In a rare case of getting something about Russia somewhat right, The New Yorker and Masha Gessen several years ago published a brief article discussing excerpts from the newly released Clinton-Yeltsin transcripts. The article is from an era gone by, when it was possible to not blame Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin for every crime under the sun. Gessen has never been some ‘Putin puppet’; she is a radical gay activist, indeed revolutionary, and a Russian dissident vociferously opposed to Putin. She has written numerous books and articles about ‘Putin’s Russia’ since the time the piece described below was published, many of them very one-sided accounts castigating Putin. But the one excerpted below is of a different sort and worth reading. It is a throwback from before the great Maidan break, when it was possible at least for Putin’s opponents to write objectively, relay the shades of gray.
At that time, one might even imagine considering — shockingly! — whether Russia may not be solely responsible for the new cold war, what Western actions led to the breakdown in US-Russian relations, and just how inevitable and even provoked the present war in Ukraine was as a result of those actions. All of these were geopolitical catastrophes presaged by NATO’s expansion east and resulting violations of international law. In Yugoslavia and Serbia, the West registered the first great military violation by a great power abroad after the US-Soviet rapprochement ushered in the post-Cold War era. This Western, particularly NATO action was the bombing of Yugoslavia and the resulting recognition of Albanian independence, violating the West’s own sponsored resolution stipulating its territorial integrity. For once Gessen is fair and gets Russia right, though with the some of the usual biases. …..
TO CONTINUE READING SUBSCRIBE TO MY SUBSTACK ‘RECONSIDER RUSSIA AND EURASIA’ at https://open.substack.com/pub/gordonhahn/p/once-more-about-the-21st-centurys?r=1qt5jg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
About the Author – Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., Expert Analyst at Corr Analytics, http://www.canalyt.com and a Senior Researcher at the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, San Jose, California, www.cetisresearch.org.
Dr. Hahn is the author of Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the ‘New Cold War (McFarland Publishers, 2017) and three previously and well-received books: Russia’s Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction Publishers, 2002); Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007); and The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland Publishers, 2014). He has published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both English and Russian language media and has served as a consultant and provided expert testimony to the U.S. government.
Dr. Hahn also has taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia. He has been a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Kennan Institute in Washington DC as well as the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.