Lt Col Daniel Davis has a distinctive pool of expert guests and audience and it was a great pleasure to be invited to speak today to what is largely a new audience for me.
Davis’s particular interest was how the Russians will react to the possibility of a revival of NATO strength following the resolution adopted at the Hague summit calling for much higher spending on military needs by the European Member States, reaching 5% of GDP by 2035. I was given the opportunity to go beyond affirming the unlikelihood of any of the spending commitments ever being realized and to consider one by one, how long the biggest loudmouths in Europe favoring war preparations with Russia will last in power.
Merz will fall if he pursues imposition of a military draft, which is the only way to retore the Bundeswehr to where it was before the ‘peace dividend’ of the 1990s cut the German army to shreds. Starmer today looks very shaky after the reform bill cutting social benefits put together by his Chancellor of the Exchequer Reeves was defeated in the House.
Meanwhile, today’s news from Poland indicates that they have joined Hungary and Slovakia in openly opposing Ukraine’s entry into NATO, and probably also in opposing Ukraine’s entry into the EU.
These and other elements of this discussion may well be of interest to the Community.
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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2 thoughts on “Deep Dive with Lt Col. Daniel Davis: ‘Russian Aggression is Relentless’”
Dr.G, good to see your views gaining wider coverage. Now, please consider improving your microphone system because your current one sounds like you are in a barrel. Take care, from Nevada USA
Gilbert Doctorow 
Dr.G, good to see your views gaining wider coverage.
Now, please consider improving your microphone system
because your current one sounds like you are in a barrel.
Take care, from Nevada USA
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I was fascinated by US State Department’s spokeswoman’s phrasing. When she spoke of NATO, she consistently used the pronoun “they” not “we”.
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