By Prof. Stephen COHEN (USA)
Below is the transcript (cortesy Sharon Tennison, Chair of the Center for Citizen Initiatives) of the speech by Prof. Stephen Cohen at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club on November 18, 2015:
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I am delighted to be here in San Francisco with you. The further you go from Washington and the mainstream media, the better introductions you get!
Some of you may know that the small group of us who have been protesting against the American policy since the Ukraine crisis began two years ago have been described in harsh and derogatory language as “Putin’s apologists, Putin’s useful idiots and Putin’s best friends in America.”
Paris should have changed everything but for these people it hasn’t. I clicked on the Internet this morning and there it was again. So let me begin with a word about myself.
My answer to these charges is that, “No, I …. not you, am a patriot of American national security,” and I actually have been since I started studying Russia about 50 years ago.
I started out in Kentucky and then went to Indiana University, and old friends here today can testify that I was doing this many years ago. Along the way I came to a conviction, exactly how and why doesn’t matter that American national security runs through Moscow. It means that an American President must have a partner in the Kremlin— not a friend, but a partner. This was true when the Soviet Union existed, and this is true today.
