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U.S.-Russia Crosstalk

The Washington Times and the Kommersant newspaper in Moscow have launched a joint project known as US-Russia Crosstalk to foster constructive dialog on issues where the two countries can share common ground in an era of global tension. Each month, one American and one Russian figure will debate a single issue and their pieces will be jointly published in both newspapers.

President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, listen during an event about the "Global Methane Pledge" at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Another failed summit? Here’s a better choice

Despite the rather dismal and disappointing results of this year’s Group of Seven, Group of 20 and COP26 summits, President Biden is getting ready for another one.

President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference at the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021, in Glasgow, Scotland. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Before fixing the world, we should repair our own foundations

It wasn’t long ago that many of the liberal supporters of Joe Biden would have found themselves among vast swaths of protesters condemning the foolish imperial aims of U.S. power projection onto the world.

Soldiers of special battalion "Azov"; talk at a checkpoint in the port city of Mariupol, southeastern Ukraine, Friday, Sept. 5, 2014. Shelling resounded on the outskirts of the city Friday as Russian-backed rebels pressed their offensive in the strategically key southeast just hours ahead of talks that are widely hoped to bring a cease-fire. Associated Press reporters heard heavy shelling on Friday morning north and east of Mariupol. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

The roots of Europe’s gas crisis

The gas crisis in Europe has added yet another dimension to a global crisis, with many well-known experts predicting that the worst is still to come.

President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Ukraine on my mind

During his recent visit to Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Biden and a few members of Congress.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy speaks during the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021, at UN headquarters. (Eduardo Munoz/Pool Photo via AP)

Volodymyr the Invincible

Soon after the spectacle of woke America’s self-humiliation in Afghanistan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was getting an “‘ironclad commitment” to Ukraine’s security from President Biden.

Illustration on UFOs by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

‘Independence Day’ summer meets with yawns

One dares hope that our latest foreign policy disaster, Afghanistan, might derail us from our foreign policy disasters in the making, such as Russia and China.

President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel speak during a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, July 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Biden’s pivot from nuclear war to civil war — danke!

The timing was poetic: President Biden’s Philadelphia speech comparing states curtailing election fraud to the Confederacy was delivered the same week he hosted outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a kindred spirit.

In this April 9, 2010, file photo, a Russian construction worker speaks on a mobile phone in Portovaya Bay some 170 kms (106 miles) north-west from St. Petersburg, Russia, during a ceremony marking the start of Nord Stream pipeline construction. (AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky, file)

Fallout from the Biden-Merkel deal on Nord Stream 2

Back in 1989, a large group of Americans, composed mostly of Republican conservatives, went to Moscow to help Russians understand the “values of Western civilization.”

In this March 10, 2011, file photo, then-Vice President of the United States Joe Biden, left, shakes hands with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

Exploring a U.S.-Russian summit agenda

News of the Biden-Putin summit is a rare positive signal amid an otherwise doom and gloom atmosphere as U.S.-Russian relations have sunk to historic lows.

In this April 15, 2021, photo President Joe Biden speaks about Russia in the East Room of the White House in Washington. In recent days, Mr. Biden has piled new sanctions on Russia, announced he would withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in less than five months and backed away from a campaign promise to sharply raise refugee admission caps. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

CROSSTALK: Fool’s Russian

It is a fateful congruence that our countrymen’s intentions for us rational folks, the non-woke, have been laid bare just in time for the potentially nuclear war that their president has escalated by sending two warships to the Black Sea last week to confront Russia over Ukraine.

In this June 3, 1961, photo, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy talk in the residence of the U.S. Ambassador in a suburb of Vienna. The meeting was part of a series of talks during their summit meetings in Vienna. Monday, May 29, 2017 marks the 100-year anniversary of Kennedy's birth. (AP Photo/File)

CROSSTALK: How to avoid WWIII

When President Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin and invited him for a summit, I felt a relief almost like back in 1962, when I heard on the news that John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev had made a deal to resolve the Cuban missile crisis and avoid nuclear war.

States Coming Apart Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

CROSSTALK: U.S. house divided could leave the planet whole

Earlier this month, in his first speech as secretary of state, Antony Blinken underscored that “the president has promised diplomacy — not military action — will always come first.” He was building on a sentence from a moment earlier: “More than at any other time in my career — maybe in my lifetime — distinctions between domestic and foreign policy have simply fallen away.”

Embracing the state secession movement illustration by Linas Garsys / The Washington Times

CROSSTALK: Our house divided could leave the planet whole

Earlier this month, in his first speech as secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken underscored that “the President has promised diplomacy — not military action — will always come first.” He was building on a sentence from a moment earlier: “More than at any other time in my career — maybe in my lifetime — distinctions between domestic and foreign policy have simply fallen away.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken introduces President Joe Biden for remarks to State Department staff, Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

CROSSTALK: Leading not by force but by example - really, Antony Blinken?

In his recent speech outlining the new U.S. foreign policy vision Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a really sensational statement: “We will not promote democracy through costly military interventions or by attempting to overthrow authoritarian regimes by force. We have tried these tactics in the past. However well intentioned, they haven’t worked.”

President Joe Biden arrives for a virtual event with the Munich Security Conference in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Feb. 19, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

CROSSTALK: How to avoid nuclear war

Let us review President Biden’s “America is back,” return to “normal” foreign policy that will be infused with “American values.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., with impeachment manager Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., speaks to members of the media during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, after the U.S. Senate voted not guilty, to acquit former President Donald Trump of inciting riot at U.S. Capitol, ending impeachment trial, Saturday, Feb. 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

CROSSTALK: Biden presidency makes Balkanites of us all

One could say the Jan. 6 incident at the U.S. Capitol and resulting impeachment and acquittal of Donald Trump were the culmination of the tumultuous year that was 2020 — chaotic by definition as a Year of the Rat. In the previous rat year of 2008, something similar happened in a country that was the proving ground for much of what’s been happening here, not incidentally because of our meddling in its affairs.

President-elect Joe Biden has chosen veteran diplomat William Burns to be his CIA director. (AP Photo/Saurabh Das)

CROSSTALK: Can the CIA resuscitate U.S.-Russian relations?

Nowadays, when something bad happens in America, the popular game in Washington is to make bets on how fast Russia and Vladimir Putin will be accused of being responsible. Therefore, it was no surprise to hear exactly that about the Jan. 6 events on Capitol Hill.

In this photo taken on Thursday, March 2, 2017, Matryoshkas, traditional Russian wooden dolls, including a doll of U.S. President Donald Trump, top, are displayed for sale in Moscow, Russia. From Moscow, the U.S. election looks like a contest between who dislikes Russia most, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Russian President Vladimir Putin is frustrated with President Donald Trump's failure to deliver on his promise to fix ties between the countries. But Democratic challenger Joe Biden does not offer the Kremlin much hope either. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

CROSSTALK: America through the looking glass

So agape was the world at the Jan. 6 spectacle of conservatives setting themselves up for moral equivalence with the left that everyone forgot to invoke the invisible hand of Russia-Putin.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright (Associated Press) **FILE**

CROSSTALK: Russia and the Hunter-gatherers Biden

Real geopolitical challenges are facing the next American president: North Korea, Turkey, Iran and China, for example. One hopes that this is where a Biden-Harris-led focus will be, rather than on convenient distractions and comfort zones called Russia.

Illustration on Putin by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times

CROSSTALK: Trump-Biden-Putin trading places

Being shared among the Russian diaspora on Facebook the week after the U.S. election was a reaction video by 10 or so octogenarians in Russia. Their spokeswoman delivered a tongue-lashing.

In this photo taken on Thursday, March 2, 2017, Matryoshkas, traditional Russian wooden dolls, including a doll of U.S. President Donald Trump, top, are displayed for sale in Moscow, Russia. From Moscow, the U.S. election looks like a contest between "who dislikes Russia most," according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Russian President Vladimir Putin is frustrated with President Donald Trump's failure to deliver on his promise to fix ties between the countries. But Democratic challenger Joe Biden does not offer the Kremlin much hope either. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)

CROSSTALK: U.S.-Russia relations after the inauguration

It is an undeniable fact that presently America is experiencing serious challenges on both domestic and foreign fronts. The dramatic polarization of society, the largest number of pandemic victims and major disputes between the nuclear powers require strong leadership and social unity.

Pope Francis makes the sign of the cross at the start of his weekly general audience in the Pope Paul VI hall at the Vatican, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

CROSSTALK: Solutions to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

In recent weeks, the danger of war between neighboring Azerbaijan and Armenia has caused many to ask how this chaos might be resolved before it directly drags in other powerful players.

In this June 28, 2019, photo, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin walk to participate in a group photo at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh/File)

CROSSTALK: Joe Biden is deceptive

In the three weeks since Vice President Mike Pence’s Republican National Convention speech, right-leaning broadcasters have given much play to his quoting of Robert Gates, the Obama-Biden secretary of defense who wrote in his 2014 memoir that then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Two activists dressed up as U.S. President Trump and Russian President Putin ride two atomic bomb models during a protest for a world without nuclear weapons in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, July 30, 2020. Several peace and disarmament organizations as well as environmental protection groups demonstrated on the Pariser Platz for a nuclear weapons-free world before the start of negotiations between the USA and Russia on further action in nuclear arms control. (Fabian Sommer/dpa via AP)

CROSSTALK: U.S. should eyeball Russia reset button - now

Within the context of a speedily devolving geopolitical roller coaster ride shaped by renewed Cold War era hostilities, an Aug. 5 Politico open letter authored by 103 American foreign policy experts calling for a reset to U.S.-Russia relations appeared to be just what the doctors of reason prescribed.

Democrats Playing the Putin and Russia Bogeyman Card Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

CROSSTALK: U.S. is its own Russian boogeyman

Last month saw a duo of “news” stories making the rounds about this or that Russia-based hacker group that’s “almost certainly linked” to Russian state intelligence. Bloomberg.com and USA Today were among those running with “Russia Accused of Vaccine Hacking,” while the AP had a second go at “Russia Behind Spread of Virus Disinformation,” which originally surfaced in April.

Former National Security Advisers Susan Rice, left, and John Bolton take part in a discussion on national security at Vanderbilt University Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2020, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

CROSSTALK: The West is ‘balkanizing’

Amid the intermittent riots and looting; the disbanding of police departments; the increase in armed disagreements between citizens; a four-year coup; an economy in turmoil; and talk of a geographic separation between Americans who have a race-based view of the human condition and those who don’t, one would think our country’s current upheavals — unyielding even to a plague (itself partisan) — would see us wanting to reduce our headaches, perhaps by making nice at least in the international sphere.

Trump Flynn Rift Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

CROSSTALK: Trump can earn points with right foreign policy

Looking at today’s America, one would be hard pressed to say that the gods were not interested in destroying this great country. For who can argue that this once proud and noble nation has not fallen into the depths of madness in recent years? After all, what is madness but a self-delusion run amok, far removed from any semblance of reality?

This image provided by The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (orange)—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19—isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (green) cultured in the lab. (NIAID-RML via AP)

CROSSTALK: Did COVID-19 prevent World War III? Or did the virus prepare us for it?

For months after the attacks of 9/11, when people would be asked, “What did you learn?” they invariably responded, “Spend more time with family.” That answer has reverberated in my mind throughout these two months of idyllic scenes of parents and children jumping on trampolines, riding bicycles and walking dogs.

In this March 9, 2020, photo, the full moon rises behind the Statue of Liberty in New York. From California to Colorado to Georgia and New York, Americans are taking a moment each night at 8 to howl to thank the nation's health care workers and first responders for their selfless sacrifices during the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/J. David Ake, File)

CROSSTALK: The world after coronavirus

The coronavirus pandemic is in the full swing around the globe and no one can predict when it will be over or at least largely contained. We can only hope and pray that this happens sooner rather than later.

In this June 28, 2019, photo, President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin walk to participate in a group photo at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. An odd new front in the U.S.-Russian rivalry has emerged as a Russian military cargo plane bearing a load of urgently needed medical supplies landed in New York’s JFK airport. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

CROSSTALK: Russia delivers coronavirus equipment to U.S.

When the Antonov cargo jet departed from Reno on April 1st, it kicked up such a cloud of dust that locals called the fire department reporting a wildfire. While there’s no official confirmation, it’s possible the Russian AN124 carried a delivery similar to the ventilators, masks and respirators that landed the same day in the same kind of plane at JFK International, an offer accepted days earlier by President Trump from President Putin. Or, as U.S. media call it, “a public relations coup for the Kremlin.”

Russians stand during the Victory Day military parade to celebrate 74 years since the victory in WWII in Red Square in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, May 9, 2019. Putin told the annual military Victory Day parade in Red Square that the country will continue to strengthen its armed forces. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

CROSSTALK: The duality of fever

One side effect of the SARS Coronavirus-2 appears to be a diminished appetite among Americans for war with Russia. Given the overreaction by my fellow Americans, thanks to whom I may have to go back to Soviet toilet paper (newspaper) — and am once again getting into any line I see — one would hate to see how they’d react in a real crisis

President Donald Trump, right, shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Friday, June 28, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Needed: U.S.-Russia collusion 2.0 in 2020

It would take desperation to find something heartening in the Russian portion of National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien’s comments last week at the Meridian International Center, which were replete with the typical projections and inversions between us and them. But amid Washington’s unhinged nonseriousness (President Trump selling Alaska to Russia as a bargaining chip, Rep. Adam Schiff?), a desperate grab for sanity is better than none at all.

New U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan, center, poses after presenting his diplomatic credentials with Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a ceremony to receive credentials from newly appointed foreign ambassadors to Russia in Kremlin, in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2020. (Aleksey Nikolskyi, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Start full scale U.S.-Russia dialogue

Now that President Trump has been acquitted after the three-year-long impeachment ordeal, some of us expect him to start this dialogue that he pledged to initiate during the past electoral campaign and kept repeating many times over without following up.

Iranian boots on the ground (Illustration by Alexander Hunter for The Washington Times)

CROSSTALK: Year of the Rat foresight, please

Not to add to apocalyptic associations with the year 2020, but we now find ourselves officially in the Year of the Rat, according to the Chinese calendar — characterized by chaos. Thanks only to my obscure interest in the Balkans, sparked in 1999 by the shock that a war could be started by the world’s superhero nation and my family’s refuge from inhumanity, I learned the Serbian word for war: rat.

Forestry researcher Jhon Farfan carries saplings to replant a field damaged by illegal gold miners in Madre de Dios, Peru, on March 29, 2019. The rainforest is under increasing threat from illicit logging, mining and ranching. Farfan's job involves inspecting lands where the forest has already been lost to illegal mining spurred by the spike in gold prices following the 2008 global financial crash. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

CROSSTALK: Can Russia be key in fighting climate change?

While U.S.-Russian relations keep sinking in a seemingly bottomless ditch, optimists aren’t ready to give up and wonder whether there is anything to reverse or at least to stop this process before Armageddon.

Russian Reaction to Nato Expansion Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

CROSSTALK: Building trust between U.S. and Russia

At a time of one of the greatest political upheavals in American history that could spill over into foreign affairs, especially U.S.-Russian relations with unpredictable and devastating results, I thought Christmas might offer a chance for all of us to take a pause and search for an exit from the megacrisis.

Worldly Ambitions of Vladimir Putin Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

CROSSTALK: Can Russia trust the wily, wily West?

On a recent episode of “Life, Liberty and Levin,” Hoover Institution fellow Niall Ferguson told host Mark Levin, “The problem at the moment is partly that we are on a kind of permanent war footing with respect to Moscow … It’s also partly that President Putin simply cannot bring himself to trust the United States.”

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., flanked by Rep. Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho, left, and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, right, the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight Reform, and other conservative House Republicans, complain to reporters about how House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is conducting the impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2019. House committees are trying to determine if Trump violated his oath of office by asking a foreign country, Ukraine, to investigate his political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

CROSSTALK: Is Ukraine vital to U.S. security?

The ongoing impeachment inquiry of President Trump can certainly compete with Hollywood’s most successful drama or comedy shows. However, when we deal with national security issues one expects the actors, in this case members of Congress and witnesses, to tell the truth. In this case, some do, but some regrettably do not.

Marine One, with President Donald Trump aboard, lifts off from the the South Lawn of the White House, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

CROSSTALK: Ukraine isn’t vital to U.S. security

We all heard former Ukraine Ambassador William B. Taylor at the impeachment hearings say — as so many do daily — that “Ukraine is on the front line in the conflict with a newly aggressive Russia.”

Bizarro Biden Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

CROSSTALK: Washington turmoil affects U.S.-Russia relations

As the political temperature in Washington rapidly rises to unprecedented boiling levels, when accusations of attempted coup and state treason are exchanged between the president and the speaker of the House, what’s the danger of spillover into the foreign policy arena?