PRESS RELEASE
‘A Breach in the Anti-Putin Group-Think’
March 22, 2017 (EIRNS)—Under that headline, Russian expert and Committee for East-West Accord member Gilbert Doctorow highlighted for Consortium News, yesterday, the significance of Foreign Affairs’ recent publishing an article suggesting President Trump understands more about U.S.-Russian relations than the Washington policy elite. Robert English’s article, "Russia, Trump, and A New Detente," trashes decades of U.S. Russia-is-the-enemy and Putin-is-the-devil policy.
Foreign Affairs is
"the preeminent professional journal of American diplomacy... [which] has been carrying water for the State Department since the days of the Cold War,"
Doctorow points out; it has published one known article which bucked the line of the neoconservative and liberal intervenists that "Russian aggression" is responsible for everything.
Author English’s arguments, while thorough and uncompromising, are not extraordinary, Doctorow writes. What is "stunning," is that Foreign Affairs would chose to publish a piece whose premise is that stated in the opening paragraph:
"For 25 years, Republicans and Democrats have acted in ways that look much the same to Moscow. Washington has pursued policies that have ignored Russian interests (and sometimes international law as well) in order to encircle Moscow with military alliances and trade blocs conducive to U.S. interests. It is no wonder that Russia pushes back. The wonder is that the U.S. policy elite doesn’t get this, even as foreign-affairs neophyte Trump apparently does."
Doctorow suggests that Foreign Affairs broke its policy line, because, despite the Washington, D.C., frenzy against Russia, "the underlying reality is that the neocons are descending into a fury over their sudden loss of power.... Foreign Affairs magazine may be bending to the recognition that it is risking its credibility if it continues to put all its eggs in the we-hate-Russia basket."
