I mentioned several situations yesterday in my post on the ICJ decision regarding Kosovo that could be affected by the decision. The implications for Palestine are even more intriguing. John Whitbeck describes some of them at:
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitbeck07232010.html
The ruling by the International Court of Justice that Kosovo’s declaration of independence did not violate international law (see Dan Bilefsky’s article in the New York Times today) will be used by the Kosovo government to argue that it entitles Kosovo to diplomatic recognition by other governments. Serbia will deny this and point out that the ruling was carefully limited, making clear that diplomatic recognition is a political, not a legal decision.
OK, the producers interviewed me for this series and have included a few cameo snippets of that interview, so I guess some may feel I have a “conflict of interest” in evaluating it. However, I didn’t choose the excerpts, didn’t edit the film, didn’t write the narrative, didn’t help finance it, and don’t derive any income from it. I must, however, admit to a strong interest in people understanding how the Cold War ended. If that creates a conflict of interest with those with a stake in a distorted version, so be it. Continue reading
I don’t spend much time watching television, but yesterday when I was on the treadmill at the gym, I tuned into CNN, listening through earphones. What I saw was excerpts from Mrs. Sherrod’s talk to the NAACP, and her interview with CNN. It was electrifying: a person who, as a teenager, had gone through the unspeakable trauma of having her father killed by white racists and a Ku Klux Klan cross burned in her front yard, described how she overcame racist resentment and came to understand that the problems she was dealing with were economic, not racial. It was a plea, to a largely black audience, to put lingering racist stereotypes behind us and to work together to solve problems all races face. Continue reading
Nina Khrushcheva knew one of the Russian spies. Here is her hilarious account on ForeignPolicy.com:
I have been amazed at the way much of the public—and, it would seem, even more of the media—has treated the oil spill caused by the BP drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico as a problem for the federal government to solve. Has Obama taken charge? Is he doing enough? Etc., etc. Can memories be so short? Is more than half the country a victim of Alzheimers?
Second, perhaps, only to sex, spies seem to stimulate the emotions, at least in the United States. And so it was when reports of the arrest of ten—and then eleven, and then twelve—Russian undercover agents in the United States moved along the news wires. Rebecca and I were on the farm in Tennessee and I did not check my voice mail in Princeton for several days. There would be several requests, I suspected, for interviews with the news media. Generally, I enjoy spouting off about all and sundry, but this time I thought it better to dodge the requests. I have been around intelligence operations long enough to know that what is announced is only part of the story. Any attempt to explain things without inside knowledge could produce nothing more than a wild guesses. Besides, I could not figure out why in the world the U.S. would arrest deep-cover agents known to them who had not yet recruited anyone who could give them secret information. It seemed to me much more logical to leave them in place, watch what they were doing, and if they recruited someone with access to sensitive secret information, “turn” the source (not hard to do if the alternative is jail) and feed the unsuspecting plant misleading information.
I was privileged to have Nina Khrushcheva, Nikita Khrushchev’s great granddaughter, as my research assistant when I was Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. She is now a tenured professor at the New School University in New York. In her book on Vladimir Nabokov, she muses on what it means to live in two cultures, and in so doing gives us insights into the moral and intellectual struggle going on in Russia today. If you are interested in Vladimir Nabokov or in intellectual currents in today’s Russia, it will fascinate you.
Written by one of Gorbachev’s closest advisers, this is probably the best account published as yet in any language of what went on within the Soviet government as the Cold War came to an end and the Soviet Union fell apart. No scholar should claim to have a clear view of the events of those years without reading it, but one does not have to be a historian to appreciate Grachev’s clear prose and dispassionate insight. A fine read on a very important subject.
Dick Combs, who served several tours at the American Embassy in Moscow, has written one of the best studies of the end of the Cold War and the Soviet collapse. In addition, Dick’s book contains many wise observations about current Russian and American policy. It is, furthermore, a fascinating read. If you have any interest in his subject–what serious person doesn’t?–you shouldn’t miss it!
