The Independent |
Russia's meddling in US election could be 'act of war', says Nato commander
The Independent General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said allegations of interference in American and European elections and an international disinformation campaign could cause the definition of an “attack” to be widened. Cyber attacks and election interference by Russia are acts of aggression says Nato chiefInternational Business Times UK Nato needs a grand strategy for Russia, says UK generalBBC News all 21 news articles » |
Raw Story |
GOP strategist blasts Trump's 'inexplicable' Russia ties: 'So many people had meetings they forgot about'
Raw Story Republican strategist Nicole Wallace went on NBC's Today show on Friday to blast the Trumpadministration's “inexplicable” record of conveniently forgetting about meetings that took place in 2016 between Trump campaign officials and members of the ... and more » |
Former ethics czar says 'follow the money' on Trump's taxes: Russia scandal 'has that Watergate feel'
Raw Story A former ambassador and White House ethics czar called on President Donald Trump to release his tax returns as the Russia scandal widens. Norman Eisen, who served as former President Barack Obama's ethics lawyer and U.S. ambassador to the Czech ... |
TIME |
Jeff Sessions Recused Himself. So Who's in Charge of Trump Investigations Now?
TIME The attorney general or acting attorney general must "[determine] that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted." 2. "That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney's Office or litigating ... and more » |
Killer, kleptocrat, genius, spy: the many myths of Vladimir Putin – podcastby Written by Keith Gessen, read by Andrew McGregor and produced by Simon Barnard
Russia’s role in Trump’s election has led to a boom in Putinology. But do all these theories say more about us than Putin?
Continue reading...
 Интерфакс |
Путин поручил Хлопонину помочь проверить исполнение закона о диких животных
Интерфакс Москва. 3 марта. INTERFAX.RU - Президент РФ Владимир Путин поручил вице-премьеру Александру Хлопонину оказать содействие Генпрокуратуре в проведении проверки правоприменительной практики закона об ответственности за уничтожение редких животных. "Помогите ... Путин попросил Хлопонина помочь Генпрокуратуре с проверкой для сохранения редких животныхМосковский Комсомолец Путин усомнился в том, что в России защищают животных по законуВести.Ru Путин призвал правительство внимательно относиться к просьбам предпринимателейГазета.Ru Российская Газета Все похожие статьи: 17 » |
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 Телеканал "Звезда" |
После ночи в тайге Путин вернулся в Москву
Телеканал "Звезда" Российский президент Владимир Путин после ночи, проведенной в тайге вернулся назад в Москву, где собирается провести несколько рабочих встреч. Об этом журналистам сообщил пресс-секретарь российского лидера Дмитрий Песков. Ранее сообщалось о том, что Путинодин день ... Путин провел день в тайге в походных условияхНТВ.Ru Путин находится на отдыхе, вернется в Москву 3 мартаТАСС Путин переночует в сибирской тайгеLenta.ru http://prmira.ru/ -Московский Комсомолец -GORDONUA.COM -Информационное Агентство "Хакасия" Все похожие статьи: 166 » |
The Atlantic |
President Trump's Untruths Are Piling Up
The Atlantic Let's be clear from the start: There is no evidence that Donald Trump or his campaign coordinated with Russia to hack the Democratic National Committee's emails or funnel them to Wikileaks; no evidence that they are puppets of Vladimir Putin; and no ... Sessions breaks with intelligence agencies, says he doesn't know if Russia wanted Trump to winWashington Post For Donald Trump Jr., lingering questions about meeting with pro-Russia groupABC News Trump's 'bromance' with Russia's Putin appears to be coolingReuters New York Times -NPR -BBC Sport all 241 news articles » |
Huffington Post |
Trump's Kremlin Konnection
Huffington Post Although Trump and his lackeys keep trying to discredit the various rumors about his dealings with Russia, the press and the US national security bureaucracy won't let them go. There are at least four ... On February 28, 2016, Senator Ted Cruz said ... and more » |
КП в Украине |
Генерал-майор ЗВО подорвался на мине под Пальмирой — СМИ
ИА REGNUM Санкт-Петербург, 3 марта 2017, 17:19 — REGNUM Начальник управления боевой подготовки Западного военного округа (ЗВО) генерал-майор Петр Милюхин получил тяжелейшие ранения вблизи сирийского города Пальмира. Он доставлен в Москву и помещен в военный госпиталь ... СМИ узнали о тяжелом ранении российского генерала в боях за ПальмируLenta.ru В Сирии генерал Западного военного округа лишился ног, подорвавшись на минеКомсомольская правда СМИ: В Сирии российский генерал потерял ноги, подорвавшись на минеРосбалт.RU Радіо Свобода -Правда.Ру -Взгляд -NEWSru.com Все похожие статьи: 86 » |
Live Updates: A Russian general has reportedly been seriously wounded in Palmyra, the first Russian military person of the rank of general to be injured in the war.
The previous post in our Putin in Syria column can be found here.
Sergey Kislyak, Russian ambassador, in eye of storm over Donald Trump campaign tiesby Vivian Salama, Vladimir Isachenkov
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration's back-to-back controversies over its Russian ties now have at least one thing in common: Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Moscow's top diplomat is a Washington fixture with a sprawling network, and he has emerged as the central figure in the investigations into Trump advisers' connections with ...
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Former intelligence analyst Edward Price dramatically resigned from CIA last week in an op-ed in the Washington Post—complete with a video critique that has gone viral on social media. Is Mr. Price’s departure the first crack in a dam of intelligence professionals flooding toward the exits? Or can he be viewed as a theatrical, but statistically insignificant, blip on the radar of service at CIA? Over the last few months, I’ve heard pundits speculating whether federal government employees will resign over President Donald Trump’s policies, his policy process, or his controversial senior staff. The New York Times has run several articles suggesting that federal employees are “quietly gathering information about whistle-blower protections as they polish their resumes,” and presumably Mr. Price is the harbinger of this prophecy coming true.
Other media outlets have suggested that various federal agencies will either slow-roll Trump Administration policies, or simply fail to comply with their directives. That’s not the kind of attitude one usually associates with water-cooler chat at CIA’s leafy compound across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. CIA’s splendid—and intentional—isolation from Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill symbolizes the Agency’s apolitical charter and mandate. In fact, the verdant CIA campus was originally intended to have the feel of a college campus where expert analysts and scholars could write intelligence estimates away from the policy process and political noise. However, could the Times be correct that even CIA officers are now considering resigning their positions during the Trump Administration, with Mr. Price as the prime exhibit?
Former Acting Director of CIA, Michael Morell, explained in an early January New York Times op-ed how disparagement of CIA hurts CIA itself as well as national security by extension. To quickly review, Mr. Morell argues that publicly questioning CIA’s competence and accusing it of political bias is a “gut punch.” Further, dismissing CIA’s analysis will weaken its positions with its liaison partners and with its sensitive sources, who may wonder, “Why am I risking arrest or even death to provide secrets if they aren’t valued?” He offered one further prediction: That from CIA will come a “wave of resignations” and “attrition will skyrocket”. Although Mr. Morell’s analysis is correct about the negative impact on CIA’s morale, its sensitive sources, and its international liaison partners, America’s intelligence officers won’t leave in droves.
This isn’t the first taste of political turmoil for CIA. In the mid-1970s, the Church Committee in the Senate and its House corollary, the Pike Committee, branded the CIA “Rogue Elephants” amidst the Agency’s internal reporting about some activities that went over the line. CIA officers took it in stride, and the CIA softball team had new uniforms made with their new mascot across the chest: The Rogue Elephants.
This also isn’t the first time CIA felt marginalized. When a small plane landed on the White House lawn in 1994, a popular quip was that it was actually the Director of Central Intelligence, Jim Woolsey, trying to meet with President Clinton.
When considering possible resignations due to political differences (or complaints about process, as cited by Mr. Price), it is useful to recall that—having grown out of the World War Two Office of Strategic Services—CIA retains a pseudo-military culture, especially in the Clandestine Service. The ranks, although they’re civilian, do matter—as does the chain of command. This is notable because, as a reserve military officer, I don’t hear my fellow military officers (active duty or reserve) talking about resigning their commissions over a Trump Presidency; I have yet to hear of any officers even considering such a move. Most of them are long past their initial service obligations, and are free to leave the service at any time. Given the similarities between CIA’s corporate culture and the military itself, the military’s response to the Trump Administration is likely more indicative of CIA’s reaction than responses among employees elsewhere in the civil service.
Still, the CIA isn’t the military either. CIA has more officers who might be described as blue bloods from the Ivy League, though an increasing number are from more humble origins. But CIA reflects America, and this is how it should be. Beyond demographics and diversity, CIA officers can be generalized about to some degree. They see nuance, they care about detail and accuracy, and most of them don’t see the world in binary terms of “good or evil”; they realize that countries act in their own national interest, which sometimes overlap with American interests, and sometimes doesn’t. They are interested in current affairs, and they wouldn’t use facile logic to conflate “understanding” terrorism with condoning it. They dislike Chelsea Manning and they loathe Edward Snowden. They have an innate distrust of the media, but then again, several journalists have legitimated this by unapologetically assuming the worst motives concerning critical national security activities. They take Congressional oversight seriously, even when it borders on the tendentious. Intelligence officers don’t seek plaudits or praise; they don’t need overweening recognition from their political masters, although some level of sincere appreciation for their sacrifices is always welcome.
But what if the First Customer eschews or delegates his daily intelligence briefing, citing past inaccurate assessments? Might one resign? At the root of the intelligence officer’s creed is its ethic is to “speak truth to power.” There is even a Bible verse inscribed on the wall of CIA’s marble lobby: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Recruiting foreign spies and stealing secrets to inform policy decisions probably wasn’t what the Apostle John had in mind when he originally wrote those words, but it does represent CIA’s mission to seek truth (factual, not divine) above all else. For CIA officers, it’s about public service, a meaningful way to make a difference, and, thought it may sound trite, patriotism, but not the fragile kind. If they needed public praise and admiration, they wouldn’t have joined up in the first place.
Given the importance of trying to provide policymakers with the best possible independent analysis, accusations of politicizing intelligence are taken seriously—there’s even an ombudsman available, outside the analytical chain of command, to hear complaints of politicization if they arise. In a cynical world, it may seem quaint to believe that politics, agendas, or worldviews don’t drive intelligence analysis, but it also happens to be true. This isn’t to say that it hasn’t happened before or could never happen. Many outside observers felt that CIA bowed under political pressure to support the Iraq war. I never saw that happen, even during the run up to the invasion in 2003, although clearly errors were made in the WMD assessment. Even the taint of massaging intelligence to support a political narrative undermines the Agency’s relationship with its political consumers and, through oversight mechanisms, the American public as well. The intelligence community has since added more explicit confidence levels for its analytical judgments as a way to continue to serve its customers better. The recent accusations that U.S. Central Command in Tampa massaged intelligence about the Islamic State was a stark reminder of how important analytical integrity is, and serves as the rare exception that proves the rule.
Intelligence officers take professionalism seriously, but it’s always possible that they might decide that CIA isn’t the place for them after all. The question is, do presidential preferences color these personal choices? The pay isn’t great, at least in the Washington, D.C. metro area. A friend of mine once observed, after returning from a tour in the Middle East, “over there I lived like a king. I had a household staff. Now I can either live like a pauper in McLean or commute two hours each way.” The federal retirement is decent, as is living overseas with no rent payments, and there is a sense of adventure and cache. The more family-minded among the CIA workforce often like being able to raise children who have a sense of the rich cultural diversity that the expatriate life has to offer. Being able to just pack the kids in the car for a long weekend and hit Venice, Casablanca, or Auckland is a welcome perk. Plus, the work is interesting and you’ll never have the same day twice. It’s hard to imagine that many working level intelligence officers would give up their profession (some even consider it a “calling”) because of the early days of a new administration.
I’ve had friends resign to pursue private sector opportunities, and one even left in disgust after the new “modernization” (read: reorganization) scrambled the Agency’s internal structure. People leave for family reasons when joint tours would not be accommodated; CIA can at times be tone-deaf to what they call “Tandem Couples” who meet at CIA and wish to serve together (Full disclosure: My wife and I fell into that category). Some resign for reasons that have nothing to do with CIA at all. Many Gen-X and younger officers never intended to make CIA a career. The younger officers want a myriad of experiences, they want adventure, and they want portable health insurance and 401(k) retirement plans that enable it. Langley becomes a stop along the journey. This stands in contrast to the older generation of mostly retired officers who seemed to feel that, after decades of putting service before family, someone from CIA would be there to sit with them on the veranda in retirement.
Despite the quip about the warm embrace of the military industrial complex—the “beltway bandits”—operations officers can’t simply take a job in the private sector and do the same job for more money. That’s not how it works. It’s the same in the military: If you take life in legal war on behalf of your country, that’s war. Otherwise it’s murder. Intelligence analysts might be able to do the same job for more money outside of Langley, and certainly contractors do many tasks for the intelligence community, but those who engage in inherently governmental activities, such as a case officer feeling the adrenaline of making off with a closely-guarded secret from an informant within a hostile government, will never do what they do “on the outside.”
None of this professionalism or commitment to duty means that intelligence officers would obey an order from the White House if it dealt with things that were either legally impermissible or left them open to being hung out to dry in the aftermath under a new legal interpretation by a future administration. CIA officers serve the White House, but they don’t do it blindly. Much has been made of former CIA Director Michael Hayden’s comment that if President Trump wanted somebody waterboarded, he should “bring his own bucket.” Many media commentators latched onto that to argue that Hayden was rejecting so-called “enhanced interrogation” methods. He was not. He was saying that criminal probes in the succeeding administration for things deemed legal during the preceding administration has had a chilling effect on CIA officers who saw what happened when the political winds changed. Irrespective of administration, this overcorrection toward caution and playing it safe is the efflux of Washington’s hyper-partisanship and take-no-prisoners approach to politics.
Although I resigned from CIA to pursue an academic career, I retained my commission as a Naval Reserve officer, and I recently was recalled to active duty and spent 11 months deployed to East Africa. I was again reminded about the importance—and cost—of national service no matter the resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Thankfully it wasn’t a particularly dangerous assignment, but I went places where I certainly wouldn’t bring my family. Danger aside, I missed a year of my son’s life— I left a toddler and returned to a little boy. I missed so many “firsts” and developmental milestones that my wife stopped telling me lest it make me sad. I wasn’t sure if it was better or worse to be skyped in on Christmas morning to watch my son unwrap his presents over a bad connection. It was hard on my wife, and harder on my son who spent months after I returned home fearing that every time I went to work I was leaving for a year. And again, like my days at CIA, seeking a sense of purpose in the mission, supporting one’s colleagues, and national service was what mattered most. I found the same level of commitment in my fellow military members and with those Department of Defense civilians who served with me. CIA doesn’t have the market cornered on patriotism or selfless service, and those in uniform are equally unlikely to leave due to their new Commander in Chief.
The CIA isn’t perfect. It has missed some big events, blown some big calls, and endless internal musical chairs doesn’t help. It struggles with public relations, and how to balance secrecy with transparency. But for all of its imperfections, my sense is that the mystique of CIA will always keep recruiting officers busy and the Trump Administration isn’t going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back for those who are considering the exit. They’ll either leave for reasons independent of the administration, or they’ll remain because they’re public servants in important organization that has been through similar challenges before. Most will remain for the interesting and necessary work, and some may have more prosaic concerns forefront in their minds. The intelligence community’s mission doesn’t stop depending on who occupies the White House, and if history is any guide, it will rise to the occasion.
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House Intelligence panel publicizes scope of Russia probeby In Homeland Security Staff
The committee will probe whether Russia's "active measures include links between Russia and individuals associated with political campaigns or any other U.S. person."
Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak appeared on Obama White House visitor logs at least 22 times between 2009 and 2016.
The Daily Caller reported that the Kislyak appeared on the visitor logs as recently as September 2016. Kislyak had a meeting with John Holdren, one of Obama's senior advisers, as well as Marina W. Gross, Alexander Ermolaev, Alexey Lopatin, Vyacheslav Balakirev, and Sergey Sarazhinskiy.
Kislyak met with National Security Council senior official Gary Samore on weapons of mass destruction four times during Obama's first term. The ambassador also meet three times with Obama's senior adviser Robert Malley on defeating the Islamic State (IS). Kislyak also paid the visitor's office four visits.
Kislyak is listed an additional 12 times among other visitors for events like "holiday open houses" or "diplomatic corps reception."
The logs were released by the Obama White House as a push for transparency in his administration.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recently come under scrutiny and calls for his resignation from Democratic senators for his interactions with Kislyak. Sessions is accused of making misleading statements during his confirmation hearing about meeting with the ambassador during the election.
During a press conference Thursday, Sessions said that he would recuse himself from an investigation into Russia interfering with the 2016 presidential election.
"I have decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States," Sessions said.
But the Trump administration is not the first to have an unconventional take on Russia.
Former President Barack Obama was once caught on a hot mic leaning over to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at a national security summit in South Korea saying that he would have "more flexibility" after his final reelection.
And in a 2012 presidential debate with Mitt Romney, Obama told him that Russia was not that big of a threat and said that "1980s were asking for their foreign policy back." Obama scolded Romney by saying that the Cold War had been over 30 years.
The post Russian Ambassador Kislyak Welcomed Multiple Times to Obama White House appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
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Dave Majumdar
Security, Europe
A shambolic shipbuilding industrial base and poor maintenance.
The underlying problem for Russia is that many of its shipyards—with the exception of those engaged in submarine construction—are an unmitigated disaster. On many occasions, ships are ordered simply for the sake of keeping a shipyard open or political patronage. “Russia’s shipbuilding industry is the worst of all its defense industries,” Kofman said—delays, technical problems and rampant corruption are commonplace. “A couple of the shipyards got racked with terrible corruption, the owners basically stole billions and ran off with them, which really hurt Russia’s shipbuilding plans.”
While the Cold War-era Soviet Navy built a massive surface fleet to challenge the dominance of the U.S. Navy on the open ocean, that once mighty armada has all but disappeared. Much of the former Soviet Navy has been scrapped, sold off, or rusted away in port since 1991. As such, the present day Russian surface fleet is a pale shadow of Adm. Sergey Gorshkov’s vision of a blue water navy. Its biggest threats are not NATO or the United States, but rather a shambolic shipbuilding industrial base and poor maintenance. Indeed, more Russian warships have been lost to shipyard fires than any enemy action.
“Essentially, we have the disappearance of the Soviet blue water navy and the transition to something like a green water navy,” Michael Kofman, a research scientist specializing in Russian military affairs at the Center for Naval Analyses told The National Interest.
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The pope will meet with European Union leaders a day before a special summit marking the 60th anniversary of the bloc’s founding treaty.
Russia’s top diplomat says the uproar over U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ meetings with the Russian ambassador is a replay of McCarthyism.
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Russia’s leading opposition figure has published a sweeping report accusing the nation’s prime minister of corruption, claims which the premier’s office has shrugged off as propaganda.
Officials say “fake news” and a “witch hunt” are intended to head off better relations.
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(MOSCOW) — The intense attention being given to the new U.S. attorney general’s meetings with Russia’s ambassador could obstruct improved Washington-Moscow relations, the spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
The spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters he did not know about the meetings last year between Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and Jeff Sessions, who at that time was a U.S. senator. Sessions also was a policy adviser to President Donald Trump’s campaign.
News of the two meetings has added fuel to the controversy over whether Russia was improperly involved with Trump’s campaign. It spurred calls in Congress for Sessions to recuse himself from an investigation into alleged Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.
Peskov said it was normal for Russian diplomats to meet with U.S. lawmakers. Sessions’ office has said the meetings were in his capacity as a senator rather than as a Trump campaign adviser.
He characterized the reaction to the news of the Sessions meetings as “an emotional atmosphere (that) leads to resistance to the idea of some kind of U.S.-Russia dialogue.”
A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, told The Associated Press that the Russian Embassy would not comment on meetings with American political figures, but she also said they were part of the embassy’s “everyday business.”
Zakharova echoed Peskov’s assessment in a briefing on Thursday, saying U.S. news media were overreacting to suggestions of improper contacts between Russia and Trump’s circle.
“What is happening now in the West, particularly in the U.S. media, it’s just the manifestation of some kind of media vandalism,” she said.
Trump has repeatedly said that he wants to improve relations between Moscow and Washington. But Moscow appears frustrated by the lack of visible progress, as well as by the support from Trump administration officials for continuing sanctions imposed on Russia for its interference in Ukraine.
Some Russian news media have cast the controversies over Trump and Russia as attempts by the Democratic Party to undermine the Republican Trump’s agenda.
But others suggest that Moscow may have been overly hopeful for a swift reversal of longstanding U.S.-Russia tensions.
“You still want to stay in this sweet dream called ‘Trump,’ always pushing away unpleasant news from across the ocean like you fumble for an incessant alarm clock and try to turn it off without opening your eyes and staying under the covers,” commentator Sergei Strokan wrote in the business-focused newspaper Kommersant.
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Now is not a great time for warm feelings about Russia in Washington. After a campaign season full of intrigue, the fallout from questions of foreign involvement in the most recent presidential election continues to grow. And most recently, the revelation on Wednesday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke with Russia’s ambassador to the United States twice during the 2016 campaign season, only to say during his confirmation hearings that he had not communicated with Russian officials, has spurred calls for Sessions to resign.
This wave of tension has sparked numerous comparisons to the Cold War period, which is unsurprising. Though the U.S. and the Soviet Union were allies in World War II and helped each other to victory, that cooperation was followed by decades during which the opposition between the two systems they represented dominated global politics.
But, though the Cold War may be the most obvious example of a time when American feelings about Russia or the Soviet Union were dominated by suspicion, experts say that hostility between the two dates back to long before that period.
“The trope [of Western European suspicion of Russia] goes back a long ways, to the 1500s and 1600s, and became stronger after the Napoleonic Wars, when Britain and Russia were grappling,” says Kees Boterbloem, an expert in Russian and European history at the University of South Florida. “That image of Russia as an ‘anti-world’ was already there. There are these old-fashioned myths about Russia being a different entity altogether from quote-unquote ‘civilized’ humanity, and time and time again I get the facile impression that everybody goes back to that dichotomy whenever there’s some kind of problem.”
Those old ideas were brought to the United States in the nation’s earliest days, and were amplified in the centuries that followed. By the 19th century, as the U.S. became more firmly established as the home of liberal democracy and that system of government became closely linked with citizens’ ideas of the nation, those Americans who gave thought to Russia saw the region as in some ways their opposite.
To boot, Imperial Russia refused to recognize the U.S. as a nation for decades after the Revolutionary War. “Outraged by its extravagant ideas about Liberty and Equality, Catherine the Great steadfastly refused to receive a U. S. Minister,” as TIME once put it. “Her successors, Paul I and Alexander I, shared her attitude.”
“Russia was viewed as a last holdout of the worst kind of autocracy,” says Nina Tumarkin, director of Russian Area Studies at Wellesley College, who served as an adviser to President Ronald Reagan on matters concerning the Soviet Union. “Russia had a very reactionary monarch who was anti-revolutionary, so there was this view of Russia quashing democracy.”
And, Tumarkin adds, as a tidal wave of Russian Jews began to emigrate to the U.S. to escape persecution in the late 1800s, their reports helped anti-Russia feeling grow. Some American evangelicals even saw Russia as a biblically foretold evil opponent to the Holy Land. (There were exceptions during the 19th century, says Igor Lukes, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. “President Lincoln was on very good terms with the Tsar of Russia,” Lukes says. “They mutually liked each other and each considered the other a great reformer; Abraham Lincoln gradually abolished slavery whereas Alexander II abolished serfdom in Russia.”)
In the early 20th century, the distrust of Russia among some Americans continued.
The Russian Revolution in 1917 initially sparked hopes of the rise of a democratic Russia; as A. Scott Berg explains in his biography of Woodrow Wilson, the president saw the Tsar’s abdication that March as a sign that World War I — which the U.S. was about to join — could be a global “war against autocracy.” But, with the Bolsheviks coming to power and bowing out of the war, that hope was soon dashed. The U.S. government even refused to recognize the new Soviet government; Wilson was doubtful that the change would stick, and the ambassador to the U.S. who was appointed by Lenin was denied a visa.
And, though the Zimmermann telegram is often given credit as the tipping point for the U.S. entry into World War I in 1917, Jeffrey Burds, who teaches history at Northeastern University, says that Wilson was also motivated by being “terrified” of the possible results of the Tsar’s abdication and participated in an Allied attempt to surreptitiously steer the course of Russian politics by supporting anti-Bolshevik forces.
In other words, though the Cold War is famous as a time for espionage between the U.S. and USSR, suspicion began on both sides decades earlier — and was, in both directions, based on some degree of truth. Though the West denied that the intervention was a big deal, Burds says, declassification of documents in the post-1991 period has showed that in fact the Soviets were right and the U.S. really was interfering with their internal affairs. In the other direction, Burds says that American fear of things like possible dealing in industrial secrets by organizations like the Soviet trade group Amtorg in the 1930s was well-founded.
But, when the U.S. and much of the rest of the world faced economic crisis in the 1930s, the Soviets — removed from the global economy — were insulated from that damage. Though many people there were already suffering greatly under the rule of Lenin and then Stalin, the worst was still hidden from audiences in the U.S. The American Communist Party grew, as the American media reported warmly on the doings of “Uncle Joe” Stalin. For example, in 1938, TIME reported that one influential member of the American Communist Party returned from a visit there to report that she had stayed in the nicest hotels, eaten well and seen real freedom in action, and had only come back to the U.S. became she wanted to use that example to “make America better.” Lukes says that some Americans who decided to move to the USSR to see the supposed paradise themselves ended up in the Gulag. This idealism wasn’t just something for the working classes either, as many American intellectuals watched the goings-on with interest.
With the coming of World War II, both the U.S. and USSR took an anti-fascist position and played key roles in combating the spread of Nazi Germany. News reports showed FDR and Stalin smilingly conferring, and some Americans — including those who were giving serious thought to the USSR for the first time— embraced that rosy picture.
But the hope for a future of peaceful coexistence was crushed even while the alliance still held. What exactly tipped the scales is hard to say, but the tail end of the war provided plenty of opportunity for the U.S. to reconsider its opinion of the USSR, and vice-versa. “All these transition moments are built into World War II,” says Burds.
Around 1943, as the Allies began to think about how they would relate to one another in the post-war world, as Burds frames it, a group of Americans associated with Allen Dulles, who would later serve as Director of Central Intelligence, realized that the Soviet Union would emerge from the War as a major force and that the U.S. didn’t really know enough about what was going on in the USSR to be able to deal with such a force intelligently. At universities — especially Columbia and Harvard — and within the government, the 1940s saw Americans begin to approach the USSR with a know-your-enemy thoroughness.
The death of Franklin Roosevelt in early 1945 brought Harry Truman to the presidency, and along with him a much more “hard-line,” as Tumarkin describes it, approach to the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, reports of the Red Army’s brutality in the course of liberating Nazi territory, available even to non-specialists, led many in the American public and Congress to sour on Russia. For example, a TIME correspondent in Vienna sent back a report that he had heard from several sources that after Russian forces took the city they would “approach an apartment house and, judging from its size, demand from the landlord that a certain number of women be delivered to them for their pleasure.” Though he noted that he was unable to independently verify the report, he passed along to American readers that the fear inspired by the idea was undoubtedly real.
“The Cold War chill sets in very quickly in 1945, even before the end of the war,” Tumarkin says.
Look at the timing of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she adds. At the Yalta Conference, Stalin had promised to enter the war against Japan within three months after victory over Germany in Europe. Victory in Europe day was celebrated on May 8, 1945. Three months later was August. The bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, just days before the deadline. The Soviet Union did declare war on Japan precisely two days later, but Tumarkin argues that one big reason for the U.S. decision to drop the bomb at that moment in the war was that the world had seen what happened when the Soviets liberated nations in Eastern Europe — including the establishment of Soviet-style or Soviet-friendly regimes — and wanted to end the war quickly to prevent that from happening in Asia.
In short, even before the Cold War began, the U.S. and Russia were in opposition.
Boterbloem suggests that the difficulty of abandoning such a long-standing dichotomy, despite the fact that the geopolitical situation has changed many times over since then, may underlie tensions with Russia even to this day.
“We don’t really know too much about other countries so we’re inclined to stick with old ideas,” he says. “It’s hard to say, ‘Forget about what you learned, we’re looking at a different country here.’”
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According to President Trump, every new story and development involving his team's contacts with Russia is nothing more than a "total witch hunt.
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