The Nation.
since 1865UPFRONT
4 DC by the Numbers:
Climate-Change Know-
Nothings; 10 Facebook:
Fuel, Meet Fire
3 Cold War II
Katrina vanden Heuvel
4 Midterm Militants
5 Q&A: Armando Iannucci
6 Asking for a Friend
Liza Featherstone
COLUMNS
8 Subject to Debate
Stormy Weather
Katha Pollitt
10 Diary of a Mad
Law Professor
Leading and Bleeding
Patricia J. Williams
11 Deadline Poet
Laura Ingraham
Picks On Parkland
High-School Student
Calvin TrillinFeatures
12 The Disrupters
George Zornick
#NeverAgain is poised to
unite the gun-control and
anti-racist movements under
the banner of youth.
16 Fifty Years Since King
Michael K. Honey
Remembering the final days
of Martin Luther King Jr.
and asking, “Where do we
go from here?”
20 Is Dutch Bad Boy
Thierry Baudet the
New Face of the
European Alt-Right?
Sebastiaan Faber
What the young politician’s
rapid ascent portends
for mainstream political
discourse in the Netherlands
and abroad.Books &
the Arts
27 In Marx’s Republic
Daniel Luban
32 Freedom for
Every Citizen
William P. Jones
35 Suffuse With Light
Jillian SteinhauerVOLUME 306, NUMBER 13,
April 30/May 7, 2018
The digital version of this issue is
available to all subscribers April 5
at TheNation.com.
Cover illustration by Louisa Bertman.I
n recent weeks, the world has seen an alarming flurry of dip-
lomatic expulsions and counter-expulsions in what has clearlybecome a new Cold War. In response to the poisoning in Eng-
land of Sergei Skripal, a Russian intelligence officer turned
British spy, and his daughter Yulia, the British government expelled
23 Russian diplomats. In a show of solidarity with
their British ally, 23 European Union and NATO
countries announced that they would send more than
130 Russian diplomats home. Moscow responded
by expelling over 50 British diplomats. In a further
step, the Trump administration announced that it
would close the Russian consulate in Seattle; Russia
responded by announcing that it would close the US
consulate in St. Petersburg.
These tit-for-tat expulsions come at a time when
Washington and Moscow are locked in multiple
crises, from Europe to the Middle East. Indeed, the
new Cold War is shaping up to be every
bit as dangerous as the old one, if not more
so, especially when you consider that the
US and Russian militaries are standing
eye-to-eye in eastern Syria; that NATO
and Russian fighter jets have come close
to clashing on numerous occasions in the
Baltic region; that the simmering war in
Ukraine—where the Trump administra-
tion has decided to send lethal weap-
ons—threatens the security of the entire
region; and that Russian President Vladimir Putin
just announced the development of a new generation
of nuclear cruise missiles, said to be capable of elud-
ing the US missile-defense systems in which Wash-
ington has invested so much. And now the extremist
John Bolton—long known as a hawk on Russia—will
be joining the Trump administration as national-
security adviser. Nevertheless, many political figures
and media outlets are calling for the administration
to take even harsher action.
Calls for tougher measures border on the irratio-
nal, given the stakes involved—not least, the threat
of nuclear war. Even the New York Times editorial
page, not known in recent years to shy away from
stoking US-Russian conflict, expressed concern that
the communications channels set up during Cold
War I, which kept unexpected crises from spinning
out of control, either had been dismantled or had
deteriorated to an alarming degree. A few senators
have recognized the danger: Bernie Sanders, Dianne
Feinstein, Jeff Merkley, and Edward Markey recently
sent a letter to now-ousted Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson calling for a new strategic dialogue between
the two nations. As Senator Merkley told The Nation,
issues such as Russia’s violations of the landmark 1987
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the
revival of the New START nuclear accord can only be
resolved “if the two sides are engaged in talks.”
Does calling for dialogue and ratcheting down
tensions show a blatant disregard of Russian interfer-
ence in US elections, or the possibility
that the Trump campaign—even the pres-
ident himself—may have colluded with
the Kremlin? Certainly not; engaging in
dialogue does not mean we have to ignore
Russian malfeasance or state-sponsored
criminality. Diplomacy, as history teaches
us, is absolutely essential in the relations
between rival superpowers bristling with
thousands of thermonuclear weapons.
The poisonous atmosphere now in-
flaming US-Russian relations is putting US national
security at risk. Those who think otherwise ignore
the fact that during Cold War I, there were numer-
ous nuclear near misses, which often occurred at
times of heightened tensions.
Cold wars are also bad for progressives. They em-
power the military-industrial complex and the worst
forces on both sides. Nationalist fervor rises, diplo-
macy is sidelined, and the space for dissent closes.
Having worked with courageous Russian dissidents,
journalists, and feminist NGOs for three decades, I
have seen how Cold War tensions have been used to
suppress independent voices in that country. Indeed,
the space for dissent on Russia policy has never
been narrower than it is today, and those who stray
from the dominant narrative are often the target of
toxic smears. Take, for example, a recent op-ed in
The Hill that accused California Representative Ro
Khanna of being “duped by Russia” and complicit inCOMMENTCold War II