“Like Pac-man, the old game if you remember,” Dr. Stephen Cohen says, “NATO has gobbled up all of these countries between Germany and Russia; it’s now on Russia’s borders.” On June 13, The Nation’s contributing editor and author of Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, appeared on The Big Picture with Thom Hartmann. Cohen describes the US position on Ukraine as a “twenty-first-century foreign policy disaster, condemning the Obama administration for its stagnant and worsening relationship with Russia. “I am convinced that the most essential partner for American national security in all of these areas—from Iran to Syria to Afghanistan and beyond—is the Kremlin, currently occupied by Putin.” —Victoria Ford