Brilliantly done, Lucy, and absolutely spot-on! Your exchange exposes, in real time, how the foreign policy elite has replaced reasoned statecraft with psychological caricature and moral theater. What passes for “analysis” at the CFR is really a confessional ritual. They project their own imperial insecurities onto Russia, then applaud themselves for “understanding” Putin’s mind. The irony, as you note, is that the Dean herself began by warning against mirror-imaging—only to embody it minutes later.
What you encountered is not only sheer ignorance but dogma. For three decades, the US establishment has needed to believe that the 1990s NATO guarantees never existed, that Maidan was spontaneous and that Russia acts from pathology rather than from strategic logic. This myth absolves Washington of responsibility for the wars it provokes and the treaties it shreds.
Your courage in challenging that orthodoxy inside the CFR auditorium was invaluable. True realism begins with empathy for the security perceptions of all major powers, not just America’s allies. Until figures like Clinton and Sullivan can confront that truth, US diplomacy will remain trapped in its own echo chamber, projecting psychology where it fears to admit geopolitics.
Thank you for asking the question so many others in that room were too timid to raise.
That's scarier than any Halloweed horror movie. It reveals what the ruling elites actually believe -- how they're entirely deluded about Russia and Putin. On my own Substack, I've written many rebuttals to those delusions. But to hear those delusions repeated, at this late date by Hillary and the others, shows the degree of madness in the elites. Thank you. And thank Lucy Komisar, a great journalist.
From the UK - stop calling Hillary by her Christian name. Here in Britain that is being uber-polite. Call her Clinton H. as if she's just another neoliberal recruit.
I believe that what Putin meant when he talked about the great tragedy of the fall of the USSR was that many ethnic Russians were abandoned, so to speak, in regions outside of Russia. We have been seeing how that played out in Ukraine with devastating consequences. I also lament the collapse of the Soviet Union, but for different reasons: it removed an important ideological counter-balance to Western capitalism. It was a disaster for us in the West too for this reason.
It reads like a continuation ( fan fiction, so to speak) of The Screwtape Letters: the CFR leaders and speakers, and first of all Hillary Clinton. sound just as honest as that book's protagonists (who were of course devils). That the CFR audience all applauded on cue struck me as particularly nauseating, and dark. No wonder US foreign policy is so idiotic.
Bravo! Lucy for your integrity & courage...but I'm surprised that you were ever invited to be a member of Council on Foreign Relations in the first place. Consider the work of historian, Laurence H. Shoup, with a PhD from Northwestern University, who has taught US history in various American universities & is author of a number of books with the most outstanding being "Wall Street's Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2019". In the preface, he describes the CFR as: "The think tank of monopoly-finance, the Council on Foreign Relations is the world's most powerful private organization. The CFR is the ultimate networking, socializing, strategic-planning, and consensus-forming institution of the U.S. capitalist class. It is the central "high command" organization of the plutocracy that runs the country and much of the world. The Council is the most important U.S. and global center of 'deep politics' and the 'deep state' that rules behind the scenes, a way that the 1 percent conducts their unrelenting class war against the 99 percent." So hang in there Lucy, as we, the people's representative Speaking Truth to Power! (The last time I corresponded with Shoup, he had retired from teaching and was living in the "Bay Area" of his native state of California....as one of our un-sung American Heroes....but with his "Wall Street's Think Tank" even more of a Must Read! in our post-Covid "Age of Conformity" run by Stroup's Plutocratic Who's Who.
As for Hillary, I remember when this female chameleon was a Republican & during the 1964 Presidential election, she served as a "Goldwater Girl". But in the course of her Ivy League education at Wellesley then Yale Law School, she morphed into a Feminist Democrat...until her husband, Bill, was almost impeached for his "Monica Affair" & they left the White House in disgrace with a mountain of legal debts...which they helped to pay by setting up a sort of $-making "revolving door", the Clinton Foundation, they managed to turn their former "New Deal" party into the "Goldman-Sachs Democrats". Then, in the course of her terms in the Senate and as Secretary of State, Hillary must have enhanced her "foreign policy credentials"...as she became famous for persuading Obama to invade Libya then was captured on "60 Minutes" video: laughing and clapping over Libyan President Qaddafi's torture & assassination. But apparently that still wasn't enough acclaim...as she repeatedly demanded: "Assad must go". Though she might be credited for her prediction as we recently saw Assad being undermined by insidious covert means, "regime-changed" by a hired army of "former" terrorists & their leader with Al Quada & Isis "credentials" plus a beard-shave & proper Western suit enthroned as "The President of Syria" in Assad's place. However, Hillary may have been disappointed that Assad was not assassinated like Qaddafi...instead escaped and was provided refuge together with his family in her nemesis, Russia! So keep standing up in CFR meetings, Lucy and write on!
How dare you not respect a piece of shit, when that piece of shit was married to piece of shit who ran the United Shitshow, and was furthermore talking important shit at the time in a place restricted to the spreading of shit.
These people (Clinton & Company) are all up to their eyeballs in complicity in this Ukraine disaster and therefore of course they have to come up with a "narrative" that holds them harmless. There is no point in even trying to pin these people down. You are dealing with deceptive devils. They never expected Russia to prevail. They are so arrogant they actually believed that Russia would be a push-over. Congress should bring them all to testify about what they were thinking.
Mindboggling, but deeply revealing. The former President's wife, a liar and a fool both, delving into Vladimir Putin's psychology to justify Cold War II and the sacrifice of Ukraine to her unrealized ambition. Presumably it was that insight into Putin's psyche that convinced her that it was he and only he that was standing be
...that was standing between fulfillment of the dream she hatched for herself that day years ago when her husband was inauguerated into the job that she knew was rightfully hers. Thank you, Hillary, your psychological acumen launched the long running historical calamity of Russiagate.
From the UK - savage them Lucy! They go on about 'free speech' and 'human rights' and then piss all over them. I used to take these people seriously but after decades of reading and asking questions I realise they fix their facts around their narrative and the narrative is increasingly separate from reality. And they squeeze other voices out - using 'influence' and money.
Mr. Sullivan was given a kiss on Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner. They danced around about Putin the terrible, but then we come to this:
Ambassador Sullivan seems to have a bromance with John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. Such lads were once considered anathema on the left. Dubner and others look to be letting their inner neocon out.
Sully calls Bolton his friend, and says, "I can assure you that I will not be taking a role in the Trump administration, as evidenced by the fact that two people who I’ve remained close with have been ruled out as potential candidates for a new administration: Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley. I am on that list, I’m afraid."
Res ipsa loquitur.
Just after I posted this, Bolton gets indicted. Sic temper tyrannis.
Are the audiences just stupid? What is the purpose? Ordinary people don't follow the CFR. It's for more "important" people. But they seem to enjoy being fooled. Propaganda for the propagandists.
Brilliantly done, Lucy, and absolutely spot-on! Your exchange exposes, in real time, how the foreign policy elite has replaced reasoned statecraft with psychological caricature and moral theater. What passes for “analysis” at the CFR is really a confessional ritual. They project their own imperial insecurities onto Russia, then applaud themselves for “understanding” Putin’s mind. The irony, as you note, is that the Dean herself began by warning against mirror-imaging—only to embody it minutes later.
What you encountered is not only sheer ignorance but dogma. For three decades, the US establishment has needed to believe that the 1990s NATO guarantees never existed, that Maidan was spontaneous and that Russia acts from pathology rather than from strategic logic. This myth absolves Washington of responsibility for the wars it provokes and the treaties it shreds.
Your courage in challenging that orthodoxy inside the CFR auditorium was invaluable. True realism begins with empathy for the security perceptions of all major powers, not just America’s allies. Until figures like Clinton and Sullivan can confront that truth, US diplomacy will remain trapped in its own echo chamber, projecting psychology where it fears to admit geopolitics.
Thank you for asking the question so many others in that room were too timid to raise.
That's scarier than any Halloweed horror movie. It reveals what the ruling elites actually believe -- how they're entirely deluded about Russia and Putin. On my own Substack, I've written many rebuttals to those delusions. But to hear those delusions repeated, at this late date by Hillary and the others, shows the degree of madness in the elites. Thank you. And thank Lucy Komisar, a great journalist.
From the UK - stop calling Hillary by her Christian name. Here in Britain that is being uber-polite. Call her Clinton H. as if she's just another neoliberal recruit.
I believe that what Putin meant when he talked about the great tragedy of the fall of the USSR was that many ethnic Russians were abandoned, so to speak, in regions outside of Russia. We have been seeing how that played out in Ukraine with devastating consequences. I also lament the collapse of the Soviet Union, but for different reasons: it removed an important ideological counter-balance to Western capitalism. It was a disaster for us in the West too for this reason.
It reads like a continuation ( fan fiction, so to speak) of The Screwtape Letters: the CFR leaders and speakers, and first of all Hillary Clinton. sound just as honest as that book's protagonists (who were of course devils). That the CFR audience all applauded on cue struck me as particularly nauseating, and dark. No wonder US foreign policy is so idiotic.
Bravo! Lucy for your integrity & courage...but I'm surprised that you were ever invited to be a member of Council on Foreign Relations in the first place. Consider the work of historian, Laurence H. Shoup, with a PhD from Northwestern University, who has taught US history in various American universities & is author of a number of books with the most outstanding being "Wall Street's Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2019". In the preface, he describes the CFR as: "The think tank of monopoly-finance, the Council on Foreign Relations is the world's most powerful private organization. The CFR is the ultimate networking, socializing, strategic-planning, and consensus-forming institution of the U.S. capitalist class. It is the central "high command" organization of the plutocracy that runs the country and much of the world. The Council is the most important U.S. and global center of 'deep politics' and the 'deep state' that rules behind the scenes, a way that the 1 percent conducts their unrelenting class war against the 99 percent." So hang in there Lucy, as we, the people's representative Speaking Truth to Power! (The last time I corresponded with Shoup, he had retired from teaching and was living in the "Bay Area" of his native state of California....as one of our un-sung American Heroes....but with his "Wall Street's Think Tank" even more of a Must Read! in our post-Covid "Age of Conformity" run by Stroup's Plutocratic Who's Who.
As for Hillary, I remember when this female chameleon was a Republican & during the 1964 Presidential election, she served as a "Goldwater Girl". But in the course of her Ivy League education at Wellesley then Yale Law School, she morphed into a Feminist Democrat...until her husband, Bill, was almost impeached for his "Monica Affair" & they left the White House in disgrace with a mountain of legal debts...which they helped to pay by setting up a sort of $-making "revolving door", the Clinton Foundation, they managed to turn their former "New Deal" party into the "Goldman-Sachs Democrats". Then, in the course of her terms in the Senate and as Secretary of State, Hillary must have enhanced her "foreign policy credentials"...as she became famous for persuading Obama to invade Libya then was captured on "60 Minutes" video: laughing and clapping over Libyan President Qaddafi's torture & assassination. But apparently that still wasn't enough acclaim...as she repeatedly demanded: "Assad must go". Though she might be credited for her prediction as we recently saw Assad being undermined by insidious covert means, "regime-changed" by a hired army of "former" terrorists & their leader with Al Quada & Isis "credentials" plus a beard-shave & proper Western suit enthroned as "The President of Syria" in Assad's place. However, Hillary may have been disappointed that Assad was not assassinated like Qaddafi...instead escaped and was provided refuge together with his family in her nemesis, Russia! So keep standing up in CFR meetings, Lucy and write on!
How dare you not respect a piece of shit, when that piece of shit was married to piece of shit who ran the United Shitshow, and was furthermore talking important shit at the time in a place restricted to the spreading of shit.
We dare!
These people (Clinton & Company) are all up to their eyeballs in complicity in this Ukraine disaster and therefore of course they have to come up with a "narrative" that holds them harmless. There is no point in even trying to pin these people down. You are dealing with deceptive devils. They never expected Russia to prevail. They are so arrogant they actually believed that Russia would be a push-over. Congress should bring them all to testify about what they were thinking.
Not deluded: liars.
Mindboggling, but deeply revealing. The former President's wife, a liar and a fool both, delving into Vladimir Putin's psychology to justify Cold War II and the sacrifice of Ukraine to her unrealized ambition. Presumably it was that insight into Putin's psyche that convinced her that it was he and only he that was standing be
...that was standing between fulfillment of the dream she hatched for herself that day years ago when her husband was inauguerated into the job that she knew was rightfully hers. Thank you, Hillary, your psychological acumen launched the long running historical calamity of Russiagate.
From the UK - savage them Lucy! They go on about 'free speech' and 'human rights' and then piss all over them. I used to take these people seriously but after decades of reading and asking questions I realise they fix their facts around their narrative and the narrative is increasingly separate from reality. And they squeeze other voices out - using 'influence' and money.
Ms. Komisar, this is well done.
Mr. Sullivan was given a kiss on Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner. They danced around about Putin the terrible, but then we come to this:
Ambassador Sullivan seems to have a bromance with John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. Such lads were once considered anathema on the left. Dubner and others look to be letting their inner neocon out.
Sully calls Bolton his friend, and says, "I can assure you that I will not be taking a role in the Trump administration, as evidenced by the fact that two people who I’ve remained close with have been ruled out as potential candidates for a new administration: Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley. I am on that list, I’m afraid."
Res ipsa loquitur.
Just after I posted this, Bolton gets indicted. Sic temper tyrannis.
Are the audiences just stupid? What is the purpose? Ordinary people don't follow the CFR. It's for more "important" people. But they seem to enjoy being fooled. Propaganda for the propagandists.