Letters From Michigan
Ronald G. Suny

Ronald G. Suny

The Alaska summit and its Afterlife: A glimpse into what peace looks like to Putin and Trump
Some of what we knew before the summit remains unchanged after the summit. First, the European powers -- notably Germany, France, and the U.K. -- remain fully supportive of Ukraine and prepared to back Kyiv in continuing its resistance to the Russian invasion and occupation of that country. Second, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine opposes concessions to Russia, at least publicly. Talk of "land swaps" ahead of the Anchorage summit were quickly ruled out by Kyiv as off the table. Rather, Zelenskyy believes that with Western, and most importantly American arms, Ukraine can effectively resist Russia and secure a better end to the conflict than is evident at this perilous moment. On the other hand, the aims and positions of the United States under Trump, beyond securing a deal, appear to be fluid.
26 August 2025
The Escalation of Rhetoric Will Not End the War in Ukraine
Why are we so ready to turn to historical analogies like Munich in 1938 and raise the rhetorical heat to the level of fascism and genocide? Do such charged words work as explanation? Such language debases the real examples in our shared pasts of fascism and genocide.
2 June 2022
Why Turkey isn’t on board with Finland, Sweden joining NATO – and why that matters
Finland and Sweden are neutral countries not beholden to the strategic compromises that the United States and NATO are forced to make to hold the alliance together. Both Scandinavian countries have to date been free to take a moral position on Turkey’s position on Kurdish rights and have officially protested the repressions of dissidents, academics, journalists and minority groups. Meanwhile, NATO countries have equivocated before their fellow member, agreeing to label the PKK a terrorist organization. So where does this all leave Finland and Sweden’s application for NATO membership?
18 May 2022
We are all “freedom-loving people”
The devastating war in Ukraine potentially threatens everyone on the globe. That threat comes not only from possible expansion of the killing, not simply from nuclear or chemical or biological weapons, but from the example that unrepresentative governments and monied elites are prepared to use any means necessary to prevent the evolution of freedom and a more egalitarian social democracy.
5 April 2022
A Lesson in Yiddish for Armenians: What Armenians Can Learn From Jews
Armenians like Jews are a historic people with a complex and fraught history who have suffered the indignities and cruelties of empires that attempted to destroy them. Armenians were dispersed from their original homeland, and like Jews lived for centuries in diaspora communities struggling to maintain their language and culture.
27 February 2022
The Autocracy Trap
Authoritarian leaders suffer from peculiar forms of isolation and dependence. Living and operating remote from the interchanges with diverse sources of information, authoritarian leaders are segregated from knowledge of their own country and people. Information flows upward slowly, usually through police channels, and is filtered by the satraps surrounding the leader.
31 January 2022
Democracy and Empire
The United States can be proud of its liberal ideals of human rights, democracy, equality, and tolerance of difference that it inherited from the European Enlightenment. But when it attempts to export those ideals to other countries, particularly when it does so with bayonets, tanks, drones and missiles, its idealistic civilizing mission is bound to fail.
4 September 2021
The Present as a Threat: Palestinians, a Jewish State, and International Responsibility
Palestinians have been abandoned by what is euphemistically called “the international community.” The most powerful state in the world, the United States, defends the right of Israel to defend itself and is less concerned, despite its rhetoric, about the fate of the Palestinians.
29 July 2021
Autocracy, Democracy, Plutocracy
Is there a way out? The struggle is clearly more difficult in authoritarian countries, and it must take the path of increasing democratic possibilities.
24 June 2021
The Subversive Power of the Past
What is so dangerous about history? Why do people in power deny what happened in the past?
7 June 2021
Moving beyond the black (and dark) spots of history
Many of my friends and colleagues ask me, why are Turks and their government unable to recognize what happened in 1915 as a genocide? Why can they not simply acknowledge the factual truth that the ruthless Young Turk government that ruled in the final years of the Ottoman Empire carried out a brutal ethnic cleansing and mass murder of their Armenian and Assyrian subjects in a frenzied time of imagined danger to their regime?
28 April 2021
Recognizing the Impossible Past: 106 Years After the Armenian Genocide
Genocide is not only the actual event of mass killing intentionally undertaken by states to eliminate an ethnic or religious people but at the same time a frame within which nations imagine their history and the precarity of the present.
24 April 2021
Is America back?
The liberal vision of American foreign policy, now being revived by Biden, has its own historical narrative.
11 April 2021
Turning a Corner?
Trump and Trumpism have left a trail of wreckage in their departure from Washington, a devastated landscape of racial, social, and ideological division. The Democrats propose unity and healing, more generous social programs, and less racial division, though their ambitious and laudable program is unlikely to win over the fractured but still Trumpist Republicans.
12 February 2021
The Mad King Departs
The sturdy democratic system in the United States withstood the attack, but it was evident that democracy is a fragile system always in danger from unscrupulous politicians, demagogues, and power-hungry opportunists.
16 January 2021
Averting Your Eyes
Governments, like many people, find it difficult to face facts. They make up stories about the past, and they fabricate tales about enemies within the country and outside. Denialism and the creation of convenient fictions help self-interested politicians stay in power. But ultimately reality bites back and forces one to look at the facts.
24 December 2020
Karabakh: Is there a way out of war?
Two universally recognized principles are at play, one favoring the Azerbaijanis, the other the Armenians.
5 November 2020
So, what is socialism, anyway?
Biden, of course, is neither a socialist nor a communist. He is a centrist liberal, who is supported by the Left in his party, the followers of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, but at the same time suspected by them of not being progressive enough in his policies. Trump’s accusations against the Democrats are not sticking.
30 October 2020
Revolution In Our Time
What is revolution in our time? It is using all means at hand to move toward greater democracy, increased equality, and more social justice. It is using people power to effect change in one way or another.
3 October 2020
No Way Out? War Between Neighbors
So, what about those lonely voices of the writers who try to imagine a future without the deadly war between two countries that once were relatively peaceful neighbors within another country, the Soviet Union? Is anyone listening to them?
25 August 2020
Nationalism and History
Donald Trump is definitely a nationalist, but he is not a patriot. When he was called up to serve in the US military during the Vietnam War, he had a friendly doctor testify that he was ineligible because he suffered from bone spurs in his heel. Later, he could not remember which foot it was.
3 August 2020
Enigmatic Russia
Putin is a formidable foe indeed. He is not a transitory danger to the West, for Putin intends to stay in power for the next sixteen years at least. But Western characterizations of Putin, and of Russia, are really caricatures that prevent an accurate reading of Russia’s role in the world.
11 July 2020
The view from the front lawn
Americans are continually perplexed by what our foreign policy actually is. The liberals shake their head in confusion, nostalgic for the Cold War clarity of who the enemy was; the conservatives avert their eyes not wishing to contradict the regime that has cut their taxes and tamed the resentful working class.
5 July 2020
Acting like a grown-up
A majority of Americans believe that Trump’s incompetency has led to the sickness and death sweeping the country. But the current Democratic alternative to Trumpism is uninspiring.
15 June 2020
Fires in the streets
Americans are divided in their politics, their beliefs, and their values. Moderate voices call for unity, harmony, and working together, all of which are praiseworthy goals. But reconciling the polarized opposites in American society is day by day becoming less possible.
6 June 2020
Lessons from the plague
The virus has exposed the deep inequalities that exist in each society and between different societies and made them worse. The poor get sick more often and die more frequently.
31 May 2020

Subscribe!

You can support Agos by subscribing. Subscribe, gift a subscription, leave a suspended subscription.