Part 1 of a two part series — This interview with Professor Stephen Cohen provides a very useful, and I believe largely accurate, portrayal of why our policy toward Russia has gone off the rails and could lead to a 2nd Cold War that is even more dangerous than the first — with one serious omission, IMO. Cohen's discussion of the reasons for NATO’s expansion, while accrurate, does not include the influence of the arms manufacturers in promoting that expansion. The MICC had a huge interest in NATO expansion, because adding new countries to NATO had the obvious potential for opening up huge arms markets in the name of NATO’s policy of standardization and interoperability. That the market has turned out less than predicted in the 1990s does not obviate the power of the motive. It is part of the mosaic of domestic political impulses to expand NATO that Cohen describes as being so dangerous. CS
