Stephen Cohen on Ukraine, Europe and Syria

IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE TODAY LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW

This interview of John Bachelor and Prof. Stephen Cohen gives the best overview I have heard of the very dangerous situation that spans Ukraine, Europe and Syria.

Stephen Cohen: Obama Rejects Russia’s Offer to Jointly Confront ISIS in Syria (Audio Podcast)

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/stephen-cohen-obama-rejects-russias-offer-jointly-confront-isis-syria-audio-podcast/ri9813

John Batchelor has an extremely popular political talk show on America’s largest radio network, WABC.

He has Stephen Cohen on live in the studio almost every week for a full 45 minute segment, the only guest he gives that much time to.

Why? Because Cohen’s appearances are killing the ratings.

America seems to be thirsting for an alternative and critical view of Obama’s Russia policy

See below for a summary of this program.

Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War.

Pointing to the torrent of American political and media denunciations of Russian President Putin’s increasing of Moscow’s longstanding military support of the Assad regime in Syria, along with Putin’s dramatic offer to join the US-led air war against ISIS in Syria, Cohen concludes that Washington seems to prefer an Islamic State takeover of Damascus to any cooperation with Putin’s Russia.

This, Cohen argues, opens another front in the new Cold War—along with the ones that have already unfolded in Ukraine and Europe—and is further evidence of Washington’s inability to think rationally about American national security.

Unless ISIS is stopped soon, and its military victories reversed, which requires Russia’s assistance, millions of refugees are likely to flood into Europe, giving further rise to right-wing nationalist parties already opposed to US influence in Europe and to NATO.

If so, the vaunted “transatlantic alliance” may not survive this political transformation of European politics.

Also discussed are the worsening US-Russian confrontation over Ukraine, which American commentators now insist is directly related to Putin’s policies in Syria; and the way Russia has welcomed perhaps 1 to 2 million refugees from the Ukrainian civil war in a generally humanitarian way—in contrast to the refugee crisis in Europe.