This past weekend, Russian state television on two major channels devoted substantial news segments of their week in review programs to the ongoing game of chicken that the U.S. is carrying on in the air and on the seas at Russia’s borders:  on the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Barents and Okhotsk seas in the Far East. From the North, from the South, from the East and West U.S. war planes are simultaneously being directed against Russian defenses to probe their effectiveness and score political points.

In the words of Russian Defense Minister Shoigu, quoted on one of these channels, Vesti, aside from intelligence gathering, one clear intent of these maneuvers is to demonstrate U.S. raw power, to impress on the Russians that there is one boss of the world who calls all the shots, to reinforce the notion of a unipolar world. Says Shoigu, Washington does not at all like the emergence of bipolar strategic balance being pursued by Russia thanks to its new strategic weapons systems and is responding with these provocations which, as explained by chief of operations of the Russian high command Sergei Rudskoi on Friday, also shown on the program, have moved from purely reconnaissance aircraft and ships, to battle ready aircraft and cutters.  B-52s and ships equipped with precision munitions and cruise missiles activate their missiles as they approach Russian frontiers to as close as 15 km to simulate attacks on the Southern Military District and the Russian installations in Crimea.

The Russian Defense Minister emphasizes that the bomber flights up to Russian borders may be American led but on the way over include fighter jets from Sweden, Germany, Ukraine and even Italy.  The point of this involvement of the allies is to impress the Old Continent with American capabilities and to persuade the countries of NATO to host American rockets.  And to those in Europe who may express concern about Russian attack should they agree to serve as launchers for the Americans, Washington responds that it has a monopoly of actionable military intelligence.

The programs on Russian television gave a different version of the relative effectiveness of reconnaissance there and in the West, stressing that Moscow is tracking all the B52s from the America’s North Dakota air arm that are now based in the U.K. from the moment they go aloft, following them across Europe, where they are accompanied by various European fighter planes and do so without the Americans’ being aware they are in the crosshairs at any point until Russian jet fighters scramble to intercept them on their approach to Russian borders. 

The host of the News of the Week program on channel Vesti, Dmitry Kiselyov, warned that the Russians are considering using their electronic warfare devices to blind the incoming enemy aircraft.  For the present they merely fly up to intercept them at top speed, approach closely and tend to unnerve the NATO pilots, leading to protests from Brussels.  Should e-warfare be invoked, things could get quite rough.

According to the statistics released by General Rudskoi on Friday and shown on the Sunday news wrap-ups, the U.S. is now staging some 33 to 40 flight approaches to the Russian borders a week that are met by Russian fighters and sent on their way. On September 4^th, there were 5 reconnaissance aircraft approaching the Crimea at the same time.  Major incidents of mock attacks came on 28 August and 14 September.

The Russian Armed Forces television station Zvezda (‘the Star’) noted meanwhile with satisfaction that although none of the NATO countries recognizes the Russian annexation of Crimea, they have all been very careful to stay clear of the Russian borders on the peninsula.  Said Shoigu, we have never allowed any of them to cross our border and we will never allow it.

It is regrettable that none of these activities, none of these possibilities for tragic accidents and recriminations between US-led NATO forces and Russia are being reported in Western media.  If and when there is some clash, some downed plane, it will be reported like a thunder clap in blue skies.

The following links are in Russian original, but the visuals speak for themselves.

Vesti nedeli, Dmitry Kiselyov, 20.09.20 :    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG8wXAE99uw

From minute 18:44

Zvezda,  Glavnoe s Olgoi Belovoi :   from minute 27

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac]

Travel notes,  Thursday, 16 – Tuesday,  21 November 1989 – the visit of UPS team headed by VP, International Don Layden for completion of JV with Sovtransavto in Moscow and opening of service in Yugoslavia

Remarkably compressed, kaleidoscopic trip. Dog tired. Succession of near sleepless nights, insomnia coming from the tension of too many things and people to coordinate.

Arrival in Moscow Thursday evening, with no rooms reserved – need to talk our way into the Hotel Ukraina. I am with Dieter, our German Region I.E. manager whom I am installing for the next two weeks – into start-up and who will remain available for 6 months. Dieter was last here 8 years ago – speaks rusty Russian which he learned doing intelligence work in the German army. He came to UPS about 6 years ago  – started as a driver and gradually worked his way up to Industrial Engineering supervisor for his district. Slow and steady, reliable, conservative guy. Hard-working – puts in a 60 hour week when at home. We take very elegant dinner at the National – excellent beef steaks.

Friday the madness begins in earnest. Morning at Sovtransato with deputy director Yevgeny Sudakov and JV management nominees Arkady Kurshin, Yuri Kulakov, etc. going over plans for the start of service. Word is that our JV will be registered and final on Wednesday, November 22; that the TNT JV with Aeroflot has never been consummated despite all publicity. That DHL still pursuing a JV with Soyuzvneshtran

Saturday morning meet with Yuri and get back our materials for the symposium. In the afternoon I go out to the airport to meet Long, Smith, Skoda, Roth. Their plane is delayed, then they clear customs very slowly. Finally we are back at the Ukaine about 7 pm. We are joined by Larry Walsh, an Irish contractor of UPS who is in town for the first time after 20 years – having hopes to build on his past deliveries for Air Rianta /Aeroflot JV duty free. We take a very elegant dinner at the Savoy – bliny with caviar followed by snow grouse, with French Mouton Cadet Bordeaux.  A bit glitzy but well done nonetheless and presentation of the food is excellent, about as in Finland. The boys look pleased.

Larry Long, UPS Vice President for Europe, Africa and Middle East repeatedly speaks of ‘a great job.’

Sunday morning I join Mark Skoda for a trip by limousine out to the airport where VIP reception has been laid on for VP International Donald Layden. Only it doesn’t quite work out. While Sovtransavto boss Tatishvili, Sudakov and we drink our coffee in the VIP lounge, the greeter leaves for the plane, but Layden slips by and falls into the general processing. Moreover, Kurshin forgot to get a letter for Customs so Don loses an hour waiting for his bags and then goes through same line as everyone else on the Pan Am jumbo.

We take dinner at the National Banquet Room #6 at 7 pm – my favorite and the boys don’t let me down. Food and drink, all excellent and the room is as elegant as you could ever hope for. My Finns don’t show at all. Ditto Vialikov of the Trade Council and US Ambassador Matlock. Top guy is Road Minister Sukhin, and US Commercial Counsellor Jim May.  I move off to one side – let our paid interpreter Nina Arkhiptseva do the work of keeping conversation alive between the Minister and Layden/Long. My chatter is divided between May, who has a sickly grin, and Fedorets. I probe May on what it’s like to work under Matlock –whether he acts as his own advisor. I don’t learn much.

Meanwhile Layden seems to enjoy being the big boss. Later I flatter his vanity well by pointing out how he’ll be invited to dine with Gorbachev via the US Trade Council. He goes for it and asks me how many UPS people will be taking part in the Council’s annual session. I say 2 – 3, of whom 1 will go to dinner with Gorby.

For me the key thing here is to learn to direct, to orchestrate from the side – to allow others to be shown off, so that top bosses are reassured that a team is being put in place and that they are not wholly in the hands of one person. That’s why Layden chose to understand our fast pace of setting JV’s in terms of events rushing us. Quite untrue – we were driven by own considerations. As Mark says “go for it.”  A guy like Layden plays down his own power, though it could be considerable if used aggressively. 

The most important aspect of the Friday dinner was that it gave our candidate operations guy Yuri Kulakov a chance to be seen and judged by Long and others. They were greatly impressed and reassured. By letting others work while you sit back, you magnify rather than diminish your own strength.  Kulakov also is maturing – he plays the role well. I let him be tour guide for Long, Roth, Smith on Sunday morning.  Note – Layden obediently accepts the speech I composed for him.

Monday – very, very hectic – pressure rises to critical level.

We check out at 8.30,  six of us drive over to Ochakovo while Roth and Nigel and Yuri set up the symposium room. Layden decides Ochakovo is worth no investment, or a bare minimum.  He under-appreciates the telecoms and location. But that could be expected.

By 10 am we are all together at the Trade Council making final preparations. I compose and type up invitation letters for Minister Sukhin to come to the USA second half of January. Deputy Minister Sokolov accepts this in a side meeting with Layden and Long at which I am the interpreter. Here I do show off a bit (like Sunday night doing a simultaneous translation of the Layden toast, which I had written – stunning Jim May with this linguistic fireworks).  Happily the Symposium attendance is acceptable – about 25 companies, prospective future clients of our service, are here and three-quarters of the seats are filled. So we have no embarrassment. I am very pleased we have sequential translation to fill the time and that the Russian text was prepared in London, so that there is no mistranslation.

At the close of the symposium, I take Long and Skoda into a side meeting withTatishvili and Sudakov to do a little memorandum covering our relations in the brief time till the JV is registered and becomes operational. Here again I get a chance to show off but in very business-like way and to good effect. Larry is sold on what we’ve done and Layden also. Layden incidentally declines to take part in the negotiation – sits in the reception area looking tired and bored.

I’m abrupt with Kurshin today, tell him to shut up about what car he gets with the job (Saturday he drove us nuts while we’re waiting at the airport). Inadvertently I close the proposal before he can make his prepared acceptance speech. He whines about it.

We take off for the airport in our flying black tank. Yugo flights to Belgrade and Zagreb are on time and ok. The only hitch is near loss of Layden’s luggage as he checks it only to Belgrade. Walsh joins us all the way. In Zagreb Zulian and Tanya from Intereuropa are waiting for us. We take a leisurely dinner at the Esplanade. The big news is from Dave Guernsy, who is just returning from Belgrade, where Jerinic and the branch office have fully broken with TNT and are working with us. News of DHL’s bizarre split with Transjug is the other gossip of the day.

Tuesday we spend in a brief visit to the airport facility and then take a banquet in the Old Town. We are joined by Michael Einik, the US Consul General, who is pleasant as ever and by Mayor of Zagreb, Mikic who makes a never-ending speech on the history of Zagreb. The palace is really splendid and all are vastly impressed. However at $1800 it sets us back $90 / person.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the “View Inside” tab on the book’s webpages to browse.]

On Friday, 18 September, professor Steve Cohen passed away in New York City and we, the “dissident” community of Americans standing for peace with Russia – and for peace with the world at large – lost a towering intellectual and skillful defender of our cause who enjoyed an audience of millions by his weekly broadcasts on the John Batchelor Show, WABC Radio.

A year ago, I reviewed his latest book, War With Russia? which drew upon the material of those programs and took this scholar turned journalist into a new and highly accessible genre of oral readings in print.  The narrative style may have been more relaxed, with simplified syntax, but the reasoning remained razor sharp. I urge those who are today paying tribute to Steve, to buy and read the book, which is his best legacy.

From start to finish, Stephen F. Cohen was among America’s best historians of his generation, putting aside the specific subject matter that he treated: Nikolai Bukharin, his dissertation topic and the material of his first and best known book; or, to put it more broadly, the history of Russia (USSR) in the 20^th century. He was one of the very rare cases of an historian deeply attentive to historiography, to causality and to logic.  I understood this when I read a book of his from the mid-1980s in which he explained why Russian (Soviet) history was no longer attracting young students of quality:  because there were no unanswered questions, because  we smugly assumed that we knew about that country all that there was to know. That was when our expert community told us with one voice that the USSR was entrapped in totalitarianism without any prospect for the overthrow of its oppressive regime.

But my recollections of Steve also have a personal dimension going back six years or so when a casual email correspondence between us flowered into a joint project that became the launch of the American Committee for East West Accord (ACEWA). This was a revival of a pro-détente association of academics and business people that existed from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, when, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the removal of the Communist Party from power, the future of Russia in the family of nations we call the ‘international community’ seemed assured and there appeared to be no further need for such an association as ACEWA.

I hasten to add that in the original ACEWA Steve and I were two ships that passed in the night.  With his base in Princeton, he was a protégé of the dean of diplomats then in residence there, George Kennan, who was the leading light on the academic side of the ACEWA.  I was on the business side of the association, which was led by Don Kendall, chairman of Pepsico and also for much of the 1970s chairman of the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council of which I was also a member.  I published pro-détente articles in their newsletter and published a lengthy piece on cooperation with the Soviet Union in agricultural and food processing domains, my specialty at that time, in their collection of essays by leaders in the U.S. business community entitled Common Sense in U.S.-Soviet Trade.

The academic contingent had, as one might assume, a ‘progressive’ coloration, while the business contingent had a Nixon Republican coloration. Indeed, in the mid-1980s these two sides split in their approach to the growing peace movement in the U.S. that was fed by opposition in the ‘thinking community’ on university campuses to Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars agenda. Kendall shut the door at ACEWA to rabble rousing and the association did not rise to the occasion, so that its disbanding in the early ‘90s went unnoticed.

In the re-incorporated American Committee, I helped out by assuming the formal obligations of Treasurer and Secretary, and also became the group’s European Coordinator from my base in Brussels.  At this point my communications with Steve were almost daily and emotionally quite intense.  This was a time when America’s expert community on Russian affairs once again felt certain that it knew everything there was to know about the country, and most particularly about the nefarious “Putin regime.”  But whereas in the 1970s and 1980s, polite debate about the USSR/Russia was entirely possible both behind closed doors and in public space, from the start of the Information Wars against Russia during the George W. Bush administration following Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2007, no voice questioning the official propaganda line in America was tolerated.  Steve Cohen, who in the 1990s had been a welcome guest on U.S. national television and a widely cited expert in print media suddenly found himself blacklisted and subjected to the worst of McCarthyite style, ad hominem attacks.

From my correspondence and several meetings with Steve at this time both in his New York apartment and here in Brussels, when he and Katrina van der Heuvel came to participate in a Round Table dedicated to relations with Russia at the Brussels Press Club that I arranged, I knew that Steve was deeply hurt by these vitriolic attacks. He was at the time waging a difficult campaign to establish a fellowship in support of graduate studies in Russian affairs. It was touch and go, because of vicious opposition from some stalwarts of the profession to any fellowship that bore Steve’s name.  Allow me to put the ‘i’ on this dispute: the opposition to Steve was led by experts in the Ukrainian and other minority peoples sub-categories of the profession who were militantly opposed not just to him personally but to any purely objective, not to mention sympathetic treatment of Russian leadership in the territorial expanse of Eurasia. In the end, Steve and Katrina prevailed. The fellowships exist and, hopefully, will provide sustenance to future studies when American attitudes towards Russia become less politicized.

At all times and on all occasions, Steve Cohen was a voice of reason above all.  The problem of our age is that we are now not only living in a post-factual world, but in a post-logic world.  The public reads day after day the most outrageous and illogical assertions about alleged Russian misdeeds posted by our most respected mainstream media including The New York Times and The Washington Post. Almost no one dares to raise a hand and suggest that this reporting is propaganda and that the public is being brainwashed. Steve did exactly that in War With Russia? in a brilliant and restrained text.

Regrettably today we have no peace movement to speak of.  Youth and our ‘progressive’ elites are totally concerned over the fate of humanity in 30 or 40 years’ time as a consequence of Global Warming and rising seas. That is the essence of the Green Movement. Almost no one outside our ‘dissident’ community is concerned about the possibility of Armageddon in say two years’ time due to miscalculations and bad luck in our pursuing economic, informational and military confrontation with Russia and China. 

I fear it will take only some force majeure development such as we had in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis to awaken the broad public to the risks to our very survival that we are incurring by ignoring the issues that Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Princeton and New York University was bringing to the airwaves week after week on his radio program.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the “View Inside” tab on the book’s webpages to browse.]

Earlier today the Russian service of RT published an article on the latest developments in restoring Russia’s air links with the world.

The headline  sounds exuberant. “One flight a week: Russia renews air communications with four more countries.”  As you scroll down, the news looks somewhat peculiar. The new cities served as from 21 September will be Nur Sultan (Kazakhstan), Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) and Minsk (Belarus); and as from 27 September, Seoul (South Korea).  The last named is of world importance; the first three will only elicit bemusement from Western readers.

This comes on top of previous reopening of service on 24 July to the U.K. (London) and on 1 August to Turkey (Ankara and Istanbul). As from 10 August the Turkish resorts of Antalya, Bodrum and Dalaman were added, as well as Zanzibar. 

The Prime Minister’s office has announced that from 3 September flights will be resumed to Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and to the Maldives. 

The article further informs us that flights to Switzerland will be increased to four a week: two flights by Aeroflot, Moscow-Geneva, and two flights by Swissair, Moscow-Zurich.

Taking all of this news together gives us a comprehensive overview of the peculiar new global reach of Aeroflot and its partner airlines. 

The fact that Switzerland is the only destination on the Continent being served is not cause for surprise given the residual “neutral” status of Switzerland in our bitterly partisan world.  Note that not a single EU Member State has air links today with Russia.

Restoration of air links with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Minsk is really an internal matter of the former Soviet Empire, having little relevance to the rest of the world.

That leaves us with all the other announced destinations which are, with one notable exception, London, playground destinations for Russia’s middle and upper classes who, after lockdown, really want to go out and party. From a purely sanitary standpoint, reopening these air links is madness.  From a political standpoint, it is regrettably understandable as a way to allow folks who may not be terribly loyal to the Kremlin to let off steam.  I would call this pattern of growing the air network to be “Money Talks.”

Curiously, and against all outward expectations given the degraded state of relations between Boris Johnson’s government and Russia, the Money Talks explanation surely accounts for the fact that the most extensive restoration of air links is precisely with London.  This is what I discovered when I was looking for a way to travel to Russia a week ago. Aeroflot has two flights a day between Moscow and London. 

Shouldn’t be! Just think how much Novichok must be headed to Britain in the hands of still undiscovered agents of the Kremlin!  But the fact remains that Britain is today Russia’s biggest friend in logistics, and the Oligarchs who are constantly decried in Parliament for subverting democracy can go and come between their principal residences here and there without impediment.  Has anyone noticed?

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020 [If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac,

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union Address was remarkable in a number of ways. It marked an informal but very tangible constitutional change in European Institutions whereby the Commission becomes in practice if not in law a parliamentary cabinet. She hued as closely to the policies promoted by a majority of the MEP’s as Elizabeth II does in her Queen’s speech to the Houses of Parliament when she reads a text handed to her by the Prime Minister.

The reasons for this development are perfectly obvious.  When her candidacy for president was put to a vote in the European Parliament, she barely squeaked by.  This, after having spent several weeks in a charm campaign when she consulted with and listened to all the leading parties of the incoming parliament. The reason for her difficulties was what was construed as a violation of the growing parliamentary habits of the EU Institutions whereby the new President is chosen from among the candidates put up by the parties and the award is given to the party with the largest number of incoming MEPs, which was the PPE, the right of center People’s Party. 

Under pressure from Emmanuel Macron, the PPE’s candidate was passed over and the nod went to von der Leyen, who was a PPE member but not its internally selected candidate.  We all noted at the time that this choice was tolerated but not encouraged by German Chancellor Merkel, in whose cabinet von der Leyen served as Defense Minister.  We also noted that von der Leyen was not a star performer in Germany; indeed, she had come under heavy criticism for mismanaging her ministry and for various financial scandals.  The backing by Macron was somewhat hard to explain, though everyone pointed to von der Leyen’s perfect fluency in French, having grown up and been schooled in Brussels. In any case, back then, a year ago, Macron’s star was still on the ascendant, Gilets Jaunes notwithstanding, while Merkel’s star was sinking, as health problems and difficulties with her coalition partners forced her to declare a retirement date. She was, it would have seemed, a lame duck.

What we saw in von der Leyen’s speech yesterday shows that Macron completely misunderstood whom he was backing in von der Leyen, completely misjudged his powers relative to Frau Merkel.

There was very little content on International Relations in von der Leyen’s speech, and it came at the very end, which by itself is extraordinary. The great bulk of her speech was devoted to economic issues, health issues and domestic spending in the EU.  One might say that these priorities indicate an isolationist turn of mind that corresponds perfectly well to the Greens, who were among the biggest winners in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament but who seemed to have been ignored by von der Leyen during the coalition building that immediately preceded and followed her installation as Commission President. The Greens’ expectation of being ‘king makers’ seemed to have been foiled.  Until yesterday…

What little there was of foreign policy in von der Leyen’s speech would have suited the German Greens in particular, since it was militant Cold War talk. Mention of the Continent’s biggest country which sits just on the Eastern frontier of the EU came in the following three sentences:

“To those who advocate closer ties with Russia, I say that the poisoning of Alexei Navalny with an advanced chemical agent is not a one off. We have seen the pattern in Georgia and Ukraine, Syria and Salisbury – and in election meddling around the world. This pattern is not changing – and no pipeline will change that.”

A more pithy, vitriolic and propagandistic statement could not have been pronounced by the Secretary General of NATO Jens Stoltenberg.  Indeed, one wonders why von der Leyen was installed in Place Schumann and not in the NATO headquarters out at Zaventem where militancy could be delivered with a Female Face, carrying gender equality through still tougher ceilings than within the EU Institutions.

Von der Leyen’s speech opened with mention of European values and the ideological messaging came up frequently, never curdling in the mouth of this very German politician, or so it would seem.  We saw it in her remarks on Belarus: “I want to say it loud and clear: the European Union is on the side of the people of Belarus.”  What exactly that translates into in terms of financial, political and, dare we say it, military meddling is not yet clear.  But if she wants a war with Russia, no cause than championing an ‘orange revolution’ in Belarus could turn the trick better.

And, last but not least, von der Leyen said she will introduce and promote a “European Magnitsky Act.”  What is that all about?

Let us return to the question of Monsieur Macron and his seeming victories on the European stage just after the May 2019 elections of the European Parliament.  Shortly afterwards we learned that his just elected ‘en marche’ MEPs were combining with the 10% of MEPs that had for years been led by the NeoLiberal MEP, former premier of Belgium, Guy Verhofstadt under the grouping labeled ALDE.  The new grouping would go under the name “Renew Europe.”

Verhofstadt soon afterwards disappeared from view and it would have seemed that Macron now would be leading a group of MEPs counting something like 15% of the European Parliament, heading them in a wholly new direction as regards relations with the big neighbor to the East.  This was the time when Macron had his one-on-one meetings with Vladimir Putin and made very bold promises to bring Russia in from the cold into the European House.   It was somewhat before Macron scandalized Frau Merkel and other pillars of the status quo in that same house with his remarks on NATO being “brain dead.”

In two places in her speech, von der Leyen was giving Macron the finger.  One was her remark cited above, addressed to “those that advocate closer ties with Russia.”  The other was in her advocacy of a “European Magnitsky Act.” Such an act makes reference to the supposedly terrible violation of human rights that was supposedly perpetrated by Kremlin agents against a certain Sergei Magnitsky for his supposed whistle blowing about crimes in high places.

The original Magnitsky Act was promulgated in the United States in 2012 when the Russia-hating majority in the U.S. Congress was conned into it by a certain fraudster, William Browder, Sergei Magnitsky’s erstwhile boss.  The Act sought to blacken the reputation of Putin and to cast the Russian Federation into pariah status. Browder tried with might and main to see it reissued in Europe. His cause was taken up with alacrity by precisely Verhofstadt and his Russia-hating followers in ALDE.  Now we find that Verhofstadt is having the last laugh in terms of setting policy for the combined group of MEPs called “Renew Europe.”  And Von der Leyen has taken up their cause and made it that of the European Commission.

For Europe’s young people no doubt von der Leyen’s Green initiatives will look great.  For those of us with a gray hair or two, and with interests that go beyond the nearest state boundary, her foreign affairs agenda such as she outlined in her speech yesterday will look oh so retro. Europe is well on its way to further marginalization in international affairs. And Macron has been proven to be an empty windbag.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the “View Inside” tab on the book’s webpages to browse.]

The El Dorado factor: diary notes from a visit to St Petersburg and Moscow, July-August 1992

Dancing on air. That’s my mood after spending 10 days in St Petersburg and Moscow at company expense taking my ‘vacation’ leisure, prospecting for further real estate investments and – doing a hell of a job to put UPS operations in Russia back on their feet.

When Larisa first planned last winter to make a long stay in Russia, including a couple of weeks of my vacation time, I had balked. Then in June, when her father revealed himself hopelessly unable to secure a dacha or even an apartment in a seaside resort for us, I threw in the towel and we cancelled flight tickets that would have taken us to St Petersburg July 1^st. Instead we spent a couple of weeks in our unrented Knokke apartment on the Belgian coast and I schemed to rent something cheap for Alexa and Larisa in either the Italian countryside or at Lake Bled in Slovenia. Nothing ‘cheap’ surfaced and in the meantime Larisa’s determination to take Alexa back to her homeland came to the fore – so I agreed to ship them off to St Petersburg for 5 weeks. By clever planning I managed also to schedule a 10 day trip to StP /Moscow for myself on UPS business – right in the middle of their sojourn.

Never try to judge what is going on in some remote place like Russia by sitting in your armchair and reading the papers, even so authoritative a paper as The Financial Times. My feelings about Russia were negative, pessimistic before the trip. Partly this was due to the ongoing unpleasant conflict with our JV management and with partners Sovtransavto, who have pointed us in the direction of bankruptcy and/or a divorce in the JV marriage. Partly it was due to the confusing and steady stream of negative news coming out of the CIS, both economic and political. The dangerous ethnic conflicts there seem ever ready to overwhelm the ongoing economic reforms in resurgence of Communist leadership under the guise of nationalism, as in the Balkans.

What surprised and greatly encouraged me was to see the progress in carrying out the bold economic reforms. Specifically, the achievement of ‘internal convertibility’ of the ruble, and the ongoing privatization of the housing stock. The former means that Western goods are being sold in normal ‘Soviet’ shops for rubles as well as in the sidewalk kiosks that line the main thoroughfares and by the street peddlers along the highways. Western bananas are being sold on the street for less than locally grown apples per kg. Nescafe is sold in the store shelves competitively with Russian soluble coffee.  French cosmetics have bumped Bulgarian ones. Colgate is sold on the street for 35R a tube ($0.20). Coke Lite cans are competing from little stands against Pepsi kiosks.

Prices have risen in food shops to the point where they are well stocked and there are no lines. Cheeses, canned Soviet salmon, dairy products – all things which had disappeared from open sale 10 years ago – now are openly available, if you can find the money. Prices are below world levels, but still are shocking to a country where the pensions and minimum salary are set at 1450 rubles/month = $9.50   To locals, like Larisa’s relative Valya, the good in this change is not apparent. Why, she opines, can’t they leave some cheap shops for us poor people, alongside the well-stocked shops with luxury goods that the wealthy want?

How can you persuade such people that this shock therapy is for their own good, that such differentiated pricing is impossible and would stand in the way of real reform. Without closing factories, without firing people, the new prices give all capable people cause to run from their moribund state enterprises and seek employment in the newly opening private sector.

Now at the same time we meet with the déclassé– our Moscow friend Tolya Silin, whose connections once got him into state sanitoria and the best hotels for free, who once had the fortune of 20,000 rubles in bank accounts and now has the buying power of less than 10% that amount. So is the reform really just pauperization?  No, because at the same time the privatization of lodgings gives everyone the chance to enjoy real equity. Privatized apartments in Moscow now sell for $1,000/sq meter. In St P they are $400 – 500 per square meter. This means that the owner of a 60 sq.m. flat in Moscow has the possibility at any moment to get the equivalent of $60k and move out – emigrate, as he wishes. What they lost in paper money they can more than make up in real estate.

And on that subject, Larisa and I are caught up in our old fever just days after my calculation of our debts had left me swearing on all things sacred that our buying of real estate must be curtailed – and we must save cash.

I visit some flats in Moscow. They can be very attractive – and the rentals are phenomenal, $3,000 – $5,000 per month for 120 sq.m.  But the renovation work is massive – stripping the walls to the brick. And the money to put up, at $1,000 sq.m. is already considerable – with no possibility of mortgage. One hell of a risk.

In StP, Larisa and I together visit some flats. First in the $18 – $22k range.  Unacceptable! 5^th floor walk-ups! Entrances that are ill-lit, malodorous, utterly inappropriate to our purpose of renting to foreigners. We even see a $40k flat that had been advertised as ‘without defects’  – but is in reality the typical Soviet wreck, with no view. The lady owner is inexperienced, tricky; has deceived more than one buyer into thinking she is ready to do a deal, while meanwhile angling for more money.

The problem is that the mafia is in the real estate market – ready to snap up almost any property to be used to launder their ‘hot’ money. So you are  competing against their dollars; and they are seemingly ready and able to transfer funds abroad, as the emigrating sellers require. Nonetheless Larisa is hopeful – identifies and attractive 120 sqm apartment on the top floor (with lift) of a decent building directly on the Moika. She will visit this next week. Also several possible one-bedroom apartments to visit later.

Larisa’s ambition of showing our daughter her St Petersburg is realized and successful. Alexa is enthralled. She spent a week ‘on her own’ with Valya, coping in Russian. Comprehension really seems to have developed and she dares to speak, even if grammatically unschooled. The kid is wide-eyed, observant and enthusiastic. Now she has real estate fever too and hopes we will buy in StP. We take her on Sunday of my departure to brunch at the Hotel d’Europe and she really and truly flips out. The fine food, the mood set by the Dixieland band, the wonderfully restored Art Nouveau dining room – all cast a spell. She so proudly shows me the jar of wild raspberries and blueberries she collected during her week in the forest; it’s her first round of berry hunting; her first swimming in forest lakes – in the wild. The kid has a keen sense of the exotic position she/we are in and she loves it. No longer blasé, she is genuinely enthusiastic, elated, radiant, as my photos of her and video interview in our hotel room show.

The trip is varied, exciting for both Larisa and me. We travel together without the kid for all but the last two days. This means the overnight train trip down and back to Moscow. For the first time in my life I actually sleep soundly and sufficiently on a train. Then a couple of nights together at the Hotel Radisson Slavyanskaya – this gives us the opportunity to have a dinner with Tolya Silin, Lena, Vlada Kumpman and her husband – Larisa’s old friends; also an evening at the opera seeing a wonderfully staged production of Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades at the Stanislavsky Musical Theater.

In StP itself we spend a couple of nights at our old haunt, the Hotel Astoria, in a room overlooking St Isaac’s. One night at dinner in the hotel, another we go to see the production of Swan Lake put on by Tanya’s ex-husband, Bruskin – Larisa’s old friends at the Theater of the Hermitage. This last is beautiful, with newly restored stage curtain showing the double-headed eagle. All that’s missing is the tsar’s family.

On the  last two nights in StP, following our return from Moscow, there is great variety. Friday evening I rent a Nissan Sunny and we drive out to Repino on the Gulf of Finland, where the Cinematographers’ Club ‘Dom Tvorchestva’ has reserved a room for us at the ridiculous price of $3 per person with full board.  Then Saturday we indulge in the other extreme, a $315 room at the Hotel d’Europe that Larisa absolutely loves.

The Hermitage ballet has its own vignette truth of the new Russian reality. The tickets are sold via Intourist at $40 each. The house seats 200 and nearly every place is taken, implying a gross receipt of $8,000.  Out of this the dance troupe is given 10,000 rubles = $60 by Intourist, a shocking abuse of privilege. The troupe is private – Bruskin’s own. He has an impresario in France and a tour is scheduled for October – November. The problem is to survive till then – for which he needs $10,000.  I offer to help find a patron – will approach the Credit Lyonnais office in town.

Everyone has got a story he is longing to share. Everyone wants to vent his optimism on the reforms, on the state of the economy. You scratch anyone and they bubble up with information.

Weather is largely cooperative. Mostly sunny but not too hot. The days are still so impressively long in StP – still more than at home, longer than in Moscow.

The feeling is that most anything is for sale. On Nevsky, grannies seated on stoops sell bric-a-bac, most likely their treasured possessions. Nearby kids sell Wrigley’s chewing gum or Coke or Colgate. It’s a new world of petty retail activity. On the highways every so often there are outdoor grills with tables. A couple of years ago you’d get 20 years for the trouble.

Alexa is impressed that our hotel television has Superchannel  and MTV and CNN. Yet she spots a need for radio to appeal to adolescents.

To my surprise, the Gold Rush atmosphere here is contagious and I am thinking it might not be a bad idea to move to Russia for 6 months – buy an apartment, participate more directly in the fantastic changes now beginning. Even Larisa agrees. Now if I want to be truly energetic, I’ll start chasing the oil companies, who are establishing multi-billion dollar deals.

This is the first time I travel to Russia with our video camera. And I remain a bit cautious, or perhaps lazy. There is such a wild combination of old and new, historic change in the air. The crust of Soviet neglect is being scraped away – literally. Bronze plaques announcing the unpronounceable abbreviations which served as the names for Soviet legal and commercial entities are removed. Paint which had covered the bright, gilded mosaics on the edifice of turn of the century, Art Nouveau corporate buildings (banks, insurance companies)is removed, revealing the pre-Soviet past for admiration.

Western cars are appearing on the streets. Purchases of second hand cars have sucked W. Europe dry. Add to that those stolen cars. The Japanese right-hand drive vehicles sold for a couple of hundred bucks in Vladivostok are all cruising down the StP and Moscow thoroughfares, lending a more familiar look to the streets as they crowd out the bizarre Chaikas, Moskviches and Volgas.

Not everything changes. As they say about the StP Intourist group, it’s the same old gang of thieves even if the titles and positions of desks have changed. Management at the Intourist-owned Astoria remains uneven, unsympathetic. At the Swedish run Hotel d’Europe, I am told that the Swedish manager and his team of German assistants are going through staff daily and applying hire and fire procedures till they get staff who work and know how to smile. The results are evident – the Hotel d’Europe looks and feels like a Western hotel. There is at least a modicum of professionalism. Compare this to the Astoria, where the front desk staff and service desk staff are ignorant and uninterested in helping guests.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the “View Inside” tab on the book’s webpages to browse.]

Visit to Moscow for UPS, May 1990.  Attending the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council annual gathering, 20-24 May

I stop in at the Council offices and receive confirmation of the right to attend the Council session. Sunday evening, 20 May, there is an opening cocktail reception. I go with the General Manager of our UPS-Sovtransavto joint venture Arkady Kurshin.

I imagine it will be a good setting to troll for new employment. In this illusion I am sadly mistaken: this is no place to look for work. It is a forum for those already in the field to show off. The reception is lavish – caviar, crab, smoked fish, vodka. For the next 3 days the same gluttony will repeat itself till I am thoroughly fed up with this overly rich food and 2 kg overweight.

Somehow the Council meetings depress me. Whereas my Leningrad sojourn earlier in this trip filled me with optimism, this herd of Americans in Moscow alienates me and leaves me saddened. After a week on the road my suits look rumpled and cheap. Here are hundreds of slick, freshly pressed newcomers to the field who stampede past the old guard like myself. After years of working in the desert I see that the long-awaited rains have come and are choking, flooding the delicate desert flowers and making room for a harvest of cabbages.

We were outcasts when the USSR and Eastern Europe was out of fashion. And we are bypassed by the big boys now that everyone smells money. The lawyers and management consultancies are moving in in force. They have the names and the prestige to lead the large corporations in by the nose and to charge their fat rates. They have respectability and credibility. For the major corporations finesse is not really needed. They are ready to take out their checkbooks and pay whatever is necessary to set up shop. So there will be much waste at first. No matter. The accountants will come later, in the van, and start tightening up the operations. This is exactly what I have seen in UPS’ behavior on its waves of international expansion. Guys like my boss spending bucks like wild, followed eventually by operations personnel who rein it in. 

And yet even then the familiar corporate landscape of Ernst and Whitney, Coopers & Lybrand, etc. gives comfort to corporate men just as IBM’s cachet enables DP managers to get approval for expenditures that senior management would reject if suppliers were unfamiliar. Quality is not the issue – covering your ass is!

These days I have been reading Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” in the Russian language edition that just has come out. I find Carnegie’s insights a wonderful refinement of what I myself discovered by trial and error going back to the selling of East-West Marketing services: pitching to what your audience’s interests are, what they want and expect to hear. Listening.

I put to work Carnegie’s sweet bromides at the receptions. I go up to my old antagonist Chris Edwards and Paul Hatfield of Ralston Purina and aggressively shake hands and exchange courtesies. Hatfield congratulates me on my ‘successes.’ Does he know of any? Great way to cut short any talk that might become embarrassing. Edwards looks very grey. I don’t suppose he’s enjoyed these past 10 years in St Louis shadowing Hatfield.

On Monday I find myself seated next to Margaret Chapman, the head of the business circle within the American Committee on East-West Accord. She expresses disappointment at the turnout. Not enough big shots from the old days. Indeed, Armand Hammer never shows up to claim his seat and other personalities do not in fact come though shown in the registration lists. As I later realize, this may be because of Gorbachev’s planned summit trip to the USA in 10 days; many of the captains of industry will be meeting Gorby in California, which is a lot more convenient for them than the long hike over to Moscow.

Don Kendall is probably the most visible old Russia hand here. I spot former Vice Chairman of Control Data Chet Schmidt and go over to shake his hand during a break.

Characteristic of the new turn in the Soviet business, the herd of Americans bringing their own landscape with them, is the presence of former U.S. Vice President, Senator Muskie of Maine. He is here as a figurehead to give prominence to the law firm on whose board he sits and attract business. A celebrity who has the sense to hardly open his mouth. I shake this well-dressed dummy’s hand as well…And this emptiness is what makes it all so frustrating and depressing.

Are things getting better or worse? What is the meaning of it all?  I see normalization in all this. Essentially it is good. At the same time American complacency, the false belief that we have something to bring here, that poor, ignorant Russians will not prevail. Russians are too clever and too well educated to have American hucksters dance on their heads for long. There will be a xenophobic reaction.

On Tuesday evening there is a cocktail reception aboard a steamer on the Moskva river. Together with Kurshin, I join up with the Minister of Transport of Uzbekistan, an old friend of Arkadi’s and his assistant in charge of “Aral”, a multi-activity company under the Ministry who are a putative service partner for UPS in Uzbekistan. It is a chance meeting which brings us together. However, real potential is there. I feel that the push for sovereignty among the Soviet republics has implications for business development that few others may appreciate. Uzbekistan’s rich resources (gold, angora wool, silk, Persian lamb) will now be their own to dispose of on world markets. We agree to pursue the contact during a meeting in Tashkent in late June.

During this boat ride I introduce the Minister to Jim Giffen, President of Mercator. For me, it’s interesting to see that Giffen is tied to Moscow in the fight with the republics. This will be a losing position. Here is a blindness to exploit.

On Wednesday the regular Council registrees go to dinner at the Kremlin. Having gotten in irregularly, I have no invitation. It is galling. To compensate, I take my guys out to a restaurant, to the new so-called American restaurant “TREN-MOS”. It’s another creature of the crazy entrepreneur who set up Astro-Pizza. Food is mediocre, though after last night’s drunken party on the boat, my taste buds are shot to hell. The owner and maître d’ is a greasy young guy given to back slapping and banter with all guests, using phony Yiddish. The saving grace is a fantastic American black pianist and jazz singer.

Thursday we spend out at the UPS offices in Ochakovskaya  reviewing current business. There are all sorts of tensions between the staff to mediate. A new manager has to be hired and there are further candidates to interview. The whole circus is so distracting that amazingly I manage to forget my proper departure time and to miss my flight out!  That’s totally nuts. At the same time it’s a sign of the growing normality of Russia that there is a second Lufthansa flight this evening on which I do get a seat. So out I do go. Once in Frankfurt, I decide to go all the way and so end up back home in Brussels shortly before midnight.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperbfack and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the “View Inside” tab on the book’s webpages to browse.]

Diary notes – Visit to Uzbekistan for United Parcel Service –  24-30 June 1990

A very concentrated, very stimulating trip. This Soviet trip also has a large measure of tourism, but of a hectic, forced variety as we were the guests of the Uzbek Minister of Road Transport Larek Akhmetov and their hospitality was all-embracing.  Warm, but fatiguing beyond our strength.

By the time we departed Tashkent, the manager of the UPS Soviet Joint Venture Arkadi Borisovich Kurshin was physically sick and I was failing. Why? A combination of the heat (over 40 degrees C) and the feasting.

“We have a cult of dining.” This is how Ralf, chief of our service company Aral put it. And so we repeatedly sat down to five hour feasts consisting of multi-course meals and non-stop toasting on brandy and vodka. Add to this our hosts’ sincere desire to show us as much of the area as possible in our four days, meaning lengthy car trips this way and that.

From a business standpoint, the trip was successful: we concluded a contract with Aral, as foreseen, for servicing Tashkent, Uzbekistan and Central Asia generally at the affordable price of 7 hard currency roubles per pick-up or delivery. We had a proper signing ceremony at the Ministry with about 60 officials looking on and with the local press taking notes and photos. We met with the two recently opened Japanese representations in Tashkent and saw our first customers for both international and domestic services to Moscow. We blazed trails as the first express company to set up shop in Soviet Central Asia, thus finally pulling ahead of DHL and the Soyuzvneshtrans monopoly.

From a personal standpoint it is very exciting to be in the midst of the forces for decentralization , decomposition of the Soviet Union. A couple of months ago in Estonia and now in Uzbekistan. The Uzbeks just one week ago declared their sovereignty and primacy of their own republican law. They are more modest than the Baltics, but have the material resources to push for really great autonomy in the months ahead.

My single strongest impression is of the Ali Baba nature of this rich and fertile land. As they say, they mine the whole of Mendeleev’s table. We pass silver, gold mines, an enormous open pit black coal mine, the area of uranium mining and, as some say, of diamonds. Near Bukhara are oil and gas wells. Railway tank cars attest to the petroleum. A huge thermal electric station is fed on the coal about 100 km east of Tashkent.

The climate is continental in most of Uzbekistan, with hot summers and cold winters (down to minus 10 degrees) with plenty of snow. At the edge of Pamir, we find 6000 meter peaks with snowcaps and our valley has over 2 meters of white blanket in winter. However, in the Fergana Valley there is a subtropical climate with citrus crops and no frost.

The soil is very fertile, the type in which proverbially you put in a stick and find a tree growing the next day. It is mostly given over to monoculture, cotton growing, which is hailed officially as the wealth of the nation but is viewed locally as its poverty, because the state prices for raw cotton are miserably low. By local reckoning, the 150 grams of pure raw cotton that go into making a shirt are sold for 30 kopeks and the shirt itself comes back for 10 roubles. That is to say the cotton goes for only 3% of the value of the finished goods and they are made chiefly in the Ukraine and elsewhere outside of Uzbekistan. If given their head, the locals would cut back on cotton, which is overbloated at 6 million tons per year, and would use part of the land to grow melons and foodstuffs for their own consumption.

I ask about quality of cotton and am told that what is on the plant itself is of the highest quality. However, the harvesting machinery is crude (Soviet and apparently made here in Uzbekistan) so that it tears the delicate fibers and seriously reduces quality. They know this well and some part of the harvest is left for hand or less destructive machines, so that they do have a top quality material available for export. All export goes via Moscow till now and none of the benefit stays with the growers.

I tend to believe this explanation. Looking at the cotton fields, I am surprised at the state of the plantation. The rows of plants are as dense and orderly as in the West, which is a far cry from the sparse rows of most anything planted in Central Russia. Evidently the seeds and sowing apparatus are up to standard.

The cult of dining expresses itself in a very finicky attention to freshness and peak quality. Everything is offered in great abundance and only the newcomer dares to think it is all to be consumed. No, the Uzbeks only take a small part of what is put on their plate. Typically the tea or other beverage is served by the half cup, so that one can continually add. It is all quite subtle.

The table is groaning from fruits and garden vegetables as you sit down and these are nibbled between courses. Some of these staples are simple, like beefsteak tomatoes and cucumbers, others are rarer, such as pistachios, almonds, salted and roasted apricot pits, local herbal grasses, mulberries (like ripe blackberries only without pits and having sweet, velvety syrup).

The meal itself is a varied procession of dishes. First the cold soup (okroshka), then the hot soup (a kind of kharcho from lamb), then sautéed river fish (marinka, a sort of trout) in cottonseed oil, then plov (the national dish consisting of rice and lamb with onion and spices), then stuffed quails with garlic, and then watermelon for dessert. This is how we were treated by the Minister at his mountain retreat and it is only a variation on our other feasts.

In between courses, you can take a stroll or lounge on the khantokhta, an oversized sofa.

When we first arrived in Tashkent Tuesday evening and we had the opening dinner at our Hotel Uzbekistan, the feeling was of great luxury on the table after Moscow. The fresh apricots, plums, melons would be hard to find in a hotel anywhere in Eastern Europe, including Yugoslavia. They attest to a superior management. By the time we returned from Samarkand and again dined at the hotel restaurant, it looked drab and tame following our experience with the private feasts.

The other feature of the dining aside from its sumptuousness was the setting. Here alfresco dining is not merely out on the terrace. It is in the midst of the forest where a table is set up, chairs are brought in and the dishes appear as if from nowhere in splendid succession to the music of the nightingales. No, not just trees. There must be water, preferably the play of the narrow streams from fountain onto a pond. It is all so very reminiscent of the Courtyard of the lions in the Alhambra of Granada. Delicate streams of water tinkling in the background. Unimpressive unless you consider how rare water was in this part of the world.

Among the other surprises are that these local bosses have done very well for themselves. The director of one of the auto bases does not allow us to leave him without ‘crossing the threshold’ of his house. Once inside the plain concrete exterior wall, we are in a port cochère where his new Moskvich is parked. He throws a switch and there is the play of water on his swimming pool. To the left, he leads us into the 60 square meter guest area complete with piano. Across the courtyard is the main house.

Even the Samarkand auto base, which looks like our drab Butovo office building near Moscow from the outside, has a pleasant suite of rooms for guests including one that is air conditioned and has a sauna. A second base has a large sports hall with sauna and fresh, well fed swimming pool – here we take one of our feasts.

As to the family: a man with less than five kids is considered unlucky. Ten or more is common. Divorce is very rare. The husband must work day and night to provide for his brood, and in particular to find dowries for the daughters. It is expected he will give the groom clothing, furniture and food staples sufficient for 3 years of marital life and will host a wedding feast for 800 or more. So says Ralf.

On this and that. Ralf is a wonderful story-teller, including tall tales. Though he does suggest that camels are not to be had (they avoid built-up places and pollution!), I am firmly promised a horse and prepare my riding habit for the trip up to the minister’s retreat. When we arrive, the camp boss looks at me in bemusement. Horse? No horses here. But we do get to eat a horsemeat sausage that is very good.

From the reaction of our Japanese prospective clients to our promises of fast service, I can presume that Ralf is not the only one to tell stories in this part of the world. The Chori rep first asks: do you mean that if I give you a parcel in Tashkent on Monday it will be in Tokyo on Friday? I say yes. He then breaks into a smile which becomes hysterical laughter. “Отсюда до Луны ближе чем отсюда до Москвы” [from here the Moon is nearer than Moscow] He asks: and if I call, will someone answer the phone? We assure him they will. But he remains very incredulous. Nice guys, these Japanese reps, but they are evidently not having an easy time. Nonetheless, their office seems as well set up as anything in Moscow would be and their ‘assistants’ are lovely, well made up girls who seem to enjoy their work and know languages.

Maybe transport is slow but the music gap is no problem in Tashkent. Our hotel orchestra plays Lambada over and over again to the request of the locals. There is a nice new Coke machine in the hotel lobby. It does not seem to be used, but the bar is selling Coke and other Western drinks. Only Western cigarettes do not seem to be available.

And the good things in life go not only to the bosses. We visit the Samarkand market and prices for fruits and vegetables as well as for fresh and very attractive lamb meat are 3 – 10 times cheaper than in the market in Moscow. There is an enormous assortment as well. Moreover, the local women are nearly all wearing the silk fabrics which are made from cocoon to finished goods within the republic.

Politics :  All of the time our friends are concerned over the fate of Gorbachev. Larek Akhmetov is going to Moscow for the 28^th Party Congress which opens next week and all are skeptical if Gorbachev can surmount the attacks coming from the left (Yeltsin) and from the right (Ligachev).

Giffen: On my way over to Moscow this trip I ran into Jim Giffen at the Lufthansa Senator Lounge of Frankfurt Airport. In the mid-70s, I had first heard of him as assistant to the Chairman of Armco who helped his boss (who later became U.S. Secretary of Commerce) on a major project that Armco hoped to put through, but which was eventually stymied by the embargo following the Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan. In the early ‘80s, Giffen became president of the US-USSR Trade and Economic Council. Then in about 1987 he became chairman of the merchant bank Mercator Corp. and in that capacity put together the US Trade Consortium and its multibillion dollar package of deals which sees oil exports from the prospecting of some members offsetting the sales of industrial plant and finished goods of other members. Giffen has just gotten in from New York and is zonked.

These days he commutes back and forth between the U.S. and Moscow twice a month and it looks like this will continue indefinitely. We last saw one another at the river boat reception of the Trade Council in Moscow in May. I ask him how the dinner at the Kremlin went, since I had not been invited. At first he is slow, but then his enthusiasm takes over. He says that Gorbachev had spoken well there, but that it was nothing compared to Gorby’s brilliant speech in Minneapolis a couple of weeks later. Giffen was so excited that he taped that speech. He now opens his briefcase to show me photos of himself with Gorbachev in Minneapolis. This is really surprising: an American businessman who is putting together a file on Gorby! And then comes the real shocker. Giffen says he first met Gorbachev back in 1984 when he was still a dark horse. Together with Council chairman Andreas, of ADM, he had been invited to a chat with Mikhail which turned into a 90 minutes discourse at which Gorbachev set out his thoughts on most everything and his program for action down to the removal of the Berlin Wall. Giffen and Andreas were so impressed that when they returned to the USA they sought a meeting with Schultz and told him what they had heard. However, Schultz was disbelieving.

Note:  James Giffen continued his business activities in Central Asia into the 1990s and had a role in arranging the Chevron Oil deal for the Tenghiz fields in Kazakhstan. His service as adviser to the Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev brought down on his head accusations of engaging in bribery (Kazakhgate) which led to his arrest at JFK airport in 2003 and to court proceedings. These were finally dropped only in 2010 on technical grounds:  Giffen claimed that the CIA was informed in advance of his every move; but the U.S. Government declined to turn over its respective files to the court.  Given the geopolitical importance of the business deals he was pursuing in Kazakhstan it is entirely credible that he cooperated with U.S. intelligence.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperbfack and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the “View Inside” tab on the book’s webpages to browse.]

I am grateful once again to RT International for inviting me to give a Zoom interview yesterday. This exercise forced me to re-examine the unfolding story of Alexei Navalny’s poisoning, which, for obvious reasons, the Russian media are following much more closely than our Western media. For us, there are no open questions about the case: we in the West all know for certain that it was Novichok and the only point is how to respond to this latest Putin outrage. Meanwhile the Russians are considering every possible identification of the substance which provoked Navalny’s collapse and near death, including, as of this morning, the possibility that he had drunk some “bad vodka,” a potent and widespread poison especially common in the Siberian towns Navalny was visiting,

Indeed, taking The Financial Times for my marker, I see that in the past few days, the skeptical reporting of their own journalists about Kremlin involvement has been wholly overridden by the newspaper’s Editorial Board, who are now daily braying for the Russians to pay a price, lest Europe show a cowardly face. Fair and transparent investigation, you say?  Forget it! The German military doctors have conclusive proof that the substance was a new and more deadly form of Novichok (from which nonetheless the victim is being revived!) which only the Kremlin could have ordered (not to mention, the weapons labs in the UK, in Germany and in a number of other countries).

I have cast doubt on the reliability of those German medics, since simple logic tells us that had there been any chance of Navalny being given Novichok in Siberia at the start of this ordeal, the Russians would never have released him for travel to Germany.  This leaves us only with the alternative scenarios that Novichok was brought into play on the flight to Germany or following his hospitalization in Germany, or…that there was no Novichok whatsoever only a falsified medical report. 

However, none of these scenarios will be followed up. There will be no investigation into the Navalny case, just as none was carried out over the Skripal case two years ago.  This is so because the medical facts are only a decorative feature; the substance is on another plane:  geopolitics.

As I commented yesterday on RT, both Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Putin are just balls in play.  Had the interview been in Russian, I would have said, more pungently, “они не при чем.”  The identification of the poison as precisely in the Novichok family had one clear purpose: to turn what would otherwise have been a domestic Russia scandal into an international scandal entailing violation of the prohibition on use of chemical weapons, whereby Russia is painted as an outlaw state.  This is the context in which Chancellor Merkel has taken the Navalny case to NATO.

For Merkel, that is one of multiple benefits which accrue to her from the Navalny poisoning.  By taking the lead position in NATO on this matter, she takes the upper hand over France and its President Emmanuel Macron who had spoken of NATO as ‘brain dead’ and was making a power play to assume direction of European foreign policy at the expense of what appeared to be an ailing and stumbling Merkel.  Now Macron’s flirtation with the Kremlin was nipped in the bud and he had to line up with the other ducks around the NATO table in issuing threatening messages to Russia.

Another benefit to Merkel from the Navalny poisoning as it has been framed is that she can take the lead in Europe on prodding the Russian bear to retreat from impending intervention in the Belarus political stand-off.  She now has what many see as a potent weapon in her hands:  the fate of Nord Stream II.  By pinning the Navalny case on the Kremlin, she opened the way for members of her own party, not to mention the virulently anti-Russian Greens, to demand cancellation of Nord Stream II.  Since she has said many times that the pipeline is genuinely in the economic interests of her country, cancellation is out of the question.  But suspension of the project would suit her overall geopolitical calculations perfectly. 

Suspension would, one may argue, give her leverage over the master of the Kremlin, lest what is deemed to be his pet project is torn up, leading to multi-billion euro losses for Gazprom and a black eye for the Russian President before his nation.  At the same time, suspension would shut up the Americans, who have become recently very aggressive in pressing sanctions against Germany over the completion of the project.  A suspension of six months, for example, would take the question of restarting Nord Stream II past the November elections in the USA when a likely new Biden Administration could reconsider its opposition within a new approach to the European allies in general and to Germany in particular.

Then there is still another geopolitical benefit to Merkel in pushing the Navalny case against Russia: it aligns her at least for a time with the Poles and the Baltic States, rendering them friendlier to the German directed EU Institutions.

In summation, as seen from every angle in Berlin, pressing the story of Navalny’s poisoning with Novichok by the Kremlin serves the ever cynical Merkel very well.  However, in opening this Pandora’s box, in trying to blackmail a country that is vastly more powerful militarily than Germany, and possibly more powerful than NATO as a whole, the Iron Lady is acting irresponsibly.  Like war itself, the outcome in such confrontations is unforeseeable.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperbfack and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the “View Inside” tab on the book’s webpages to browse.]

A couple of days ago, several European news channels reminded us all of the fifth anniversary of Merkel’s opening the doors of Europe to mass uncontrolled entry of Syrian, North African, Sub-Saharan African, Afghani, Iraqi, Bengladeshi and other assorted migrants. They gave us heartwarming stories of the successful settlers, all of which would appear to validate the humanitarian concerns that the German Chancellor said motivated her action as it did in several other states, particularly Sweden and to validate her widely cited call at the time: “Wir schaffen das!” (We can manage it).

What they did not remind us is of the mayhem this open door policy stirred up between Member States of the European Union, deepening the divisions between the founding members and the most recently joined countries from Central Europe. Nor did they consider how this massive influx of peoples aroused strong populist movements in so many countries against the abandonment of Europe’s frontiers and identity as majoritarian white and Judeo-Christian for the sake of multiculturalism. In other words, how it stirred up nationalism, which had been the bête-noire of the European Union’s founders, who said it was the engine of war. And they ignored one further collateral effect of the uncontrolled violation of European borders: namely the outcome of the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom which it tilted to ‘Leave.’ This all by itself put the future of the European Union experiment in doubt.

No one back then or since dared say the obvious: that the Iron Lady had not succumbed to feminine emotions of compassion and humanitarian zeal but was acting in the most cynical fashion possible to cover all traces of the truculence by which she had in the preceding two years overseen the rape of Greece and Portugal under the Troika for the sake of securing the finances of German and French banks now that the state bonds of these and other Southern European states on which they had stocked up were becoming worthless thanks to the 2008 financial crisis and application of the policy of austerity across Europe that she and her Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble personally guided.

In the past couple of days, she has done it again: her announcement that German military experts had identified Novichok as the substance with which Alexei Navalny was poisoned defied all logic, as I called out in an essay yesterday that has been widely read.

Developments over the past 24 hours indicate that the German Chancellor has once again acted in the most reprehensible and irresponsible manner that threatens to unleash the dogs of war. 

A most interesting and, I believe credible, piece of information was released yesterday evening by President Lukashenko in Minsk. He said that his intelligence forces had intercepted a telephone conversation between German and Polish officials which point to Polish direction of the whole Novichok story with intent to put Russian President Putin on the defensive under massive NATO and Western pressure over the alleged violation of international rules on chemical weapons, and thereby prevent Russian intervention in the unfolding confrontation in Belarus between Lukashenko and his opposition.  The Polish agent was saying that “we are at war and all means are acceptable.” Such an explanation fits very nicely with the obvious designs that Poland has on Belarus, just as it meddled egregiously in the Maidan putsch in Ukraine. 

I do not mean to say that Mr. Lukashenko does not have his own interests in spreading this story, by which he shows his usefulness to his big friend in the Kremlin upon whom his continuation in power depends.  However, saying that does not cancel out the transcripts he claims to have and they must be investigated.

The question, of course, is why Chancellor Merkel would follow this script and ignore all the logic surrounding the collateral contamination of Novichok that has not been seen in the Navalny case, why she would ignore the logic telling us that the Russians never would have sent Navalny to Germany for treatment if there were any possibility of Novichok having been used and ultimately detected, why in general Vladimir Putin would ever sanction such a criminally inculpating action against a minor pest who posed no real threat to his rule. How could the diploma holding physicist that Merkel is fall for such nonsense?  The only plausible explanation is unadulterated cynicism along the lines of her ‘Wir schaffen das’ past.

Today’s news also brought to the fore a development in Washington which highlights the relevance of my observation at the close of my essay yesterday regarding the interconnected nature of Merkel’s new charges against Russia and her unwillingness to follow Donald Trump in a trade, political and military confrontation with the People’s Republic of China, which happens to be one of Germany’s top three export markets worth 96 billion Euros annually.

Whatever one may think of Donald Trump’s intellectual level, he understood the Chancellor’s bait and switch stratagem perfectly well and directly came out against it, saying that he has seen no proof of the Novichok poisoning and that for the USA the PRC poses a far greater security threat than Russia.

In summation, though yesterday and in recent weeks we have not seen Merkel suffering the shakes that set off speculation over her deteriorating health half a year ago, it is high time for her to leave the world stage before she further undermines European and global stability.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2020

[If you found value in this article, you should be interested to read my latest collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, published in November 2019 and available in e-book, paperback and hardbound formats from amazon, barnes & noble, bol.com, fnac, Waterstones and other online retailers. Use the “View Inside” tab on the book’s webpages to browse.]