Some of you probably know that the small group of us who have been protesting American policy toward Russia since the Ukrainian crisis began two years ago have been described in harsh and I would say derogatory language, as Putin's apologist and Putin's useful idiots. I am the patriot of American national security, and I actually have been ever since I started studying Russia, which is about 50 years ago.

Whichever existential or grave world threat you might emphasize, and for some people, it's climate change. For some people, it's human rights. For some people, it's a spread of democracy. For me, it has been for quite a while, the new kind of terrorism that afflicts the world. It's no longer these so-called non-state actors. These guys are organized, they have an army, they have a self-professed state and they have a capacity to harm us gravely.

This is the real threat today. This kind of threat cannot be even marginally diminished. And I'm not sure we can ever end it in our lifetime, unless we have a partner in the Kremlin. That's the long and the short of it. What we need are these common interests in a partnership. The way two business people make a contract. They've got the same interests. They trust each other because if one side violates the interest, the other guy's interest is violated. We haven't had that. We don't have it today. The chance for a durable Washington, Moscow strategic partnership was lost in 1991 after the Soviet Union ended.

Actually, it was lost earlier because it was Reagan and Gorbachev who gave us the opportunity, but it certainly ended in the Clinton administration and it didn't end in Moscow. It ended in Washington. It was squandered and lost in Washington. And it was lost so badly, that today we have been in literally a new Cold War with Russia. It's a really horrible situation and exceedingly dangerous. This new Cold War has all the potential to be even more dangerous than the preceding 40 year Cold War. It's Ukraine that set this off. And Ukraine remains a ticking time bomb politically. And this is not only on Russia's borders, this is through the heart of Russia's and Ukrainian's Slavic civilization. This is a civil war even more profound in its ethos than was the American Civil War.

You'll remember that after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Moscow and Washington developed certain rules of mutual conduct. They saw how dangerous, how close we came to nuclear war. There are no red lines today. One of the things that Putin and his predecessor, Medvedev, keep saying to Washington, "You're crossing our red lines." And Washington says, "There are no red lines! You don't have any red lines. We have red lines." I mean, "You can't have a military base in Canada or Mexico, but we can have all we want around your borders."

Now, the position of the American political media establishment is that this new Cold War is all Putin's fault. War is all Putin's fault. All of it, everything. We did nothing wrong. At every stage, we were virtuous and wise, and he was aggressive. And a bad man.

And that's why I say we have to be patriots of American national security. The reality is, for whatever reasons the Clinton administration adopted in the 1990s, a Winner-Take-All policy toward Russia, they said we won the Cold War. But the four policies that most offended Russia and offend them today were the following. The decision to expand NATO right to Russia's borders. I mean, it's a joke. We say Putin has violated the post-Cold War order of Europe. Russia was excluded from the post-Cold War Order of Europe by NATO's expansion. Russia kept saying, "Hey, let's do a pan-European security arrangement like Gorbachev and Reagan said." And we said, "This is not military. This is about democracy and free trade and it's going to be great for you. Swallow your poison with a smile." And while they had no choice, they did, and then when they had a choice, not - they start pusing back.

Secondly, there's the absolute refusal on the part of the United States to negotiate on missile defense. Missile defense is now a NATO project that means missile defense, building installations, whether it's on land or sea, is now part of NATO expansion, encirclement of Russia. It's part of the same system. Russians are absolutely convinced it's targeted at their nuclear retaliatory capability. The reality is that the Pro Cold War forces in Washington in particular, who control the New York Times, The Washington Post, all the main broadcast and cable television networks, NPR and PBS are so powerful that it is a shock when a dissenting voice has gotten on their pages or on their air.