I offer visitors to my website the link to yesterday’s 20 minute video interview with the Belarus radio and television broadcaster.
This chat dealt with issues raised in my latest written report on Day Five of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine, but it went further to probe the reasons why America’s success in provoking Russia to engage in a war with Ukraine will likely not achieve its intended purpose of burying talk of a revised security architecture in Europe. On the contrary, both sides, the U.S.-led West and Russia, are escalating their aggressiveness precisely because the struggle is, in the last analysis, about expanding and enhancing NATO or smashing it to pieces. Ukraine just happens to be the field of combat for this historic struggle that will shape the world order for decades to come.
The murder in the U.S. of George Floyd gave momentum to the Black Lives Matter movement and also provided an image that captured the imagination of the nation and the world: the knee on the neck of a prone victim. That image is entirely appropriate to describe the essential nature of the NATO alliance and of the European Union, which NATO has de facto taken hostage. It is absolutely stunning to witness how in the days since Russia launched its ‘Special Military Operation’ in Ukraine the whole of Europe has snapped to attention and is doing its very best to implement the orders coming from Washington.
Should the Russians succeed in their mission in Ukraine and continue on their way in the face of the ‘nuclear bomb’ economic sanctions that Washington and Brussels have directed at Moscow, the whole NATO alliance will appear to be a sham, and the security umbrella of Washington will be blown inside out by gale force winds.
I call attention to the fact that until now the Russians have not responded to the latest waves of sanctions apart from their closing their air space to all nations that have shut out Russian airlines, meaning the entire EU. However, the freezing of Bank of Russia assets in the West remains without a response, as does the partial exclusion from SWIFT. This is not for lack of options on the Russian side to inflict extreme pain on the West. The confiscation of all Western corporate assets in Russia would largely balance the frozen Russian assets in the West. The shut-off of gas and oil supplies, of uranium for French and other European power plants, and of still other essential raw materials that are largely or even exclusively sourced in Russia would be very damaging to the European economies. None of this has been done because the Russians expect to finish up their business in Ukraine rather soon, and then to negotiate a gradual return to normality with the West.
Fortunately such colossal confrontations as we are now witnessing come along once in several generations. Let us hope that this one will end sooner rather than later, and will see us all through safe and sound to a new world order that is better balanced and just than the one that we have known till now.
*****
These are busy days for Russia specialists, I am sad to say. My ongoing vacation in the Lisbon area has not provided the rest and battery recharge it was supposed to do because of a flow of demands from broadcasters and others to grant extensive interviews or to participate in panel discussions of the Ukraine-Russia crisis.
In this connection, I close this note with mention of the podcast chat with me that Tom Woods released on the internet a day ago: https://tomwoods.com/ep-2074-russia-ukraine-and-nato/
The podcast is well over an hour long, which made it possible to go into the history of the present conflict in and over Ukraine in some depth. I hope listeners will find it especially informative.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022
Gilbert Doctorow 
Thanks you very much for your excellent contributions (here and elsewhere). I wish there were more people with your knowledge and appreciation of the Ukraine situation willing to talk. I would add that if a new state is created in the west (Galacia) of Ukraine, perhaps along the old Austro-Hungarian borer line, there is still the problem of Zakarpatye region which no one ever mentions at all – these unfortunately people, historically part of Hungary, have been as much, perhaps even, discriminated against by the Ukie nationalists than the Russians. Their plight needs also to be considered and I am a bit surprised the Hungarian government has not be voicing its concern more loudly.
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The EU has not been following orders from the USA, it has been a lot more aggressive in confronting Russia than the USA has been during this crisis. It is Europe where 90% of the sanctions news has been coming from, hour by hour over the past few days. It is shocking, totally out of keeping with the eurocrat stereotype.
Russia has not responded to western sanctions yet because they did not expect such massive sanctions. I did not expect them, no one did. I assume Putin and the government created some responses on Monday and is now in the process of setting them up, before announcing them.
A whole upper middle class and wealthy lifestyle in Moscow and St Petersburg is dead now. No more iPhones, no more trips to Europe, no more luxury car servicing, now on to Chinese products and grey market goods and vacations to Istanbul and Vietnam instead of London or the south of France. Dubai is still there, I assume it will be even more full of Russians going forward.
I actually expect the Russian economy to recover much more strongly than people expect. Less capital flight now that people can’t move money to Europe, and continued natural resource sales. But the degraded lifestyle for the rich and just upper middle class is an existential threat to the government. A palace coup is very much not out of the question. I’m not in Russia so I don’t know the mood.
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In late breaking news the Biden administration has decided to picket the Chinese and Russian embassies. These embassies will be surrounded by loudspeakers and a computer program, developed by the Pentagon, will repeat on loop, America is number one. Experts and anonymous officials in the administration expect that both countries will buckle under this extreme pressure and eventually be brought to the negotiating table, likely returning the world to the rules based international order.
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None of this has been done because the Russians expect to finish up their business in Ukraine rather soon, and then to negotiate a gradual return to normality with the West.
Fortunately such colossal confrontations as we are now witnessing come along once in several generations. Let us hope that this one will end sooner rather than later.
I am not sure I agree, while I am well aware you have much more information to form your judgment on than I may ever.
However, what you hope and support there is exactly the attitude that keeps the bullies bully the bullied, and in the case of “NATO” and Russia, it has.
if some things, even most things, in the Ukraine get fixed, and then everything returns to “normal”, as you seem to wish, what, on a deep level, will have been fixed?
Will they stop being able to call themselves, and their interests, and drives, the “international community”, “international consensus”, “international community values”?
Will they stop being assured, oh so fully assured, that a different set of standards and rules applies to them than to anyone else in the globe?
Will their inner urge to dictate, establish, shape, decide, set, determine, anything that anyone does in any corner of the world subside?
Will their ability to issue dollars without limits, without any of the penalties that anyone else issuing their own currency likewise would immediately run into, and with all the inavoidable outcomes that leads to in terms or power, military and of any other kind (even the power to, for example, have FIFA and UEFA and other “sports federations” ban a country from their competitions has its roots in the ability to issue dollars without limits) end?
The “normal” is precisely all of that, going on, forever.
Perhaps you see it as the best among what can realistically come to pass — even if that were the case, I’ll excuse myself for my inability to feel any enthusiasm at the prospect —.
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By the way, wouldn’t it be about time social platforms like YouTube were given an internationally-appealing, internationally-accessible alternative from the East, even from Russia, and that people critical of the system of power of which YouTube, and other Internet social platform like YouTube, are part, stopped publishing their content on those platforms (while hoping they’ll be so kind not to ban them and their channels yet)?
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The American stock market is discounting a Ukrainian victory/Russian Pyrrhic victory. Sanctions have worked: Russia crippled except in her capacity to export oil. Call it the the triumph of the iPhone, which will no longer be sold in Russia. At a cost of blood and treasure, Russia is tilting at windmills in Ukraine. Certainly, the first commentor supports this view and feels free to insult anyone who doesn’t. Emphasis free, as in The Land of the Free.
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