Biden Should Resist Calls to Fight a New Cold War

As a new Iron Curtain threatens to divide Europe, progressives must face the dangers of a resurgent militarism—and seize the opportunities to advance our priorities.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine “is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine,” State Department spokesman Ned Price recently declared.

Now that the US and the NATO allies have taken from the Russian oligarchs their cash in foreign banks, their mansions, their boats and planes, and blocked the export of all private and corporate Russian capital abroad, Russia is freer to decide how to organize the capital investment of the economy. Freer, that’s to say, than Russia was when the Clinton Administration installed Boris Yeltsin and his cronies in the Kremlin at the end of 1991; destroyed the parliament in 1993, and rigged Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996.

Some cold, hard facts they don’t tell you about Ukraine

Zealous anti-Russia voices are actually demanding that anyone opposing their views be silenced, and even criminally prosecuted.

The Russian operation to take the port city of Mariupol is drawing to a successful conclusion. “Success” has to be understood today in a qualified sense, since large parts of the city now lie in ruins and as many as 4,000 civilians may have been killed in the fighting, largely victims of trigger happy Ukrainian ultra-nationalists.

This is a follow on to yesterday’s Ukrainian Tochka-U missile strike on the Kramatorsk railway station. Russia no longer has Tochka missiles (search for Tochka in the pdf) while the Ukraine, Belarus and several other states still use them.

Washington appears to be absent from the process, seemingly holding out for a preferred outcome while the violence rages.

Gen. Mark Milley’s predicted war of years is a Cold War II that risks WWIII. It is not in America’s interest to protract this conflict.