But Cohen, author of Th New American Cold War, kinda the landmark piece on the topic, has a new article on the topic:

A chilly peace: U.S. presidential candidates must address our strained relations with Russia, By Stephen F. Cohen

Excerpt:

How did it come to this? Less than 20 years ago, the Soviet and American leaders, Mikhail S. Gorbachev and George H.W. Bush -- completing a process begun by Gorbachev and President Reagan -- ended the Cold War, "with no winners and no losers" (as even Condoleezza Rice once agreed), and began a new era of "genuine cooperation." Now, the U.S. policy elite and media contend that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin's anti-democratic domestic policies and "neo-imperialism" destroyed that historic opportunity.

You don't have to be a Putin apologist to understand that it is not an adequate explanation. During the last eight years, Putin's foreign policies have been largely a reaction to Washington's winner-take-all approach to Moscow since the early 1990s, which resulted from a revised U.S. view of how the Cold War ended. In that new, triumphalist narrative, the U.S. won the 40-year conflict and post-Soviet Russia was a defeated nation analogous to post-World War II Germany and Japan -- a nation without full sovereignty at home or autonomous national interests abroad.

The policy implications of that bipartisan triumphalism, which persists today, have been clear, certainly to Moscow. It meant the U.S. had the right to oversee Russia's post-communist political and economic development, as it tried to do directly in the 1990s, while demanding that Moscow yield to U.S. international interests. It meant Washington could break strategic promises to Russia, as when the Clinton administration began NATO's eastward expansion, and disregard extraordinary Kremlin overtures, as when the George W. Bush administration unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and moved NATO's border even closer to Russia despite Putin's crucial assistance to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan after 9/11. It even meant the U.S. was entitled to Russia's traditional sphere of security and its energy supplies.

Such U.S. behavior was bound to produce a Russian backlash. It came under Putin, but it would have been the reaction of any strong Kremlin leader. Those U.S. policies -- now widely viewed in Moscow as an "encirclement" designed to keep Russia weak and to control its resources -- have helped revive an assertive Russian nationalism, destroy the once-strong pro-American lobby and inspire widespread charges that concessions to Washington are "appeasement," even "capitulationism." The Kremlin may have overreacted, but the cause and effect threatening a new cold war are clear.

Because the first steps in this direction were taken in Washington, so must be initiatives to reverse it. Three are urgent: a U.S. diplomacy that treats Russia as a sovereign great power with commensurate national interests; an end to NATO expansion before it reaches Ukraine, risking something worse than cold war; and a full resumption of negotiations to sharply reduce and fully secure all nuclear stockpiles and to prevent an impending arms race, which requires ending or agreeing on missile defense in Europe. Discussions with members of Moscow's policy elite suggest that there may still be time for such initiatives to elicit Kremlin responses that would enhance rather than further endanger our national security.

As always, I have some disagreements with Cohen.  But as always, I'm more convinced than ever that the world would be a better place if someone, anyone, listenned to him.

Also Winthrop 360 has a post for all your Gorbachev needs, including the Telegraph article, responses to it, and a very sweet list of Gorby quotes on related topics.  Check it out.

"This is nothing compared to how Putin rigged Eurovision."