Tragedy And Farce: How The West Lost Post-Soviet Russia

Analogies comparing Putin to Hitler miss the mark and conveniently omit the West’s hand in creating the current state of affairs.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

History, Karl Marx said, repeats -- first as tragedy, then as farce. With the ongoing political crisis in Ukraine bringing the West and Russia closer to conflict than they’ve been at any time since the end of the Cold War, pundits have been playing fast and loose with historical analogies, painting Moscow in the harshest possible light. Russian

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US Foreign Policy Blowback: How US Disregard For Int’l Law Set Stage For Crimean Crisis

Critics charge that US history of cherry-picking international rules gives license for other powers to do the same

Jon Queally
By Jon Queally

Eleven years ago this week, the U.S. decided to sidestep international law in its rush to invade the sovereign nation of Iraq. In doing so, charge critics, it has helped open a pandora's box of imperial lawlessness that is now rearing its head in Ukraine. Amid warnings that what's taking place as Russia battles the U.S. and European nations over

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The Global Fallout From The Crimean Crisis

While at first glance the conflict in Ukraine may seem regional, Russia super power status mean it’s implications are global.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh
Ukraine

The world was stunned on Feb. 27, when just a few short days after the end of the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, Russian forces operating out of military bases located on Ukraine’s strategic Crimean Peninsula seized control of the territory – effectively severing it from Kiev’s control. As a result, for the first time in many decades the

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The Globalized State And Its Discontents

In a world governed by financial and cultural interdependence among states, the present reflects the past more than the future we had been promised. But is a state-less world a viable option?

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh
An Occupy protester wears a Guy Fawkes mask while protesting.

Nearly a quarter century ago the end of the Cold War instituted what then-President George H. W. Bush called a “New World Order.” It was, perhaps, a poor choice of words that elicited more in the way of conspiracy-fueled fear of one-world government than a bright, new cosmopolitan future, but it was nonetheless an apt description of a new era in

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Ukraine Is No Game

Ukraine’s addition as a member of the Western camp would spur Russia to assist the West’s enemies and could even return Europe to militarized competition between East and West last seen during the Cold War.

Jeffrey Cavanaugh
By Jeffrey Cavanaugh

In an episode of the classic 1990s sitcom “Seinfeld,” two of the show’s characters, Kramer and Newman, find themselves playing Risk on a New York City subway car. As they clutch the board to keep the passengers around them from overturning their armies of plastic men, Kramer gleefully informs Newman that his friend’s last stronghold – Ukraine – is

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UK Spying Shows Electronic Surveillance Not Just A Yankee Usurpation

Britain can tap the transoceanic cables that form the backbone of the international communications network and in real time monitor the social media sites.

Frederick Reese
By Frederick Reese
Eric Friedberg

Nearly 67 years ago, the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand came together under a multilateral agreement that was considered so sensitive that the prime minister of Australia didn’t know about its existence until 1973. The public wouldn’t be allowed to read the text of the treaty -- which Time magazine once called one

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