TRNN - U.S. Hoped Putin Would be a ‘Sober Yeltsin’ - RAI with Stephen Cohen (3/5)

Yep, part 3 is excellent. Paul Jay tries to take a balanced view and is sometimes critical of Putin, but Stephen Cohen explains why Putin has done the things he has.

Paul Jay says that Putin could have had a referendum in Crimea and then not taken the country back but gone to the U.N to negotiate its future, but Steve Cohen says Putin was given two types of advice and one was what Paul Jay had described above, but other advisers told Putin that to stop a civil war he had to act now and take Crimea back immediately. Also, Putin was being seen as weak by some people in Russia by always being very diplomatic with the West, and his decision to take back  Crimea went down very well with the Russian public.

Cohen warns that the U.S. is playing a very dangerous game by pushing Russia, a nuclear armed power, into such a tight corner. Cohen warns of nuclear war.

Stephen Cohen agrees that Trump is bad but says obtaining peace with Russia is far more important. I couldn't agree more. 

TRNN - U.S. Hoped Putin Would be a ‘Sober Yeltsin’ - RAI with Stephen Cohen (3/5)

Here's a little bit of the interview. 

STEPHEN COHEN I don’t disagree. But that brings me to my final point, I guess, because we are at the time we are in. We now have, I think, at last count 19 or 20 Democratic would be contenders for the presidential nomination; 19 or 20. We need to ask ourselves which, if any, of these people see these dangers clearly, and ask them. But I have a feeling that the mainstream media will not ask them, because these are uncomfortable issues for them. I also think that the one candidate who has embraced a position similar to my own, Tulsi Gabbard, was immediately attacked by NBC, as you know. Scurrilously.

That it’s a question of what kind of discussion–because according to our democracy these existential issues that you and I have discussed are discussed during presidential campaigns. This is when we clarify and make our choices. It seems to me this is unlikely to happen, partly because the mainstream media doesn’t permit voices like mine any longer. Though they used to welcome me. I used to work for them. It would be interesting to see how they treat Tulsi Gabbard, who’s the closest to this kind of anxiety about the new Cold War with Russia, has taken positions on this. There may be others, but I haven’t–I haven’t noted that. We’ll see how they’re–if there’s an attempt to suppress her view, or to give her a fair time. Now, she’ll have to do well in a primary somewhere to get that. But it’s a little discouraging that of 19 or 20 Democrats, only one thus far has spoken with some clarity about this, what I consider to be the number one existential issue; the danger of war with Russia.