Transcript of ‘Dialogue Works’ edition of 3 December 2024

Transcript submitted by a reader

Nima R. Alkhorshid: 0:06
Hi everybody, today is Tuesday, December 3rd and Dr. Gilbert Doctorow is here with us. Welcome back, Gilbert.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Good to be with you.

Alkhorshid:
Let’s get started with what’s going on in Georgia and in Syria. What are the repercussions of these two major events that are happening right now in the Russian media, and how do they feel about it in terms of what’s going on in Ukraine?

Doctorow: 0:33
Well, I’m glad that you asked me to direct attention to the Russian media, because their take on these developments is rather different from what we hear in major media here in the West, or in the alternative media. I’ve heard some very interesting and well-informed statements by people like Scott Ritter, with regard to Syria, who knows vastly more than I do about it. But that is reflecting his insider’s knowledge of politics on the ground in that part of the world. And the Russian, what I’m bringing to this discussion is what the Russians are saying about it.

1:09
Because the Russians are a big player in one of these two crises. They’re a big player in Syria. They were when they came in and saved Assad’s regime or government, as you wish to call it, in 2015, 2017, by very well conducted air strikes coordinated with Iranian forces on the ground to knock out what the extremist terrorists, which the Americans like to call moderate terrorists and which now the Americans are calling rebels. Rebels, my foot. These are terrorists, and they have been financed by the United States.

1:54
However, let’s come back to the difference in interpretation. From the Russian perspective, what is happening in Syria is an American operation. Some of my peers, like I said, Scott Ritter, have good reason to put the finger on Israel as the driving force. And of course, Israel is a beneficiary of chaos in Syria, because it interrupts supply lines from Iran, which is a source of munitions, missiles, and all sorts of good things, to Hezbollah. It all crosses Syrian territory. This is the reason why there have been these Israeli strikes over the last several years, air strikes on arms caches in various places of Syria.

2:38
It was all about that movement of arms across Iraq and Syria into Lebanon. So then the beneficiaries of chaos that interrupts that neat logistical solution, keeping Hizballah armed. The Russian perspective on this is that it’s driven by the United States. For the United States, it is a concept that they have two areas of conflict in which Russia is a participant or can be named as a participant, and which can distract public attention away from the disastrous situation for America’s Kievan allies. The war is being won on the ground day by day with a thousand Ukrainian soldiers here and there killed every day with 30 or 40 Americans killed manning various weapons systems on Ukrainian territory with French soldiers being killed.

3:47
All of this bad news crawls into the front page even of the “New York Times”. It was yesterday they had an article on the front page, on the online edition, about the real military setbacks. And they spoke about these two towns or cities, which are now under contention, that is in the middle of the Donetsk region. The the important logistical hub Pokrovsk, which is now being renamed by the Russians to its original name before the Ukrainians got hold of it. It is Krasnoarmiisk, and that’s the name under which it will appear in Russian military bulletins; and Kharkovka, which is mostly captured already by the Russians. Both towns will fall completely in the next week or two.

4:40
The Russians claim to have about 50% or 60% of Kharkovka and a substantial portion of Pokrovsk. These are enormous blows to the supply of arms to the Ukrainian front. The loss of these towns opens the way for a Russian offensive straight across to the Dnieper. The next major cities would be the ones that were most famous in the period of 2014, so- called Russia Spring, when the rebellious Donetsk militias held on to Slaviansk was the name of the town, which is yet to be reached by the Russian offensive. They held on to it for 85 days in a kind of saga that for them is like the Americans talking about the Alamo. It’s holding on to a fortified area against the overwhelming enemy forces.

5:45
So the Russians are moving very nicely; and the Americans, the Brits, would particularly like to get this off the front page of the news. And it’s so much more convenient to have what’s going on in Syria, which as the “Financial Times” very nicely put it, “Well, the Assad forces are doing badly because the Russians and Iranians are so weak.” They love to say the Russians are weak.

It takes your mind off the fact that the Ukrainians are being crushed, ground down. And that the Russians have demonstrated their military might 10 days ago or whatever by their blow using the hypersonic, a Oreshnik ballistic missile to destroy a multi-story fortified concrete multi-story factory making– it’s an old factory that was always involved in production of missiles and other military gear. So they demonstrated their military might and the “Financial Times” would rather have us forget it.

6:49
The second area that is in the news, that for the purposes of American propaganda is another front, another point where the Russians are losing is Georgia. The Russians are losing what they don’t have. The Russians were, after the 2008 war, the Russians have had very poor relations with Georgia.

For a brief time, they had restored air transport between Russia and Moscow and Tbilisi, but that was taken down. There was a lot of protests in Georgia over that. And in point of fact, they have no diplomatic relations. Russian leverage on Georgia today is zero. But that doesn’t stop our media, our mass media, from saying what Washington would like them to say, that at least the election in September of the new parliament and prime minister in Georgia was Russia-influenced, Russia- controlled, and is trying to put Georgia back in the Russian sphere of influence.

7:58
And it does, we have now a revolt, something like the start of a civil war going on in the streets of Tbilisi, very much according to the Ukrainian Maidan scenario, down to little details like handing out cakes to the street demonstrators, handing out 40 euros equivalent to everybody who appears on the streets to try to overthrow the government. The only thing they haven’t had yet, which would be in line with the whole Maidan scenario dash catastrophe is the use of snipers to pretend to present the government as being murderous. When in fact, the snipers in the case of Maidan were … Georgian, by the way, snipers who were brought in precisely to facilitate the overthrow of the government, since the murder of people on the streets of Maidan would be laid at the door of the president Yanukovych. This is coming, because there are Georgian fighters in Ukraine who are now heading back to Tbilisi. So they can fulfill the rest of the scenario and try to kill people on the streets and blame it on the government.

9:33
The point is that in our newspapers, this whole saga, the whole adventure in Georgia is presented as pro-Russian, anti-Russian. It’s nothing of the sort. As I said, the Russians have no boots on the ground, they have no presence, they have no diplomatic mission, which could be coordinating the efforts of the young prime minister to hold on to power and to kick out the president, whose term expires within this month, but who’s refusing to leave her office, claiming that the elections that put in place the parliament were fraudulent. Well, these are two trouble spots, and the Russians have their view, which I’ve just expressed, on who is behind it. And who’s behind it is a country that has an abbreviated three letters starting with U, the USA. That is the present situation.

Alkhorshid: 10:44
I think the main question right now is: what would be the policy of the United States under Donald Trump in Georgia? And to what extent Europe would be involved when Donald Trump comes to power in Georgia, in order to facilitate some sort of color revolution in your opinion?

Doctorow:
Well, the color revolution is underway. The question is, there’s a very big difference between 2013 and 2024. The difference is who’s the top of the government. Yanukovych was a very weak man. If he had shown the courage and the determination that Lukashenko showed three years ago when his rule was threatened, or two years ago, when his rule was threatened by a pretender, a false king, or the queen, who was backed by the Lithuanians and by the Poles. And he showed his teeth and he came out with his son, both of them armed with Kalashnikovs, saying, “You’re going to have to take me.”

11:52
Well, Yanukovych was not such a fighter. He was a very weak man. And he did not do what common sense would have dictated, which is to beat to hell those violent street demonstrators. He didn’t do it. I think this government in Georgia is prepared to do it as a young, vigorous and very smart Prime Minister, they’re very lucky to have him in this Georgia dream team.

12:18
So that scenario won’t go. But to answer your question about the United States, I think the United States doesn’t have to do very much, because the work for the color revolution is being led by the French on behalf of the United States. And why do I say that? It’s quite extraordinary that in at least two countries, the head of state of democratic sovereign states is a person who’s a dual national, which should be a no-no. You should not have a dual national as your head of state. It’s a contradiction in terms.

12:53
And she, the sitting president, is a French national. And as I said on Russian television last night, she’s not only a French national, but she’s working and has been working for a long time with French intelligence. Therefore, she would not take the position that she has taken, which is directly challenging the elected parliament and the elected prime minister, by refusing to step down and calling them illegitimate. She would not dare to do that if she didn’t have the full power of France behind her. And I assume that’s via the French diplomatic mission and whatever.

13:44
So the Americans don’t have to do very much. Trump can just rest easy and find something else to busy himself with. Mr. Macron’s people have got the rebel cause, the traitorous cause in Georgia well in hand. I think they’re going to lose.

Alkhorshid: 14:02
How do they talk about, in Russia they’re talking about– because we know in 2020 there was an agreement between Iran, Russia and Turkiye considering Idlib and Aleppo being a demilitarized zone. What do they talk about the situation right now between these three countries? I’m talking about Turkiye, as you’ve mentioned, being totally in the hand of the United States, playing on their part in Syria.

Doctorow: 14:32
Yeah. Well, the Russians are deeply disappointed by the behavior of Erdogan. And I think his chances of getting into BRICS even as a partner have been reduced to close to zero. I think the Chinese are also furious at him. So with these two core members of BRICS on the committee deciding who’s going to enter the association, I think Mr. Erdogan is no longer on the list.

But the Russians explained that this is a very– the first day, the day when Aleppo was seized, Russian news said nothing about it. You would have no idea that there was a crisis going on there. Yesterday, Russian news and Russian talk shows, the two most serious analytic programs that I watch– both “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov”, and the earlier in the day program, “The Great Game” with Vyacheslav Nikonov– they both had segments of their program devoted to the crisis in Syria.

15:41
And what I heard was, this is from, of course they’re not just people from the street. They’re not just talking heads. These are leading scholars from Moscow University and from other very authoritative research institutes who are specialized in the Middle East. What they had to say is that first of all, they believe that Mr. Bashar Assad is largely responsible for this catastrophic loss of Aleppo.

16:21
He was not doing the job properly. He was not taking into account that you snuff out rebellions as they did between 2015 and 2017, 2018, with Russian and Iranian help. And it dies down, but then it flares up again at some point in the future. And he was totally unprepared for a flare-up, which he had no right to be. So the Russians are quite unhappy with Bashar Assad. They’re trying to put heads together with the Iranians, who were the people on the ground today and people in this axis of resistance as the cat’s paws of Iran, they were the people on the ground mostly who saved the Assad regime in that period, critical period, starting with 2015 when the vast majority of the territory was in the hands of various rebels.

17:27
So the situation today is bad but not terrible. The loss of Aleppo is very important. It is the second- largest city in Syria. And it was before 2011, I think it was the largest city in Syria. Also the sortie, the advance that these rebels made, oh I’m calling them rebels, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.

In fact, in the past we would have called them Islamic extremists, Sunni extremists and terrorists. All these people moved south from Idlib into Hama. It’s another province which has apparently some important military infrastructure that they are in the process of seizing. They said they seized weapons caches there.

18:24
So there’s a threat. They’ve been turned back, or at least the line has been held in this province, South Lidlib, Hamas. But the Russians are at a disadvantage. Their logistical supplies between the center of the country and their airfield and naval base on the coast are in jeopardy. So the Russians are looking in an anxious way in trying to save the situation with the forces they have on hand there, which are primarily air force. They are making attacks in the first day of action– again, this is very sketchy news that came out on Russian television– that killed 350 of these insurgents or terrorists by their bombing campaign.

19:16
There will be a lot more of them. They have their airplanes there and they also have some ground forces, but marginal. The expectation of the United States is that this, from the Russian perspective, is that the whole Syrian crisis would be an important distraction for the Russians and would take the pressure off the front in Donetsk, giving some relief to Mr. Zelensky. That is a false hope. I think the Russians are quite prepared to see Syria collapse if at the same time they finish off Ukraine.

Alkhorshid: 19:55
It seems that there was a phone call between Putin and the President of Iran Pezeshkian. They are talking about they are going to meet soon in the near future, personally. But do you see that these two countries are trying to manage the situation with Turkiye, or they’re just, they don’t know what to do with Turkiye right now.

Doctorow:
Well, I think Pezeshkian has a better feel for Turkey right now than Putin does because Putin refused to take a phone call yesterday from Erdogan. That’s the state of their present relations, whereas Iran had sent their foreign minister into both Damascus to meet with Bashar Assad and to meet with Erdogan in Ankara, I believe.

20:52
So the initiative for finding a great-power or regional-power solution to the crisis in Syria is really with the Iranians. At the same time, the Russians point to something that you will not find mentioned anywhere in our major media, which [is] the situation is not as bad for Assad as it was in 2015. He has gotten the support of Saudi Arabia, of Egypt and of the United Arab Emirates in this present fight against the Sunni terrorists. Back in 2015 he was public enemy number one among the Arab countries. So in this sense, the situation is considerably more favorable, at least the regional situation, is more favorable to Assad than it was back then.

Alkhorshid: 21:53
In your opinion, right now in Russia, if you remember, Keith Kellogg is talking about the Biden administration preparing everything for Donald Trump to put him in a better position. Is what’s going on in Georgia, in Syria, and Jake Sullivan talking about sending more weapons by mid-January to Ukraine. Is part of that grand plan on the part of the deep state in the United States?

Doctorow:
Well, the Russian position of Mr. Trump has become very clear in the last week or two. And out of this, there are a number of things I want to share with viewers to give them some comfort that the world is not going to hell and that a nuclear war is most improbable given what the Russians have learned and how they intend to continue their their activities against the Ukrainian and NATO forces. What they learned is that Mr. Trump is worthless, from their standpoint. They have discounted him completely as a factor in the end game of the Ukraine war.

23:15
If they pretend– well, Mr. Putin is never an insulting person, he never would show his disdain, except if you happen to be Angela Merkel and he knows that you are afraid of dogs. In that case, he might show his disdain for you in a way that people will know. But as regards Donald Trump, of course, he will be given all respect. Mr. Kellogg, General Kellogg will be given all respect if and when he makes a visit to Moscow.

But the outcome of those talks will be zero. From the Russian perspective– they discussed precisely Kellogg’s outline back in June, published, on what the solution to the war could look like. And this was presumably what he was feeding to Donald Trump back then. And it’s presumably what Trump had in mind when he spoke, said that he could solve the war at once. From the Russian perspective, what is coming to the public domain, the public news about the Kellogg Plan back from June, dates from June and has no relevance to November, December 2024.

24:31
The battle has moved on. The Russians have achieved sweeping victories and conquered additional territory, more territory in the last month than the preceding 12 months. They have shown on their television for the first time in a way that you can make sense out of it, they showed exactly how the battle, the line of confrontation, the battle lines in Donetsk have moved in the last month. It’s dramatic.

And they’re comfortable that they have a winning hand and that time is on their side. And they have something else. And that is their present reading of the meaning of Oresznik and what to do with it. Many of our commentators, both in mainstream and in alternative media, have considered that Mr. Putin will use this weapon to strike against a NATO country.

25:39
I myself put Poland at the top of the list of potential targets for a Russian strike if they were further subjected to ATACMS, SCALP and Storm Shadow firings from Ukraine into their territory. However, I think on the basis of their dismissing Trump’s possible contribution to a solution, considering the desperation and the recklessness of the Biden administration, considering the utter recklessness and stupidity of the British Prime Minister Starmer, and how he is conducting himself in British policy…

I think the Russians have stepped back and said, “Why are we going to play into the hands of these people who are hoping to incite us to do something that will raise the escalatory level? And why would we wait a minute for the arrival of Mr. Trump when he showed himself by appointing these hopeless loud mouths and Waltz and Gortcan who are insulting us, why would we wait for Trump to come to power? No reason at all.”

27:07
So, in this context, what is the leverage that they enjoy from the power of the Oreshnik? Well, in Ukraine, it’s not Mr. Trump who’s sitting in a bunker 200 meters below the earth. It’s Mr. Zelensky, who now realizes he’s totally vulnerable. And all the American and NATO generals who are in similar bunkers around, either around Xxxx or within the Kiev area, they all can be killed in a moment’s notice by the Russians. So the real pressure, the point of leverage, is not in Washington where you’ve got dummies with Yale degrees on their office walls, who don’t get it and who are only making these sounds for the sake of getting a better university position on January 21st.

28:10
No, leave them alone. Let them talk to themselves. Let them talk to their journalists. The Russians are applying pressure where it can move things on the Ukrainians. It’s the Ukrainians who are now about to lose five million refugees to Europe because all heating and electricity is being reduced to close to nil. And they are, and Mr. Zelensky is rattled, as he should be, by the strength of Russia’s new arms.

Alkhorshid: 28:46
In your opinion right now, with what we’ve seen considering Oreshnik and the power it has in terms of any sort of escalation between the West and Russia, do you think that– we have two conflicts in the West Asia, in Georgia, and with escalation in Ukraine– do you think what would be the next step on the part of the policymakers in the United States? Because they want to escalate the situation, in my opinion. They don’t give up on escalation, that any possibility, they can take any possibility to escalate the situation. But at the end of the day, we have the fear of having a nuclear interaction between the West and Russia. Russia doesn’t need to go nuclear because they have a new, as you’ve mentioned, hypersonic missile that is so capable of hitting any target in the West. But the West doesn’t have it. This is the problem that you’re facing right now.

Doctorow: 29:53
Well, as I’ve written a couple of days ago, when this situation was discussed on the Sunday “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov” show, one of the regular political-scientist commentators said that they were delighted with Mr. Putin’s speeches in Astana on Wednesday and Thursday, both sitting at the session of their treaty organization of defense.

And he was talking tough. He was talking very tough. They were very happy finally that their president had moved from what they called Soviet- era diplomatic language to the kind of very straightforward in-your-face language that he was using in Astana. And to sum it up, what’s the best way to for Russia to conduct itself in front of the West now? it’s just to say, “Hands up! Time for you to surrender, because we got you covered.” And let’s just say something about the Oreshnik, which again, is not much discussed.

31:10
Yes, it’s an intermediate range ballistic, but it’s at the top end of intermediate and the bottom end of intercontinental. It is intercontinental, it depends where you fire it from. If you fire it from Kamchatka, from the Russian far east, it can reach Montana and maybe farther down the US West Coast. So of course it is intercontinental in that sense. It’s where you position it.

It also can wipe out any or all of American military assets in the Middle East. You fire it from Astrakhan and that’s it. You’ve got the whole US military establishment in West Asia covered and ripe for destruction. Now, I think the only limitation in this is first of all, how many of these Oreshniks do they have? And it’s clear that when they say they’re going into serial production, they mean three-shift production.

32:06
They have a few of them, clearly, but they decided not to waste them on a further attack on Ukraine until and unless Mr. Zelensky fires another one or two or more ATACMS or Storm Shadows into Russian territory. Then they will start spending some of their stock of this missile, their hypersonic missile. In the meantime, they’re doing quite well, thank you, destroyed the energy infrastructure and various arms caches and concentrations of foreign mercenaries using simpler, much less expensive short-range missiles. The Iskandar in particular, which has a 500-kilometer range, quite sufficient to wreak havoc across Ukraine, which is what they are doing.

Alkhorshid: 33:04
We’ve seen, if you remember in the Trump’s presidency, his first term, he wanted to withdraw the US troops from Syria and later on he said, we’re there, I didn’t do it because we have a lot of oil there and we have to take care of that. Don’t you think that would be the case in Ukraine in the future? That would bring some sort of– because Lindsey Graham was talking about the resources in Ukraine, and they may go in that direction. That would be problematic for Russia. Don’t you think that would be the case?

Doctorow: 33:44
Look, Ukraine was an important country for population. It had 45 million. It’s down now to 28 million and soon it’ll be down to 22 million or less across all the refugees who headed either to Russia or to Europe. It was important because of the skills of the population and the manufacturing infrastructure in Donbass, which was among the most advanced and important contributors to the Soviet economy.

34:13
The wealth that Russia has received in terms of population and manufacturing capabilities in the Donbass, which it now possesses, I think more than offsets the $350 billion in frozen assets and so forth. So that aspect, manufacturing in both the equipment and the skills, the manufacturing skills and the mining skills of population in Donbass, were an important contributor. The agricultural component also was very important. Oil and gas, much less important. There was discussion of fracking and how that would open up all kinds of possibilities for energy sufficiency or as you’re suggesting for energy exports from Ukraine but that was never really exploited.

35:13
There was considerable resistance within Ukraine to fracking. I said nothing much came of it But they have their metal, they have a lot of things. Mr. Zelensky has opened up shop to sell off his country as if he has a right to sell it. He has no legitimacy. And I think any contracts he makes will be overturned in international lawsuits because he has no legitimacy. I don’t think that the United States is motivated in its policy towards Ukraine by this kind of mercantilism and resource capture. That is no doubt an additional bonus, but it’s not what’s driving American policy there. It’s all geopolitics. It’s trying to deprive Russia of its rightful place in the world by having it under continual pressure by an existential enemy that they are supplying.

Alkhorshid: 36:21
What were the repercussions of Donald Trump’s comment on the countries who are not willing to use dollar any more? Because he’s just trying to intimidate them by putting more sanctions on these countries. How do they talk about it in the Russian media?

Doctorow: 36:41
They laugh at it. I think he’s making a fool of himself, because he’s carrying to a still further extreme all of the self-destructive practices of the Biden administration in its sanctions policy. It is utterly impossible for the United States to sanction the BRICS countries. That is more than half of the world’s population, a very substantial part of global GDP. Whom are they going to sell to, after all? Whom are they going to buy from? It is showing utter ignorance of the real economic power of the United States today in the present configuration of nations. It’s assuming that the United States has the preeminent place in the global economic pecking order that it had in 1947. It doesn’t.

37:42
The only thing that he can achieve is self-isolation of the United States and harm to the American economy. So the Russians take this as showing rank stupidity. They don’t say that openly, but they laugh. They laugh.

I think that it also misses the point. I think Trump was very badly advised. He was following all of the promotional hype about what BRICS would do and not following what they actually said and concluded in their declaration of the BRICS summit, which is not attacking the dollar. They made it plain that their efforts will be of a constructive rather than a destructive nature, constructive in that they’re building parallel institutions for global governance that they expect will take over eventually from the existing institutions but for some time will be parallel. And they did not, they pointedly did not make de-dollarization an objective or the creation of a BRICS currency the objective, knowing that this will alienate many prospective new members of BRICS who do not want to risk their ongoing, their substantial commercial relations with the United States for the sake of an unproven new currency.

39:33
So the whole BRICS exercise is assuming a gradual replacement of the dollar with bilateral currency exchanges or by trading in national currencies. The biggest factor in de-dollarization is not what Trump was talking about. “Ah, who’s going to stand against it?” No, The biggest factor is what the Saudis are doing. And he doesn’t dare touch that.

The fact that the Saudis did not renew the petrodollar agreements with the United States, that they are now doing substantial sales to China in Yuan and not in dollars, that’s the single biggest threat to the American financial hegemony, not any declarations coming out of BRICS.

Alkhorshid: 40:30
Do you think in Donald Trump’s view right now, is he saying these conflicts are helping him or just solidifying the relationship between Iran, China, Russia and other countries within BRICS?

Doctorow:
Well, the Russians view Trump’s plans for foreign policy as having the notion that he can make some kind of a pragmatic solution to relations with the Russians and then can try to split off the Russians from the Chinese.

41:05
The people around Trump have been rightfully alarmed that the Biden administration did so much to solidify a Russian-Chinese high-level alliance, practically speaking, an alliance. And they would like to take one or the other country aside to break this up. Well, they can’t take China aside, because they’ve already declared China as enemy number one and the biggest threat to Americans global position. So what’s left is to take the “junior” partner, as they like to see it. The concept of junior partners is also nonsense. It shows ignorance of the real strength of the Russian negotiating position within their relation with China. But that’s a separate issue, for a separate discussion.

42:03
Gilbert, what’s so interesting right now is the United States, Washington, right now is talking about that the next battlefield between the United States on one side and Russia and China and BRICS on the other side wouldn’t be in Africa. It means that it would be in Africa because it seems– do you see the war expanding under Donald Trump, in a new front in Africa?

42:37
I’m not aware of his policy plans. I am aware of what Mr. Biden is doing at the very end of his four-year term. He’s finally made it over to Africa, one last hurrah. And as the BBC is describing it today, his trip there is a step towards addressing the concerns in Africa, that America is not interested in their continent, whereas the Chinese have invested so very much.

43:05
And the suggestion is the Americans will invest in Africa. That’s an assumption that doesn’t have much foundation under it. As for the Russians, they’re busy in Africa, but doing different things, not so much commerce of supplying security and arms sales, not, I said, not commerce, not civilian commerce, not consumer-goods type of commerce, but services they’re selling, namely security, military assistance and military supplies. So that is the Russian presence in Africa is rather small footprint. The Chinese have an enormous footprint, because they’re so dependent on raw material supplies, minerals and other things for their industry as a global manufacturer and exporter that Africa to them has, like Latin America, has very great meaning and importance and is worth investing in.

44:11
For the United States, it’s hard to see that, because the United States is no longer the world’s factory. It’s a consumer, not a producer of manufactured goods. Therefore, I find it hard to imagine that the American investment in Africa can become a serious rival to China’s.

Alkhorshid: 44:35
We had all of Sholz within Kiev. And is this one of the final attempts on the part of the Biden administration to keep things calm in Kiev. And what do we know about what’s going on in Ukraine politically between these political parties, between these different factions?

Doctorow: 45:03
Well, on the latter, I cannot claim an expertise to add to this discussion. I don’t follow the political factions within Ukraine. But as to Mr. Scholz’s visit, that was shown on Russian television. They again had a good laugh of his stepping out of the train and holding onto an aluminum suitcase. And they were asking, what have they got in there? Is it loaded with banknotes? Is it loaded with gold ingots? Well, gold ingots, because you know, that would, Scholz may do his exercises in the morning, but he’s not going to carry a suitcase like that full of ingots. So it was something rather that he didn’t want anyone else to have a chance to see. His visit there was– I don’t think provided a great deal of comfort to Zelensky.

45:55
The Russians call it “political tourism”. They don’t take this seriously. He didn’t give Zelensky what he wanted most, which is permission to use a Taurus missile. He specifically denied that this was something that Germany will accept for the reasons that we’ve heard in the past, because it would have to be German personnel manning and guiding those missiles. Instead, he offered various types of military aid and kept on beating the drum how Germany is the largest supplier of military goods to Ukraine after the United States.

46:40
Mr. Zelensky looks uncomfortable, And as well he might, because really his days are numbered, and if he’s not careful, his days on earth are numbered.

Alkhorshid: 46:54
How about Europe, the European countries right now? Is the conflict in Ukraine, or would this conflict in Ukraine be a dividing issue for the Western European countries or they were still united in their policies?

Doctorow:
Well, I have something, kind of challenge, to the audience to think about on this very question, something that’s crossed my mind. Why is it that we have 27 leaders of whom 25 are just licking the boots of the United States and are not doing anything to look after the interests of their own people and are submitting to the American dictates on how to conduct a war against Russia by way of Ukraine? Why is that the case? And as you say, is it split? Yes, it’s split, but not dramatically split in any way. You have Mr. Orban all there by himself as the one brain in the whole operation, and the rest of them presenting themselves as dummies.

47:58
Now why is that true? Are these people genuinely dummies, or is there something else going on? I believe there’s something else going on, which no one is talking about. And that is: all of the states, the 27 states, they have sacrificed, going back to 1992, when the European Economic space, the Community, became the European Union, when what was an economic grouping became a supranational state, they all gave up their sovereignty, large amounts of their sovereignty, to the point where a head of state or head of government has the power of a city mayor and not of a traditional head of state.

48:48
They gave up foreign policy. Even Germany, pretend to do policy. You’ve got that complete idiot, Baerbock, who was busy getting herself censored by the Chinese for making insulting remarks about Xi. They pretend to do something like diplomacy, even if they have such very poor, very poorly educated personalities speaking on behalf of their diplomacy. But this is an accident, because there is nothing there. The diplomatic function is concentrated in Brussels.

49:29
And so all of these countries are not countries any more in the traditional sense of understanding. And this is precisely what Putin has revolted against. That type of denial of sovereignty is unacceptable to the Chinese, to the Russians, to the Iranians, and to a few other countries who stand out. Europeans– and why did they do this? Why did they give up their sovereignty?

50:00
Because they believed, falsely, wrongly, that national sovereignty is the basis for wars. Countries are aggressive. If they have full sovereignty, they make wars on one another. And since the European Union is supposed to be a peace project, we do away with sovereignty. Well, this other factor: they wanted to integrate for the sake of freedom of travel within the borders of the EU, which ultimately took the form of the Schengen, and to simplify economic life, financial life within this whole space by creating a common currency, the euro.

50:50
And you can’t, if you are not willing to tie the currency to gold, then you have a fiat currency. And a fiat currency requires that all members using that currency have a coordinated tax system, budgetary system, deficit agreements, and all the rest of it. And that’s what they’ve done. They have a fiat currency which works fine, but the result of that fiat currency is that European leaders are nobodies. And we can afford to have complete idiots bearing the title of prime minister or head of state. That’s what we have.

51:25
No, I don’t mean to say everyone’s an idiot, of course not. But they have been stripped, they have stripped themselves of the responsibilities and the powers that would give them a voice in the present conflict over Ukraine. They don’t have a voice. And into this void– it was a void before she took power five years ago, she being Von der Leyen– you had a drunkard who was the head of the Commission, the drunkard prime minister, former prime minister of Luxembourg, who didn’t do very much. And she came around and she understood, “My goodness, I can seize all this.”

52:23
And she did. And nobody said no. Nobody said that the European Union constitution doesn’t give you these powers. So they’ve all been silenced, and she has seized the power. She’s very ambitious, she’s not stupid, she’s vicious and she has concentrated all the power in her own hands. So you ask her, is Europe divided? Who cares if it’s divided? So long as Von der Leyen has all of the cards in her hand, it doesn’t make any difference.

Alkhorshid: 52:58
What’s tragic, Gilbert, about what’s going on in the European countries is those people who are largely corrupted are getting to the power. This is the tragedy of what’s going on in Europe. And they’re having everything in their hands to change the future of Europe. And it doesn’t seem that they’re representing the people who are, as we’ve seen so far, the people in Europe want some sort of change. But do you see that coming to Europe, even under Donald Trump?

Doctorow: 53:31
He may be the disruptive force. He doesn’t have any respect for the European leaders for all the reasons I just outlined above. And I’m sure he may not think of it conceptually as I’ve just outlined it, but the net result of these people are nobodies: he’s right. So why should he respect them? Why should he care what they think of him? What they think of the ambassador who’s delivered to France, the convicted felon who’s a jailbird, and he’s now, because of his relationship with the Trump family, is now going to be the ambassador to France.

54:11
It fits in with his estimate of what France counts for, which is to say close to nothing. And ultimately in foreign affairs, he’s right, it counts for nothing. What will change this? I’m afraid nothing short of breaking up the European Union and turning it back to where it was before 1992 as an economic community.

And it can have a common currency. Why not? Only it would be tied to the gold. It can be done if somebody realizes what you sacrificed to achieve a common currency that is based on fiat, you will realize that it’s time to undo some of these crazy things that were done by very smart, very progressive intellectuals in 1992 with the best interests. There were no villains in the piece, but what we see now [is] a Europe that’s descended to lower depths and has people who are an embarrassment. And they’ve had a whole succession– looking at foreign policies, a whole succession of embarrassments in what preceded Mr. Borrell.

55:26
Borrell is an embarrassment. He’ll never live down “This Europe as a garden, and outside our gates is a jungle”, said two years ago. It’s an embarrassment for anyone with any self-worth to consider this. And before him, what did they start with? Lady Ashton, this British Dame. I mean by title, not by sex, from Britain. She was the first nitwit to head European foreign policy. She didn’t know her ass from her elbow. And then she was followed by this Italian, name escapes me right now, who was a mental case.

56:10
She couldn’t bear the pressure of the office. And you saw the anguish in her face every time she appeared in public. And she was speaking for the European Union. There is something seriously wrong, just as it’s utterly unacceptable that this buffoon, insulting buffoon, Baerbock, is sent on missions abroad to represent Germany and to deal with complex issues like separating China from Russia.

So I know that the party, the bloc in the parliament that was created and is headed by Viktor Orban, is to reform the European Union and not to deconstruct it. But I dare say he’s going to have to rethink this, because I don’t see a way that you can reform the European Union under conditions when the constituent member states are not states, they’re not nation states. They are, they’ve been deprived of powers of diplomacy and of powers to think for themselves, which is a disaster for an entity that represents 500 million people.

Alkhorshid:
Thank you so much, Gilbert, for being with us today. Great pleasure as always.

Doctorow:
Yeah. Thank you for having me.