Putin’s American Toady at 'The Nation' Gets Even Toadier
If there’s a popular consensus out there, you can be sure that Stephen F. Cohen is going to disagree with it, because that’s the kind of original thinker Stephen F. Cohen is. In fact, he’s so original, he’ll even disagree with a consensus that doesn’t exist, as he does in his most recent column, penned with his wife and employer, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor-in-chief of The Nation. In it, Cohen alleges that Barack Obama has unilaterally declared a new Cold War against Russia, and that the entire monolithic crowd girded by the Washington Beltway has been utterly, silently complicit.
Except, of course, The Nation. “There are notable exceptions,” the disinterested couple writes, “including this magazine, but none close enough to the mainstream to be 'authoritative' inside the Beltway.”
There’s a whole tome to be written about the self-aggrandizing martyr complex on display here: Only the great and brave Stephen F. Cohen dares defy this Washington stampede to cold war—or, you know, any consensus out there.
For example, the consensus that Vladimir Putin is, at best, a problematic leader. The great and brave Stephen F. Cohen disagrees. The Russian president that the Beltway crowd bashes for vanquishing dissent, democracy, press freedoms, human rights, a fair and independent judiciary, the president who is once again back to starting armed conflicts in his backyard is actually a pretty great guy—mostly because he is sticking it to the Beltway crowd.
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http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117606/stephen-cohen-wrong-russia-ukraine-america
