Remembering Stephen F. Cohen: Katrina vanden Heuvel on life and love with eminent Russia scholar
Pushback with Aaron Maté
Stephen F. Cohen, the eminent historian who helped shape the field of Russia studies and bravely exposed the fallacies and dangers of Russiagate and the new Cold War, passed away on September 18, 2020 at the age of 81. Cohen's wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher of The Nation magazine, reflects on his life and legacy.
Guest: Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher of The Nation magazine, and wife of Stephen F. Cohen.
This is a sad day. America has lost a giant but they don't even know it. The articles below, from Caitlin Johnstone and the Saker below make it clear just what what his contribution was.
Just when sane voices are more needed than ever he has been snatched from us.
I felt as if I knew Steve Cohen from his weekly sessions on the John Batchelor Show. I emailed him once and received a response.
Stephen F Cohen, the renowned American scholar on Russia and leading authority on US-Russian relations, has died of lung cancer at the age of 81.
As one of the precious few western voices of sanity on the subject of Russia while everyone else has been frantically flushing their brains down the toilet, this is a real loss. I myself have cited Cohen’s expert analysis many times in my own work, and his perspective has played a formative role in my understanding of what’s really going on with the monolithic cross-partisan manufacturing of consent for increased western aggressions against Moscow.
In a world that is increasingly confusing and awash with propaganda, Cohen’s death is a blow to humanity’s desperate quest for clarity and understanding.
I don’t know how long Cohen had cancer. I don’t know how long he was aware that he might not have much time left on this earth. What I do know is he spent much of his energy in his final years urgently trying to warn the world about the rapidly escalating danger of nuclear war, which in our strange new reality he saw as in many ways completely unprecedented.
The last of the many books Cohen authored was 2019’s War with Russia?, detailing his ideas on how the complex multi-front nature of the post-2016 cold war escalations against Moscow combines with Russiagate and other factors to make it in some ways more dangerous even than the most dangerous point of the previous cold war.
“We’re in a new cold war with Russia that is much more dangerous than the preceding cold war for various reasons,” Cohen told The Young Turks in 2017. “One is that there are at least three cold war fronts that are fraught with hot war: that would be Ukraine, that would be the Baltic Black Sea region where NATO is undertaking an unprecedented military buildup on Russia’s border, and of course in Syria, where American and Russian aircraft are flying in the same airspace. And I would add to those three cold war fronts what is now called Russiagate, because the accusation that Trump needs to be impeached because he’s somehow a Russian agent so distorts and cripples the possibility of the White House making Russia policy that I think it’s a cold war front.”
Cohen repeatedly points to the most likely cause of a future nuclear war: not one that is planned but one which erupts in tense, complex situations where anything could happen in the chaos and confusion as a result of misfire, miscommunication or technical malfunction, as nearly happened many times during the last cold war.
“I think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian relations, at least since the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen told Democracy Now in 2017. “And arguably, it’s more dangerous, because it’s more complex. Therefore, we — and then, meanwhile, we have in Washington these — and, in my judgment, factless accusations that Trump has somehow been compromised by the Kremlin. So, at this worst moment in American-Russian relations, we have an American president who’s being politically crippled by the worst imaginable — it’s unprecedented. Let’s stop and think. No American president has ever been accused, essentially, of treason. This is what we’re talking about here, or that his associates have committed treason.”
“Imagine, for example, John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen added. “Imagine if Kennedy had been accused of being a secret Soviet Kremlin agent. He would have been crippled. And the only way he could have proved he wasn’t was to have launched a war against the Soviet Union. And at that time, the option was nuclear war.”
“A recurring theme of my recently published book War with Russia? is that the new Cold War is more dangerous, more fraught with hot war, than the one we survived,” Cohen wrote last year. “Histories of the 40-year US-Soviet Cold War tell us that both sides came to understand their mutual responsibility for the conflict, a recognition that created political space for the constant peace-keeping negotiations, including nuclear arms control agreements, often known as détente. But as I also chronicle in the book, today’s American Cold Warriors blame only Russia, specifically ‘Putin’s Russia,’ leaving no room or incentive for rethinking any US policy toward post-Soviet Russia since 1991.”
“Finally, there continues to be no effective, organized American opposition to the new Cold War,” Cohen added. “This too is a major theme of my book and another reason why this Cold War is more dangerous than was its predecessor. In the 1970s and 1980s, advocates of détente were well-organized, well-funded, and well-represented, from grassroots politics and universities to think tanks, mainstream media, Congress, the State Department, and even the White House. Today there is no such opposition anywhere.”
“A major factor is, of course, ‘Russiagate’,” Cohen continued. “As evidenced in the sources I cite above, much of the extreme American Cold War advocacy we witness today is a mindless response to President Trump’s pledge to find ways to ‘cooperate with Russia’ and to the still-unproven allegations generated by it. Certainly, the Democratic Party is not an opposition party in regard to the new Cold War.”
“Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world,” Cohen wrote in another essay last year. “No American president can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks. What kind of catastrophe will it take — in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia’s electric grid — to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight.”
And now Stephen Cohen is dead, and that clock is inching ever closer to midnight. The Russiagate psyop that he predicted would pressure Trump to advance dangerous cold war escalations with no opposition from the supposed opposition party has indeed done exactly that with nary a peep of criticism from either partisan faction of the political/media class. Cohen has for years been correctly predicting this chilling scenario which now threatens the life of every organism on earth, even while his own life was nearing its end.
And now the complex cold war escalations he kept urgently warning us about have become even more complex with the addition of nuclear-armed China to the multiple fronts the US-centralized empire has been plate-spinning its brinkmanship upon, and it is clear from the ramping up of anti-China propaganda since last year that we are being prepped for those aggressions to continue to increase.
We should heed the dire warnings that Cohen spent his last breaths issuing. We should demand a walk-back of these insane imperialist aggressions which benefit nobody and call for détente with Russia and China. We should begin creating an opposition to this world-threatening flirtation with armageddon before it is too late. Every life on this planet may well depend on our doing so.
Stephen Cohen is dead, and we are marching toward the death of everything. God help us all.
We have lost a real giant
(Stephen F. Cohen has died)!
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God
It is with immense sadness that I have to report that Stephen F. Cohen passed away yesterday in his home in Manhattan at the age of 81.
There are a few media outlets who have already reported this. Most of them discuss Stephen F. Cohen’s political ideas and his books, which is normal since he was a historian of the Soviet Union. But I won’t do that here.
What I want to say about Cohen is something very different
First, he was a man of immense kindness and humility. Second, he was a man of total intellectual honesty. I can’t say that Cohen and I had the same ideas or the same reading of history, though in many cases we did, but here is what I found so beautiful in this man: unlike most of his contemporaries, Cohen was not an ideologue, he did not expect everybody to agree with him, and he himself did not vet people for ideological purity before offering them his friendship.
Even though it is impossible to squeeze a man of such immense intellect and honesty into any one single ideological category, I would say that Stephen Cohen was a REAL liberal, in the original, and noble, meaning of this word.
I also have to mention Stephen Cohen’s immense courage. Yes, I know, Cohen was not deported to GITMO for his ideas, he was not tortured in a CIA secret prison, and he was not rendered to some Third Word country to be tortured there on behalf of the USA. Stephen Cohen had a different kind of courage: the courage to remain true to himself and his ideals even when the world literally covered him in slanderous accusations, the courage to NOT follow his fellow liberals when they turned PSEUDO-liberals and betrayed everything true liberalism stands for. Professor Cohen also completely rejected any forms of tribalism or nationalism, which often made him the target of vicious hatred and slander, especially from his fellow US Jews (he was accused of being, what else, a Putin agent).
Cohen had the courage to take on the entire ruling elites of this country and their messianic supremacist ideology by himself, almost completely alone.
Last, but most certainly not least, Stephen Cohen was a true peacemaker, in the sense of the words of the Holy Gospel I quoted above. He opposed the warmongering nutcases during the Cold War, and he opposed them again when they replaced their rabid hatred of the Soviet Union with an even more rabid hatred of everything Russian.
I won’t claim here that I always agreed with Cohen’s ideas or his reading of history, and I am quite sure that he would not agree with much of what I wrote. But one thing Cohen and I definitely did agree on: the absolute, number one, priority of not allowing a war to happen between the USA and Russia. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Stephen Cohen dedicated his entire life towards this goal.
If the Nobel Peace Prize meant anything, and if it was at least halfway credible, I would say that Stephen Cohen deserved such a Nobel more than anybody else on this planet. Instead, he will get his reward in the Heavens
In Russian we have an Old Testament inspired saying: “город стоит, пока в нем есть хоть один праведник” roughly meaning “a city will stand as long as there remains even one righteous person inside“. I can’t help it but feel that the “city” of the United States has just lost such a righteous person. Yes, there are still a few righteous people left in this “city”, but we all sure lost one of our best contemporaries.
To my immense regret, I never met Professor Cohen personally. And yet, when I heard the news of this death this morning, I felt truly heartbroken. My main consolation is that Cohen died before November and what will inevitably follow. I believe that God took him away from us to spare him the pain of seeing his country collapse under the repeated attacks of pseudo-liberal neocons.
It is pretty obvious that in our crazy and ugly times, Professor Cohen will not get the recognition and gratitude at home he so much deserves (if only because US pseudo liberals are much too busy bawling about Justice Ginsburg’s death). And while Stephen Cohen is well-known in some Russian circles (he had many friends in Russia), he is hardly a household name for most Russian people. But I am confident that, assuming humanity survives a little longer, Professor Cohen will be recognized as the righteous person he was, both in the USA and in Russia.
Somewhere, I also believe that we, as a society, simply don’t deserve to have such a righteous man amongst us. Cohen is now in much better company.
Thank you, dear Steve, for your kindness and courage. I shall miss you very, very much!
The Saker
This is an example of the relationship between Prof. Cohen and John Batchelor
Ukrainegate
impeachment saga worsens US-Russia Cold War
the
Grayzone
As
the House opens impeachment hearings for President Trump, Professor
Stephen F. Cohen warns that the US military assistance at the heart
of Ukrainegate escalates the US-Russia Cold War.
Guest:
Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York
University and Princeton University, contributing editor at The
Nation, and author of "War with Russia: From Putin & Ukraine
to Trump & Russiagate."
TheNew
York Times has
published an anonymously sourced report titled “U.S.
Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid”
about the “placement of potentially crippling malware inside the
Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never
been tried before” which could potentially “plunge Russia into
darkness or cripple its military,” with one anonymous official
reporting that “We are doing things at a scale that we never
contemplated a few years ago.”
Obviously
this is yet another serious escalation in the continually
mounting series of steps that
have been taken into a new cold war between the planet’s two
nuclear superpowers. Had a report been leaked to Russian media from
anonymous Kremlin officials that Moscow was escalating its
cyber-aggressions against America’s energy grid, this would
doubtless be labeled an act of war by the political/media class of
the US and its allies with demands for immediate retaliation.
To
put this in perspective, The
New York Timesreported
last year that
the Pentagon was pushing for the US Nuclear Posture Review to include
the strategy of retaliating against serious Russian cyberattacks on
American power grids with
nuclear weapons.
So
that’s scary enough. What’s even scarier is the information that
the Timesburied
way down in the 21st
to 23rd paragraphs of
its report:
“Two
administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been
briefed in any detail about the steps to place ‘implants’ — software
code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the
Russian grid.
“Pentagon
and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into
detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern
over his reaction — and the possibility that he might
countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in
2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian
foreign minister.
“Because
the new law defines the actions in cyberspace as akin to traditional
military activity on the ground, in the air or at sea, no such
briefing would be necessary, they added.”
“New
laws, enacted by Congress last year, allow such ‘clandestine
military activity’ in cyberspace to go ahead without the
president’s approval. So, in this case, those new laws are
protecting American interests… by keeping the sitting president out
of the loop. What a (scary) time to be alive.”
So
Trump is in a bit of a bind now. The escalation has already been put
in place, which will likely see an equal response from Moscow if it
isn’t scaled back. But scaling it back would mean a whole new wave
of shrieking alarmism from the political/media class about the
conspiracy theory that just won’t die no matter how much evidence
is mounted against it: that Trump is a controlled puppet of the
Kremlin. All as he’s working to build the case for re-election in
2020.
Stephen
F Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University
and Princeton University and one of America’s leading experts on
US-Russia relations, has been warning for years that exactly this
would happen. In an April 2017 interview
on Democracy
Now,
Cohen warned that placing political pressure on a US president to
never step back from escalations during a showdown between nuclear
superpowers could have potentially world-ending consequences should
mounting tensions see a situation similar to the Cuban missile crisis
again.
“I
think this is the most dangerous moment in American-Russian
relations, at least since the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen said.
“And arguably, it’s more dangerous, because it’s more complex.
Therefore, we — and then, meanwhile, we have in Washington
these — and, in my judgment, factless accusations that Trump
has somehow been compromised by the Kremlin. So, at this worst moment
in American-Russian relations, we have an American president who’s
being politically crippled by the worst imaginable — it’s
unprecedented. Let’s stop and think. No American president has ever
been accused, essentially, of treason. This is what we’re talking
about here, or that his associates have committed treason.”
“Imagine,
for example, John Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis,” Cohen
said. “Imagine if Kennedy had been accused of being a secret Soviet
Kremlin agent. He would have been crippled. And the only way he could
have proved he wasn’t was to have launched a war against the Soviet
Union. And at that time, the option was nuclear war.”
People
rarely take time to deeply reflect on the uniquely important fact
that our species came within a hair’s breadth of total annihilation
during the Cuban missile crisis. We learned long after it was all
over that the only reason a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine didn’t
discharge its payload on the US Navy and set off a full-scale nuclear
exchange between the US and the USSR was because one of the three men
in the sub needed to authorize the weapon’s use stood against the
other two and refused. That man’s name was Vasili
Arkhipov,
and he’s responsible for the fact that you and everyone you love
exists today. There’s a good
PBS documentary about
the event on YouTube if you’re curious.
President
Kennedy was constantly going back and forth in communication with the
Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis, and any number of things
could have gone cataclysmically wrong during that exchange had
Kennedy not made certain concessions at certain times and known when
to hold back instead of pressing forward. He made a series of
diplomatic moves that would not be possible in this current paranoid,
leak-prone climate, including secretly
recalling the USA’s Jupiter missiles from
their position in Turkey at Khrushchev’s request.
For
all the outrage that liberals display whenever a high-profile
Republican utters the phrase “deep state”, it sure is interesting
that the Commander-in-Chief has found himself in a situation where he
is at the whim of a collective of warmongers who are advancing
pre-existing agendas against a nation they perceive as a geostrategic
threat to US hegemony. It begs the question, who is really in charge?
The
US war machine is the most powerful military force in the history of
civilization, and the alliance of nations that it upholds is
functionally the most powerful empire that the world has ever seen.
Because so much power depends on the behavior of this gargantuan war
engine, it is seen by those with real power as too important to be
left to the will of the electorate, and too important to be left to
the will of the elected Commander-in-Chief. This is why Americans are
the most propagandized people in the world, this is why Russia
hysteria has been blasted into their psyches for three years, and
this is why we are all at an ever-increasing risk of dying in a
nuclear holocaust.
UPDATE: Trump now seems like he might be denying that what The New York Times’ sources said is happening is happening. It’s unlikely that the Timeswould fabricate a story whole cloth, so if Trump is in fact denying the story then either the sources are lying about what they’re doing in their own purported jobs, or Trump is still being kept in the dark, or Trump is just lying.“Do
you believe that the Failing New York Times just did a story stating
that the United States is substantially increasing Cyber Attacks on
Russia,” Trump tweeted. “This is a virtual act of Treason by a
once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for
our Country. ALSO, NOT TRUE! Anything goes with our Corrupt News
Media today. They will do, or say, whatever it takes, with not even
the slightest thought of consequence! These are true cowards and
without doubt, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”
Curiouser
and curiouser.
A
newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to
President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons
to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear attacks on
American infrastructure, including what current and former government
officials described as the most crippling kind of cyberattacks.
For
decades, American presidents have threatened “first use” of
nuclear weapons against enemies in only very narrow and limited
circumstances, such as in response to the use of biological weapons
against the United States. But the new document is the first to
expand that to include attempts to destroy wide-reaching
infrastructure, like a country’s power grid or communications, that
would be most vulnerable to cyberweapons.
The
draft document, called the Nuclear Posture Review, was written at the
Pentagon and is being reviewed by the White House. Its final release
is expected in the coming weeks and represents a new look at the
United States’ nuclear strategy. The draft was first
published last week by
HuffPost.
President
Trump has hurled the dire charge of "Treason" at the New
York Times for its lengthy investigative piece alleging US
intelligence has stepped up systematic cyber attacks on Russia's
power grid.
“This
is a
virtual act of Treason by
a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad
for our Country…”
Trump
tweeted Saturday evening in response to the story which ran hours
earlier.
He
then hastily added in a follow-up tweet in all caps, "ALSO,
NOT TRUE!" — as
if only then realizing his initial tweet seemed to actually vouch for
the story. The follow-up further excoriated the Times for their
reporting with "not
even the slightest thought of consequence!"
Whether
this means the president is outraged that a true and
verified report could be detrimental to US credibility and national
security, or that fake news could hurt the US and invite unnecessary
cyber retaliation is still not fully evident, but Trump's impulsive
Saturday evening tweets appear to back the former.
Do you believe that the Failing New York Times just did a story stating that the United States is substantially increasing Cyber Attacks on Russia. This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country.....
.....ALSO, NOT TRUE! Anything goes with our Corrupt News Media today. They will do, or say, whatever it takes, with not even the slightest thought of consequence! These are true cowards and without doubt, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
Accusing the press of treason is dangerous.
We described the article to the government before publication. As our story notes, President Trump’s own national security officials said there were no concerns. https://nyti.ms/2FdpKV1
The
NYT report outlines
an alleged ongoing US operation to infiltrate and
implant malware in Russia’s power grid as
preparation for any potential major cyber warfare operation in
the future, and further as "a warning" to the Kremlin.
However, the story is light on details and heavy on the usual
anonymous "current and former officials".
According
to the Times,
“officials described the previously unreported deployment of
American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets.”
The
officials described that “it
has gotten far, far more aggressive over the past year,” and
that they are “doing things at a scale that we never contemplated a
few years ago.” Though US operations hadn't reached the level of
specific attacks, the malware constitutes what's described as
a “persistent presence” within Russia’s infrastructure.
The
report casts the latest ramped up cyber efforts targeting Russia as
part of a broader campaign to clandestinely probe the country’s
electrical grid going back to 2012 — efforts
whichgrew
following alleged Russian hacking and election meddling connected
with the 2016 election.
"Two
administration officials told the Times they believed President
Donald Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the US computer
code being implanted inside the Russian grid."
And
further, the story is outright suggesting the White House's own
intelligence briefers are actually withholding vital national
security information from the president:
Pentagon
and intelligence officials describe to the Times "broad
hesitation" to tell Trump about the details of
the operations against Russia. They tell the Times there was concern
over how Trump would react, andthe
possibility that Trump might reverse the operations or discuss it
with foreign officials
.
So
there it is - assuming the report has merit - essentially a major
"clandestine military activity" is being run by US defense
and intelligence commanders but while intentionally
circumventing the White House's lawful civilian oversight?
Indeed,
perhaps Trump is right to have word "treason" as his first
thought — though
it wouldn't be on the part of the Times reportingbut
on the part of those seeking to hide the operation from the president
himself.
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