When the United States Invaded Russia


Book Description

One of the earliest U.S. counterinsurgency campaigns outside the Western Hemisphere, the Siberian intervention was a harbinger of policies to come. At the height of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson dispatched thousands of American soldiers to Siberia, and continued the intervention for a year and a half after the armistice in order to overthrow the Bolsheviks and to prevent the Japanese from absorbing eastern Siberia. Its tragic legacy can be found in the seeds of World War II, and in the Cold War.




Russia and the United States


Book Description

Russia and the United States—an account of American-Russian relations written for an American audience by Soviet historians—represents a novel venture for both scholarship and publishing. Its often startling perspective on American foreign policy is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the increasingly troubled relations between the two nations. Sivachev and Yakolev trace the course of the U.S.-Russian relations from the years preceding the American Revolution to the 1970s, when human rights issues began to cause friction. Those relations, the authors believe, were characterized by America's repeated failure to take advantage of opportunities to improve them. Recognizing the controversial nature of the book, Sivachev said in an interview with the New York Times: "We did not set out to please the American reader, nor did the University of Chicago Press ask us to. On the contrary, they recommended that we should feel free to present our own views." "Scholars and students of American foreign policy . . . are likely to be alternatively interested, intrigued, angered, and sometimes illuminated by some of the interpretations found in this work."—Perspective "An American reader should not prejudge this book as simply another dreary contribution to the rhetoric of Soviet propaganda. It is more than this. The book is an expression of a view of the world that is truly and strikingly different from an American one and it is important to understand that it is a theory of reality that is shared by most, if not all, Soviet intellectuals who study America and its foreign policy. It is not enough simply to establish the inaccuracies and misrepresentations contained in such a view. One must go further and understand that such a view of reality is sincerely deeply held and that it is a part of a larger belief system that gives the authors' scholarly work coherence and meaning."—Boston Sunday Globe




War with Russia?


Book Description

Is America in a new Cold War with Russia? How does a new Cold War affect the safety and security of the United States? Does Vladimir Putin really want to destabilize the West? What should Donald Trump and America’s allies do? America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s war-like demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril. In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohen—the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia—gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations. Topics include: Distorting Russia US Follies and Media Malpractices 2016 The Obama Administration Escalates Military Confrontation With Russia Was Putin’s Syria Withdrawal Really A “Surprise”? Trump vs. Triumphalism Has Washington Gone Rogue? Blaming Brexit on Putin and Voters Washington Warmongers, Moscow Prepares Trump Could End the New Cold War The Real Enemies of US Security Kremlin-Baiting President Trump Neo-McCarthyism Is Now Politically Correct Terrorism and Russiagate Cold-War News Not “Fit to Print” Has NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer? Why Russians Think America Is Attacking Them How Washington Provoked—and Perhaps Lost—a New Nuclear-Arms Race Russia Endorses Putin, The US and UK Condemn Him (Again) Russophobia Sanction Mania Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create. War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves who is right: are we living, as Cohen argues, in a time of unprecedented perils at home and abroad?




Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States


Book Description

From the capricious reign of Catherine the Great and Alexander I to the provocative leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, the author concentrates on the interplay between interests and ideologies in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, in an even-handed, non-ideological narrative.




Concord and Conflict


Book Description

Between 1867 - the year of the Alaskan purchase - and the beginning of World War I, Russian and American dignitaries, diplomats, businessmen, writers, tourists, and entertainers crossed between the two countries in surprisingly great numbers. Concord and Conflict provides the first comprehensive investigation of this highly transformational and fateful era in Russian-American relations. Excavating previously unmined Russian and American archives, Norman Saul illuminates these fifty significant - and open - years of association between the two countries. He explores the flow and fluctuation of economic, diplomatic, social, and cultural affairs; the personal and professional conflicts and scandals; and the evolution of each nation's perception of the other.




Distant Friends


Book Description

Drawing upon more than two decades of research in secondary and documentary publications as well as archival materials from the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain, Saul reveals a wealth of new detail about contacts between the two countries between the American Revolutionary War and the purchase of Alaska in 1867.




The Russia-China Axis


Book Description

The United States is a nation in crisis. While Washington’s ability to address our most pressing challenges has been rendered nearly impotent by ongoing partisan warfare, we face an array of foreign-policy crises for which we seem increasingly unprepared. Among these, none is more formidable than the unprecedented partnership developing between Russia and China, suspicious neighbors for centuries and fellow Communist antagonists during the Cold War. The two longtime foes have drawn increasingly close together because of a confluence of geostrategic, political, and economic interests—all of which have a common theme of diminishing, subverting, or displacing American power. While America’s influence around the world recedes—in its military and diplomatic power, in its political leverage, in its economic might, and, perhaps most dangerously, in the power and appeal of its ideas—Russia and China have seen their influence increase. From their support for rogue regimes such as those in Iran, North Korea, and Syria to their military and nuclear buildups to their aggressive use of cyber warfare and intelligence theft, Moscow and Beijing are playing the game for keeps. Meanwhile America, pledged to “leading from behind,” no longer does much leading at all. In The Russia-China Axis, Douglas E. Schoen and Melik Kaylan systematically chronicle the growing threat from the Russian-Chinese Axis, and they argue that only a rebirth of American global leadership can counter the corrosive impact of this antidemocratic alliance, which may soon threaten the peace and security of the world.





Book Description




Americans Experience Russia


Book Description

Americans Experience Russia analyzes how American scholars, journalists, and artists experienced and interpreted Russia/the Soviet Union over the last century. It critically engages with postcolonial theories which posit that a self-valorizing, unmediated west dictated the colonial encounter. In examining the fiction, film, journalism, treatises, and histories Americans produced out of their 'Russian experience, ' this volume closely analyzes these texts, locates them in their sociopolitical context, and gauges how their producers' profession, politics, gender, class, and interaction with native Russian interpreters conditioned their authored responses to Russian/Soviet reality.




The Limits of Partnership


Book Description

A gripping account of U.S.-Russian relations since the end of the Soviet Union The Limits of Partnership is a riveting narrative about U.S.-Russian relations from the Soviet collapse through the Ukraine crisis and the difficult challenges ahead. It reflects the unique perspective of an insider who is also recognized as a leading expert on this troubled relationship. American presidents have repeatedly attempted to forge a strong and productive partnership only to be held hostage to the deep mistrust born of the Cold War. For the United States, Russia remains a priority because of its nuclear weapons arsenal, its strategic location bordering Europe and Asia, and its ability to support—or thwart—American interests. Why has it been so difficult to move the relationship forward? What are the prospects for doing so in the future? Is the effort doomed to fail again and again? What are the risks of a new Cold War? Angela Stent served as an adviser on Russia under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and maintains dialogues with key policymakers in both countries. Here, she argues that the same contentious issues—terrorism, missile defense, Iran, nuclear proliferation, Afghanistan, the former Soviet space, the greater Middle East—have been in every president's inbox, Democrat and Republican alike, since the collapse of the USSR. Stent vividly describes how Clinton and Bush sought inroads with Russia and staked much on their personal ties to Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin—only to leave office with relations at a low point—and how Barack Obama managed to restore ties only to see them undermined by a Putin regime resentful of American dominance and determined to restore Russia's great power status. The Limits of Partnership calls for a fundamental reassessment of the principles and practices that drive U.S.-Russian relations, and offers a path forward to meet the urgent challenges facing both countries. This edition includes a new chapter in which Stent provides her insights about dramatic recent developments in U.S.-Russian relations, particularly the annexation of Crimea, war in Ukraine, and the end of the Obama Reset.