Stephen Cohen's legacy: Warnings unheeded, a war without end

Russian historian Stephen F. Cohen, who passed away five years ago this September, occupied a position in American intellectual life that has become increasingly rare: a tenured Ivy League professor with deep establishment credentials who used his considerable influence to challenge rather than echo establishment narratives.

As Ukrainian-American journalist Lev Golinkin observed, Cohen was “someone who didn’t just write about history but had dinner with it,” having briefed U.S. presidents and maintained friendships with figures like former Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

Yet the ideas he championed — warning of the perils of ignoring Russia’s security interests and the dangers posed by an unchecked security state — were unpopular, even outright dismissed as “Putin apology,” particularly at a time when allegations of extensive Russian interference in the 2016 election made Vladimir Putin public enemy number one for many Americans and rendered talk of rapprochement between the U.S. and Russia increasingly difficult in establishment circles.

Cohen’s critique of U.S. foreign policy was not rooted in sympathy for Putin, but in a sober reading of post-Cold War history. “He fully understood the foolishness of U.S. policy toward Russia since the early 1990s,” University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer told RS. “There would be no war in Ukraine today if Western policymakers had taken his advice on the perils of NATO expansion, especially into Ukraine.”

Now, as we approach five years since Cohen’s passing, the U.S. and NATO find themselves engulfed in the very crisis he spent decades warning against.

To his credit, President Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday to discuss a resolution to the three-year-old Russia-Ukraine war, something President Joe Biden had not done during his own term. Still, bipartisan factions in Washington push for more weapons for Kyiv, thinking this war can still be won on the battlefield, despite $175 billion in aid since 2022 and Ukraine's dwindling military prospects. A Senate Appropriations Committee vote just approved another $1 billion for Ukraine with overwhelming bipartisan support (26-3) in July.

Though he did not live to see the 2022 Russian invasion, Cohen anticipated it. For decades, he argued that dismissing Russia’s legitimate security concerns — primarily Moscow’s strong opposition to NATO expansion — was not only reckless but a predictable provocation.

When a bipartisan coalition in Congress led by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and the late Sen.John McCain (R-Ariz.) openly celebrated their role in ousting Ukraine’s democratically elected President Yanukovych in 2014, Cohen broke with virtually every other establishment opinion, criticizing the Obama administration for its “shameful” intervention, which he presciently predicted, could “provoke Russia into a war with the United States and NATO in Ukraine.”

In the more immediate term, as Cohen pointed out, U.S. support for the new Ukrainian government “created a reign of terror,” in cities like Odessa where officially sanctioned “anti-terror” squads, some with openly Neo-Nazi allegiances, violently suppressed opposition to the newly installed government.

Remembering the late Cohen, Golinkin recalls how “Steve was the only major figure in America who insisted on remembering the Russian-speaking Ukrainians,” like Golinkin’s family members who “distrusted and hated the new Kiev government. He spoke of neo-Nazi paramilitaries who fought for the U.S.-backed government committing war crimes against civilians in eastern Ukraine. He spoke the truth, regardless of how unwieldy it was.”

Beyond Cohen’s scrutiny of American meddling in Eastern Europe, he also directed his criticism toward domestic political currents that were reorienting Washington’s posture toward Moscow.

When many in Washington and beyond were claiming that Russia had worked with the Trump campaign and tipped the scales against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, Cohen was instantly skeptical of their charges, recognizing holes in the narratives that establishment journalists would take years to acknowledge.

While debates over the extent of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election consumed the nation’s attention, with some analysts even declaring Russia’s alleged interference an “attack on the United States” on par with Pearl Harbor, Cohen understood that the hysteria would neuter the left’s antiwar instincts. A consequence, he warned, would be a newly empowered political alliance between the liberal establishment and neoconservatives united in their drive for confrontation with Russia — a realignment that made diplomacy all but impossible and even “treasonous.”

Illustrative of that realignment, was the nascent class of what Politico termed “The Spies Who Came in to the TV Studio” — intelligence officials like James Clapper elevated to trusted cable news contributors at CNN and NBC who, “explain[ed] the methods by which the Russians recruit spies” and “entertain[ed] us with their disdain for President [Trump].”

“There was a time when liberals and progressives were deeply suspicious of the American intelligence community,” said Cohen. “How did it happen that liberals and progressives today are embracing the FBI and CIA in their war against Trump?”

In 2018, when establishment media joined together to condemn President Trump’s Helsinki Summit with Vladimir Putin, a meeting former CIA Director John Brennan labeled “treasonous,” Cohen instead praised the meeting and applauded Trump’s acknowledgement — rare for any U.S. President — that “both sides are to blame,” for poor relations between the United States and Russia.

Now, with an upcoming summit between the U.S. and Russia scheduled for August 15, an American president has finally signaled a willingness to embrace Cohen’s core lesson; that recognizing Russian security interests as legitimate isn’t “appeasement,” but the only path toward avoiding mutually assured destruction.

Predictably, a chorus of neocons and liberals have emerged to pre-emptively sabotage any attempt to reach a negotiated settlement, urging Trump to follow through on his ultimatum and levy even more sanctions against Russia. The Alaska Summit “is a great victory for Putin,” John Bolton declared on CNN. Similarly, The Financial Times cautioned that Trump’s eagerness to cut a deal —one a majority of Ukrainians now support — evokes “the ghosts of Munich and Yalta.”

But the Alaska summit offers a rare opportunity to step back from the brink. Whether U.S. leaders choose to seize it — or ignore Cohen’s lessons once again — will determine not only the future of the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine, but perhaps the survival of all nations in the nuclear age.