US Policy

Trump’s ‘Mixed Signals’ on Crimea Have EU Stumped and Intrigued
US President Trump has yet to articulate his foreign strategy, Russian political analyst Alexei Martynov said, commenting on the White House's "mixed signals" on Crimea. Apparently therefore new UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres's statement on the peninsula's status was rather ambiguous. [...]
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Russia won’t be talked to ‘from position of strength’ – Moscow on US statement
Russia will not be talked to from a position of strength, only as an equal partner, the Russian defense minister said, commenting on the latest remark by his US counterpart. It comes as senior military commanders of the two nations are about to meet. [...]
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Ex-Pentagon Chief Says Alleged Trump’s Comments on New START With Russia ‘Wrong’
The White House will make 'a tragic mistake' if it rejects Russia's reported offer to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), former US Secretary of Defense William Perry said in an interview on Friday.   [...]
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Trump’s Foreign Policy at a Crossroads
Recent U.S. foreign policy – driven by neocons and liberal hawks – has spread chaos and death around the globe. But can “crazy” Donald Trump bring sanity to how the U.S. approaches the world, asks Robert Parry. If you wanted to bring sanity to a U.S. foreign policy that has spun crazily out of control, there would be some immediate steps that you – or, say, Secretary of State Rex Till [...]
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US’ Bill on Info War Against Russia Has Soros’ Fingerprints All Over It
The US bipartisan initiative to launch information warfare against Russia has George Soros's fingerprints all over it, Pamela Geller, US journalist and President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative told Radio Sputnik. According to Geller, Soros wants to prevent a rapprochement between Russia and the US. [...]
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US Senators Introduce Bill Requiring Approval for Lifting Anti-Russia Sanctions
A bipartisan group of US senators led by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Ben Cardin introduced a legislation granting Congress a veto right over any decision by President Donald Trump’s administration to lift anti-Russian sanctions. [...]
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‘All on me’: Homeland Security chief falls on sword over chaotic travel ban rollout
Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly took the blame for the poor rollout of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning nationals from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US, but said there was a need for speed in doing so. [...]
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What Trump’s ‘Great Wall’ Misses
President Trump’s “Great Wall” ignores a key reason why desperate Mexicans and Central Americans flee north – the history of U.S. military and economic intervention that has created poverty and repression, notes William Blum. Instead of building a “Great Wall” on the Mexican border, President Trump might find it so much cheaper, so much easier, so much more humane, so much more popu [...]
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Trump’s Attacks on Iran, China, Taiwan Potentially Harmful for Ties With Russia
While 2016 showed some promise that global politics in 2017 can improve, much will depend on the first steps of the US' new administration, according to the Head of the Russian Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev, who spoke to RIA Novosti about two possible models of global development in 2017. [...]
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US tanks, infantry fighting vehicles arrive in Estonia amid NATO buildup on Russian borders
US military hardware, including M1A2 Abrams battle tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, have arrived in the northern Estonian town of Tapa as part of continued US efforts to counter the alleged Russian threat.   [...]
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Empire Files: US-Russia Relations in “Most Dangerous Moment”
Leading scholar on US-Russia relations addresses the claim being trumpeted by politicians and media on both sides of the political spectrum that Russia is now the "number one" threat to the United States. Given the proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine, Dr. Cohen tells host Abby Martin that the real alarming danger today is "a new, multi-front Cuban missile crisis." Dr. Stephen Cohen is Professor Eme [...]
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Steering Trump Back to Endless War
President Trump’s chaotic first two weeks have seen senior aides reverse his most promising plans for restoring realism to U.S. foreign policy, especially regarding Russia and the Mideast, reports Daniel Lazare. Well, that didn’t take long, did it? The Trump administration hadn’t even reached its two-week mark when it surrendered a major portion of its independence and fell in behind the [...]
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Russian, US Analysts Urge Trump Not to Make an Iraq-Like Mistake with Iran
On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was looking to 'drive a wedge' between Russia and Iran in its effort to improve relations with Moscow while confronting Tehran. Multiple observers, from Russian foreign policy analysts to American paleo-conservatives, warn that a US-Iran clash would be a catastrophic mistake. [...]
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Russia disagrees with Trump labeling Iran ‘number one terrorist state’
Russia disagrees with a remark recently made by US President Donald Trump’s that branded Iran as “the number one terrorist state,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, citing partnership between Moscow and Tehran. “We do not agree with the definition,” Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. [...]
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Trump: US supports NATO, but wants all members to pay fair share
Donald Trump has stated that although the US strongly supports NATO, it wants all members to make their full contributions to the alliance. His comments were made during a speech at the US Central Command in Florida. [...]
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Unspeakable: the Black Book of Imperial Terrorism
American “mainstream” journalists who want to keep their paychecks flowing and their status afloat know they must report current events in a way that respects the taboo status of the nation’s underlying inequality and oppression structures and its savage and relentless imperial criminality. Those topics are understood as off limits, as beyond the narrow parameters of acceptable and polite di [...]
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The Double Standard on Yemen’s Suffering
The Trump administration condemns Iran as somehow responsible for a Yemeni rebel group’s attack on a Saudi warship, but ignores the Saudi-inflicted bloodbath on the Yemeni people, as Gareth Porter explained to The long-running U.S.-backed Saudi war against a Yemeni rebel group has led to mass hunger and civilian slaughter — suffering comparable to the humanitarian crisis of Aleppo in Syria [...]
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Trump Bends to Neocon Pressures
President Trump’s calls for reorienting American foreign policy look to be disintegrating in his first two weeks in office as he embraces the neoconservative hostilities toward Iran and Russia, as Andrew The Trump Administration’s goal of de-escalating tensions with Russia is meeting stiff resistance in Eastern Europe where many reject the notion that a diplomatic solution can be reached ov [...]
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Trump Schooled on Separation of Powers
President Trump is getting a crash course on the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers as federal courts knock down his temporary immigration ban aimed at seven mostly Muslim countries, reports Marjorie Cohn. On Jan. 27, President Trump made good on his campaign promise to institute a ban on Muslims entering the U.S. Trump’s executive order (“EO”) is titled “Protecting the Nation F [...]
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Trump ‘Likely to Team Up With Russia, Damascus to Liberate Raqqa From Daesh’
The only way for US President Donald Trump to liberate Raqqa, the de facto capital of Daesh (ISIS/ISIL), from terrorists, is to join forces with Russia and Damascus on the ground, Russian military expert Ivan Konovalov told Radio Sputnik. [...]
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Netanyahu Sees Trump Presidency as a Chance to Do Whatever He Wants in Palestine
Speaking to Sputnik, Neve Gordon, visiting Professor of Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees Donald Trump's presidency as carte blanche for Tel Aviv to act in the occupied territories. [...]
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Against All Odds: What’s Behind Washington’s Softening Stance Toward China
Both Beijing and Washington are by no means interested in unleashing an all-out trade war, experts believe. Beijing and Washington are exchanging signals and testing waters before starting a serious dialogue about the future of bilateral relations, Russian expert Nikita Maslennikov told Sputnik. [...]
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