“Coffee and a Mike”: American Foreign Policy is Flying Blind

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“Five will get you ten!”  That old folk wisdom of gambling folk sometimes also works in reverse. Appearing on one or another of the leading alternative video platforms like ‘Judging Freedom’ which has just passed the line of 500k subscribers means that you may well get invitations also from start-ups, as I now do from time to time.

I am very pleased that I agreed to chat with and be recorded today by Michael Farris for his “Coffee and a Mike” platform on Rumble which now has a little over 7k followers. Michael has in the past several days interviewed Larry Johnson and Paul Craig Roberts. I think he is off to a good start and deserves to do well.

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Our chat began with his asking whether the latest massive Russian strike on Ukrainian power generation and fuel infrastructure should be considered to be their retaliation for the Ukrainian missile strike two days ago on Russia’s military air field in Taganrog using 6 ATACMS missiles.  I said that was unlikely if my hunch was correct and the real objective of Kiev was to destroy a factory near the air field producing the Russian equivalent of American AWACS. Such planes are a key part of their early warning radar network that would alert Moscow to incoming missiles fired by US submarines in the Persian Gulf or Mediterranean should the US decide on a preemptive nuclear strike.

Now that I have listened to the latest news on Russian state television about what Moscow achieved by its new missile barrage, I am obliged to agree that this was indeed the awaited retaliation even if it did not entail use of the Oreshnik hypersonic missile. Instead the Russians used most other missiles including air, ground and sea-launched weapons in their arsenal to achieve truly devastating results. 

Apparently half of Ukraine is now without any electricity and the important nuclear stations which were providing Ukraine with 20% of generating capacity prior to this latest attack now also were shut down because the current from outside that they need to operate was no longer available. We also now know that Ukraine is begging Europe to send power their way insofar as their grid is linked to Europe. Moreover, apart from the actual damage to infrastructure, this Russian attack engaged approximately 100 of their missiles plus drones, demonstrating that their stocks are still very impressive and overturning suggestions emanating from Washington that Russia is running low.

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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3 thoughts on ““Coffee and a Mike”: American Foreign Policy is Flying Blind”

  1. » the important nuclear stations … now also were shut down because the current from outside that they need to operate was no longer available «

    Disagree. Russia is trying to thread the needle with regard to the nuclear power stations.
    They are trying to break their ability to supply the grid without endangering their ability to consume the power they need to operate the reactors and spin out of control.

    UA is obliged to decrease the generation of power since they cannot dispose of it, but without danger their operation.

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