Is Russia The Greatest Danger To America?

Vladimir Putin at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow. (Reuters / Alexei Druzhinin)

Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation: Russia Is Not the ‘No. 1 Threat’—or Even Among the Top 5

By declaring Putin’s Russia to be the greatest danger to America, the political-media establishment itself is endangering US national security.

Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com. This installment is posted a few days later than usual because of the Thanksgiving holiday.)

In the 1990s, the Clinton administration embraced post-Soviet Russia as America’s “strategic partner and friend.” Twenty years later, the US policy establishment, from liberals to conservatives, insists that Russia under Vladimir Putin is the number-one threat to American national security. The primary explanation for this transformed perception, which began under President George W. Bush, became more insistent during the Obama administration, and is now a virtual bipartisan axiom, lies in Washington, not in Moscow. But whatever the full explanation, it is gravely endangering US national security by diminishing real threats and preventing the partnership with Russia needed to cope with them

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WNU Editor: Stephen Cohen avoids explaining why the Washington political and media establishment view Russia .... particularly Putin .... as a threat. My take is simple. If Hillary Clinton had won the U.S. Presidency ..... Russia-Gate would not even be a blip on the radar. But she lost .... shockingly so .... and she lost to a populist like Donald Trump. And after one year .... the rhetoric is only becoming more shrill.