Transcript of ‘Dialogue Works’ edition of 19 February

Transcript submitted by a reader

Nima R. Alkhorshid: 0:05
Hi everybody. Today is Wednesday, February 19th, 2025, and our friend Gilbert Doctorow is back with us. Welcome back, Gilbert.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Yes, it is a pleasure.

Alkhorshid:
Let’s get started with the reactions on the part of Russians to what has happened in Riyadh between the two delegations from the United States and Russia. What do we know about that?

Doctorow:
Well, I was following the body language as well as the statements made by the three American negotiators. And it was very– and then I followed, of course, what Sergey Lavrov said afterwards. And from this it was clear that the atmosphere was positive, constructive on both sides. It was diplomatic. I mean, we don’t think about Trump as being a diplomat or a subtle man, shall we say. But Rubio was. In that sense, he displayed one of the finer points of diplomacy, tact. He has a lot of it.

1:06
And that is a very important attribute for his job as Secretary of State. There are people who said in the days following his nomination by Donald Trump. “Oh, this man’s a lightweight. He doesn’t know anything about diplomacy. He’s just in the pocket of the Israeli lobby. He’s a pro-Zionist.”

And they were dismissive of him. But the people were dismissive of nearly all of the appointments or nominations that were made by Trump, except for a couple whom we knew to be good guys. So Tulsi Gabbard is the outstanding case. And maybe his defense secretary nominee. Anyway, the main thing is that we all saw that he appointed a lot of hawks, people who didn’t sound like they would be in keeping with his peacemaker approach to his second term.

2:01
And you know what? Now that we’ve seen what’s happened in the last week, it’s just a week that everything has been turned on its head, starting with the telephone conversation that Trump had with Vladimir Putin. Everything’s been turned on its head, and we look at each case. Who said what where? What after– Trump didn’t say much about the call. He let others speak for him. The first one to speak and speak really very loudly, importantly, was of course, Pete Hegseth.

And in his debut here, a speech in Brussels, to what’s called the Ukraine support group or the Ukraine Coordinating Organization. Well, the Hegseth said, one, there will not be Ukraine in NATO; and two, it’s unrealistic to talk about going back to the pre-war borders, that this is a new reality. That was picked up by Western press and observers as saying that Trump had already conceded the major points to Putin, before they ever sat at the table. Well, it isn’t quite like that. These were non-negotiable terms for the Russians.

3:30
And either you’re going to accept them and you’ll proceed to peace negotiations, or you’ll reject them and there are no talks. So I don’t think that he was conceding anything if he was intent on taking this to talks. And the things that came out between the appointment of these power ministers or advisors to Trump and what we saw in the last seven days, almost everything is different. And you have to ask why. Is this the same Trump or is something else going on?

Well something else is going on. Those of us– and I include myself among them. I don’t stand above my peers in being so very perceptive– no, no, we all were taken in by these strange appointments of Trump. And we say, my goodness, does he know what he’s doing? My goodness, how are these people going to implement his plans, when they personal orientation is quite different?

4:31
And we misunderstood what he was doing and why. He appointed these people, including General Kellogg, knowing that they would say things that would be directly contradicting what we all expected. But in keeping with what some other people expected or hoped for, crossing their fingers, that they had Trump once again in a barrel, that he once again, his assistants would betray him and they would get what they want. So all his opponents in Capitol Hill, in the press, in the academic establishment of war, the war keepers, they all were very happy with these appointments, even if we in the alternative media were cringing that maybe we made our own bet on Trump.

5:30
That was a game, that was a charade. And you know, we were all taken in on both sides of the aisle. Here in the alternative media, I think all my peers were taken in. We were all discussing, gee, you know what happened? Trump is getting the same false intelligence from the CIA as Biden was getting.

They got a complete wrong reading. They’re saying the war is a stalemate, as Kellogg did. They’re saying, as Kellogg was saying, we’ve got to have a stick and a carrot for the Russians, we’re going to beat the hell out of them if they don’t sit down on the table and conclude a peace as we think it should be, or we’re going to raise the arms into Ukraine, we’re going to raise the sanctions against Russia, we’re really going to show who’s boss. Well, that was Kellogg before his wings were clipped. He was saying what Trump wanted him to say, to make all of Trump’s enemies quiet, and allow him to proceed with what would overwhelm them all before they had a chance to react.

6:37
And that overwhelming is what we saw in the last week. No, we didn’t have to wait for Tulsi Gabbard to come with her candle into the dark room and light it all up for Trump, to show him who’s who and what’s what. He had that all down perfectly. Now, we got used to speaking about the collective Biden. Well, I put it more kindly and speak of Team Trump.

It comes to the same thing. The presidency is more than one man. And not because Trump needs some mental assistance, no, no. The guy’s quite sharp, as sharp as anyone could be in that position. So that isn’t the issue. The question is how much can you master?

And how much should you master as the chief executive? And how much can you and should you delegate to your assistants who are delegating in turn to their assistants the way things work in any large organization of any kind, not just a government organization, but any private organization, any business, any educational institution, that’s how people work.

7:45
And so Trump, even if he’s not a universal genius and who expects that, to find that in the oval office, he has by his personal intuition found implementers of first-quality intelligence and talent. And I include in there Marco Rubio, whom some of, some very authoritative and serious people, were saying, my goodness, Rubio is shallow, Rubio has no real international experience, he’s not a diplomat, he’s not up to the job, how can he sit at negotiations with the doyen of international diplomacy Sergei Lavrov? Well, he did yesterday and it looked quite all right.

8:34
The main thing was tact, diplomacy, respect, notions which had disappeared from American foreign policy and diplomatic implementers for at least three years and maybe for 30 years. This suddenly reappeared. My point is that if you look at each of the developments in the last week, you find that they were meticulously planned and executed. And let’s go over them. I just think of one, since I’m in Brussels and all around me, there’s news of JD Vance’s speech to the Munich Security Conference.

9:18
And then follow on that, the news that already at the start of this week, on Tuesday in fact, there would be a high-level meeting between the Americans and the Russians to initiate talks about the peace agreement in Riyadh, without the presence of either the Ukrainians or the Europeans. And my goodness, what a to-do there was here. Everyone was talking about a seat at the table. And the Europeans here, well, they also read English. And they also know the American political wisdom that if you don’t have a seat at the table, it means you’re on the menu.

10:01
And they understood very well that they were on the menu. And they were very uncomfortable. Even “Le Monde”, “Le Monde” which has Sylvie Kaufman, who was for a number of years their editor in chief, for a number of years was their New York bureau chief, who is printed in op-ed pages of “Financial Times” and of the “New York Times” regularly. Sylvie Kauffman was fulminating. And in an article that was published yesterday, a long article, in “Le Monde”, which I believe she was a contributor to, if not the main author of, they called Vance’s speech hostile and fascist.

10:44
Note the word “fascist”. The American vice president is a fascist. This is coming out of the mouths of leftist European politicians. Well, that wasn’t an accident. He wanted them, Trump wanted them to see what the relations between us on the Ukrainian war really [are], that we are in opposite camps, that the Europeans are all the war camp and America is now in the peace camp.

11:13
So he alienated them, as he intended to do. Wasn’t an accident. It was a very well planned speech in which they were denounced for being their own greatest threat to their security, by being undemocratic and have nothing to defend or fight for, because they were behaving like Soviet nomenklatura. They were behaving in a way that deprives their population of freedom of speech and deprives substantial portions of the population in the populist parties in the right and left of the right to participate equally in political life. So Vance’s speech was main, a major point.

11:57
And then the announcement that there would be a meeting in Riyadh without the likes of Zelensky or Starmer or all the other warriors who wanted to frankly speak and foil the negotiations before they even could get going. So this was [a] master stroke. And there was an addition to that, also on the weekend, that the State Department sent out a questionnaire to all European countries saying, well, yeah, please tell us, send us back information on how many troop formations and what military materiel you’re going to supply, if you are going to take part in a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine to enforce the peace that may be signed. And Macron rode to the rescue. He convened six, seven country leaders, including of course Germany and Spain and Italy and the United Kingdom.

13:11
And there was also Mr. Rutte on behalf of NATO and there was Da Costa on behalf of the European Council, that is the governing body of the European institutions, which consists of the 29 heads of government. Da Costa was there. And of course, the inescapable, unavoidable Ursula von der Leyen. They all came, all the worthies came.

And you know what, after four and a half hours, they couldn’t agree on anything. So they left without answering the questionnaire from the States and validating the whole exercise. What was it about? It was to show that they are nobody, that there’s nobody home in Europe, and they’re all counting on getting the United States running the show and taking all the risks and expenses of enforcing the peace treaty. So these were not idle and separate actions.

14:20
They were all interconnected, and they had a mission of ensuring the success of the first high- level meeting between the United States and Russia in three, more than three years. So this is why the Russians first looked at Trump and they looked at what we were seeing, whom he appointed to these power ministries. And they said, my goodness, this fellow is not going to give us much comfort in his administration. And they looked at the same time at Elon Musk and the wrecking-ball activities that were also reflected in Trump’s first decrees upon taking office. And they said, you know, this fellow looks like our own Mikhail Gorbachev.

15:14
We had, just remember it’s a change of generation. Well, in the case of the States, it’s a three-year difference between Trump and Biden, but nonetheless, he’s surrounded himself with younger people, none younger, than his own vice president. And so it is indicative of a forthcoming change in generations. But most importantly, it’s the wrecking ball. This is what Gorbachov brought in with him.

It was a wrecking ball. And the consequences were, unfortunately for Russia, quite bad because he destroyed the economy by various measures that were ill-considered, and he destroyed the political structure by other measures that were ill-considered. And the political commentators on the talk show that I, one of the two main talk shows that I follow, this is “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov”, they were saying, the Americans are headed for the same chaos that we had. And they were sort of laughing about it. But they were serious at the same time.

16:20
It sounded familiar. We’d been there before. Just as they knew the case of Biden, they’d been there before also. They had their own problem of superannuated, senile or physically disabled leaders going from the end of the 70s into the first years of the 80s before Gorbachov, a new young generation, vital generation came to power. So they had seen that, and these are the negatives.

16:53
Then what I see now on the same show by the same panelists is they’re again saying, “This man is like Gorbachov”, but they’re putting Gorbachov in a much kinder light. This is Gorbachov, the peacemaker. Gorbachov, who at the same time, showed political skills which nobody else had. He was able to, because he was not a dictator in the sense of running the show himself. He had to deal with his fellow Communist Party officials at the very apex of the power structure of the Soviet Union, who could stymie his initiatives.

17:40
And so he shifted balance from the right side of opposition to himself, to the left side of opposition to himself. He kept his political opponents off balance, each side for a while thought that he was in their pocket,, and so they didn’t attack him. And he put through measures which none of them expected or really wanted in any way, because they saw what it was leading to, the end of the Soviet Union. Well, here we see the same talent of a feint to the right, a feint to the left, fooling all of us, including the whole lot of us in alternative media who think we’re pretty clever. And Trump got the better of us.

18:27
The man whom– it’s easy to say that he’s just a, you know, a hot-air artist, and he’s got his venal interests in being in the Oval Office because he’s going to get this deal or that deal for himself. All of these rather small-minded criticisms which are with us today as well. A colleague of mine told me about an article today in German press criticizing Trump for having plans to exploit Russia for bringing in the head of the Russian foreign investment organization because they want to speak about American investments, meaning exploitation in Russia. These people are missing the point intentionally. And I had a moment hesitation to say that. What Trump is doing now was utterly brilliant. It’s much more than I got for my lottery ticket when I voted for him in November.

You’re on mute.

Alkhorshid:
When you look at Donald Trump and the way that he’s talking about Zelensky right now, he says that Zelensky’s approval rating is now at four percent.

And I like him personally, but that doesn’t matter. These are huge statement on his part and the way that he sees Zelensky, it seems that he sees the same way that Russia sees Ukraine today. There has to be a presidential election in Ukraine because they don’t recognize Zelensky if Zelensky wants to be part of any sort of negotiation at any stage in the process of negotiating with Russia. How do you see the way that Donald Trump is literally destroying Zelensky by his comments?

Doctorow: 20:19
Let’s leave Russia out of it. I was listening to the BBC commentary this morning, and they were saying, “Ah yes, and Vladimir Putin is laughing at Europe over this” and so on. And my answer is, so what? And besides, did you see him laugh? He didn’t. That is an absolutely fake-news account. If they had said that he must be laughing, I could begin to accept that.

But when they say he is laughing, that’s fake news. It didn’t happen, they didn’t see it. And what is the relevance of that? The only thing that should be relevant is what Trump’s saying, true or not, Does this represent the real situation, or is it invented and artificial?

21:05
Now, the four percent, that’s an exaggeration. That’s in the range of, the Pinocchio-measurement range of Trump’s statements that the “Washington Post” has been carrying since his first term. However, what do you say about the 52-percent approval rating of Zelensky that the “Financial Times” publishes today, saying that it comes from a sociological institute in Kiev? Don’t we know how much that is worth? I would say less than nothing. Therefore, I forgive Trump for his exaggeration, because it’s merited by the utter propaganda that calls itself mainstream.

21:44
Whether the Russians like this or not is not relevant. The question is, is it true? Of course it’s true, what he was saying. Of course that he’s saying there have to be elections. Well, yes, Putin is saying that, but is Trump repeating it because he likes what Putin says?

No, he’s repeating it with a simple statement of legal fact. The man is an illegitimate dictator right now. I’m speaking of Zelensky. His term in office, oh yes, again, the British “Financial Times”, so how can you leave out the elected president of a sovereign state? “Sovereign” is an interesting word for Ukraine, which can’t live for two weeks without Western financial assistance and military assistance.

So sovereignty is fake news. And democratic, how can he be democratic if by their own constitution it’s almost a year that his legitimacy expired. So what Trump is doing, if he is saying the same things as Putin, it’s because Putin is saying what is true. And if you think that it is bad because Putin says it or likes it, then you have no interest in truth, justice or ending the war. You are only a belligerent.

23:16
And that is where all of Europe sits today. The whole damned elite structure, parasitical structure that calls itself European leadership, with two exceptions, Slovakia and Hungary, they have to be voided out of office. And that’s going to happen. As the peace process goes forward, there’s no way these people can present themselves as the war party. They will not have popular support.

Nobody wants to be interested in politics here. The indifference, passivity in Europe is manifest, because it seems like a vote counts for nothing. Here in Belgium, we had elections last June. It took them eight, nine, 10 months to constitute a new government on which the public had no expression, no vote. It’s all done behind closed doors between, I’d say, hereditary rulers here.

24:21
Therefore, the attack that Vance made on European democracy was much more true than he understood. I don’t think he knows what I know, because he doesn’t live here. He was dealing with some things that he could pick up correctly. What happened in Romania, that was scandalous and everybody knew about it. The exclusion of the Alternative for Deutschland and Jelinka from attendees at the Munich Security Conference, that is clear as day to JD Vance. So he didn’t need any coaching to understand that these countries are not democratic.

25:03
But it’s not– they’re much less democratic than he knows. Because as I say, he doesn’t live here. He doesn’t know anything about the structure of the European institutions. The, I mean, the general mantra in, among well-meaning people is the problem with European institutions is that they’re bureaucratic and the parliament does not really have power, that the executive, the Commission has the power and was not elected by people. That’s not true, That’s only partially true.

I’ve been in the European Parliament. I know how it works. And the problem is the Parliament itself, which is a top-down organization. Its composition is mandated by the heads of the leading centrist parties in Europe, particularly in Germany. And how everybody votes in the parliament is not on their own conscience. It’s dictated by the party leaders in Germany, France, and a few other countries who are told they’re given 150 items to vote on in one day, and they told, check, check, check, check, this is how you’re going to vote. And that’s what they do.

26:07
So Europe is a big problem in democracy, much more than JD Vance knows. But that’ll come out eventually as this wrecking ball continues to move.

Alkhorshid:
Europeans want to impose more sanctions, a new set of sanctions on Russia, which Rubio was talking about, that he said that we’re not going to support that in the process of negotiation with Russia.

On the other hand, today we’ve learned, “Financial Times” reported that 6 billion euros they’re going to send to Ukraine to support, in terms of military aid to Ukraine. What is with Europe, Gilbert, when you look at Europe today? They’re so in panic right now. And Macron tried to invite, as you’ve mentioned, four or five countries, and one of them is out of the European Union is United Kingdom. Czech, Czech Republic and Romania Slovenia were complaining that they were not invited to the first summit in Paris. And how can we understand the way that they’re trying?

Are they really clueless about what’s going on? Because without daddy being there, I’m talking about the United States, it seems that they don’t know what to do, they don’t know what to, how they can deal with the situation they’re in right now.

Doctorow: 27:40
You’re putting national interests and a leader’s interests as being aligned. I disagree, they’re not aligned. These people are concerned about themselves the same way that Netanyahu is concerned about himself, not about the fate of Israel.

They are concerned about holding onto power. That’s all they care about. The whole system here in Belgium, in Belgium I take it as an example, because I live here and I know the ugly details, but I assure you they’re not prettier in the other countries around us. The details are, as I said, division of power between the various parties that in no way reflects the popular vote. We have, there’s a lot of cynicism in the States and in other democracies about the value of vote.

28:23
Frankly speaking, when my wife and I registered for absentee ballots in the state of New York and we knew whom we were going to vote for and we knew the state is overwhelmingly democratic, we knew that our votes would have no reflection in the allowance of electors that New York has when the decision was made on who won. However, our votes counted in the overall popular vote, which gave Trump more than 50 percent. So we made our own little contribution to his getting more than 50 percent. Here in Belgium, we have very progressive– and other countries around us. They all operate on coalition governments, because they all have protections for minorities.

29:16
I don’t mean color or gender minorities, I mean minority political platforms. And so you have a lot of little parties that take away votes from the major parties. You don’t have a first-past-the-post system of voting. You have fractional voting, fractional results. Fractional results, it sounds wonderfully democratic, but ends up being extremely undemocratic.

Because they form coalitions and they allocate ministerial portfolios without asking the public, and without counting on the competence of the ministerial, ministers for the portfolios assigned to them. So we have– that is called institutionalized corruption, and it is manifest in almost all of the countries of the European Union. There are exceptions. France is an exception. It has mostly a dual competition for electoral victory.

30:24
Although the last elections didn’t work that way. And it wasn’t a single party, but a majority. Nonetheless, my point is that the positions of these leaders [have] nothing to do with national interests or what their voters think. It is– there is such a passivity that in the general population, which comes out even when the BBC gives people a microphone here on the street, that they don’t give a damn about any of these issues, because they know they have no control over the government policies. Their votes count for nothing, even if the votes are [mandated] that you have to vote or face fines, as is the case here in Belgium.

31:04
Therefore, I only look at these statements as being statements from the war party who are desperately afraid that the war will end and that party will be over. And they will no longer be invited for hot dogs on the 4th of July, on the lawn in front of the White House. The happy days may be coming to an end for them. And I say good riddance. These people have to go.

Alkhorshid: 31:34
How about putting troops? They’re talking about Europeans. Do you see the way that they’re talking about putting troops in the aftermath of any sort of permanent solution for the conflict in Ukraine. Is that acceptable? Did they talk about this things in the Russian media, on the Russian part, that Europeans really want– At least Starmer was talking about it, putting troops, 25 to 30,000 troops, on the ground in Ukraine.

Doctorow: 32:04
There are two issues where I can say that Trump has performed a master stroke. This is one of them. He didn’t say no to them, to the Europeans. You want to put in troops? Oh, yeah, of course, of course.

Let’s see, tell me how many you’re going to put up. First you have Starmer saying that this doesn’t work if we don’t have American backing, American logistical support and so forth. So there’s so much for their troops. Then they couldn’t reach agreement on whether they should send troops. You’ve got Germany saying, no, it’s premature, said Mr. Scholz. It’s inappropriate, said Mr. Scholz. The Spanish said, no, we don’t like this. Well, it fell apart.

32:51
And so Trump didn’t have to destroy it. He let them destroy it themselves. Because he knew very well that the Russians, for the Russians, this is unacceptable. But he didn’t say to the Europeans, this is unacceptable to the Russians. He said, “Okay, guys, show, put up or shut up.”

And the end result is shut up. Therefore, that is one case. Another case is the whole story of the mineral rights. Now there’s been an enormous discussion of this mineral rights question. People who otherwise want to present themselves as being peaceniks and on the right side of the angels are attacking Trump because we all know that he’s a buffoon, He’s self-interested, he’s materialistic, crass, vulgar, you name it.

So they want to say that, “Oh, you see how it is with Trump and demanding the rare earths of Ukraine? He just wants to exploit and hand out parcels of money to his good friends.” Well, my friends, you missed the point entirely. Trump did this because he knew that Zelensky would refuse. And he made this a condition of further American assistance.

We didn’t stop the assistance, will say Washington. Zelensky did, because he didn’t agree to give us guarantees. Now is that the move of a master politician or not? I say it is.

You’re muted.

Alkhorshid: 34:21
I don’t know if you saw the article in the Bloomberg. It says that Ukraine doesn’t have rare earth minerals.

Doctoeow:
Well look, they were just going to the same sources that I was using. It’s not correct to say they don’t have them. They have rare earth deposits in many different places, not just in the occupied, Russian-occupied eastern part.

By the estimates of Russian geological information, maybe 30 percent of those deposits are in the territory that the Russians now occupy. But that’s not the point. It’s not commercially viable. That’s the point. There are deposits of oil and gas around the whole world and dinosaurs didn’t all die in one place.

35:08,
Or vegetation didn’t all die in one place, that you have coal deposits only here or there. No, they’re all over the place on the planet Earth. But only in some places is it commercially viable to exploit them. And so it is with the rare earth in Ukraine.

Alkhorshid:
Yeah. You think that the way that Europe is trying to put pressure on Donald Trump or his administration. To what extent are they capable of changing the policy in Washington? Is that possible? Is that achievable in their mind? I’m talking about the mind of Europeans, I’m not talking about the way that Donald Trump sees Europe.

Doctorow: 35:53
Remember, Russians are still Europeans, right? And I can tell you what the Russians are saying on television. They’re saying, “Donald, watch your back.”

Alkhorshid:
But after all, Europe is– Do you think that these two summits, the first summit and Macron is just preparing for the second summit, inviting more countries to talk with. What would be the outcome of these political moves on the part of Europeans? Is there any sort of outcome in terms of influencing the decision makers in Washington?

Doctorow:
Well, they can certainly influence people in Washington, but they’re not the key decision-makers today. Lindsey Graham will go along with anything they say, that’s for sure, and he’s not alone in that. But he isn’t calling the shots any more. And I’d say, if he ever did.

And so let them invite Slovenia. How many troops to Slovenia have? They have some policemen, I understand that, but where’s their army? Around Europe, there are very few countries that have anything significant.

37:10
Here in Belgium, we have a navy. And we even have a head of the navy. I don’t know, we have five or six boats. Mostly they’re dredging. They’re not real naval vessels capable of warfare.

How many vessels do the Swedes, the Danes have to enforce their blockade of Russia in the Baltic Sea. These armies are mirage. Estonia, who would complain very loudly about being included? Of course, the Baltic states. Of course, Estonia complained.

“We weren’t there.” Although nominally, Denmark was supposed to represent them at the meetings in Paris on Monday. Nonetheless, that wasn’t good enough. Of course they went in. And these are the barking dogs.

These are the ones who want to insist that Putin cannot be trusted, that we have to enforce anything with our armies on the ground. Where’s their army? Who are they going to send? It is farcical. So the instincts of Macron in the beginning were correct.

He invited those countries that have a big enough army pool to actually contribute something. Now, what is contributing something? Even 20 or 30 thousand, I mean, that can be taken out by one tactical nuclear weapon, OK? All at one go.

38:45
Mr. Zelensky was talking about 200,000. There isn’t any 200,000 army force in Europe to locate there if you want to have any troops left in the homeland to protect you against the riots that are going to follow. I mean, the armies in most of these countries, including the one I live in, basically are there for domestic security as they always were. I remember very well when I first traveled to France in the 1970s, and every government building had special units of the military with submachine guns at the ready, day and night, 24 hours. That was the way it was.

39:31
And if you think it was different here in Belgium, you’re wrong. That was also the case in the 1970s. Now these are less visible today, but that’s what you have an army for, to protect you against your own people, not to go out and fight the Russians in Ukraine. Let’s be serious about it.

Alkhorshid: 39:47
Gilbert, the way that the administration in Washington, again, is talking about Keith Kellogg being in charge of negotiations with Russia. And Keith Kellogg, in his sort of talk at the Munich Security Conference said, not only the issue in Ukraine, but also the relationship or the partnership between Russia, North Korea, Russia, Iran, and Russia and China, these three countries, should be considered in any sort of concession that Russia would make for the United States. How is that realistic in your opinion when it comes to this sort of idea on their part?

Doctorow: 40:33
Well, let me break your question into two questions. One is who is Keith Kellogg today? Number two is what is the relationship between the geopolitical questions and the peace in Ukraine?

Mr. Kellogg, it’s been clear that he has been sidelined. He is in the game, but he’s in the game that doesn’t really count. He has been given responsibility for maintaining relations with the European Union and with Ukraine, and Zelensky. That’s to say to watch them, keep them, hold their hands so that they believe that some Americans really care about them. That’s it.

41:16
The actual serious negotiating side, to be carried out with the Russians, for that the presidential envoy or emissary is Witkoff. And Witkoff is a different creature from Kellogg entirely. He’s very diplomatic. He understands how negotiations can proceed with the Russians.

And all the fussing and foot stomping of the Ukrainians or of anybody here in European Union [doesn’t] count for anything. So that … part of it is pretty clear, who is who. What was the second side of it again?

Alkhorshid:
The partnership between Russia and three countries.

Doctorow: 42:06
Right. That comes under the heading of geopolitical discussions. And if you notice carefully what was said by the three negotiators, I forget which one just addressed this precisely yesterday. That is phase three, not phase one, not phase two. It is not, I did not have a sense that this is linked to the signing of a peace accord over Ukraine.

Now, what is phase one? Phase one is beginning immediately, that is restoration of normal functioning of the respective embassies and diplomatic corps of the United States and Russia in Washington. [It] probably means return to Russia of the stolen and illegally expropriated Russian properties in the United States, the reopening of consulates, although that is less pressing. The most pressing thing is allowing for the normal functioning of the embassies.

43:20
So they can’t function normally if they don’t have ambassadors. That is neither the United States nor Russia has its own ambassador in the other country. So there’s immediate discussion of who’s going to be sent by the States and who’s going to be sent by Russia to fulfill this task. Secondly, there is these little things that the United States was doing everything possible to make life miserable for the Russians. They called off all the bank accounts, including those of the diplomatic mission in the United States.

43:49
They cannot pay any salaried workers or any expenses they incur on American soil, because they don’t even have a working bank account. So all of these things have to be fixed at once. And that is why working teams for that [events] are being assigned presently. So that’s stage one. You can’t proceed with such a complex negotiation to reestablish the general points of interest between these two countries if there’s no diplomatic mission.

44:22
Point number two will be to proceed to discussion of a peace in Ukraine. As became clear from the press conference yesterday, the American delegation understood this is not going to be achieved in one week, two weeks or more. It also, eventually it’s going to bring in both the Ukrainians and the European Union. I believe that if you put it on a six-month timeline, then the Americans expect that there’ll be elections and that Zelensky will be legitimately gone without the need to assassinate him or do the other things that Americans have done for regime changes in the past. He’ll be voted out of office.

45:04
And then somebody who was voted in office, whoever it is, it could be, doesn’t mean there is going to be some hero, some white knight here, could be Poroshenko, who’s a little devil with his own horns, but it won’t be Mr. Zelensky. And that person will have the legitimate authority to sign whatever peace has to be signed. So I think it’s within the same time frame there’ll be elections and it’ll be the processing of the peace.

45:28
Then the third thing which can occur simultaneously but more likely in a longer range, is the geopolitical accommodation. It wasn’t called accommodation. It was just called geopolitical issues by Rubio and Witkoff and the national security advisor Mike Waltz. The three of them, I forget which one brought it up, but it was in their list. So that– and what does that mean? Let’s decode that. It means exactly what you’re saying. It means the United States wants to break the very close semi-alliance between Russia and China and with the other countries whom it has befriended and with whom it is actively working sanctions now or not like North Korea, Russia is [coughing] sanctions and proceeding at a very full-throated, very vital cooperation.

46:39
So the United States wants to break all that. The chances of success? It’s difficult to say what kind of accommodation, what kind of agreements the Russians can make, but it’s a hundred percent clear they will not break relations with China. That’s a hundred percent clear. That’s also a non-negotiable point. So– but as you’ll notice, that is not a precondition for the solution to the Ukraine war, that meets most, if not all of Russia’s primary objectives.

47:13
These are separate, they have been separate, three boxes here, obviously with different working groups on each of them. That there will be a meeting between Trump and Putin, probably in Riyadh, probably in the early days of March, I’d say that’s almost a certainty. How much they can sign off? I think they can sign off on issues relating to restoration of diplomatic missions, possibly relief from some of the sanctions. This will definitely include relieving certain banks from their present cutoff from SWIFT.

47:54
Some Russian banks will now, I think in stage one, at the time of the summit, they will be restored to operations as a sign of good faith by the Americans. Good faith is a key to it all. Going back to the issue of Mr. Gorbachev, which we started this discussion on, Gorbachev was extremely sharp, shrewd,
I’d say merciless in pursuing the implementation of his own program for reforming the Soviet Union and for out-foxing his immediate peers in the Soviet leadership. He seemed to be very naive and foolish in his dealings with the West.

48:48
And in particular, he has been held in contempt for not defending Russia’s national interests in matters like the return of the Soviet armed forces from their deployment in the Warsaw Pact countries. And for his handshake agreements with the American leadership on NATO not moving one inch to the east. He said, what kind of a fool, why didn’t he get written agreements? But looking at this from today’s perspective and from what is about to happen now between the United States and Russia, we have a lot of people on the sidelines including especially in the alternative media camp saying, “Ah, the Russians can’t trust the Americans about anything, and no written document be worth anything.” And that is only partially true.

49:48
The question is which Americans can you trust. And there has been a real disastrous decline in the level of personal morality and personal trustworthiness among people in high office in the United States. Mr. Gorbachev could well have assumed that a handshake was enough when you’re dealing with gentlemen. And he could make reference to the agreement between Khrushchev and Kennedy at the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was only on a handshake, well, verbal commitment by Kennedy that if the Russians withdrew their forces from, their nuclear weapons from Cuba, America would withdraw its nuclear-enabled missiles in Turkey and Italy.

50:41
That was not public knowledge. If he wanted to double-cross Khrushchev, Kennedy had every possibility, but he didn’t, he kept his word. And I think that with a reference like that, Gorbachev also had a verbal agreement with the Americans who turned out to be card cheats. So I think you have to take people one by one and not generalize that every last American is a card cheat and that is not a very helpful way to proceed. And possibly Mr. Putin will be neither naive nor so cynical that he deprives himself of the peace.

Alkhorshid: 51:25
Gilbert, comparing Gorbachev to Putin. Gorbachev, when he tried to solve the issue with the West and to get better, to get closer to the West, he wasn’t Russia, so Soviet Union wasn’t that powerful in those days, military and economically. The situation today in Russia is totally different. They’re stronger, their economy is doing much better than it did before the conflict in Ukraine started.

These are huge guarantees for Russia, on the part of Russians, that the West has to abide by any sort of agreement that they’re going to reach in the future with Russia. This is the part– because when I talk with Jeffrey Sachs about Gorbachev, he said that in the United States they were arguing that Russia is defeated. Why we should have any sort of agreement with them? Why we should understand them? We have to put a lot of pressure on them right now.

52:27
But Russia today is not the way that it was during Gorbachev. It’s totally different. That would bring a huge, a significant change in any sort of talk or security agreement between the West and Russia. Russia is getting stronger economically and militarily. That’s a huge change that Gorbachev didn’t have in those days.

Doctorow: 52:56
Look, size is very important and this concerns Mr. Saxe included. Mr. Saxe was responsible and had a very important role in the transition to a market economy in Poland. He took lessons from that experience, which was fairly positive, although I have my reservations about how positive, that’s a separate issue.

Still for the public view, it looked very successful. And he took these to Russia, but Russia is a different scale from Poland. The economy was vastly larger, the territory is infinitely larger. And so all these parameters were different, and he didn’t take that into account. And so it is today when we speak about Russia having– Russia was on its back in the 1980s, 1990s I mean, and the Americans could well scorn it.

53:47
And certainly, Clinton did, despite the fact that even Yeltsin told him to his face that Russia will come back. Nobody believed it. I was in Russia in 1998. I was there when the economic collapse, the financial collapse, as a result of the financial crisis in Southeast Asia, it became global. Companies, Western companies, in the course of a year, fired half of their staff. Half of their staff.

I was in a company where I was spared, because I was overseeing the shutdown of our company or the half, a lot of our staff disappeared. And my eventual replacement was an Indian who was making one third of what I made and who counted for nothing in the company’s internal politics. The estimation was, looking at Thailand, that Russia would take 10 years to recover. Russia took two years to recover. And that was without Mr. Putin running the show. The country has vast potential, vast wealth and a vast number of very high quality managers, both in corporate life and government life.

55:00
Therefore, the estimations that were made in the 1980s and 1990s about Russia on the spiral down– and I include our Mr. John Mearsheimer in those who have disparaged Russia until the last few weeks– were saying for 10 years that Russia is, again, what mainstream was saying in the States, that Russia is just a spoiler, that Russia is on its way down, and the only country that counts is China. So a lot of very, very smart and very authoritative people were saying the same thing, that Russia is on a one-way track and therefore we don’t have to give them anything. And you know something? They were all wrong.

55:42
Of course, nobody could count on a man of genius in his own way and charisma in his own way. And who knew what he wanted from the beginning. And I’m speaking now about Vladimir Putin. Nobody could count on a national savior, which is what he turned out to be. But even absent Mr. Putin, in those two years from the financial collapse of 1998, when we foreign companies fired half of our staff in Russia because we felt the country had no prospects, we were all wrong. Two years later, Russia was back. We weren’t back, but they were back. So these things have to be taken into account. And again, I don’t mean to make criticisms of people with such renown as John Mearsheimer or my slight criticism here of Jeffrey Sachs.

56:34
I don’t mean any disrespect. I just mean to say universal geniuses don’t exist and it’s unreasonable to expect that any one of us will be a universal genius.

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

Doctorow:
Well, I appreciate your having me and a chance to, to set out some non-mainstream, non-conformist views.