Interview with Professor Glenn Diesen, 14 May: Trump’s Ukraine Peace Plan or Deception?

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I heartily recommend this interview to the Community because we addressed issues that are skipped over in the very focused commentaries on geopolitical news though they provide an essential context for interpreting this news.

I have in mind for example the whole issue of Trump’s tariff wars.  I put this together with Trump’s obvious respect for, no better to say envy of Vladimir Putin’s using the hardships of U.S. directed sanctions on his country to implement a very successful reindustrialization of Russia.  Trump is self-sanctioning the USA via tariffs with a view to achieving similar results.

Then, when speaking of the successful Russian management of externally created challenges to its economy, we have to consider the challenges that the free market or Liberal economists within the government, within the Central Bank, have created by the sky-high interest rates they imposed.  They should normally lead to recession, which would bring down inflation, but would be counter to the strength needed in the midst of a cruel war that threatens the nation’s existence.  In fact, the economy has survived and even thrived in the face of the 21% Central Bank interest rate because in parallel the Finance Ministry is following an antidote policy that could be best described as dirigisme: it is providing subsidies on the interest rates that bank lenders establish for credits to favored industries and to national champion manufacturers within those industries deemed essential for economic growth in general and for supporting the war effort in particular.

We also discussed what may come out of the Russia-Ukraine peace talks scheduled to be held in Istanbul tomorrow in light of Trump’s tactics of spreading confusion to keep his enemies at bay

These are just three examples of the material in this interview which viewers should find stimulating.

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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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