Stephen Cohen Makes A Slight Mistake.

When Dr. Stephen Cohen speaks, I listen. So, I read his latest piece on pathological neocon war-mongers (most of them draft-dodgers or humanities "professors" thousands miles away from theaters of operation) in RT. It is a good piece:

Anyone who has lived through or studied the preceding forty-year Cold War will recognize the ominous echoes of its most dangerous periods, when actual war was on the horizon or a policy option. Here are only a few random but representative examples: In a March 8 Washington Post opinion article, two American professors, neither with any apparent substantive knowledge of Russia or Cold War history, warned that the Kremlin is trying “to undermine our trust in the institutions that sustain a strong nation and a strong democracy. The media, science, academia and the electoral process are all regular targets.” Decades ago, J. Edgar Hoover, the policeman of that Cold War, said the same, indeed made it an operational doctrine.

But then Doctor Cohen makes a slight mistake when states that:

But the preceding Cold War was driven by an intense ideological conflict between Soviet Communism and Western capitalism.

Here, we have to be very clear that on the West's (primarily Anglo-Saxon West) side this war was against historic Russia, not "communism" (grossly misunderstood and deliberately misinterpreted) and Russians. Hans Morgenthau was explicit in 1957, as were explicit American ideological doctrines that emphasized:

   "I would say, and I have said many times before, that if the czars still reigned in Russia, that if Lenin had died of the measles at an early age, that if Stalin had never been heard of, but the power of the Soviet Union were exactly what it is today, the problem of Russia would be for us by and large what it is today. If the Russian armies stood exactly where they stand today, and if Russian technological development were what it is today, we would be by and large confronted with the same problems which confront us today."

US problem was not with "communism", which was merely a propaganda cliche, it was with Russia and Russians as  such, as a nation.  It still is. It was and is the issue of precious bodily fluids from the get go, especially today between neocons and so called interventionist "elites". I totally get where Cohen comes from, I addressed this issue myself not for once--US "strategists" (let alone utterly corrupt media) are for the most part unqualified and not that well educated people, as last 20 years, or so, so manifestly demonstrated. The danger of these people such as Kagans, Petraeuses, or this mindless bimbo AOC is that these people are utterly unqualified for a statesmanship and, maybe with some caveat for such military "leader" as Petraeus, have no a faintest idea what real war is. So, I also have issues with calling such a pseudo-"thinker" as Robert Kagan, or coward John Bolton or anyone from this pool of ignoramuses running US foreign policy and military disasters, "warriors"--none of those people have any idea what being real warrior is and that too is a problem. As I stated not for once, I feel slightly more secure when I know that Dunford and Gerasimov talk to each-other--talking to Bolton or Pompeo is a waste of time. 

Today, observing an American wasteland of military and geopolitical thought which follows in step with complete political and ideological degeneration of the American state, one is forced to prepare for war which, in a current American case, could be unleashed by people who have no clue. 

P.S. I don't think that Dr. Cohen serves his noble cause well when references the name of Solzhenitsyn who played his, however small, role in helping to topple one of the versions of the historic Russia and maybe Dr. Cohen has to ask himself a question why the monument to this self-proclaimed "consciousness of Russia" in Moscow is under specifically setup 24/7 video surveillance. But that is a separate topic of Russian history and here I and Dr. Cohen may have different views altogether.