“Does Russia have a Future?”: interview with Bulgarian journalist Martin Karbowski

I have today received and share with readers the link to the first installment of a lengthy two part  interview that I gave to Bulgaria’s most widely viewed journalist blogger, Martin Karbowski. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTnOsDsC5x0&t=508s  The second part will be put on the internet tomorrow.

The interview covers a broad range of subjects, mostly relating to the current state of international relations.

The title which Mr. Karbowski has given to this interview makes reference to my collection of essays of the same name published in 2016.  The subtitle, or alternative title, he shows is “Does the United States have a future?” which was the title of a follow-on collection that came out a year later.  These questions were closely interrelated because I argued that the two countries were engaged (already back then) in a titanic struggle from which one would emerge victorious and the other would be shattered.  These questions are, of course, very timely and helped to shape our discussion in the interview.

As one might well imagine, a large percentage of Karbowski’s audience is Bulgarian and, accordingly, the subtitles and the comments are in that language.  Having served for 5 years as ITT Country Manager in Bulgaria during the 1980s, I muddle through this language while readers may get help from Google Translate.  What I see is a good number of supporters of what I was saying, which is interesting in itself given that for a good long time the Bulgarian government has been Russophobe and pressured by Washington to conform to its economic warfare against Moscow. It was precisely U.S. bullying that underlay the decision of Sofia to cancel arrangements for a South Stream gas pipeline that would have made land in Bulgaria. As we know, this project then was redirected by the Russians to become Turkstream, and the Turks became Russia’s gas hub in the Black Sea region.  Bulgaria is also viewed by Washington today as a potential regional base for its war on Russia over Ukraine, and in particular as a possible base for F16s that will nominally be called Ukrainian when de facto they are ‘commuting’ between safe airports in Bulgaria, Romania or Moldova and Ukrainian airspace from which they will launch missiles against Russia. So far, Bulgaria has been reluctant to commit itself to this highly risky helpmate position, which might lead to Russian air strikes on its territory.

I mention in this interview the start of the Information War on Russia as following immediately upon Putin’s address to the Munich Security Conference. That took place, of course, in February 2007.

I am pleased to have been given the opportunity to explain why I believe that the USA has taken over the ugly features of the old Soviet Union, by which I mean the propaganda and outrageous lies that pass for official policy statements on international relations. The newspaper that I had in mind when speaking of “Pravda on the Potomac” was and is The Washington Post, though The New York Times comes in a close second in the race to the bottom of journalistic professionalism and integrity.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Transcript follwed by translation into German

Transcript below by a reader

Martin Karbowski: 00:16
Hello, Professor Doctorow. How are you?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
I’m very well, thanks. Good to talk to you.

Karbowski:
Let’s start. First question is, do you have anything in common with the American writer Edgar Lawrence Doctorow?

Doctorow:
Well, you’re speaking about a family member–

Karbowski:
Yes.

Doctorow:
–but not a close one. He was a second cousin. I never met him, but the family certainly knew about him. I only knew him as a reader of his novels.

Karbowski: 00:51
Okay, the first question, who can save the world? Please explain your point that Putin saved the world.

Doctorow:
Well, when I said that, it was the consequence of the visit of Vladimir Putin to Pyongyang, his stay in North Korea and the conclusion of the mutual defense pact that was the outcome of that meeting. And I thought it was really world-changing, because this is Russia’s first genuine full military alliance with another country. And North Korea is not just any country, with very substantial military assets and having in common with Russia nothing to lose.

01:40
That’s to say, they both have been severely challenged by the United States-led West. And unlike China, which has a lot to lose by confrontation with the United States, North Korea has nothing. and Russia now, to its great regret, has nothing to lose. So, these two countries presented, it seemed to me at the time, an obstacle to further escalation by the United States, in particular to its sending F-16s into the war zone in Ukraine, because the ability of the Russians together with North Koreans to strike at American military assets would normally be such that they would dissuade any rational aggressor from proceeding against them.

02:41
However, I underestimated, I’m afraid, the irrationality of decision makers in Washington. And I must say that the expectations I had that the world was saved and our necks are saved was premature. We’ll see how this develops, whether or not cooler heads will prevail in Washington than the heads of Mr. Biden, Mr. Blinken, and Mr. Sullivan. But at present, Sullivan seems to be particularly insouciant, particularly scathing in his view of Russia, and believing in the invincibility and impunity of American actions with respect to Russia.

Karbowski: 03:28
What is happening on the chessboard globally? Ukraine, Israel, China, Taiwan?

Doctorow:
The United States’ global hegemony is unraveling. The ability of the United States in the Middle East to dictate relations has taken a hit in March of this year when the Chinese brokered a restoration of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It took a hit several days ago when Bahrain announced that it is in diplomatic discussions to restore relations with Iran, Bahrain being one of the signatories to the Abraham Accords, and so was assumed by the United States to be safely in hand and to be forming part of the wall of the Arab states against Iran.

04:29
So America’s ability to dictate the arrangements, diplomatic, financial, and other arrangements between states in the Middle East has been diminished. America’s ability to ensure the propaganda, success of the propaganda efforts of the Zelensky regime took a deep hit two weeks ago when the peace conference was held in Switzerland, and when 70 out of the 90 members attending agreed on only three of the points in Mr. Zelensky’s ten-point peace plan, which was really a plan for capitulation by Russia. That was a big diplomatic defeat for the United States, which had of course applied all of its typical blackmail and extortion methods against the African countries, the Latin American countries, and so forth, to ensure that they would vote the way it wanted the vote, which was to find a global consensus condemning Russia for the war. And it didn’t happen.

05:44
So the American rule in the world has come under severe challenge, and the American footprint in the world is being diminished — at the same time that an active de-dollarization program was launched by China and Russia and is being taken up by other countries. BRICS is still a work in progress. BRICS has no real administration, has no real institutional presence, but BRICS is showing the way to the new world order that Mr. Putin and others, Xi, have announced. That new world order, I have to emphasize, will exist on two levels. The global level, where there will be a renewed “board of directors” of global affairs, in which the major powers will have a seat and will not be following the commands of the one biggest dog, which is the United States at the table. That is at the global level.

06:55
But I think we also see an important regionalization of international affairs, where local disputes and local problems are more likely to be negotiated and discussed between countries at their own regional level, without the intervention of great powers that have their own interests at stake. This is the way I think things are headed, but it is a work in progress. It isn’t something that will come fully clothed into being, tomorrow or even the day after tomorrow. But we are witnesses to dramatic change.

Karbowski: 07:39
We are a little bit afraid [of] dramatic change. It’s scary. You wrote the book, “Is There a Future for Russia?” What is this future?

Doctorow:
Well, I’d like to mention a companion volume that came out two years later, “Does the United States Have a Future?” Because these two questions were one question. It was– I detected back in 2014, that there was a global confrontation between Russia and the United States. And it was an existential struggle going back to 2014, it didn’t just happen in the last couple of years. In the late days of the Obama administration, in the early years of the Trump administration, it was clear that there was a fight for control, a fight for the major position in the world between Russia and the United States.

08:48
This was imposed on Russia by the United States, but the Russians responded. And one of the reasons why Russia could and did respond is that it had very few trade relations with the United States. There was, unlike most other countries, the– I think back, going back to the 1990s, the halcyon days, the great optimism of some kind of a accommodation being reached between the United States and Russia. And some friends were speaking about how wonderful it will be that these countries will get along, will be friends, and will do constructive things in the world.

09:33
But back then I thought this was a pipe dream, because the United States and Russia have very few common interests. And I think this has been borne out by events. Most other countries have been and remain very fearful of alienating the United States, because it is still the biggest economy in the world. It is by any measure the holder of the biggest military in the world. With 900 military bases around the world, it can intimidate countries. Of course, Russia was a special case. It had a long, cold war with the United States. It had been used to standing up to the United States, whereas smaller countries didn’t have that experience.

10:29
But when I wrote this, “Does Russia Have a Future?”, I had in mind precisely its ability to withstand the very big pressure that came to bear after 2008, after Mr. Putin made his famous speech denouncing the United States for its abuse of power in the world at the Munich Security Conference. That was the beginning of the informational war against Russia, which quickly developed into economic pressure. We speak about sanctions today, and the sanctions are draconian. They were meant to be, as Nuland said, the Undersecretary of State at the time, said that they would be the sanctions from hell.

But there were sanctions imposed in 2012. The– thinking now of the Browder Magnitsky Act. These were already an indication of what’s coming. And what’s coming was great American pressure– abuse of its position as financial arbiter around the world, abuse of its position as the holder of the world’s biggest reserve currency– to pound on anyone that objected. Russia objected, and they got pounded on.

Karbowski: 11:55
Did the Americans lie to us in 90s when they promised freedom of speech, freedom of free market? Did they lie?

Doctorow:
Yes, of course they lied. By itself, that is not surprising. States lie. President’s lie. This comes with the profession. The problem is that the lies of that time have been magnified as there’s been a gradual change in the United States. As you may be aware, I was born in the United States, and I left the United States in 1980 to pursue to employment in Europe. And people ask me occasionally, do I go back to the States? What do I think about the States? The United States today is not the United States of 1980, not by any means. And I think the single biggest change in the United States came with 9-11, which brought with it a mass hysteria.

Karbowski: 13:06
Mass hysteria.

Doctorow:
Hysteria, completely. People went crazy. They were so frightened, so– you would think the whole country had been attacked. No, it was one city, and it was one business complex, Towers. But Americans as a whole were traumatized. Their country, which had not been attacked in world wars, had experienced no bombing like Europe has been bombed to hell. They didn’t have that in the States. And this experience created irrational response in which the average Americans were ready to sacrifice their liberties for the sake of security. And the nature of the country has changed for the worse ever since that time.

14:00
So lies… I don’t think they were all lies, there may have been exaggerated expectations from their own country, but they have become lies, as the United States has become the Soviet Union. I traveled to Russia, the Soviet Union. My earliest trip was in 1966 as a member of a language school tour– that was Indiana University– arranged every year with financing from the US government to take undergraduates on a four-week visit to the Soviet Union to improve our language skills. And I went back to the Soviet Union in the 1970s on business as a consultant to some very big US corporations, in their hoped-for big business deals in Russia. And I went back later.

14:56
The Soviet Union was for me… a very difficult place to visit. And I understood fully that it was built on lies. I understood the joke among businessmen that the first time you visited the Soviet Union, you were surprised at how little they had, and the 10th time, you were surprised they had anything. Because you needed very– I dealt with ministers, with factory managers, particularly in the food processing area, on behalf of the major companies that I was serving as a consultant. And I saw that the only way that Russian managers could succeed was embracing the law. If they followed the rules, their factories would never meet a plan.

15:53
So this understanding of Russia, of the Soviet Union, how regrettably it was built on lies, was my single biggest impression. Unfortunately, that all has been transferred now to the United States. And among those of us in the know, we speak to “Pravda on the Potomac”. It has come back, and it’s very unfortunate, but it’s also undeniable, that the United States today has many of the features that were so objectionable in the Soviet Union.

Karbowski: 16:32
I know you speak very good Russian. Can we speak Russian?

[remainder translated from spoken Russian]

Doctorow:
Please, it is possible.

Karbowski:
How good.

Doctorow:
What about analysis like a blogger?

Karbowski: 16:45
You took it apart like a blogger. What kind of people do you say live in America now? Scared people or what?

Doctorow:
They give up privacy. They live their private lives. In general, they are all friends of mine. Even my relatives are there. They live well, they are happy with life, they absolutely do not feel, do not understand and do not want to understand what is going on in the world.
17:16

Translation (Andreas Mylaeus)

„Hat Russland eine Zukunft?“: Interview mit dem bulgarischen Journalisten Martin Karbowski

Ich habe heute den Link zum ersten Teil eines langen zweiteiligen Interviews erhalten, das ich dem meistbeachteten bulgarischen Journalisten und Blogger, Martin Karbowski, gegeben habe, und gebe ihn an meine Leser weiter. Siehe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTnOsDsC5x0&t=508s . Der zweite Teil wird morgen ins Internet gestellt.

Das Interview deckt eine breite Palette von Themen ab, die sich hauptsächlich auf den aktuellen Stand der internationalen Beziehungen beziehen.

Der Titel, den Herr Karbowski dem Interview gegeben hat, bezieht sich auf meine gleichnamige, 2016 veröffentlichte Aufsatzsammlung. Der Untertitel oder Alternativtitel, den er angibt, lautet „Haben die Vereinigten Staaten eine Zukunft?“, was der Titel einer Folgesammlung war, die ein Jahr später herauskam. Diese Fragen waren eng miteinander verknüpft, denn ich vertrat die Ansicht, dass die beiden Länder (schon damals) in einen titanischen Kampf verwickelt waren, aus dem eines als Sieger hervorgehen und das andere zerschlagen werden würde. Diese Fragen sind natürlich sehr aktuell und haben dazu beigetragen, unsere Diskussion in dem Interview zu gestalten.

Wie man sich vorstellen kann, ist ein großer Prozentsatz von Karbowskis Publikum bulgarisch, und dementsprechend sind die Untertitel und die Kommentare in dieser Sprache gehalten. Da ich in den 1980er Jahren fünf Jahre lang als ITT-Landesleiter in Bulgarien tätig war, kann ich mich in dieser Sprache zurechtfinden, und die Leser können sich von Google Translate helfen lassen. Was ich sehe, ist eine große Anzahl von Befürwortern meiner Aussage, was an sich schon interessant ist, wenn man bedenkt, dass die bulgarische Regierung lange Zeit russophob war und von Washington unter Druck gesetzt wurde, sich der wirtschaftlichen Kriegsführung gegen Moskau anzupassen. Es war genau das Mobbing der USA, das der Entscheidung Sofias zugrunde lag, die Vorbereitungen für eine South-Stream-Gaspipeline zu stornieren, die in Bulgarien verlaufen sollte. Wie wir wissen, wurde dieses Projekt dann von den Russen in Turkstream umgewandelt, und die Türken wurden zu Russlands Gasdrehscheibe in der Schwarzmeerregion. Bulgarien wird heute von Washington auch als potenzieller regionaler Stützpunkt für seinen Krieg gegen Russland wegen der Ukraine angesehen, insbesondere als möglicher Stützpunkt für F16, die nominell als ukrainisch bezeichnet werden, de facto aber zwischen sicheren Flughäfen in Bulgarien, Rumänien oder Moldawien und dem ukrainischen Luftraum „pendeln“, von dem aus sie Raketen gegen Russland abschießen werden. Bislang hat Bulgarien gezögert, sich auf diese höchst riskante Helferposition einzulassen, die zu russischen Luftangriffen auf sein Territorium führen könnte.

In diesem Interview erwähne ich den Beginn des Informationskriegs gegen Russland, der unmittelbar auf Putins Rede auf der Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz folgte. Diese fand natürlich im Februar 2007 statt.

Ich freue mich, dass man mir die Gelegenheit gegeben hat, zu erklären, warum ich glaube, dass die USA die hässlichen Züge der alten Sowjetunion übernommen haben, womit ich die Propaganda und die unverschämten Lügen meine, die als offizielle politische Erklärungen zu den internationalen Beziehungen gelten. Die Zeitung, die ich im Sinn hatte, als ich von der „Pravda am Potomac“ sprach, war und ist die Washington Post, obwohl die New York Times in Bezug auf journalistische Professionalität und Integrität knapp dahinter liegt.