The situation in the Ukraine grows more dangerous by the hour as Russian forces have appeared to occupy strategic points on the Crimean peninsula. Russia claims they are there to protect the Russian speaking population which composes 60 % of the residents. The authorities in Kiev have denounced the occupation as an act of war. So we now have the beginnings of another cold war unless there is some effort to compromise on both sides. The American scholar who is also a leading expert on Russia Stephen Cohen who taught for many years at Princeton and then NYU has come out with a very interesting analysis of how we got to this point. He largely blames the strategists at Nato and within the White House for miscalculating how far they could go in threatening Russia by bringing Nato to its borders and wooing the Ukraine to ally with the European union and distance themselves from Russia.You can see his analysis in The Nation magazine. Cohen also points out that some of the actors in Kiev are in fact rather anti European in terms of the values they espouse and in terms of their anti-semitic beliefs.He also points out as I have that the EU is not about to grant the Ukraine financial terms that are better than the terrible austerity packages it offered Greece and Portugal who are already full members of the EU. So far Cohen has briefly appeared on CNN and PBS to offer his alternative explanation of what is happening but for the most part he is ignored by the mainstream media and also denounced as a Russian apologist by neo-con magazine writers. Whoever is at fault in this conflict it is clear that reviving the cold war benefits no one except the arms industry.It will if it comes to pass be a major failure of American foreign policy.