 20, 2020
We should heed the dire warnings that Stephen Cohen spent his last breaths
issuing, says Caitlin Johnstone.
Image for post
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
Stephen F Cohen, the renowned American scholar on Russia and leading
authority on US-Russian relations, has died of lung cancer at the age of 81.
As one of the precious few western voices of sanity on the subject of Russia
while everyone else has been frantically flushing their brains down the
toilet, this is a real loss. I myself have cited Cohens expert analysis
many times in my own work, and his perspective has played a formative role
in my understanding of whats really going on with the monolithic
cross-partisan manufacturing of consent for increased western aggressions
against Moscow.
In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohens
death is a blow to humanitys desperate quest for clarity and understanding.
I dont know how long Cohen had cancer. I dont know how long he was aware
that he might not have much time left on this earth. What I do know is he
spent much of his energy in his final years urgently trying to warn the
world about the rapidly escalating danger of nuclear war, which in our
strange new reality he saw as in many ways completely unprecedented.
The last of the many books Cohen authored was 2019s War with Russia?,
detailing his ideas on how the complex multi-front nature of the post-2016
cold war escalations against Moscow combines with Russiagate and other
factors to make it in some ways more dangerous even than the most dangerous
point of the previous cold war.
You know its easy to joke about this, except that were at maybe the most
dangerous moment in US-Russian relations in my lifetime, and maybe ever,
Cohen told The Young Turks in 2017. And the reason is that were in a new
cold war, by whatever name. We have three cold war fronts that are fraught
with the possibility of hot war, in the Baltic region where NATO is carrying
out an unprecedented military buildup on Russias border, in Ukraine where
there is a civil and proxy war between Russia and the west, and of course in
Syria, where Russian aircraft and American warplanes are flying in the same
territory. Anything could happen.
Cohen repeatedly points to the most likely cause of a future nuclear war:
not one that is planned but one which erupts in tense, complex situations
where anything could happen in the chaos and confusion as a result of
misfire, miscommunication or technical malfunction, as nearly happened many
times during the last cold war.
I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at
least since the Cuban missile crisis, Cohen told Democracy Now in 2017.
And arguably, its more dangerous, because its more complex. Therefore, we
and then, meanwhile, we have in Washington these and, in my judgment,
factless accusations that Trump has somehow been compromised by the Kremlin.
So, at this worst moment in American-Russian relations, we have an American
president whos being politically crippled by the worst imaginable its
unprecedented. Lets stop and think. No American president has ever been
accused, essentially, of treason. This is what were talking about here, or
that his associates have committed treason.
Imagine, for example, John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis, Cohen
added. Imagine if Kennedy had been accused of being a secret Soviet Kremlin
agent. He would have been crippled. And the only way he could have proved he
wasnt was to have launched a war against the Soviet Union. And at that
time, the option was nuclear war.
A recurring theme of my recently published book War with Russia? is that
the new Cold War is more dangerous, more fraught with hot war, than the one
we survived, Cohen wrote last year.
Histories of the 40-year US-Soviet Cold War tell us that both sides came to
understand their mutual responsibility for the conflict, a recognition that
created political space for the constant peace-keeping negotiations,
including nuclear arms control agreements, often known as détente. But as I
also chronicle in the book, todays American Cold Warriors blame only
Russia, specifically Putins Russia, leaving no room or incentive for
rethinking any US policy toward post-Soviet Russia since 1991.
Finally, there continues to be no effective, organized American opposition
to the new Cold War, Cohen added.
This too is a major theme of my book and another reason why this Cold War
is more dangerous than was its predecessor.
In the 1970s and 1980s, advocates of détente were well-organized,
well-funded, and well-represented, from grassroots politics and universities
to think tanks, mainstream media, Congress, the State Department, and even
the White House. Today there is no such opposition anywhere.
A major factor is, of course, Russiagate, Cohen continued. As evidenced
in the sources I cite above, much of the extreme American Cold War advocacy
we witness today is a mindless response to President Trumps pledge to find
ways to cooperate with Russia and to the still-unproven allegations
generated by it. Certainly, the Democratic Party is not an opposition party
in regard to the new Cold War.
Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden
policy pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and
the world, Cohen wrote in another essay last year. No American president
can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump
manifestly lacks.
What kind of catastrophe will it take in Ukraine, the Baltic region,
Syria, or somewhere on Russias electric grid to shock US Democrats and
others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump
Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national
security?
Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday
Clock to two minutes before midnight.
And now Stephen Cohen is dead, and that clock is inching ever closer to
midnight. The Russiagate psyop that he predicted would pressure Trump to
advance dangerous cold war escalations with no opposition from the supposed
opposition party has indeed done exactly that with nary a peep of criticism
from either partisan faction of the political/media class.
Cohen has for years been correctly predicting this chilling scenario which
now threatens the life of every organism on earth, even while his own life
was nearing its end.
And now the complex cold war escalations he kept urgently warning us about
have become even more complex with the addition of nuclear-armed China to
the multiple fronts the US-centralized empire has been plate-spinning its
brinkmanship upon, and it is clear from the ramping up of anti-China
propaganda since last year that we are being prepped for those aggressions
to continue to increase.
We should heed the dire warnings that Cohen spent his last breaths issuing.
We should demand a walk-back of these insane imperialist aggressions which
benefit nobody and call for détente with Russia and China. We should begin
creating an opposition to this world-threatening flirtation with armageddon
before it is too late. Every life on this planet may well depend on our
doing so.
Stephen Cohen is dead, and we are marching toward the death of everything.
God help us all.
