War with Russia?

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?

Stephen F. Cohen is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University, where for many years he was also director of the Russian Studies Program, and Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and History at New York University. He grew up in Owensboro, Kentucky, received his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Indiana University, and his Ph.D. at Columbia University.

Cohen’s other books include Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography; Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917; Sovieticus: American Perceptions and Soviet Realities; (with Katrina vanden Heuvel) Voices of Glasnost: Interviews With Gorbachev’s Reformers; Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War; and The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin.

For his scholarly work, Cohen has received several honors, including two Guggenheim fellowships and a National Book Award nomination.

Over the years, he has also been a frequent contributor to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio. His “Sovieticus” column for The Nation won a 1985 Newspaper Guild Page One Award and for another Nation article a 1989 Olive Branch Award. For many years, Cohen was a consultant and on-air commentator on Russian affairs for CBS News. With the producer Rosemary Reed, he was also project adviser and correspondent for three PBS documentary films about Russia: Conversations With Gorbachev; Russia Betrayed?; and Widow of the Revolution.

Cohen has visited and lived in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia regularly for more than forty years.

Praise for War With Russia?

“A fantastic new book, which you should read.” —Tucker Carlson

“Cohen sees himself as a balancer, getting readers to see the other side. He laments what he terms ‘Russophobia’ among much of the American political class as well as high-profile journalists and academics. … At times, Cohen is a provocateur, but if he compels us to sharpen our analysis by examining a contrarian position, this is not such a bad thing. He often brings to light questions that others have neglected. He is especially adept at taking sometimes unfocused or ideologically eccentric views emanating from Russia and turning them into succinct, declarative statements. This alone is helpful. In our current volatile climate, dissenting voices are necessary to the conversation.”—Military Review journal, review essay by Robert F. Baumann, PhD

“The title of Cohen’s book is intended not as a prophecy but a warning. In the overexcited debate about Putin and Trump, Cohen chooses to eschew moderation because he believes that in practice that results in conformity with an anti-Russia narrative that is not only wrong but dangerous. This book will delight his supporters and enrage his opponents, while readers of a moderate persuasion will be able to admire the passion and tenacity of his resistance to the trend towards provoking war with Russia.” —Irish Times, reviewed by Geoffrey Roberts, emeritus professor of history at University College Cork and a member of the Royal Irish Academy

"It’s a page-turner."—Consortium News, reviewed by Ann Garrison

Praise for Stephen F. Cohen’s Books

Bukharin and The Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography
“This magnificent book will come to be regarded … as one of the two or three really outstanding studies in the history of the Soviet Union of the past 25 years.”—The New York Review of Books

Rethinking the Soviet Experience
“[Cohen] clarifies Russian issues better than anyone has in the past decade.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

Sovieticus: American Perceptions and Soviet Realities
“A model of scholarly journalism, sound and wonderfully readable.”—Publishers Weekly

Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia
“A blistering, brilliant, and deeply felt critique of America’s decade-long daydream of a Russia in transition.”—Kirkus Reviews

The Victims Return
“A striking memoir … Russians today are inheritors of an unspeakably immense crime, and Cohen engages fully — and personally — with the debate on the way they continue to grapple with their Stalinist legacy.”—The New Yorker

Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives
“An extraordinarily rich book …an absolutely vital beginning point for anyone interested in a serious study of political and foreign policy developments involving Russia.”—Slavic Review

“Cohen’s ideas about Russia, which once got him invited to Camp David to advise a sitting president, now make him the most controversial expert in the field.”—The Chronicle Review